h a l f b a k e r yCogito, ergo sumthin'
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Certain concepts and sounds are alleged to be amusing by their very nature. For instance, it's alleged that the abruptness of words with plosives such as P, T and K makes them more likely to elicit humorous responses and so forth, and certain words are seen as funny such as "ying tong iddle i po".
The same applies to concepts. For instance, i would tentatively suggest that references to certain bodily functions, organs and substances are likely to cause giggles in certain circles, and for some reason it seems to me that certain fruits and probably a number of other things - perhaps animal species - fall into this category too.
So i suggest an intrinsically amusing constructed language based on these, and perhaps other, principles. Each word sounds funny and many words are based on concepts at which people tend to laugh. So, for example, if gherkins are considered funny, as many words as possible are based on the concept of gherkin: green translates as "gherkin-coloured", skyscrapers are referred to as "gherkin buildings" and so forth - just an example. At the same time, these words should bear some affinity to "ping", "wibble" and so forth.
That way, even the most humourless person would be funny. Also, it would constitute an interesting experiment: would everyone find it funny? Would the amusement fade after a while to be replaced by amusement at the sounds of one's native language? Would a joke be extra funny or just like an ordinary statement? What precise features would be needed?
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Would the words get funnier the more serious they are? E.g. a newscast about an earthquake that killed thousands must have extra phhhh's, pwinggs, and gherkins to compensate for the sadness. |
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I think everyone would become rather jaded by humor after awhile. Come to think of it, this rather explains the German constituency and their high rate of plosive consonants. |
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Maybe this would be a way of removing humour entirely from life, temporarily, like in Asimov's 'Joker'. |
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I think this is an eminently idea. |
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It might benefit, however, from less subtlety. If
instead you translate "war-torn" as "bollocky",
"economic" as "rectal", "reports" as "enormous
buttocks" and "the" as "unfeasibly huge breasts",
news bulletins become immediately more
lighthearted. |
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A similar approach works quite well for
mathematics, too. |
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//everyone would become rather jaded by humor after awhile.//
<Python> "I put it to you that on February the Fifth of this year, you were very depressed with malice aforethought, and that you moaned quietly contrary to the Cheerful Noises Act." </Python> |
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//everyone would become rather jaded by humor after
awhile.// |
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Eee ecky phomp is _always_ funny. |
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For something to be funny, it needs to somehow go against (some loosely defined form of) convention. It doesn't need to be a surprise, but that helps. I think that explains the plosives - though it must be said that oolong, ham and meringue are all inherently funny words, with not a plosive between them. As people get older, the things that they find funny drift. Language drifts, with slang acting as the font of neologismry - I'd suggest that slang provides a similar function to, and is infact tied up with humour (or at least, linguistic humour - slapstick, imagery and other types of humour that is non-dependent on language would of course be excluded from this discussion) in that it highlights certain a certain poetic or emotional resonance. And so on that wider thought, it might be equally sensible to suggest a language that is inherently poetic - and in that respect, perhaps we're onto something. |
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But - again, we have to tease out the detail here - are we limiting ourselves to talking about an onomatopoeic type of humour, lots of blowing raspberries, whistles and other exclamations, like Klunk from "Stop The Pigeon"? |
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Or are we also allowing for a different kind of semantic humour that's based on a rich set of interconnections between meanings and referential prompts? In the case of the former, I'd imagine it'd become tedious after a while, and in the latter - where by definition such a thing must be constantly changing, I think we're already pretty much at the pinnacle with the number of puns, rhymes, regurgitations and cultural cross references found in the ever-evolving English language. |
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It would become simply a parallel universe to Nineteen-Eighty-Four with plosive and unconventional Newspeak as convention. |
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Perhaps this language could be reserved for humorous matters; sort of like Coptic is now reserved for religious matters, or Hebrew in the pre-Israel days. |
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It may be that langauge intended to be humorous already is in effect a dialect or sublanguage chosen for humorous impact. This is ripe for scholarly endeavor. |
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Could be useful as a sarcasm font. |
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[Zen_tom], maybe it could have registers for younger and older speakers, with the onomatopoeia confined to the younger and the wittier form for older. If one form of humour began to fade, the other register could be substituted unexpectedly. |
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