Author: Phil

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Language

Comparatives and Superlatives Part Two

While I am happy with the basic mechanism I have proposed for comparatives and superlatives the actual words to be used have varied.
My latest idea is to use the words “min” and “plu”, which are already used in a number of other languages, including several IALs. In Diinlang these are used as prefixes but may also be used as standalone words in certain applications.
“Plu” is the equivalent of “more” or “much”. “Min” is “fewer” or “less”. The equivalent superlatives are created with the ending “-st” to create “plust” or “minst” and have the meanings “most”, “the majority”, “fewest”, “least” etc.
The word “tro”, used in a number of other languages, indicates an excess or “too much/many”. An antonym meaning “too few/little” may be created. “Tro min” would have this meaning or might also mean “not enough”.
For better clarity I have changed the small/ medium/ large words to mik/ mes/ gros. Words for good/ bad remain as bon/ mal. These are used with the comparatives and superlatives in a regular and predictable fashion.
Thus  bon/ plubon/ plustbon is good/ better/ best and mal/ plumal/ plustmal is bad/ worse/ worst.  Gros/ plugros/ plustgros is big/ bigger/ biggest and mik/ minmik/ minstmik is small/ less small/ least small.
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Language

Categories from Interglossa

While researching constructed languages I have encountered a number of systems. One of particular note was Interglossa. One reason for this was the creator’s name was not unknown.
Lancelot Hogben was author of the book “Mathematics for the Million”, a book that should probably be on the curriculum of all schools.
Interglossa is also impressive in that a book trying to promote international understanding and fraternity was published at the height of World War Two.
Interglossa has some interesting ideas, although I do not think many of them are in the current version of Diinlang.
In a previous post I remarked on the problem of finding suitable categories to assign syllables or mora to. Interglossa’s section on Generic Substantives does provide some useful suggestions in this direction.
“-pe”, meaning “person” is used to create agent noun type constructions. “aero-pe”, airman, “agri-pe”,  farmer and “ergo-pe”, worker. In Diinlang, I have proposed that the third person pronouns “ze”, “zo” and “za” be used in this fashion.
“-re” is used for inanimates such as “ferro-re”, ironware, “pedi-re”, step and “reflecto-re”, mirror. In Diinlang I have proposed “it” be used as a suffix in similar fashion, although an alternative might be considered for less physical inanimates.
“-ca”, from the word “cameri” is used for room, chamber, cabin, hall or compartment. Since Diinlang does not use the letter “c” an alternative will need to be selected.
“-do” from “domi” is a house, building, tent or man-made erection. “dom” may be used for Diinlang.
“-fa” from “fascio” is a group, set, bunch, batch, heap or collection. This is a good example of the Greek/ Latin derivation of many of Interglossa’s words. In Diinlang a single syllable word will be used and there may be distinction between groups of objects and people and their coherency. For example, a team has more common purpose than a gang or mob.
“-fi” is a cord, filament, line, rope, string, thread or wire.
“-ru” is from “instrumenti”. Hogben notes that the antecedent of a -ru compound always points to function, making it an agent noun for inanimate objects.
“-li” comes from “lithi” and denotes a stone, rock or translucent jewel. The full word is used for non-transparent ornamental stones, hence “chloro-li” emerald, beryl and “chloro-lithi”, jade, malachite.
“-lo” from “loco” for place, region, territory, domain, locality.
“-ma” or “materia” for material, stuff, substance, including some liquids (suspensions/ solutions?).
“-me” from “mechani” for machine, apparatus, device, engine, mechanism. Hogben states the antecedent points either to function or power source. This word is used for motors and engines. This should probably be used to indicate more complex tools than “-ru”. In Diiblang this is very likely to be the syllable “mek”.
“-mo” from “mobili” for furniture or moveables.
“-te” or “texti” for fabric, cloth, textile, woven material, tissue, canvas, muslim, etc.
“-va” or “vassa” is a vessel, container, jug, mug, cup, bowl, pitcher. This seems a very useful category. “va-“ is used as a prefix to indicate tinned, canned or bottled goods. Hogben states that the meaning can be made more explict by using an antecedent point to the function or other suggestive characteristic rather than the object’s composition. Thus, the equivalent of “drinking vessel” is superior to “glass”. Hogben used “ora-va”, mouth-vessel.
“-ve” or “vesto” is covering, clothes, vesture, costume, -wear, suit, dress.
“-zo” or “zona” is ring, belt, hoop, zone, band. The distinct word “cycli” is used for circle and “sphera” for a ball or sphere. The word “zo” is already in use in Diinlang. The word “ring” already meets the requirements of Diinlang, being one syllable, CVn format and as a bonus recognizable to English and English second language (ESL) speakers. “zo/zona” suggest that categories such as bar/pole and tube/pipe might be useful. The English word “QUAD” has a somewhat rectangular look. It is tempting to create words for circle or sphere using the letter “O”.
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Language

