What would the simplest language be like?

Sign language.
American signers find that, with only a couple days exposure, they can speak to French signers.

The simplest spoken language is Esperanto.

I’m not asking what the simplest language actually is, but how simple a language could become.

@PhiNotPi

The simplest language would be one that uses a limited number of nouns for common items, a limited number of verbs to indicate action, and little else. No conjunctions, no modifiers, no tenses… just the bare minimum necessary ti get across the simplest ideas.

Indonesian does not have plurals, but repeats a noun to indicate more than one. The verbs do not have a past tense, but have an adverb for future and another for past. It was a created, simplified, version descendant of Malay, adapted to be a national language in a country with hundreds of dialects and individual languages.

So it is a good model of what a simple language would be like.

I think 1984’s Newspeak is a good model as what a simple language would be like.

It would be a combination of hand gestures, grunts, moans and vowel sounds. Just watch a 18 month old try to communicate.

Well, for starters you could do away with any notion of male or female words, languages such as Spanish have male/female variations.

You could also get rid of all past, present and future variations, and instead include 3 new words that are used at either the beginning or end of something to let people know if it happened, is happening or will happen.

You could merge words such as ‘Is’ and ‘are’, kind of like they do in Chinese. As you mention you can also do away with ‘I’ and ‘me’ and other such terms.

I guess you could probably do away with with plural and singular variations, as well as all other variations and synonims of words leaving just the simplest version, e.g. use ‘but’ and never ‘however’, and just keep going until you get it down to the bones. Maybe even use abreviations as much as possible too.

You could also do away with a lot of words by making a language based on assumption. Instead of saying “I like apples so I’m going to the shop to buy some apples” you could just go with something like “I like apples so I’m going to the shop”, and just let it be assumed that you are going for apples.

An example could maybe look something like this:

Past I study school IES Son Servera, Past I finish study + Present I have diploma. Future I job office, I computer—I job chance good, but present many look job, I compete but no.

body language. with signing

IMO the most simple concepts are expressed, internationally, with:
The gesture for eating
The pee-pee dance
The gesture for sleeping
The gesture for taking/giving
The gesture to decline or accept
A hug or bow to show like, love or deference
And expressions such as- smiling, frowning, laughing, crying or being angry

It is Binary. You can not get simpler than that.

I agree with @King_Pariah.
Huxley’s 1984 is a great reminder that simplifying a language is an effective way to remove power.

Four words
Food, Sex, Submit and Fight would be ample enough words for us to survive in an Neanderthal like environment.

We could simplify language to a simple yes and no, but effective communication would go out the window. To continue to communicate effectively, we could simplify by doing away with words that mean the same thing. (I.E. crazy, mad, nuts, insane, bonkers, crackers, one beer short of a 6-pack). We could also use one verb for “to be”, such as using “are” instead of is/are/am. In the Swedish language, they use “ar” (are). There is no “is” in Swedish, and they don’t seem to miss it. These are just some examples.

@Boogabooga1 it’s George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s A Brave New World.

We could get rid of the inclusive or and use DeMorgan’s rule. It would make for some convoluted sentences. “Bring a pen or pencil” becomes “Do not not bring a pen and not bring a pencil.”

We could also get rid of the exclusive or by replacing “You must choose one or the other” with something strange like, “Choosing the one is logically equivalent to not choosing the other.”

As a side note, it is interesting how little confusion there is between inclusive and exclusive or. Until I was told about it, I did not even realize that there was a difference. I wonder if there are any languages that have separate words for the two uses.

I’m with @ragingloli. Binary is what you’re talking about here. It’s just composed of 1’s and 0’s. 1=on, 0=off (or something like that). If you wanted to translate that to spoken word, it would be a communication style where the alphabet consists of 2 letters (“Y” & “N”), and where all questions, responses, and reactions would be verbalized as 1 of 2 sounds meaning “yes” or “no”.

There was once an experiment where a guy determined that by only using about 850 Engish words, you can describe anything that currently you can with the complete version of English. The drawback is that certain words become as long as sentences and certain sentences become as long as paragraphs, etc. I’m having a bit of trouble finding where on the internet I read that, but that’s where his name was. If I find it, I’ll post it.

Check out the Hawaiian Language – five vowels, eight consonants, several diphthongs.

These twins will show you

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQbYc7qLgBc

Can’t get much simpler, I guess.