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[Derakon]

I strongly recommend studying linguistics if you're serious about making a language. There's tons of stuff to learn about how languages work that you won't be able to take into account if your only knowledge of language is "practical" (i.e. from just using language).

That, and go find some conlang communities and hang out in them.

[ein]

Great idea, but \ and | are hard to type and wouldn't really save time for somebody who types really fast.
I would recommend using ; for stuff. Maybe " and ? too.

[G-Flex]

Wrong.

I know a bit of french.


And, a massive ammount of C, java, C++, basic, and others...

I'm sorry, but "a bit of French" (which is fairly similar to English anyway, in the big picture) isn't going to help a hell of a lot, nor are programming languages.

[IndonesiaWarMinister]

Wrong.

I know a bit of french.


And, a massive ammount of C, java, C++, basic, and others...

I'm sorry, but "a bit of French" (which is fairly similar to English anyway, in the big picture) isn't going to help a hell of a lot, nor are programming languages.

Yes, you need representives from other language families.

Like Arabic, or the Malay.

Or... Inuit? <- but still Indo-Siberian, eh.

[Vester]

German is a bit closer to English than French, I think.

Also?

Latin.

You need Latin. It's the foundation of several European languages.

[G-Flex]

Latin is a good choice because it has a fairly explicitly-complex grammar, but if you want to construct some sort of totally new language, you'll want to look at stuff that's beyond the continent your own language comes from, as someone else mentioned.

[Ampersand]

The best thing I can think of for a internet is Esperanto. Think Latin with vaguely Italian pronunciation, with all of the complexity explicitly removed. You can learn the grammar, if not the dictionary in a couple of weeks of study.

On the flip side, there's Lojban. You will never say anything that could ever be ambiguous in any way. Your meaning will always be precisely conveyed by the words you use and the order in which they are organized, with a complex system of back-up articles to make things as clear as possible. Suffice it to say that most people don't bother trying.

[Mulch Diggums]

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[G-Flex]

The best thing I can think of for a internet is Esperanto. Think Latin with vaguely Italian pronunciation, with all of the complexity explicitly removed. You can learn the grammar, if not the dictionary in a couple of weeks of study.

On the flip side, there's Lojban. You will never say anything that could ever be ambiguous in any way. Your meaning will always be precisely conveyed by the words you use and the order in which they are organized, with a complex system of back-up articles to make things as clear as possible. Suffice it to say that most people don't bother trying.

The problem with that is that the purpose of language is to convey whatever meaning a person wants to convey.

Sometimes people want to be ambiguous, and if language is that precise then you can't state things via analogy or idiom as easily. In other words, 100%-precise language is only good when your thought is 100% precise and the ideas you want to convey are as well, which is untrue, especially if you approach anything near art.

[Ampersand]

I should rephrase it. It is not possible to cause unintentional ambiguity in Lojban. It is entirely possible to state things in that language where properties of things are left out in the open. The type of thing that is impossible in Lobjan are things like the following phrase

Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.

In Lojban, there is no overlap between verbs and nouns, and the precise meaning of each phrase would be clear to any reader.

[G-Flex]

There's still a problem there.

Idiomatic phrases like "Time flies" occur for a very good reason. After all, it's not as if English couldn't already represent the concept, so why would a technically-ambiguous (although not in practice) term like that arise?

It's because idiomatic, metaphorical language like that is good for understanding what someone means by something. "Flies" is associated with a certain physical process that doesn't apply to time in a technical sense, but is applied analogously in order to describe a perception of time moving fast... hell, I'm having trouble even describing what "time flies" means, because it's so easily understood idiomatically. Weird little quirky constructs like that, where the meaning of one thing is applied by analogy and association to something completely different, are important to language. You could get rid of it, but people would end up doing it again anyway eventually, or else it never would happen in the first place. The connotations and images people conjur up when they use language are just as important as the technical definitions of the words themselves.

[Armok]

I think you still have it wrong, if I got it right it's more like "Time-the-fourth-dimention flies-throught-the-air alike an arrow-launched-by-a-bow.
Tephritidae prefers to consume a banana-fruit."

[Alexhans]

Knowing a programming language is definetly NOT going to help you guys...

Languages and programming languages have just the word language in common...

I concur with whoever said that you needed a lot of linguistics knowledge...

There's so many different approaches...

[Vester]

There's still a problem there.

Idiomatic phrases like "Time flies" occur for a very good reason. After all, it's not as if English couldn't already represent the concept, so why would a technically-ambiguous (although not in practice) term like that arise?

It's because idiomatic, metaphorical language like that is good for understanding what someone means by something. "Flies" is associated with a certain physical process that doesn't apply to time in a technical sense, but is applied analogously in order to describe a perception of time moving fast... hell, I'm having trouble even describing what "time flies" means, because it's so easily understood idiomatically. Weird little quirky constructs like that, where the meaning of one thing is applied by analogy and association to something completely different, are important to language. You could get rid of it, but people would end up doing it again anyway eventually, or else it never would happen in the first place. The connotations and images people conjur up when they use language are just as important as the technical definitions of the words themselves.

Aye. It's like that old logical fallacy.

"God is love. Love is blind. Therefore God is blind."

Following if A = B and B = C, A = C.

But that's silly. The "B" term here refers to two different kinds of love in two different statements. The thing is, if spoken language weren't full of ambiguities, then this kind of fallacy would be impossible.

But I like English just the way it is.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

Ugh, Newspeak
Certainly not doubleplusgood.