I was reading about a constructed language called "Toki Pona" that is touted to have only 120 words.
I wanted to know are there any examples of any natural languages notable for their simplicity or relative lack of words?
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1Your definition of simplicity only concerns vocabulary pool right?– Andrew RavusMar 25, 2016 at 20:58
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That could be one example of simplicity, I was also thinking in terms of grammar too. For example, languages with only a few verb conjugations– waratteMar 26, 2016 at 1:03
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4No natural language is that small or simple because human social life isn't that small or simple.– curiousdannii ♦Mar 26, 2016 at 5:25
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3All languages are not the same in terms of grammar. Regardless, there are natural languages, called "creoles", that occasionally arise from contact languages, called "pidgins", by creating a generation of children with no other common language. All known creoles have very similar syntactic characteristics (most notably, even when the contributing languages are polysynthetic, like Chinook Jargon, all creole languages are analytic) Creoles, like any other language, don't lack for lexical resources, however; if they need a word, they steal it or make it.– jlawlerMar 28, 2016 at 1:58
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2All languages meet your requirements, when spoken by 2-year-olds.– prash ♦Mar 28, 2016 at 5:27
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1 Answer
There is one single ritual language that comes quite close with a vocabulary of only some 150 words (having quite broad senses like the Toki Pona ones), namely the aboriginal language Damin
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Damin is a natural Australian auxiliary language. Granted, Australian auxiliary languages are pretty weird. See Dixon's mother-in-law language and Hill's upside-down Walbiri, for instance.– jlawlerMar 28, 2016 at 2:02
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@jlawler can you elaborate on "upside-down walbiri"? A duckduckgo search didn't show anything relevant Dec 15, 2017 at 13:13
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The Hale article is "A Note on a Walbiri Tradition of Antonymy", and it's a classic.– jlawlerDec 15, 2017 at 17:28