The Tower of Babel in SamSkandinavisk

Here is my first attempt at the Tower of Babel in SamSkandinavisk.

I started out this translation by researching the Tower of Babel stories for 3 Scandinavian languages (4 if you consider Nynorsk another separate language), and also the stories in Icelandic and Faeroese. I also made sure that I compared multiple versions in each language.

I've tried to make a story the contains the barest essence of the story in all the majority of them. So my rendition might be a bit bare of embellishment and poetry compared to some of the texts that I referred to. Unfortunately I'm no theologian and it's another one of those bizarre Biblical stories that to this infidel makes no sense -- Jehovah at his typical weird, arbitrary and fickle worst.

Failing to understand the motivations of Jehovah or the children Adam, makes it difficult to achieve a definitive translation. Umm why did they need to build a big tower? Wherefore did the Lord become so wroth at the idea of humanity being capable and effective when they could communicate and co-operate with each other???? There's so much repetition in the story that I wonder if the at some stage during the original transcription, that the scribe fell asleep and lost his place :-)

Some words/phrases I couldn't decide on, so I've provided alternatives in brackets. I'm also becoming increasingly enamored with my version of the SamSkandinavisk orthography that uses umlauted vowels instead of "æ" and "ø". Somehow this system looks more unified because the umlauted vowels match each other. "ä" and "ö" look like part of the same system.

I hope it looks like bad Swedish :-)

Ok hele jorden havde ett språk (tungemål) ok samme ord.
Då folket (männene) bröt upp ok drog östermot, fand de en bred dal (en slette) i landet Sjinears, ok bosatte sig där.
De sagede til hverandre, "komm, låt oss lage tegelsten ok brenne dem godt!" Ok de brukede tegel som sten ok jordbek som kalkmörtel.
Så sagede de, "komm, låt oss bygge en stad (en by) med ett torn som når upp i himmlen, ok göre (skape) oss ett namn så at vi ikke skall spredes ut (över) hele jorden."
Då steg Herren ned för at se staden (byen) ok tornet, som människerne byggde.
Ok Herren sagede, "de er ett folk ok har allesammen ett språk (tungemål). Dette er det förste som de begynne, nu skall ingenting väre umojelig, som de beslute at göre."
"Låt oss stige ned ok forvirre deres språk (tungemål), så de ikke forstår hverandres språk (tungemål)."
Så spredede Herren dem därfrå ut över hele jorden, ok de håldede upp med at bygge på staden (byen).
Därför kalles den Babel, förtvi Herren forvirrde hele jordens språket, ok därfrå spredede Herren människerne ut över hele jorden.

SamSkandinavisk Nouns

I've finally been forced to do some research and write some rules that codify how to use nouns in SamSkandinavisk,
The document has lots of ugly tables, so it's too hard to post on this blog, but the file is available here:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bx0T9Dxrods1b0trWlZ0NGIteU0

It a document that summarizes the genders of SamSkandinavisk, the methods for forming plurals, for marking the genitive case, and when and if to use enclitic definite articles. If you read between the lines, it also covers most of the adjective declensions also.

I've aimed for a system that captures the essential common features of the Scandinavian languages, hopefully being slightly simpler to learn than any of the natural Scandy languages, and even more hopefully being no more complex.

SamSkandinavisk Dictionary Reaches 1500 Words

After many hundreds of hours of toil, my SamSkandinavisk to English dictionary now has approximately 1500 words. And the English to Scandy dictionary has over 3000.

When I started work on SamSkandinavisk, I had come full circle in my Conlanging career; the first Conlang that I ever attempted (back in the 1980s) was a common Scandinavian language. I chose to work on SamSkandy because I am getting lazy and it looked like something potentially achievable. My other attempts at Pan-Germanic auxiliary languages have been very difficult. I think it just isn't possible to make a Pan-Germanic auxlang that is instantly intelligible to speakers of every Germlang. The best I hope for now is easily learn-able. But with the continental North Germanic languages, they are already partially mutually intelligible, so the point of the exercise with SamSkandinavisk is more to create a new,  neutral standard for inter-nordic communication. A fourth Scandinavian language if you will.