Lego Words

One of the current problems with the Diinlang project has been the lack of vocabulary. Most of my work has been with respect to verb structures, pronouns, noun genders and similar subjects.
Essentially I have built some bones for Diinlang but we also need some “meat” to better illustrate how the bones are working.
A number of approaches can be made towards creating a vocabulary. The one that I favour at present is the use of “lego” syllables. Each syllable has a specific meaning so the meaning of a word can be deduced by consideration of the “bricks” it was built with.
An often repeated piece of information on language webpages is that the Mandarin word for “plumber” is “water pipe technician”.
The three characters used can be read in a number of ways and an alternative might be “pipe working expert”.
This does, however illustrate the lego syllable idea. If we have syllables that mean “water”, “pipe/tube” and “work/ worker” we can build a word for plumber and have a reasonable chance that a Diinlang speaker who has never before encountered that word would have a good idea of its meaning.
For example, if water was “kwa”, pipe was “piy” and work “gung” our plumber would be a “kwapiygungzo”, or perhaps just a “piygungzo”.
This approach has been tried with some other artificial languages. Ithkuil is an example of a language with information dense words. Possibly the best know example is Searight’s Sona language.
Sona uses syllables as “radicals” and the meanings and associations with related syllables can sometimes be more intricate that you might first assume. Like many conlangs, it is geared more towards written rather than spoken use and some of the distinct radicals are phonically similar.
See this article for an essay on the use of radicals and a convenient list here.
One of the initial concepts of Diinlang was that syllables should have a “CVn” format, where “C” is a consonant, “V” is a vowel and “n” is a nasal such as “m”, “n” or “ng”.
It should be understood that C and V represent phonemes rather than single letters.
In practice Diinlang has expanded to use phonically clear mora (“CV” and “VC”) and some “CVC” constructions, particularly when the final C has a hard sound.
There are therefore plenty of syllables to choose from. The real work is selecting what the building blocks to assign them to should be!
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Language

"Hznai" and words as patten recognition

“It dseno’t mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm.”
The above passage is taken from an interesting article written by a web-acquaintance of mine. This is an example of typoglycemia. The explanation for this is that generally we treat written words primarily as patterns. We only tend to look at each individual letter if the pattern is unfamiliar such as in a word that we do not know. Unlike Chinese, English words are composed of letters and their arrangement will give us some help in determining how the unfamiliar word is pronounced. Of course, given the numerous irregular rules of English the word may be pronounced in a quite different way to what the component letters may suggest to the reader!
That words are not fully read has been established by various experiments. Most of us read much faster than we might do if it was necessary to register every letter. Many of us can also correctly comprehend a larger number of words than we correctly spell. In one test I saw participants were rapidly reading out loud a prepared text. Unbeknown to them the text had deliberate mistakes such as “bifferent”. This was pronounced as “different” on the playback. Context doubtless also had an effect on such corrections.
One of the things that strikes me about the above passage is that it seems to suggest there are a fairly limited selection of commonly used word endings in English:
 “-m”, “-n” and “-ng” are used.
“-d” and “-t”
“-r” and “-l”
“-k” and “-g”
“-s”
“-z” and “-x” and some other letters are rarer but not unknown.
Vowel endings are also used. “-y” is phonetically “-i”. Some of the “-e” endings would probably be replaced by the above consonants if the words were first rendered into a more phonetic form. Words like “bole” or “fare” have homophones such as “bowl” or “fair”.
In a more practical vein grouping words by “first letter, last letter, approximate length” may greatly improve the capabilities of search engines and similar systems. One can envision a search engine mode where one enters the first and last letter and the word length. Words of six to nine letters would be grouped together, as would words of eight letters or more.
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Language

