I haven't had time to read the full article yet, so I'm not sure if this is addressed later, but already I'm seeing some problems with this being presented as universal. The first is that it uses...
I haven't had time to read the full article yet, so I'm not sure if this is addressed later, but already I'm seeing some problems with this being presented as universal. The first is that it uses pictograms that requires cultural knowledge to understand. For example, the Pinocchio pictogram with a speech bubble signifies a lie. This is pretty obvious to those who have a understanding of Pinocchio, but to the countless cultures that don't have Pinocchio, this icon is meaningless. Similarly, colours such as blue are represented with a colour palette and a sailor's hat(?). This again requires cultural knowledge to understand why a black and white hat with an anchor on it means blue.
In a similar vein, some things may not necessarily require cultural knowledge to understand, but are inaccessible to certain people. The colour for white, for example, is indicated by a snowman. Many people around the world have never, and will never see snow. Even if they did, snowmen are not an inherent quality of snow, that is to say, there is no guarantee that anyone seeing snow for the first time will create a snowman. In this case, the colour for white is both culturally and geography locked.
The third problem I saw was that icons weren't always clear. The icon representing grey is a mouse with a colour palette. But why choose a mouse for grey? Mice can be brown, grey, black, white. Simply saying the colour of a mouse doesn't actually give you any information.
Edit: the more I think about this, the more I dislike it. There are more problems than it's already English/Western centric starting point. It also relies too heavily on technology to express meaning. The pictogram for identity, for example, is a fingerprint. I'm not certain in this history of fingerprinting as a means of establishing identity, but I gather it's a relatively recent thing. It isn't intuitive to any culture that doesn't have fingerprint technology, and it seems odd to me to have to define such a core and integral idea to humanity by a relatively meaningless technological development.
One of the biggest things I was unhappy with however, was the expression for 'woman', which is the woman toilet emoji. Granted, this already is a nearly recognised and used way of signing 'woman', but I also feel it's pretty outdated. Why is 'woman' just 'male' in a dress? It's an outdated concept which just feels unnecessary here. I understand that it's making the most of an already (near)universal symbol, but if we're making a whole new writing system, why are we resigning ourselves to the fact that the best way to represent 'woman' is a person in a dress?
For a system like this to work, we have to have a universal understanding of what different concepts, objects, and colours are. Ultimately, each culture understands everything slightly differently, so we will never be able to encapsulate all cultural variations of things and concepts into one image.
The author isn't necessarily claiming that the icon-meaning associations are universal. They cite an example in the article. I think their intent is simply to create a writing system that's...
The author isn't necessarily claiming that the icon-meaning associations are universal. They cite an example in the article.
The “heart” icon, for example, is widely understood to mean “love” but neither depicts any emotion nor much resembles any physical heart. Because its meaning is thus little more than a convention, it is strictly speaking a symbol rather than an icon (Shen et al., 2020; Bühler, 2021).
I think their intent is simply to create a writing system that's "easier to learn to read."
Although the concept in the article was presented more professionally, I can't help but be reminded of one of the most absurd startups we ever saw at an app development firm I used to work for....
Although the concept in the article was presented more professionally, I can't help but be reminded of one of the most absurd startups we ever saw at an app development firm I used to work for. I'm talking "so absurd we brought them up at happy hours for years" type of customers.
It started when a couple of boomers in suits physically arrived at our office to inquire about our services (which was always a surefire sign we were about to hear about a crazy app idea.) Well, these guys genuinely believed they were about to change the world with their app, which they dubbed "JGist." (I think it was supposed to be pronounced like the word "gist," but we always called it "jay-gist.") They showed us this unhinged, hilarious concept video (a wild 4 minute ride that I highly recommend watching), complete with outer space effects, grandiose claims, and a "logo" made of the most hideous clip art you'll ever see. The boomer energy was off the charts, and honestly I feel a bit bad making fun of the guys, because they were so earnest and optimistic about it. They had just cracked the code that would allow all human civilizations to communicate with each other effortlessly for the rest of eternity - emojis, apparently! They even filed for a patent, which I hadn't seen until now. What a treat.
Beyond being amused by the terrible presentation of their idea, I found the same issues with the concept that have been pointed out in this thread. Icons may be simpler and more universal in a way, but cultural context still plays a big role in how we interpret images/icons, and they are no replacement for actual language. Surely, improvement of translation technology would be a more logical route to support communication?