The design philosophy has been similar to that Interlingua. Irregular features that are not common to all 3 major Scandy tongues have not been included. But conversely, any feature that is common to all three is included regardless of whether it is irregular or difficult or not. This means that the grammar of SamSkandinavisk will, in theory, be simpler than the natural Scandy languages. But not by very much as it happens. Features that are common to all 3 tongues still let through some truly delightful irregularities.

Take for example the SamSkandinavisk adjective liten:

liten a. diminutive, little, small, fine, lower-case (letter), short, young.

Indefinite common singular = liten [ˈliːtən]; indefinite neuter = litet [ˈliːtət], definite singular = lille [ˈlɪlːə]; definite and indefinite plural = små [smɔː]; comparative = mindre [ˈmɪnː(d)rə]; superlative = minst [mɪnːst]

Complicated enough?

Or take the SamSkandinavisk noun mann:

mann nc. man, fellow, husband, male, person

[manː] indefinite plural = mænn [mɛnː]; definite plural = mænnene [ˈmɛnːənə].

Or the SamSkandinavisk verb ta:

ta vt. take, get, lay hold of, pick up, bring, catch, clear, have, occupy, remove, steal.

[taː] also tage [ˈtaːjə]. Class VI Strong verb: pt. tog [toːg];  pp. taget [ˈtaːjət]

There is a fascinating sample of irregular and strong verbs, nouns that form plurals by umlaut, and more irregular adjectives. There is also still the common and neuter gender to learn.

The form of words is based not on the commonest form, but on the etymological prototype. That is, the form of a SamSkandy word will retain the most conservative or original features present in the 3 source languages. For example, the SamSkandy word høg (high) is based on Norwegian høy, Danish høj and Swedish hög. The choice of a final g is from the presence of the g in Swedish hög, this being the form that is closest to the ancestral form from which the 3 languages descended; Old Norse haugr.
Initially I started out basing the form of words on the commonest or the compromise form between Danish, Norwegian Bokmål and Swedish. But this was producing results that were very nearly always the same as Norwegian Bokmål. This was because Danish and BM are so similar in written form -- BM being almost a Norwegian variety of Danish. Choosing the prototyping method allowed Swedish forms to get more representation and make a language that is more conservatively "authentically" Scandinavian. Perhaps also bringing it's form fractionally closer to Nynorsk, Icelandic and Faeroese.

Anyway, this is the Conlang project that has been occupying the majority of my time over the last year. Links to the dictionaries are at the top of the "Useful Files" link list. I probably need to write a spelling/pronunciation guide to explain how words actually work.

SamSkandinavisk Text Sample

In SamSkandinavisk:

Snart skall vi dverger endeligt besegre våre nuvärende fjender ok hevne alle gammle vanärer. Då skall det väre en ny gulltid för den skeggige slekt. Hvis männene ok halflingerne kenner sin rang ok klasse, de skall have ären för at tjäne oss. Halflingerne skall röre vår gröt ok bäre våre ölkrus. Männene skall slite i våre gullgruber ok hente ting  för oss som står på höge hyller.

Translation In English:

Soon we dwarves will finally defeat our current enemies and avenge all ancient dishonors. Then there will be a new golden age for the bearded race. If the men and the halflings know their place, they shall have the honor of serving us. The halflings will stir our porridge and bear our ale tankards. The men shall toil in our gold mines and fetch things on high shelves for us.

I hope this initial attempt at SamSkandinavisk is at least partially intelligible to speakers of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish -- the response I've had on Facebook has been fairly positive. It illustrates at least a few features of interest: Enclitic definite articles such as -en and -erne. Non enclitic definite articles using de and den.  Regular plurals formed with -er and irregular plurals such as mænnene for "the men" and ting for "things". 

It's still a bit rough in places, the noun and adjective system needs some major work. I've not yet decided on some things that differ markedly between the source languages -- such as when to use enclitic definite articles and when to put them in front of the noun. And when and what declensional endings to put on adjectives. The Scandy languages have a blessedly simple verb system, but they make up with it by having an absolute minefield when it comes to nouns and adjectives.