20(ish) Vowels

Officially English has twenty vowel sounds but only five vowel letters. The other vowel sounds are represented by combinations of two or more letters. Unfortunately most of these vowel sounds can be represented by multiple different combinations with no apparent logic or consistency. For example, the words “boot” and “hook” have quite different pronunciations, both of them closer to “u” sounds than “o”.
If a more phonetic form of English is desired then the vowel sounds seem a very logical place to start.
The five “basic” vowels are:
Sound
Usually written
Examples
/æ/
a
mat, pat, lap
/ɛ/
e
met, pet, let
/ɪ/
i
bin, pit, lip
/ɒ/
o
rot, pot, lot
/ʌ/
u
fun, sun, luck = fun, sun, luhk
These are relatively consistent, so we will move on to the other vowel sounds. In the second column I suggest standardized letter combinations to represent these. Further discussion of these is in the section below:
/eɪ/
ay/ ey
wait, day, late = wayt, day, layt.
/ɑ:/
ar/ aa
far, car
/eə/
er/ ayr
air, care, where =ayer, kayr, wayr
/iː/
ii
sheep, meat, fiend, elite = shiip, miit, fiind, ayliit/ eyliit.
/ɪə/
ir
steer, near, here = stir, nir, hir
/ɜ:/
ur
stir, her, word, bird, hurt = stur, hur, wurd, burd, hurt
/aɪ/
ai/ iy
I, sign, fight, dry, ice = ai, sain, fait, drai, ais/ iy, siyn, fiyt, driy, iys.
/u:/
u/ uu
do, doom, through, boot = du/ duu, duum, thru/ thruu, buut
/ɔɪ/
oy
coin, toy = koyn, toy
/əʊ/
oh
boat, note, snow, know = boht, noht, snoh, noh
/ʊə/
or
for, oar, worn, door, more, saw, paw, lore = for, or, worn, dor, mor, sor, por, lor.
/aʊ/
ou
sound, cow, how, now = sound, kou, hou, nou
/ʊ/
u
look, hook = luk, huk
/juː/
yu
few, due, cube = fyu, dyu, kyub.
One of the surprises in constructing this table is the variability of how “u” is used. The dictionary insists words like “do” and “through” are a “long u” (/u:/) while I would be inclined to pronounce them “du” and “thru”. Indeed, this would be my inclination to pronounce any word ending in a “u”. “Look” is obviously a short “u” sound, “luk”. Spelling “luck” phonetically in the above system gives us “luk” too although pronunciation is obviously different, hence I used “luhk”. Further examination of the ways “u” is used as a phoneme may be needed.
The “i” in words like “high” or “wire” is represented by “ay” in SaypYu. To my mind this is too likely to be taken as “-ay” as in “may” by English speakers. As far as I know “ay” is always pronounced “/eɪ/” in English. SaypYu’s use of “ay” requires the unnecessary respelling of many perfectly reasonably spelt English words. In the past I have suggested that this should be “ai”, pronounced as in “thai”. A good case can be made for instead using the letter combination “iy”. Thus words such a “fire” become “fiyr”, which is fairly easy to comprehend.
Saypyu uses “ey” to represent the “a” sound in words such as “may” or “same”. If “iy” or “ai” is used to represent the gliding “i” “ay” can be used to represent the gliding “a” and is more easily comprehended by English speakers. There may be a case made for using both “ey” and “ay”. “Ey” would be used for “/eɪ/” sounds not traditionally spelt “ay”. One problem with phonetically spelling English is it increases the number of homographs, something that the language hardly needs!
“er/ ayr” is another case where two different spellings may be used. Words such as “air”, “care” and “where” are more easily comprehended using the “ayr” spelling : “ayr”, “kayr”, “wayr”. The spelling of other words may be clearer using what is effectively a rhotic form of schwa. The distinction between these two may be more pronounced in some accents and dialects.
The long “a” is another phoneme that might be represented two ways. In the above table examples are given of a rhotic form but this may not be applicable for some words. Alternately “ah” may be used instead. Is “father” better spelt “fardher”, “fahdher” or “faadher”?
“/ɔː/” as in “saw” or “sore” would usually be represented by “or”. For some uses such as “/ɔːl/” or “/ɔl/” in “ball” the use of “au” to create “aul” might be clearer.
Careful readers will have realised that the above options give this system more than twenty vowel sounds. They may also have noted that the two tables only have nineteen rows! The missing vowel sound is schwa, which is not represented by a letter in English. Unlike Saypyu I have attempted to create a vowel system that for the most part uses existing English constructions. This system should be comprehendible to native English speakers as well as easy for non-native speakers to learn. Schwa will usually be represented by “e” although in some words it may be clearer if another vowel is used.
The above vowel system is relatively easy to remember. Firstly, you have the digraphs that end in “-r” : ar, er, ir, or, and ur, to which we might add “ayr”.
Then come the doubled letters : ii, uu, au and possibly aa.
Next come the digraphs with a “y” in : yu, ay, ey, iy, oy.
And last, the other “o”s : oh, ou.
This gives seventeen vowels, which with schwa and the single letter vowels is twenty-three in total. Some of these vowels represent the same or similar phonemes. ah, eh, ih and uh might also be considered to be digraph vowels.  This gives us a much more logical and intuitive system than traditional English.
An example:
“Aul hyumen biingz ar born frii and iikwel in digniti and riytz. Dhey ar endoud widh riizen and konshens and shud akt tewordz wun enodher in ey spirit ov brodherhud.”
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Language

