Letters from the Depths of Solitude. The Sixty-Third. On the Ideal Language
In the uneasy task of inventing an ideal language, a language as a site of utopia and the figure of final perfection, Wittgenstein and other Western logicians were always too preoccupied with an idea of equating language with mathematics; they all strove for the utmost, impossible precision.
In some ideal languages a word corresponds with an object in a very closely-knitted way: one object--one name, end of bifurcation. But it is rare that the ideal language was imagined as un-fully-clear, vague, sensual language, the language of poetry, which prioritizes affect over meaning.
The ideal language is said to exist both in the pre-Babylon-construction epoch (that is to say, situated in the mythic past, as done by Boehme), and postponed until tomorrow (examples might be computer codes, languages on which complex programs are run, directed into the domain of the future).
I, too, had an idea of the ideal language, which is immensely complex: it should oblige the speaker to disclose data conceivable / requiring additional speaking in an ordinary language; should force us to tell a lot in the forms of bits packaged in a very few lexical items.
For instance, when you say in Russian, "I met a neighbor," you disclose the gender of the neighbor, as there is no gender-neutral form for the "neighbor," it is either "neighborer" or "neighboress." In German and French you are obliged to be doing the same by using gendered articles.
Consequently, the ideal language should oblige the speaker to disclose, in so many lexical items, the time of the meeting, as for a meeting in the morning and meeting in the evening there should exist different verbs. Perhaps, "I" could also be differentiated depending on whether I am healthy or I am sick, I am cheerful or I am melancholic, and finally somewhere, perhaps in suffixes, there should be information conveyed on whether this meeting was delightful or saddening, and if any, the explanation for it must lay in the external or internal circumstances. Imagine what poetry might have been written in such language, and what admittance of love could be possible in the language which places such demands of the self-reflexivity of the speaker. Instead of the I love you which means too little and promises too much, I could have known, or rather could not have omitted knowing what exactly I am stating by saying "I love you." (Written on an empty pack of electronic cigarette' cartridges)
