Monday, January 8, 2024

Lashen, an in-progress Semitic "postfix notation" language

Translation: God said, "Let there be light!" and there was light.

Postfix notation is a mathematical notation in which operators follow their operands. Instead of "1 + 1 = 2", you'd write "1 1 + 2 =".

While a little unintuitive, this notation system renders the order of operations (and the need for parentheses) obsolete. For example, "3 * (1 + 2)" is written as "3 1 2 + *".

Similarly, word order in Lashen is object-subject-verb:
anek banenin akol (I bananas eat.)

Or, with more complex sentences:
anek parehin ahov-ala anek banenin ahov baram (I fruit like-not, I bananas like but.)

With this system, there is no real need for punctuation marks.

It also solves ambiguous sentences such as "She said that Bob was sick and she felt bad." Did she say she felt bad, or did she say that Bob was sick, period, and she also felt bad about it?  
In Lashen, you'd either say "She Bob sick was said she bad felt and" or "She Bob sick was she bad felt and said".

No comments:

Post a Comment