Plurals, Gender and Possession

Continuing the introduction of some of the basic framework of Diinlang.

Plurals

As may have been deduced by the previous posts plurals are formed by the addition of -z at the end. Phonetically this is the same as an -s ending is usually pronounced in English. The -z ending is used on nouns and also used to make the plural pronouns. “we”, “they”, “us”, “them”, “these” and “those” are all created by adding a -z to the equivalent singular pronoun. Hence we have miz, ziz, saz and siz. The z can also be added to the one letter words to form their plural. If a word ends in “-s” or some other construction that does not euphonically mesh with “-z” then “-iz”,  can be used instead. 
The -z can be dropped if the sentence has an obvious indicator of plurality. “Three coffee” is an acceptable construction since it contains a plural number.
Ideally in Diinlang the only words ending in -z will be plurals. In an older draft I had “plu” for amount/much and “pluz” for number/ many. This will probably be changed.

Gender

Most words in Diinlang are of neutral gender. One way to indicate gender of a individual is to compound their designation with the relevant singular third person pronoun. This is the same as is sometimes done in English with constructions such as “she-wolf”. Another way to indicate gender is to add an -o suffix for a male or a -a suffix for a female. Since it is planned that most words in Diinlang end in -m, -n, -ng, -i or -u then -o or -a endings can be added without needing to substitute letters. Obviously we want to avoid ungendered words that end in o or a. A work around may be to spell such words more phonetically with an -oh or -ah but this is not entirely satisfactory. Neither is that only nouns are likely to be gendered in this way.
Some pronouns take their gender using the same convention. The third person neuter singular pronoun “zi” can become “zio” or “zia” to mean “he” or “she”. In single letter form this becomes “zo” and “za”. Plural gendered constructions are also possible. A body of males could be referred to as “zoz”. “Ze” will most probably be used instead of “zi”. 
A number of non-noun words end in -o or -a. These include “ya”, “no”, “sa” and “so”, meaning “yes”, “no”, “this/here” and “that yonder”.

A simpler approach may be to gender nouns with “-zo” and “-za” which agrees with the system proposed for gendered agent nouns and maintains the option for neutral words ending in -o or -a. Non-agent nouns can be gendered by using “zo” and “za” as prefixes.