Introducing GoldenDict

What is GoldenDict? It's a freeware dictionary look-up program. It allows instant one-click look-up of words and presents the definitions in nicely formated, hyper-linked form. It's available for various platforms including Windows and smartphones.
You can read about it on their website here:

http://goldendict.org/

I'm recommending it here because it's free and it's able to read Babylon dictionaries. In my conlanging, for years, I have been making my electronic dictionaries in Babylon glossary format (.bgl). Bablyon is a proprietary software and happens to cost real money for a license. Now anyone on a tight budget can access my Bablyon dictionaries. I would say that it's not quite as nice or slick as Babylon, but it does the job.

Babylon is available here:

http://www.babylon.com/

Test Scandinavian Dictionary - With Sound!

This is just a quick test of embedding sound files into a PDF document of a dictionary. It's just a few words extracted from the SamSkandinavisk-Engelsk Dictionary. I've formated the words nicely and put clickable pronunciation guide for each word. It's mainly just an exercise for me to play with the interactive PDF features of Adobe InDesign 5.5.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0Bx0T9Dxrods1R3FCbFpmYjRUWnc

NB If you just open the PDF on GoogleDocs, you will not be able to hear sound. Download the file to somewhere else and open it in Adobe Reader. If you click on the little speaker icons, you should get a speech example for each word.

SinPlatt Spoken by a Human

Here is a second attempt at the extract from De Kartuse fan Parma. This time it's spoken in my own sweet voice.

SinPlatt Spoken by a Finnish Femmebot.

Here is a speech sample from my translation extract of The Charterhouse of Palma.

It is created using Google Translate's speech synthesis option. It's using the Finnish voice, because the Finnish language had most of the phonemes that I needed and the orthography rules are very regular. If you write text the right way, you can force Google Translate's text-to-speech to say pretty much what you want. It does mean that the SinPlatt will have quite a Finnish accent.

“Ik pries de lüttele husar an,” riep de merketantin. “De junge bürger heft ene modig hert.” Korporal Aubry marschärde forbie uten seggen een word. Acht oder tejn soldaten liepen fort and kåmen med him toosamen. Hi leidede hin toorügg ene grote eek, umgegeven med dornen. Wan kam hi dår, hi settede hin fort de rand fan de busch, noch uten seggen een word, an ene wied gestrekkde front, eelke stond toomindest tejn schreden af siene nåjbuur.

Arabic Auxlang Aborts Before Take-Off

First off, here's a provisional name for my hypothetical Arabo-Islamic auxlang, that I postulated in my post called Arabic Auxlang Anyone?

As a contrast to the name of the romanoclone auxlang name Occidental, I dub my hypothetical language Oriental. The Oriental which I am referring to isn't in the more modern sense where it's understood to mean the Far East and cultures such as Chinese, Japanese and Korean. I'm harking back to the old-fashioned Oriental of the 19th century and the Orientalist aesthetic movement. At this time Oriental included more the Near East and Middle-Eastern, Turkic, Persian and Indic cultures. This realm is pretty close the what this auxlang would cater to.

The most relevant passage of my previous post would have to be:

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 [to] Interlingua, where all the source languages are Indo-European and the majority are Romantic.

I've bolded the really critical fact. Here's the problem. Undoubtedly, these 6 languages have borrowed, lent and shared a large quantity of vocabulary. Some through the spread of Islam, some through the military conquests of the Persians and Turks, some through the spread of Hinduism and Buddhism, some through Arabic traders on the Indian ocean. But whereas languages might borrow large numbers of words when in contact with other cultures, they generally have a core-vocabulary that tends not to be replaced with borrowings. These words tend to be the most basic fundamental words in the vocabulary, words for such things as louse, two, water, ear, die, I, liver, eye, hand, hear, tree, fish, name, stone, tooth, breasts, you, path, bone, tongue, skin, night, leaf, blood, horn, person, knee, one, nose, full, come, star, mountain, fire, we, drink, see, new, dog, sun. These are the words that are typically found in a Swadesh list. The list that I just gave was the 40 concepts that have been found least likely to change over the aeons of a language's history.

