[ithkuil]

There are real languages that kinda sorta work that way already.

For example in Tok Pisin helicopter is called "mixmaster bilong Jesus Christ" (Jesus Christ's food blender) or piano: bigpela bokis he got whitepela teeth hegot blackpela teeth sappos you hittim him he cry out (big box with white and black keys that cries out when you hit it)

[lproven]

Emi fulup gud dei.

Emi fulup gud dei, yumi 2 fela, tekim sol-water 1-eye fela, put im long postofis letahol blong praya-fela pasta-man, tel im:

"Sky islan twinky-twink planty-fela ia!"

This is from Ken Campbell, the UK's greatest populariser of what he called "wol wontok". https://ianlouisharris.com/tag/piotr-baumann/

It's a Ken Dodd joke, in pidgin. Original:

https://twitter.com/profdanslater/status/973184442566172678

[dalore]

This is rubbish. We had a piano and it was never called that, neither were helicopters.

Tok pisin was my first language, left with the babysitter when growing up.

[ithkuil]

Sure piano is piano and helicopter is helicopta and its been like that for years, but these expressions are documented and widely known as the initial words people came up with to describe things for which they didn't yet have words for.

The more those objects got in daily lives, the more incentives was to find proper words.

The point of my comment was to find an example of a _natural_ language where people came up with ways to refer to new objects by using simple vocabulary (As opposed to a conlang like toki pona)

[dalore]

tok long yu trupela

I want to know how/where the word for plane came from? balus

But also remember the tok pisin is a recent language, created from the colonisation efforts so it's not strange to find that modern words will have a translatation. Helicopters and piano's were around at the time.

[ithkuil]

it's possible the word comes from some substrate language, possibly the name of some flying animal.

The thing with pidgins is that when they start out, they are everybody's foreign language and are used as lingua franca. Generally people have their own native language where they may or may not have words for a given concept but then when they talk with other people from another language group they may or may not be able to just sneak in such a word and be understood. That's why sometimes long turn of phrases are used to describe stuff; not because the speaker doesn't have a word but because the speaker and the listener don't have a common word.

[leeoniya]

you're not John Quijada, by chance, are you?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithkuil

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8180493

[ithkuil]

no, I'm just a fan

[bitcharmer]

If I need to use 16 words to say "piano" then it's not a very practical language, IMO