Dear Duolingo: Could I invent an easier language

Dear Duolingo: Could I invent an easier language?

Are you sick of learning irregular forms in your new language? You're not alone!

Welcome to another week of Dear Duolingo, an advice column just for learners. Catch up on past installments here.

Hi, readers! I'm back with another fascinating question from one of our learners. If you've ever been frustrated by the seemingly endless exceptions and irregularities in a language you're learning, this question is for you!

Our question this week:

Your question touches on *a lot* of interesting linguistic subjects! We've got: complexity and irregularity in languages, the way languages change over time, the specific processes that happen when we learn a new language, and finally, constructed languages-also called "conlangs"!

Let's tackle them one by one:

• What is complexity?
• Languages are constantly changing
• • They can become more regular…
  • … Or less regular
• Is it complex, or just unfamiliar?
• Try a conlang!

What is complexity?

You're absolutely right that some languages seem to have a completely confounding number of verb endings, verb tenses, noun cases, gender agreement rules, word order rules-I could go on and on! But even though some languages have more inflections (parts of a word, like prefixes or suffixes, that carry grammatical information) than others, the fascinating thing is that all languages are equally complex, even though it might not feel that way at first glance.

Take a look at this example comparing the same phrase in Spanish and English:

• las bailarinas talentosas: In Spanish, all three of the words in this phrase have information about gender (feminine, because of the "a") and number (plural, because of the "s").
• the talented dancers: In English, there is only one inflection for number (the "s" at the end of dancers), and none for gender-so we know that there's more than one dancer, but we can't tell anything about their gender(s).

Some languages have even more-or less-inflection than these examples!

For example, Vietnamese has no inflections on nouns, verbs, adjectives, or any other parts of speech-so if you've only ever studied Spanish, this might sound like a relief! Instead, you use a separate word entirely to communicate a verb tense:

• tôi ăn (I eat)
• tôi đã ăn (I ate)
• tôi sẽ ăn (I will eat)
• tôi đang ăn (I am eating)

Compare that to Inuktitut, a language spoken in northern Canada, where each individual word carries a lot of meaning due to its inflections. The phrase Aannialiqpasaarama iksivaassuujaluarnikumut means "I was sitting so long that it started to hurt." These two words can be broken down into multiple parts and meanings, including:

• aania- (to be in pain)
• ikskivaa- (to sit)
• -ssuuja- (for a long time)
• -liq- (something that describes the beginning of an action; in this case, hurting)
• -niku- (something that describes the result of an action; in this case, pain as the result of sitting)
• as well as several other pieces of grammatical information!

From these examples alone, you might think that Spanish is more complex than English and that Inuktitut is more complex than Vietnamese-but inflections aren't the only way to measure complexity in a language. English spelling and pronunciation are full of surprises, and the number of sounds in a language is another way that a language can be complex. Vietnamese might not have any inflections, but it's a tonal language where the pitch of your voice can change a word's meaning (a layer of complexity Inuktitut doesn't have).

Languages are constantly changing

All languages change over time. There are plenty of patterns in how languages are most likely to change, but of course, there are lots of exceptions, too! So the irregularities you see in a language weren't always there, and they may not be in the future, either. Not only that, but the irregularities that we hate learning today might actually be a *simpler* version of what the language used to look like!

They can become more regular…

We just saw how English words don't usually change based on gender, but older versions of English used to have both noun cases and grammatical gender-meaning a lot more inflection!

Take the word frēond (friend) in Old English. It had multiple possible inflections, depending on its role in the sentence:

And that's only the singular forms-there were also plural forms for each of Old English's cases! Not to mention all the other possible word endings, since Old English had three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, or neuter (just like German). Over time, most of those forms disappeared, and today this complex system of inflections has basically been lost! Of course, there's a lot more to the story… but we'll save that for another Dear Duolingo question

English's former noun case and gender systems are an example of a language becoming *more* regular over time, but the opposite can happen, too!

… Or less regular

Spanish is famous for having a LOT of different forms that a verb can take, and there are also a lot of irregulars in nearly all of those forms!

One of the Spanish past tense forms, the imperfect, uses the endings -aba for verbs that end in -ar (so hablar, "to speak," becomes hablaba, meaning "I used to speak") and -ía for verbs that end in -er and -ir (like salir, "to go out," which becomes salía, "I used to go out").

On the surface, these -aba and -ía endings look completely unrelated! But in the past, -ía was actually -iba. The "b" sound became pronounced less and less forcefully over time, until it eventually disappeared entirely from both spelling and pronunciation. That old form still exists for the verb ir (to go), which is iba (I used to go) in the imperfect. Today, it looks like an irregular, but it's actually a relic!

All of that adds up to mean that languages that seem to have very few inflections and irregularities may have once had a lot, and vice versa. So no matter what kind of exquisitely exception-free language you create, it's bound to change-leaving future learners to puzzle over complex rules and exceptions, just like you're doing now!

Is it complex, or just unfamiliar?

Sometimes, the complexity we see in a new language we're learning is just based on our own perception! What seems hard to us in a language is influenced by where we are in our language-learning journey, as well as subconscious habits rooted in languages we already know.

On one hand, sometimes a language may seem more straightforward because you're new to it and you haven't discovered all of the complexities yet. This can be especially true of learning a language that's closely related to one you already know: Maybe the pronunciation, writing system, or grammar are familiar enough, but once you start getting into more advanced grammar concepts or exceptions, you realize that there's more to it than meets the eye!

On the flip side, if a new language's quirks aren't second nature to you yet, they might feel impossible to learn and remember. This will have the opposite effect: The language may seem more complex than other languages just because you're new to it.

Overall, however, the languages that are easiest to learn are the ones that are most similar to a language that we already know, which means that linguistic complexity is very subjective-features like noun cases, grammatical gender, tones, or rare sounds can feel completely impossible to some learners, while they're perfectly familiar to others!

Try a conlang!

Ultimately, this week's question is about whether creating a language that's completely free of complexity and irregularity is even possible. Let's take a closer look!

If you invented a complete language that allowed you to capture all of the concepts that the rest of the world's languages are able to express, it would necessarily be complex in some way. But this is your hypothetical language, so it's up to you where that complexity appears! Do you want to have no verb endings but strict rules about word order? Do you want a small inventory of sounds but lots of other ways (like tones or long words) to distinguish between similar-sounding words? The possibilities are endless!

Conlangs (short for "constructed languages") have existed for centuries. Some, like Star Trek's Klingon and Game of Thrones' High Valyrian (both taught on Duolingo!), were created to lend authenticity to fictional worlds. These languages used complexity as an asset, since they were meant to sound completely unfamiliar, in order to evoke an alien or fantasy world.

Esperanto (also taught on Duolingo!) is a conlang that was designed to connect people and be learned relatively easily, but it still has lots of prefixes and suffixes that can change a word's meaning. Its grammar is said to be completely regular-but that doesn't stop children who learn it from applying their own rules in an attempt to make it *even more* regular!

So, in short, Starting from Scratch, a conlang seems to be the answer to your question, but with a few caveats: No matter what, your language will be complex in some way-that's just the nature of language. And try as you might to avoid all potential irregularities, if your conlang catches on, you'll eventually be faced with the same problem all over again, because language change is an unstoppable force!

Embrace complexity!

Complexity, irregularities, and exceptions are all part of the beauty of languages. And as much as we might hate them when we're learning a new language… they're here to stay!

For more answers to your language and learning questions, get in touch with us by emailing [email protected].