My critical stumbling block for Oriental, is that these 6 languages are unlikely to have much shared vocabulary for the most basic of words. Oriental will probably have less trouble finding words for law, religion, government, commerce, science, technology agriculture and warfare. But for the most basic concepts, there will be little common ground between the 6 languages.

Take the case of a typical romanoclone auxlang; Interlingua, Of its source languages French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian are all closely related Romantic languages. The other source languages; English, German and Russian are still share a genetic relationship, albeit more distantly by way of Proto-Indo-European.

In my proposed Oriental, the 6 languages come from 5 different language families.

The only languages that share a distant common ancestor are Persian and Hindi-Urdu.

So what could be the selection criteria for the most basic of words, such as are unlikely to have any common ground among the source languages?

I can suggest two possible solutions: 

1. The basic vocabulary is made of words that have cognates in Persian and Hindi-Urdu.

2. The basic vocabulary is made of words from Arabic.

In the first proposal, the common basic vocabulary of Persian and Hindi-Urdu is Proto-Indo-Aryan. For convenience of research, one could base it on Proto-Indo-European. That means Oriental is built as an Indo-European language with superstrates from waves of borrowing from Arabic, Sanskrit, Persian Turkish and Graeco-Roman.. 

In the second proposal, Oriental is an Arabic pidgin with large amounts of borrowings from Turkish, Persian, Sanskrit and Graeco-Roman.

The first proposal happens to be quite close to Olivier Simon's Sambahsa, just with a tighter focus on one region of the world. I guess the wheel has already been invented (by Proto-Indo-Europeans!)

Arabic Auxlang Anyone?

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

http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/

and Wiktionary:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary:Main_Page

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.

The Charterhouse of Parma in SinPlatt

Here is a translation of part of Chapter 4 of the originally French novel by Stendahl into SinPlatt. It is possibly not perfect yet. I started out by tweaking my Frenkisch translation into a SinPlatt-like form. Later I decided that a fresh look was needed.

I'd be interested how intelligible it is to speakers of German, Dutch and English -- the source languages of SinPlatt

De Kartuse FAN Parma

fan Stendahl

KAPITEL 4

Nejts kond him wekken, nejt de musketten nåj de karr geschoten oder de traf fan de perden, dat de merketantin med all hire kraft pitschde. Dat regiment, angefallen unferwajted fan swarmen fan prüüssische kavalleri, after si all de dag in de seg gelöövd hadden, tiejden snell toorügg oder egenlik flooen too de richting fan Frankriek.

De kolonell, ene elegante junge mann, good antwikkeld, dat Macon siene plats genomen hadd, lag dood fan ene sabel. De batalionleider, dat siene plats genomen hadd, ene wiethårige alde, befelde dat regiment too halten.

“Ferdammd,” brüllde hi too siene soldaten, “in de tied fan de Republik, wajteden wi antoo wi gedreven fan de fiend wåren for wi weg rannen. Ferdedig eelke lapp fan terrän, and werd gedöded!” hi riep hin an and scheldede hin uut. “Et is de grund fan dat Faderland dat dese prüüssen nu infallen wollen!”

De kleine karr stoppde; Fabrice wekkde plütslik. De sonn hadd allreid lang gesunken; hi was gansch estonärd too sejen dat et nåjgenoog dunker was. De soldaten liepen hen and toorügg med ene ferwerring dat unsere held seer overraschde; Si såjen ferlegen uut, hi dacht.

“Wat geschejt?” frågde hi de merketantin.

“Absolut nejts. Bloot dat wi in diepe möje sien, miene junge; Dår is de prüüssische kavalleri, dat uns dood höwen, nejts meer. De idiotische general dacht eerst dat si unser wåren. Kom snell, help mi Cocotte hire toom reparären; et is kaput.”

Een par schotten wåren tejn schreden ferr geschoten. Unsere held, frekk and sorgloos, seggde too sikk: “Doch werklik, hebb ik de hele dag nejt alssulk gestridden; Ik hebb bloot ene general begeleided.” “Ik moot gån and strieden” fertellde hi de merketantin.

