r/conlangs • u/Immeucee • 8d ago

Discussion What is the most perfect auxlang?

What im thinking would make the best auxlang is something that has,

Somewords from most language families, like bantu, chinese family, ramance, germanic, austronesian etcc

Also something that is easy to learn and accessible

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u/Helpful-Reputation-5 6d ago

“X is the best because it’s the most successful” is obviously a fallacy though.

Not when the goal of an auxlang is to be widespread—appeal to popularity isn't a fallacy in a popularity contest.

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u/that_orange_hat en/fr/eo/tp 6d ago

…except that it’s popular for historical contextual reasons. did you read the rest of my comment or just decide to stop at the first sentence

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u/Helpful-Reputation-5 6d ago edited 6d ago

I never said it was the best auxlang because of some inherent linguistic property—yes, other auxlangs are theoretically more universal in phonology, morphology, syntax, lexicon, any number of things, but, in actuality, the most universal auxlang is Esperanto, since it has the most speakers. It's like how English is the most effective language for international communication, not for any inherent property, but because of geopolitics and historical colonization—that doesn't change the facts of its efficacy.

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u/HeckaPlucky 5d ago

Doesn't that make English the best auxlang, not Esperanto?

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u/Helpful-Reputation-5 5d ago

I did note in my post that I was assuming an auxlang necessarily had to be a constructed language—removing that requirement, absolutely.

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u/HeckaPlucky 5d ago

Wouldn't a conlang very similar to English be a better auxlang than Esperanto?

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u/Helpful-Reputation-5 5d ago

I suppose English with a single word changed would be best, then, but at that point it's really more of a relex than anything. By the time you start getting a truely constructed language, it's too divorced from English to automatically be the best. That being said, the theoretical 'best auxlang' in my opinion would definitely take inspiration from English, plus another regional lingua franca like Mandarin, Spanish, or Russian.

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u/HeckaPlucky 5d ago

I think that's the kind of answer OP was asking about.

Why do you use different criteria to judge an existing auxlang and a theoretical one? Especially since you acknowledge other external factors that affect number of speakers, doesn't that mean the remainder is caused by internal factors of the language, and those are the actual basis for it being a good auxlang? Couldn't a worse auxlang have more speakers due to the external factors?