Coincidentally, use of icons (or rather, the avoidance of icons) is actually part of Tildes' design philosophy. "Use words, not icons." Just thought that was interesting to bring up in the context of this discussion. Personally I'm on the side of the Tildes philosophy. "Sleek, modern" icons are often just a pain in the ass when trying to get around a new website or app, in my opinion. Of course there are exceptions, things like the "hamburger" menu icon or the floppy disk save icon have earned their spot, but it takes time to develop a universal understanding like that. And those icons are only attempting to represent one or two words, not detailed communication.
It's probably worth noting that the author is not a linguist, but then I think very few of the myriad "universal language" proponents over the years have been. A fresh, outsider take can be very...
It's probably worth noting that the author is not a linguist, but then I think very few of the myriad "universal language" proponents over the years have been. A fresh, outsider take can be very valuable sometimes however. That said, I really dislike that the author conflates language and orthography. Written language is not a natural part of human existence, and trying to bend brains into using a language that was designed as a writing system first is (while an intriguing suggestion), doomed to failure, imo. One must understand that the human brain is uniquely wired to acquire language, and that process begins within weeks of birth (and some evidence suggests even during gestation). But our eyes are not well formed enough, and nor do we have world experience enough to use a pictographic language until we are much older, and potentially already past the sweet spot for language learning. Proposing a grammar which is more vibes-based is a really bold idea, but again: doomed to fail. We are pattern recognition machines, and there is a reason that all natural grammars settle into regular rhythms and patterns: efficiency.
Icono is basically something that (in its current form) can only exist in a world of digital communication and writing. Look at all the examples they give for Chinese, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian: they got simplified over time to be quicker to write. Human communication is lazy, and our brains are inclined to be as efficient as possible, and this strikes me as incredibly inefficient, unless you're aiming for something like Toki Pona, where the ambiguity of every word is sort of the point. Icono is functionally impossible to handwrite effectively, and while the author suggests that writing by hand is nigh a thing of the past, I think it's deeply, dangerously wrong to assume that we won't still be doing so in 100 years' time.
I applaud the intention to put the reader first, as I agree that most written language makes more demands of the reader than the writer. However, a minimum of accommodation needs to be provided to the writer for anyone to actually want to learn and use this language.
I think they’re assuming it will be written on a computer using autocomplete, like emojis? But if they’re serious about this project, I’d recommend making sure the characters they need are either...
I think they’re assuming it will be written on a computer using autocomplete, like emojis? But if they’re serious about this project, I’d recommend making sure the characters they need are either already available, or make proposals to add them to Unicode.
It already is. Companies figured out years ago that to avoid global translation of buttons and menus that icons are easier, and emojis are already all over common conversations. It’s arguably much...
It already is. Companies figured out years ago that to avoid global translation of buttons and menus that icons are easier, and emojis are already all over common conversations.
It’s arguably much more intuitive than any alphabet with the main issue being how difficult it usually is to write
Well, looking at some of the proposed pictograms they seem pretty straightforward, at least until two or three start getting strung together. That's where my brain starts to get a bit wobbly.
Well, looking at some of the proposed pictograms they seem pretty straightforward, at least until two or three start getting strung together. That's where my brain starts to get a bit wobbly.
I feel like, sure, that works when typed but we're gonna need a bigger budget for art classes unless I wanna see a note that my uncle left to go to the store to beg emu or something.
I feel like, sure, that works when typed but we're gonna need a bigger budget for art classes unless I wanna see a note that my uncle left to go to the store to beg emu or something.
This is not the first attempt at something like this, and I'm not particularly sold on it as an improvement over something like Blissymbols. It has all the failings of Blissymbols and also adds an...
This is not the first attempt at something like this, and I'm not particularly sold on it as an improvement over something like Blissymbols. It has all the failings of Blissymbols and also adds an entirely constructed grammar (one which is inevitably biased toward speakers of languages with similar grammars) on top. Seems like a fun conlanging/conscript project, but presenting it as a "universal" is silly and impractical.
I also don't like how they present the history of Chinese characters as a script -- it's not wrong per-se but falsely places the radicals and phonetic components at a weird dichotomy and doesn't represent the history of the script well at all.
I wasn't sold on most of this, but where the author really got me was in pointing out how iconographic depictions (or at least, certain ones) from ancient cultures are easily understood thousands...
I wasn't sold on most of this, but where the author really got me was in pointing out how iconographic depictions (or at least, certain ones) from ancient cultures are easily understood thousands of years into their futures by people with no knowledge of the language (me!).
Figure 3 has the vocabulary for "here". Figure 4 shows the overly complicated set notation for "to be". Figure 6 has the vocabulary for "not" (I don't like the use of black backgrounds for...
