Recently, I came across some information that the points of the traditional Mediterranean compass rose were named in the Italian variant of Mediterranean Lingua Franca.
Mediterranean Lingua Franca, also known as “Sabir” was a pidgin language widely used for several hundred years. Traces of Sabir have been identified in such diverse places as place names, “pirate talk”, Algerian slang and Polari.
Some of the features of Sabir may also be seen in later pidgins and creoles used outside the Mediterranean area. This could have been direct transfer or have been parallel design, or some mixture of both.
For its vocabulary, Sabir seems to have selected existing words from older languages. Many words have an obvious Romance origin, but borrowings from Turkish, Greek, French, Hebrew and Arabic have also been identified. Most readers with some familiarity with Romance languages can usually puzzle out the gist of a Sabir sentence, even if they do not understand every word.
Sabir was successfully used for centuries by the members of a wide variety of cultures and backgrounds. Obviously, if we are interested in designing a more efficient language, Sabir may have things to teach us.
Frustratingly, very little written material on Sabir seems to exist. Much of what I could find was lists of the words used and analysis on the possible origin of these words, rather than information on the grammar.
Looking at what little information I could find on Sabir, it seemed to use a bare infinitive for most of its verbs. This, of course, is a common feature of pidgins and creoles, especially when the parent tongues have complicated systems of conjugation.
Most of the verbs that I can identify are apparently taken from Spanish or Portuguese and ending in -er, -ir, or -ar. It is possible that some are of Italian origin, dropping the terminal -e of regular verbs.
Sabir-type Verbs
Suppose we consider a similar convention for Diinlang?
What if most verbs in Diinlang adopt the form of ending in -er, -ir, or -ar like the verbs in Sabir and the regular verbs in Spanish?
On the downside, nearly all these verbs become at least two syllables. This may enhance euphony and comprehension, however. It did not seem to be a hindrance to Sabir.
Many nouns could be formed by dropping the terminal -r of the verb infinitive, or the verbal version of a verb stressed by rolling or trilling the terminal -r.
For example, Sabir had “pesca/pescar” for “fish/to fish”. With most verbs ending in -r, forming participle adjectives and verbal nouns becomes simple and regular: “pescarin/pescaren” for “fishing”, “pescarte” for “fished”.
Likewise, agent nouns: pescaro, pescara, pescare, pescaru, pescari = fisherman, fisherwoman, fisher (neuter), fisher (instrument neuter inanimate), fished (patient noun, may be made redundant for some meanings by the past perfect verbal noun form).
Exceptions
In Diinlang, we are not restricted to using words from existing languages. Our priorities are clarity, compactness and comprehension.
With this in mind, some verbs will not follow the above proposed format. It is logical that those verbs that are most used be represented by short, single syllable words.
As the primary auxiliary verbs, “to be” and “to have” continue to be “bi/be” and “he”. With these we may group “fe/du” (to do) and “ge” (passive to be/to become). The modal verbs, once decided, will also be of a compact form.
The duoverbs, which are mainly verbs of communication, should also be compact and single syllable. Rather than using the preverbal “te” or using it as a suffix, the past form of a duoverb might be rendered by simply adding the suffix “-t”. “No!” zo le, ma za let “Ya!”
Several other verbs, such as “go” (to go) and “fa” (to make) will also be more useful as verbs of the compact class. Likely candidates are the 16 (later 18) verbs of Ogden’s operators, or Hogben’s 20 verboids.