(Disclaimer: Ithkuil is not my creation. The language, its website, any quotes therefrom, etc. belong to Ithkuil's creator, John Quijada. Also, note that this is the 2011 Ithkuil, sometimes called v3 (as in the third version) or ElartkĘ°a. When you hear "Ithkuil" nowadays, it usually refers to New Ithkuil; here I typically use it to mean the 2011-2015 version.)
This is where I'm putting my thoughts about, and explanations of, a conlang called Ithkuil. Proceed to the subpage(s) linked below, or scroll down for a primer on Ithkuil.
Here is the structure of an Ithkuil formative, seen here with my dark mode browser extension:
In case you don't know what a conlang is, it's short for "constructed language" and means a language that someone made up, as opposed to one that naturally evolved in the world, which is called a natural language or natlang. This isn't about conlangs in general, though; it's about Ithkuil.
This version of Ithkuil is considered to be the third of its kind because its creator made two languages before it. Confusingly enough, only the second, Ilaksh, has its own name; the first, third, and fourth are all simply called Ithkuil. (The community, of course, necessarily found ways to distinguish them, often by version number.) The first Ithkuil earned a reputation for being very complicated and allegedly making one think faster (which Quijada never claimed or intended). Ilaksh was a simpler project that Quijada considered a failure. After that came the third Ithkuil, which has lasted the longest so far. And then he made a fourth one, which I've heard good things about (it can mark benefit or detriment on a pronoun, for instance), but which I have never seriously attempted to use.
A significant contributor to the intimidatingness of all of the Ithkuils is their idiosyncratic grammatical categories that likely have no direct analogue in any natural language. The terminology, too, is unusual; Quijada is willing to misuse normal terms like "absolutive" and "oblique", and also admits to making new names up.
A side note on terminology: every possible value for those categories has its own three-letter acronym (or TLA, if you will). Except for Perspective, which uses one letter. I think that's the only exception...
I would like to make it clear that I mean no disrespect towards John Quijada. Anyone can think "I should make Ithkuil"; it takes a great mind to realize that dream, and a greater one still to write poetic lyrics in it. I say this not just because Ithkuil is complicated, but because the ideas and conceptual categories it runs on are very unusual, and understanding them requires adjusting one's brain. This makes it all the more disappointing that Quijada is seemingly incapable of expressing them in a way accessible to the average reader (inasmuch as making Ithkuil accessible is even possible). Because of this, I decided to try to explain parts of Ithkuil myself.
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