Possession

The use of the apostrophe, particularly for possession, is something that seems to baffle many native English speakers. A basic guideline is that if a word is both plural and ending in -s put an apostrophe at the end. If it is not both plural and ending in -s then add -’s. Children is plural but does not end in -s so becomes “children’s”. Not that difficult! Of course, English being the eccentric language it is there are oddities. Possessive pronouns such as “mine”, “yours”, “his”, “hers” and “whose” don’t take apostrophes, but “one’s” does.  
There is no possessive apostrophe in Diinlang. In Diinlang there are several ways to indicate possession. One is the “_ of xxx” construction used in many European languages. The Diinlang word for “of” or “from” is “di” which can be represented by the single letter “d”. Incidentally, rather than saying “a play by Shakespeare” in Diinlang the construction would translate as “ a play from Shakespeare” so use “d” or “di”.
Possession can also be indicated by using the noun or pronoun as an adjective. “John’s book” and “his book” translates as “John book” and “he book”. Since this is a noun phrase this construction will often have an article before the noun or pronoun, for example “the John book” or “those John books”.
Sometimes there is a need to emphasise possession. In English you might say “Dean and myself got beers. I held his”. To an English speaker it is obvious that it is Dean’s beer that I was holding. In Diinlang “his” is usually replaced by “zio”. Such a sentence could be translated as “I held him”. When the possessive nature of a noun or pronoun needs emphasis the marker “vo” is placed after it. “I held his” would be correctly written “mi held zio vo” or “m held zo vo”.
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Language

Personal, Reflexive, Relative, Dummy and Determiner Pronouns

Personal Pronouns

Diinlang has fewer personal pronouns than English and is simpler, yet still meets all needs. Note that the same word is used for “I” or “me” or for “he” or “him”…
The pronouns are:
First person : mi.                                        Plural miz
Second person : ti/tu                                        Optional plural tiz/tuz
Third person : zio/zo, zia/za, zi/ze, it.                      Plural ziz/zez.
Reflexive : ip
Relative : si/ki
“Zi” is a singular third person epicene pronouns for when the gender of the subject is unknown or not relevant. zio is masculine, zia is feminine and ziz is third person plural, made like other plurals by adding -z . Zio would rhyme with Leo, zia would be pronounced “zi-ah”. “Zi” and “ze” are phonetically identical so the use of “ze” may be preferable to distinguish agent nouns from words ending naturally in “-zi”. derived pronouns thus become zo, za, zez, zoz, zaz
“It” is also used as a proper noun to designate and inanimate or indeterminate object and can be thought of as being similar to the word “thing” or “object” in English. “It” is also used to form agent nouns for inanimate objects and as a referential pronoun.
As in English, “ti” can be singular or plural. It can also be spelt and pronounced as “tu” and this may be preferable for euphonic contrast. The construction “tiz/ tuz” can be used if there is a necessity to emphasise that more than one person is being addressed or instructed. The structure of this system means that zioz/zoz, ziaz/zaz, and itz are theoretically possible constructions. Ziz could denote a collection of people or animals while itz a grouping of inanimate objects such as a traffic jam. Ziaz could designate an all-female group such as a hen party or superfluity of nuns.
For an indefinite pronoun either the “generic tu/ti”, “jhen” or “ziz” can be used.
In the rare occasions that the objective use of a pronoun needs emphasis for greater clarity the forms mim, tum, ziom/zom, ziam/zam and zim/zem might be adopted. The use of the objective form are likely to see more use in written communications than verbal. “vo” is an optional marker that is added to a pronoun or noun when possession needs to be emphasised.
Mi, ti/tu and zi/ze can all be represented as the single letter words m, t and z. I prefer “tu” for “you” but it is inevitable that if it is represented as “t” is going to be pronounced as “ti”. Thus “ti” and “tu” are interchangeable. Use of “tu” in sentences may create some euphonic contrasts. Constructions such as mz, zo, za and zz are inevitable too.