Figure 3 has the vocabulary for "here". Figure 4 shows the overly complicated set notation for "to be". Figure 6 has the vocabulary for "not" (I don't like the use of black backgrounds for negation). And there's no vocabulary for "safe".
I assume we would just link up "here" and "not + safe" using the set symbol for "is".
One thing I liked about this was the separation of written and spoken language. It reminds me of the universal language of the heptapods from Contact. Main criticism is the sometimes questionable...
One thing I liked about this was the separation of written and spoken language. It reminds me of the universal language of the heptapods from Contact.
Main criticism is the sometimes questionable choices of symbols and the strange choice to replace Arabic numerals with symbols that are both culturally specific and also do not scale well with large or even medium sized numbers.
Severely doubt it will go anywhere but I'd like to try out a working proof of concept for it.
I haven't had time to read the full article yet, so I'm not sure if this is addressed later, but already I'm seeing some problems with this being presented as universal. The first is that it uses pictograms that requires cultural knowledge to understand. For example, the Pinocchio pictogram with a speech bubble signifies a lie. This is pretty obvious to those who have a understanding of Pinocchio, but to the countless cultures that don't have Pinocchio, this icon is meaningless. Similarly, colours such as blue are represented with a colour palette and a sailor's hat(?). This again requires cultural knowledge to understand why a black and white hat with an anchor on it means blue.
In a similar vein, some things may not necessarily require cultural knowledge to understand, but are inaccessible to certain people. The colour for white, for example, is indicated by a snowman. Many people around the world have never, and will never see snow. Even if they did, snowmen are not an inherent quality of snow, that is to say, there is no guarantee that anyone seeing snow for the first time will create a snowman. In this case, the colour for white is both culturally and geography locked.
The third problem I saw was that icons weren't always clear. The icon representing grey is a mouse with a colour palette. But why choose a mouse for grey? Mice can be brown, grey, black, white. Simply saying the colour of a mouse doesn't actually give you any information.
Edit: the more I think about this, the more I dislike it. There are more problems than it's already English/Western centric starting point. It also relies too heavily on technology to express meaning. The pictogram for identity, for example, is a fingerprint. I'm not certain in this history of fingerprinting as a means of establishing identity, but I gather it's a relatively recent thing. It isn't intuitive to any culture that doesn't have fingerprint technology, and it seems odd to me to have to define such a core and integral idea to humanity by a relatively meaningless technological development.
One of the biggest things I was unhappy with however, was the expression for 'woman', which is the woman toilet emoji. Granted, this already is a nearly recognised and used way of signing 'woman', but I also feel it's pretty outdated. Why is 'woman' just 'male' in a dress? It's an outdated concept which just feels unnecessary here. I understand that it's making the most of an already (near)universal symbol, but if we're making a whole new writing system, why are we resigning ourselves to the fact that the best way to represent 'woman' is a person in a dress?
For a system like this to work, we have to have a universal understanding of what different concepts, objects, and colours are. Ultimately, each culture understands everything slightly differently, so we will never be able to encapsulate all cultural variations of things and concepts into one image.
The author isn't necessarily claiming that the icon-meaning associations are universal. They cite an example in the article.
I think their intent is simply to create a writing system that's "easier to learn to read."
If they don't intend to claim that it's universal, then entitling it "Icono: a universal language" is misleading at best.
Hypothetically, it's possible to make a language universal by imposition.
Although the concept in the article was presented more professionally, I can't help but be reminded of one of the most absurd startups we ever saw at an app development firm I used to work for. I'm talking "so absurd we brought them up at happy hours for years" type of customers.
It started when a couple of boomers in suits physically arrived at our office to inquire about our services (which was always a surefire sign we were about to hear about a crazy app idea.) Well, these guys genuinely believed they were about to change the world with their app, which they dubbed "JGist." (I think it was supposed to be pronounced like the word "gist," but we always called it "jay-gist.") They showed us this unhinged, hilarious concept video (a wild 4 minute ride that I highly recommend watching), complete with outer space effects, grandiose claims, and a "logo" made of the most hideous clip art you'll ever see. The boomer energy was off the charts, and honestly I feel a bit bad making fun of the guys, because they were so earnest and optimistic about it. They had just cracked the code that would allow all human civilizations to communicate with each other effortlessly for the rest of eternity - emojis, apparently! They even filed for a patent, which I hadn't seen until now. What a treat.
Beyond being amused by the terrible presentation of their idea, I found the same issues with the concept that have been pointed out in this thread. Icons may be simpler and more universal in a way, but cultural context still plays a big role in how we interpret images/icons, and they are no replacement for actual language. Surely, improvement of translation technology would be a more logical route to support communication?