“Mak kene sorg, du sallst strieden, and meer als du willst! Wi sien ferloren”

“Aubry, miene kerl,” riep si too ene forbiekomende korporal uut, “bewak immer wår de kleine karr fan tied too tied is.”

“Sollt ji strieden?” frågde Frabrice Aubry.

“Ach nee, Ik kleid mi miene pantoffels um too gån too de ball!”

“Ik sall jü folgen.”

“Ik pries de lüttele husar an,” riep de merketantin. “De junge bürger heft ene modig hert.” Korporal Aubry marschärde forbie uten seggen een word. Acht oder tejn soldaten liepen fort and kåmen med him toosamen. Hi leidede hin toorügg ene grote eek, umgegeven med dornen. Wan kam hi dår, hi settede hin fort de rand fan de busch, noch uten seggen een word, an ene wied gestrekkde front, eelke stond toomindest tejn schreden af siene nåjbuur.

“Ach so männen”, seggde de koporal, hi sprak för de eerst mål, “schiet nejt antoo ik et befel: bedenk, ji hebbt enig drie patronen eelk.”

“Doch, wat geschejt dan?” frågde Frabrice sikk. Endlik, wan fand hi sikk alleen med de korporal, hi seggde too him: “Ik hebb kene muskett.”

“Eersts, hald diene tung. Gå fort dår: fieftig schreden for de busch, sallst du een fan de arme soldaten fan dat regiment finden, niewlik fan ene sabel gehakkd; du sallst siene rancel and siene muskett nemen. Roof nejt af ene ferwundede mann doch; nem de rancel and muskett af ene gewisse dode, ond iel sikk oder du sallst fan unsere kameraden geschoten wesen.”

Fabrice rann fort and kam toorügg straks med ene muskett and ene rancel.

“Lad diene muskett and sett di hinden jeen boom, in dat besunder, schiet nejt for de befel dat ik geven sall… Genådeloos God!”, riep de korporal underbroken uut, “hi kann nejt alssulk siene wåpen laden!”. (Hi halp Fabrice des too dooen, fortgåend med siene updragen.) “Infall mag ene fiendlike rieder an di galopären um di too hakken, dråj sikk um diene boom, and schiet nejt antoo hi in nåje reikwiedde is, wan diene rieder drie schreden af di is: wajt antoo diene bajonett nåjgenoog siene uniform trefft.”

“Smiet diene grote sabel weg,” schriede de korporal. “Willst du fan him fallen, in Gods nam? Sulke soldaten sien wi nu gegeven!” 

Als hi sprak, hi nam de sabel and warp him weg böös.

“Du, wisch de füürsteen fan diene muskett med dien dook. Hast du emål ene muskett geschoten?”

“Ik bin ene jager.”

“Dank God!” seggde de korporal med ene diepe süft. “In dat besunder, schiet nejt for de befel dat ik jü geven sall.”

And hi ging weg.

Fabrice was gansch früdig. “Endlik sall ik werklik strieden,” seggde hi too sikk, “and ene fiend döden. Desmorgen warpen si an uns kanonkugels, and ik dääd nejts uten stell mi bloot too gedöded werden; Dat werk fan idioten.” Hi blikkde sikk um, seer niewsgirig. After ene kurte tied, plütslik höörde hi seven oder acht muskettschotten temlik nåj him. Doch hi höörde kene befelen too schieten, allso stond hi still hinden siene boom.

Neo-Teutonic, the prototyping Language

The construction of Frenkisch is based the methodology of Interlingua de IAL. However it doesn’t follow the prototyping method of Interlingua exactly.

In this I post will compare the proto-typing method of Interlingua with Frenkisch. And propose a novel and different scheme to that used by Frenkisch (and other attempts at a pan-Germanic auxiliary language)

Interlingua words are based on the Etymological Prototype. Which is basically the ancestral point from which the forms in the various source languages branched out. This means that it retains any conservative features preserved in any one of the source languages. For example, take the Interlingua word foco meaning fire or focus. It is based on French feu, Spanish fuego, Portuguese fogo and Italian fuoco. These words all originally come from Latin focus.

