when u're stripped of everything physical that can tie u to who u are, your spoken language will be THE identity. language in itself isn't much other than a mode of communication. but couple that to mannerism, terms, idioms, sayings, inflections, subtleties etc language is one of the components that make a culture.
I agree. And further than that, it is the medium that makes the spirit of pure culural products: Tsel mentionned the songs, but there are also poetry and some writings. Personally, I find that when those artworks are traducted they most always lose something.
What if we resurrected Latan? It is an existing language, is already used to form other languages, and is too strict to be bastardised. By adding words to incorporate new ideas such as technology it may become a viable alternative.
Yeah, it would be worth considering, imo; although I don't know if it's a hard language or not. And since very much languages origin from it, it is a kind of key to understand them. Like knowing english + french allows to roughly understand spanish. As for the new words to incorporate for new concepts & technologies, most of them come from old language's words (and very much from latin roots) or from proper names, so it's not a big problem. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/winkwink.gif" alt="" />
The 'tool' language must be adequate to express feelings, insinuations, humour, impressions - not only the factual transfer of information.
True. But most languages (again I don't know much so I may be wrong) are set up so you can express everything, even the "simple" ones. If no word exists for what you mean, you can explain it with other words. It's longer but you have the same result. Having a language with very precise words for everything makes a language difficult to learn (apart from the capricious grammar, that is a point that makes french a difficult language; in french there is a word for quite everything).
In Finnish you don't have that. A sound can only be written in one way and everybody knows what you mean.
It could be another worth considering choice. But it is another one that is unknown to me. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