Reflexive Pronoun(s)

Reflexive terms such as “myself”, “itself”, “themselves” etc are replaced by the single reflexive pronoun “ip”, pronounced like the first syllable of “self”. In several languages the word “se” is used but this is phonetically similar to “si”. “Ip” may just be a placeholder and a better word used instead. “He loves himself” is thus “Zio/zo filu ip”. Ip is therefore the only dedicated objective pronoun in Diinlang. Alternately the first pronoun can be repeated “Mi ami mi” = “I like myself”. “Ip” is preferred where ambiguity might occur such as with third person use. “Zio pre du zio” could mean “He did himself” or “He did to him (someone else)” so “Zio pre du se” would be preferable for the first meaning.

Relative Pronouns

Relative pronouns in English include “who, whom, whose, what, which and that”. All of these are replaced by “si” in Diinlang. When it is necessary to indicate the ownership of an object the construction “di/ze si” or “si vo” is used instead of “whose” or “of whom” in English. It is possible that “ki” may also be used as a relative pronoun. Si and ki are in this usage interchangeable. Si and ki may be written as the single letter words “s” and “k”. As in English, the relative pronoun can sometimes be omitted.

Dummy Pronouns

Germanic languages often make use of dummy or expletive pronouns, for example the use of “it” in “it is raining”. Romance languages tend to form the same constructions by dropping the pronoun. There may be constructions in Diinlang where a dummy pronoun will be required. For statements about subjects such as the weather pronoun-dropping is the preferred construction. Hence:
“It rained that day” = “Pre avpotsu si dia” not “It pre avpotsu si dia”

Determiner Pronouns/ Determiners

Just as an adjective can be converted to a noun, so most determiners can be converted to pronouns. “Si” means “there” but can also be used for “that”. It can also be written as just “s”. It is part of the progression sa/ si/ so which means here/ there/ yonder.
These can be used in both singular and plural phrases: “Si Kanis” = “That dog”, “Siz Kanisiz” = “Those Dogs”.  “These” and “Those” are plurals of the above and hence “Saz/Siz” is equivalent. This may be regarded as optional and only really required when plurality needs emphasis. “Not this, these!” = “No sa, saz!”. When used in this fashion sa/si/so can be gendered ie sio, saya.
Si can be represented by the single letter “s”. Sa and so must be written as two letters.
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Language

Single Letter Words

Single letter words are a recent addition to Diinlang and were inspired by the Dutton Speedwords system. The actual uses and the phonology of the letters differs from Dutton’s system.
Diinlang uses a number of words that are written with just one letter. These are very commonly used words so this feature makes writing Diinlang quicker and a little more compact.
Where a single letter is used as a word it should be pronounced as if followed by a schwa (?) or a short “e” or “i” sound. Hence m and b are pronounced as they are in English “me” and “be” although phonetically they are “mi” and “bi”. All of the schwa ending words are consonants.
m
mi
I, me
t
 
ti or tu
you
z
 
zi  derives into zio, zia, ziz, zo, za and zz
neuter third person. Gendered to mean “he”, “she” and plural means “they, them”
b
 
bi
be and other forms of verb “to be”
d
 
di
of, from
j
 
ji
a, an, some. (Indefinite Article)
k
 
ki
What? Question.
s
si
that
v
vi
the (Definite Article)
There are four groups of exceptions to the assumed schwa ending.
The vowels “o” and “a” are pronounced “oh” and “ah” when used as words. “a” means “to” or “at”. “e” is pronounced as just “?”, rhyming with the French “que”. “e” means “and”. “r” is pronounced “or” and means “or”. “u” is not currently used but would be pronounced “uh”. “u” may possibly be used for the “uh” sound!
“i” and “x” are pronounced as “in” and “eks” meaning “in” and “out”.
“y” and “n” are pronounced “yah” and “noh” and mean “yes” and “no” in Diinlang.
“p” and “g” stand for the verbal tense markers “pri/pre” and “gon”.
Like all Diinlang this is a work in progress and assignments are likely to change. It was only last night I thought of switching ofor r and restoring “or” as a word. I had not come up with a good alternative for “nor” so this solves the problem and also lets nor be abbreviated “nr”. “o” is currently unassigned and may be left as an exclamation. It would be nice to have a single letter for “it” but none of the free letters are suitable. May have to use an unshifted symbol instead.