None of the source languages retain the Latin -us ending, So the common point of branching is not -us but the next most conservative ending, o. So the IL word ends in -o. Next, the final consonant of the stem. In French, it’s lost, in Spanish and Port it’s evolved to a g. Italian retains the Latin c,. The point from which the French and Port. and Spanish consonants branched was a c. If the Latin c had evolved into another sound before it then branched into the various Romance versions, then that evolved sound would be the point of common branching rather than the exact Latin sound. The most conservative final consonant for the IL word is c. Next the vowel of the stem. In French, the vowel has changed to eu. In Spanish it’s become ue and in Italian it’s uo. Portuguese retains what is most like the Latin o. The common point from which these vowels branched is o. So the IL word has a o vowel in the stem. Next the initial consonant. Obviously it the same f as in Latin! So it’s F+O+C+O = IL foco. The prototype doesn’t always have to be Latin. Let’s say all the source languages have a word like hotel. The prototype would be the French word hôtel. Even though French hôtel can be traced back earlier to Old French hostel and then to medieval Latin hospitale, the common point of branching for the word which means a largish commercial guest accommodation building for travelers, is the French word hôtel. That there is the Interlingua prototyping method in a nutshell.

Frenkisch doesn’t follow this method exactly, although it is the starting point. The hypothetical Etymological prototype for Frenkisch words would often be something like the Proto-Germanic (PG) form. However having words that resemble closely PG is arguably less useful than closely resembling Latin. Proto-Germanic is utterly dead. And it was never written down. However Latin never really died out. It continued a parallel zombie-like existence to the Romance language and was a constant influence on them and other Western languages. Not so for PG, it evolved into the Old Germanic dialects and didn’t continue on as a learned language like Latin. No languages are continuing to use PG as a source of words. Many of the common features in the Germanic languages group, are an inheritance from Proto-Germanic. But even-more so, the common features are because of later languages influencing each other and borrowing from each other and from the same Romance sources. To put it another way, many common Germanic linguistic features were never present in PG, they are later parallel innovations. For example constructions such as forgive/vergeven/vergeben are likely to be calques/loan-translations of Latin perdonare.

So Frenkisch words are modernized from their prototype. This modernization is that they are pseudo-evolved along the most common evolutionary pathway that the Germanic source languages have followed. So, if for example, most of our source languages have lost/merged the PG *þ phoneme, then so does Frenkisch. If in German, Dutch and English, the PG *ī phoneme has regularly become a very nearly identical diphthong,s then so do the Frenkisch equivalents. So let’s say we have in the Germanic source languages the words, English drive, Dutch drijven, German treiben, Danish/Norwegian drive and Swedish driva. Might this be a good basis for a Frenkisch word? It is. The prototype for those words would be the PG word *drīƀan. But the PG word is not the Frenkisch word. It has the most common evolutionary path pseudo-evolution applied to it. The *ī evolves to [aɪ], the *ƀ becomes a voiced labiodental fricative [v]. The infinitive *n is lost. The final vowel in the unstressed suffix is generalized to a schwa [ə]. So the PG word pseudo-evolves to Frenkisch [ˈdraɪvə], spelled dryve.

If the makers of Interlingua had followed a “modernization” method similar to that of Frenkisch, the language would not look so conservative  or Latin in form, it would look more like an average modern western Romance language, perhaps looking similar to Occitan/Langue d’oc or Catalan. Lingua Franca Nova has been decribed as resembling those languages in form.

Anyway, this brings me to the point of this long long post. What would a conlang that used the true etymological prototype of the modern Germanic languages look like? Would it really be less or more recognizable and instantly intelligible?

Note that the etymological prototype would not always be identical to the reconstructed PG form. All evolutions that were common to all the source languages, would be present in the prototypes. So changes such as some i-mutation, generalization of unstressed vowels to Schwa, merger of *hl and *l, *hr and *r, and some Ingvaeonic loss of nasals would be applied. Interlingua often resembles Vulgar Latin/Proto Romance in form, rather than classical Latin. These Germanic prototypes would be some kind of “Vulgar Proto Germanic”.

