2011/11/14

Arabic Auxlang Anyone?

Tonight, I was researching a few words for Germanic constructed languages. I was using multi-lingual dictionaries such as Websters

and Wiktionary:

I was looking for Germanic words, but I found myself distracted when I noticed a large number of similar words cropping up in a cluster of languages. Those languages were in regions as far-flung as the Middle-East, The Horn of Africa, Western China, the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Sub-continent and South-East Asia.
for example:

Arabic فرق / farq
Indonesian / Malay furak
Turkish fark
Persian فرق / farq
Hindi/Urdu farq

The obvious connection was, of course borrowings from Arabic and the spread of Islamic civilization.

Very many auxlangs are classified (disparagingly often) as Romanoclones, for example Interlingua, Novial, Occidental, Idiom Neutral, Ido, Esperanto etc. They are based on the common vocabulary of Western Civilization which is mostly a common heritage of words coming from Latin and Greek. Some of those languages, I would say are very very good if you want to make a language that's easily accessible to educated "Westerners" or Europeans. (For the record, I constantly find myself drawn back to Interlingua for various reasons). It's convenient that very many languages of the world have acquired similar words from the same sources, and if you're lucky enough to be a speaker of one of those languages, then it's wonderful that you can take advantage of it.


But not all the world has shared in this cultural exchange -- indeed they might even be part of their own separate cultural clubs.
Perhaps a different type of auxlang could be created for a different cultural sphere?

BTW, I am using "Western" in contrast to "Islamic" as labels for civilizations, but I don't really want to over-load the religious significance of either. "Western" seems to me to be a convenient short-hand for a civilization that has a predominately European, Graeco-Latin and Christian flavour. It's overloading the religious dimension of the juxtaposition to talk about "Christian" versus "Islamic" civilization. The sphere of languages that have had the Arabic influence include the languages of many people who are not predominantly muslim.  The same applies to "Western" civilization -- it a generalization and  it's not entirely defined by Christianity or Europeanness. For example, I'd readily call myself a "Westerner", although I don't live in Europe and am not a Christian. But for the purposes of this post, "Western" and "Islamic" were the best words I can think of to use.

What I would propose is an a posteriori constructed language based on features common to the major languages that have participated in the spread of Islamic civilization. So it would have a similar methodology to Interlingua, but with a different set of source languages. Instead of the major European languages, it would refer to some of the worlds other major languages.
The source languages that I would propose are:

Modern Standard Arabic
Turkish
Persian/Farsi
Swahili
Hindi-Urdu (One or two languages depending on your political persuasion)
Indonesia-Malay (Essentially two standards of a plural-centric language) 

Perhaps the criteria for words could be that they need to have cognates present in 4/6 of the above languages. Or 3/6 if that's too stringent.

Interestingly enough, with the exception of Persian and Hindi-Urdu, these six languages are genetically all un-related. Contrast this Interlingua, where all the source languages are Indo-European and the majority are Romantic. 
The common vocabulary would be largely descended from Classical Arabic. But, depending on the entry criteria, could include a lot of words descended from Turkish, Persian, and Sanskrit. Some of these source languages have also participated in the "Western" sphere of lexical borrowing. For example Turkish and Indonesian have borrowed large numbers of words from the same Graeco-Latin sources as many European languages. So this proposed auxlang will probably have a large number of "internationalisms", very similar to those found in Interlingua or Occidental.

Although the base vocabulary would be mostly Arabic-sourced, to make a good auxlang, it's grammar, syntax and orthography would need to be simple and regular. And probably the alphabet would need to be offered in two flavours -- Latinized and Arabic -- with some kind of standardized transliteration scheme.

Now I'm surely not the right person to be creating such a language. It's not my area of expertise and I've too much on my plate already. But I am definitely interested and intrigued if such a language has already been attempted. I would love to see an auxlang that didn't fit the normal romanoclone mold. Not a world-lang, but one that had something to offer to a wide cultural-sphere and can leverage the common vocabulary of that sphere. It wouldn't necessarily be a world-lang any more than Interlingua could claim that title.

5 comments:

  1. Those auxlangs already exist (but as worldlangs), these are Sambahsa and LdP (the latter has "fark", indeed). Here is a list of some (not all) words of this area found in Sambahsa : http://sambahsa.pbworks.com/w/page/10183070/Arab%20harifs%20in%20sambahsa
    (Not all words of these area are from Arabic; others do come from Persian).
    On the Sambahsa Yahoo Group, a man from Maine, USA, has been taught lessons in Sambahsa for one week. Now, he already knows the basics of the language ! You should have a look at this.

    Olivier

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  2. Thanks Olivier, it's already occurred to me that Sambahsa looks something like the language I'm proposing.
    But the trouble I have with "worldlangs" is that they focus too widely on very many un-related languages. They dilute the advantage of common vocabulary to the point where it is much less useful. A romanoclone such as Interlingua is very useful if you speak one of it's source languages. Or indeed any Romance language. Or even any European language. Or even speakers of languages such as Indonesian and Tagalog will find much familiar vocabulary.

    A world-lang is "fairer" by being of no great advantage to anyone.

    Anyway, I've already thought of a show-stopping limitation to my proposal for an Arabo-Islamic auxlang which I will cover in more detail in another post.

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  3. How about 3 different spelling flavors: Romanized, Hebrew (especially for Jewish speakers), and Arabic (for the masses)?! Each alphabet system would need to be synchronized (Ex.: A in the Romanized alphabet would need to correspond to a Hebrew letter and an Arabic letter , ...) like those in languages using multiple scripts.
    The source languages would need to include: Arabic, Farsi, Pashto, Urdu, Hindi, Turkish, Malay-Indonesian, Hebrew, Swahili, Hausa, Maltese, Dhivehi, and English.

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    Replies
    1. Like I was saying, a Romanized d would need to correspond to a Hebrew letter (daleth) and an Arabic letter (dal).

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  4. What would you like for the definite article (a determiner)? Would it be /δe/ (based on English the)? Or, could /ha-/ do (from Hebrew—with gemination of the initial letter in the base word it is attached to)? Or, should it be /ʾal/ (like it is in Arabic)?!

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