natlang
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English[edit]
Etymology[edit]
Blend of natural + language, by analogy with conlang.
Noun[edit]
natlang (plural natlangs)
- (informal, conlanging, natural language processing) a natural language, one that arose without intentional design. [from 1990s]
- Proto-Indo-European was a natlang that can only be reconstructed with the help of its attested daughter languages.
- 2012 June 19, Escape Landsome, “Are Natlang the best case for entropy in communication ?”, in lojban@googlegroups.com[1] (Usenet):
- In the case of natlang some redundancy is set to avoid this, namely the "f-" or "few" opposes the "n-" of "none", but also "-ew" of "few" opposes "-one" of "none", so that, if ever one phonem is not well understood, the other ones are there to save the day.
- 2003 December 11, Javier BF, “Poll on Natlangs”, in alt.lang.artificial[3] (Usenet):
- Don't expect me to waste my time learning a con-auxlang full of irregularities which I can already more or less understand and which won't gain me any access to other areas outside my own Romance area. I'll much rather use that time in learning the irregularities of a real natlang like, say, Arabic or Hindi, which will gain me access to the Arab and Indian areas, something which Interlingua won't do.
- 1997 March 31, Tiro Typeworks, “Conlang to Natlang”, in sci.lang@googlegroups.com[5] (Usenet):
- Regionalism is not a characteristic feature of natlangs, at least not in modern societies. People move around so much nowadays, that the effort is to conserve the differences rather than to conserve the similarities between different people's speech.
- Antonyms: conlang, constructed language