Now that biggest advantage to this language that I can see, is that PG had a much simpler vowel phonology than modern germlangs. It might make a language that is easier to learn the pronunciation for and possibly easier to devise a spelling system that needed no/less diacritical marks.

Next post on this topic, I shall experiment with a few sample words, a pronunciation and orthography scheme and method for borrowing Romance and Greek words.

Access to Documents for my Conlangs

After some false starts and stumbles, I've worked out how to host my files so the public can get to them. See the right-hand side of this page for links to the Googledocs page for documentation for my conlangs:


Frenkisch:
Frenkisch Grammar
Frenkisch - English Dictionary
Eng'lisch - Frenkisch Wordbouk

Samskandinavisk:
SamSkandinavisk to English Dictionary - html format
English to SamSkandinavisk Dictionary - html format

SamSkandinavisk to English Dictionary - Babylon format
English to SamSkandinavisk Dictionary - Babylon format

SamSkandinavisk dictionary: Interactive PDF with sound samples. Download this and open in Adobe Reader to hear the sound.

SinPlatt:
Bare-bones Grammar and some design principles for SinPlatt
SinPlatt - French Dictionary

Welcome

Welcome to Konstspraik. In this blog I will be covering news about the constructed languages that I am working on. Plus any ideas or opinions I have about other constructed language projects. Plus anything else about which I have an opinion which I think is profound.

I have been trying out constructed languages since I was a teenager. Some of these have been serious languages, some experimental, some have just been fictitious languages for fiction and fantasy. I take a keen interest in other constructed languages and have learned Interlingua.

At the moment I am working on:

Frenkisch

A Germanic auxiliary language. It is concerned with aesthetic and naturalistic considerations as well as usability and ease of learning, which makes it somewhat of an art-lang. It is an a posteriori constructed language, based on 6 Germanic languages (English, German, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish). Outside of the Germanic language group, it also refers to French and Russian as source languages. This language now has a dictionary of over 6000 words.

Folksprak

This is another pan-Germanic auxiliary language. It is intended as a co-operative project with other contributors and participants. This project began in 1995. I joined the Folksprak effort in 2004 and the language has gone through much debate and evolution over time.  Much of the effort in this language has been adapted and applied to my other constructed language projects. Folksprak has a tighter focus on pan-Germanic commonality, regularity and ease of learning.

SinPlatt

SinPlatt is short for Synthetic Platt. This is a Low German-like art-lang, it is a posteriori and refers to English, Dutch and German as its source languages. In fact it doesn't refer directly to actual Platt/Low-German -- hence the Synthetic part of the name. It has features common to 2+ out of 3 of English, Dutch and German. I've made little effort to make it easy or regular - instead it's intended to have a naturalistic typically West Germanic flavor. The prominent linguistic feature of this language that I think makes it interesting, is it makes use of phonemic consonant length as a regular part of phonology - otherwise known as the phenomenon of "stretching" vowels. This isn't a major feature of any of it's source languages, but it exists in a subtle latent form in all 3, it was a feature of the common ancestral language and understanding it unlocks some of the mysterious features of the Germanic languages. SinPlatt, currently has a pronunciation/orthography guide, a bare grammatical overview, and a vocabulary of about 300 words. This is my first attempt at a constructed language where the definition language is other than English: I am simultaneously creating Sinplatt - English and SinPlatt - French dictionaries.

Samskandinavisk

This is the beginning of a pan-Scandinavian aux-lang. It is intended to give speakers of Scandinavian North-Germanic languages a common standardized language. These languages are semi mutually intelligible. Samskandinavisk is intended to offer a "neutral" alternative to the current status quo: where Scandinavians either muddle-through just about understanding each other's speech, at time deliberately pretending not to understand each other's speech and at times using English. It is a naturalistic a posteriori language based on Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. It follows a similar methodology to that of Interlingua, basing the form of Samskandinavisk words on the etymological prototypes of words common to at least 2 out of 3 of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish. Currently it's in an embryonic state with no grammar and a demonstrator vocabulary of 400 words.

As my time allows, I will be posting more detail about these languages and the principles used in developing them.