Coincidentally, use of icons (or rather, the avoidance of icons) is actually part of Tildes' design philosophy. "Use words, not icons." Just thought that was interesting to bring up in the context of this discussion. Personally I'm on the side of the Tildes philosophy. "Sleek, modern" icons are often just a pain in the ass when trying to get around a new website or app, in my opinion. Of course there are exceptions, things like the "hamburger" menu icon or the floppy disk save icon have earned their spot, but it takes time to develop a universal understanding like that. And those icons are only attempting to represent one or two words, not detailed communication.
It's probably worth noting that the author is not a linguist, but then I think very few of the myriad "universal language" proponents over the years have been. A fresh, outsider take can be very valuable sometimes however. That said, I really dislike that the author conflates language and orthography. Written language is not a natural part of human existence, and trying to bend brains into using a language that was designed as a writing system first is (while an intriguing suggestion), doomed to failure, imo. One must understand that the human brain is uniquely wired to acquire language, and that process begins within weeks of birth (and some evidence suggests even during gestation). But our eyes are not well formed enough, and nor do we have world experience enough to use a pictographic language until we are much older, and potentially already past the sweet spot for language learning. Proposing a grammar which is more vibes-based is a really bold idea, but again: doomed to fail. We are pattern recognition machines, and there is a reason that all natural grammars settle into regular rhythms and patterns: efficiency.
Icono is basically something that (in its current form) can only exist in a world of digital communication and writing. Look at all the examples they give for Chinese, Egyptian, and Mesopotamian: they got simplified over time to be quicker to write. Human communication is lazy, and our brains are inclined to be as efficient as possible, and this strikes me as incredibly inefficient, unless you're aiming for something like Toki Pona, where the ambiguity of every word is sort of the point. Icono is functionally impossible to handwrite effectively, and while the author suggests that writing by hand is nigh a thing of the past, I think it's deeply, dangerously wrong to assume that we won't still be doing so in 100 years' time.
I applaud the intention to put the reader first, as I agree that most written language makes more demands of the reader than the writer. However, a minimum of accommodation needs to be provided to the writer for anyone to actually want to learn and use this language.
I think they’re assuming it will be written on a computer using autocomplete, like emojis? But if they’re serious about this project, I’d recommend making sure the characters they need are either already available, or make proposals to add them to Unicode.
Interesting concept, though I'm not sure my letter-focused brain could switch to reading pictograms.
It already is. Companies figured out years ago that to avoid global translation of buttons and menus that icons are easier, and emojis are already all over common conversations.
It’s arguably much more intuitive than any alphabet with the main issue being how difficult it usually is to write
Well, looking at some of the proposed pictograms they seem pretty straightforward, at least until two or three start getting strung together. That's where my brain starts to get a bit wobbly.
I feel like, sure, that works when typed but we're gonna need a bigger budget for art classes unless I wanna see a note that my uncle left to go to the store to beg emu or something.
This is not the first attempt at something like this, and I'm not particularly sold on it as an improvement over something like Blissymbols. It has all the failings of Blissymbols and also adds an entirely constructed grammar (one which is inevitably biased toward speakers of languages with similar grammars) on top. Seems like a fun conlanging/conscript project, but presenting it as a "universal" is silly and impractical.
I also don't like how they present the history of Chinese characters as a script -- it's not wrong per-se but falsely places the radicals and phonetic components at a weird dichotomy and doesn't represent the history of the script well at all.
You've been drafted to my conlanging island. Sorry, I don't make the rules.
I wasn't sold on most of this, but where the author really got me was in pointing out how iconographic depictions (or at least, certain ones) from ancient cultures are easily understood thousands of years into their futures by people with no knowledge of the language (me!).
I wonder how "This place is not a place of honor" would read in Icono?
Figure 3 has the vocabulary for "here". Figure 4 shows the overly complicated set notation for "to be". Figure 6 has the vocabulary for "not" (I don't like the use of black backgrounds for negation). And there's no vocabulary for "safe".
I assume we would just link up "here" and "not + safe" using the set symbol for "is".
Interesting. But I just keep wanting to call it esperantoglyphics
One thing I liked about this was the separation of written and spoken language. It reminds me of the universal language of the heptapods from Contact.
Main criticism is the sometimes questionable choices of symbols and the strange choice to replace Arabic numerals with symbols that are both culturally specific and also do not scale well with large or even medium sized numbers.
Severely doubt it will go anywhere but I'd like to try out a working proof of concept for it.