Ilaksh

Ilaksh is a constructed human language marked by outstanding grammatical complexity and an innovative system of writing. It is based on Ithkuil.

The language’s author, John Quijada, presents^[1] Ilaksh as a cross between an a priori philosophical language and a logical language^[2] designed to express deeper levels of human cognition overtly and clearly, yet briefly. The many examples from Quijada’s original grammar^[1] show that, in the general case, a message would take significantly longer to explicate in a natural language than in Ilaksh.

Quijada deems the language as too complex and rational to have developed “naturally”, usable for general conversation and literature.

History

Since the mentioning of Ithkuil in the Russian magazine Computerra^[3], several Russian-speakers contacted Quijada and expressed enthusiasm to learn the language, while complaining of its difficulty in pronunciation. Quijada remade the language’s morphophonology and published the revision on 10 June 2007, as Ilaksh. The new version involved other amendments to grammar, like the increasing of the number of Levels and the expansion of the noun case system.

Grammar and lexicon

The lexicon of Ilaksh potentially consists of 3,600 word roots; so far only about a 700 are assigned with definite meanings. Each root consists of a consonant cluster, a vowel, and a toneme, and can derive innumerable lexemes through Ilaksh’s complex rules of morphophonology, which involve consonant mutation, shifts in syllabic stress, and diverse affixes.

Phonology

Ilaksh’s phonological system consists of 30 consonants and 10 vowels. The consonants of Ithkuil are as follows:

/m n ŋ l/ can be syllabic. All consonants except /j w/ can be geminated; when geminated, /h/ is pronounced as a bidental fricative and /ɾ/ is prounounced as an alveolar trill.

Orthography

Ilaksh's writing system has two forms, a sequential "informal" system suitable for handwriting or compact typesetting, and a "formal" logographic system with artistic possibilities resembling Maya scripts.

In the "informal" writing system, several parallel sets of lines have shapes that sequentially correspond to the different parallel sets of lexemes and inflections. It is directly pronounceable. The author designed it to be conveniently hand-written. It also appears to permit compact, clear, black-and-white typesetting.

In the colorful "formal" writing system, a single complex glyph represents an entire sentence. Diversely shaped, shaded and superimposed “cartouches” represent the syntactic relations of the verb and noun phrases of a sentence. The edges of the cartouches have particular shapes describing one set of inflections, while the colors describe another set of inflexions, and the textures yet another set. On the cartouches, “letters” of hexagonal outline spell out the shapes of particular lexemes. The cartouches form phrases, with primary phrases overlapping subordinate phrases. The coloring system utilizes different color densities and texturing for different colors in order to be usable by color-blind people. These density conventions also allow the formal system to be inexpensively printed in black-and-white, or inscribed or imprinted on stone or other materials. [1]

See also

• Ithkuil

References

1. ^ ^{a b} A Philosophical Design for a Hypothetical Language – John Quijada’s grammar of Ilaksh
2. ^ Seek explanation of the terms in the Constructed language article
3. ^ «Скорость мысли», Станислав Козловский – (Russian) Speed of thought by Stanislav Kozlovsky, Computerra, №26-27, June 20, 2004