Kan sursa

= Huge Sambahsa translation of Stendhal available! Also Interlingua, Frenkisch... (Jumat, 07 Oktober 2011) =

Over at the new Joy of Literature site which now accompanies this blog, an ongoing translation of the great French novel La Chartreuse de Parme is underway, starting with Chapter Four which features scenes from the Battle of Waterloo. By the way, I mean 'great' only in the sense of it being a great literary work, not in the sense of agreeing with any views expressed therein. But I digress.

Anyway, along with my humble contribution of an Interlingua translation, and David Parke's kind contribution of a Frenkisch translation, both of which are in their early stages, Dr Olivier Simon has 'gone nuts' (as we say in Australian English, to imply 'worked with great enthusiasm') and finished the entire chapter, producing a Sambahsa translation of over 6,000 words! Since each of these translations shows the original French and an English translation in parallel, this is the perfect opportunity for students wishing to learn how to write literature in these constructed languages.

That Olivier was able to so quickly create (in a few days) such a large translation demonstrates the maturity of the Sambahsa language and its grammar. An achievement not to be sniffed at. Also notable is that the Sambahsa text is shorter than both the English and the French, demonstrating that Sambahsa is indeed a capable yet concise language. Being concise is a virtue not to be underestimated.

To celebrate Olivier's amazing achievement, I am going to attempt to translate some of the Sambahsa into English without reading either the original French or its English translation. Since I have not read the end of the chapter, this is a valid test. Let's test the precision of Sambahsa, a language at which I am a beginner barely capable of writing a few short sentences, by doing this exercise. Unfortunately, Sambahsa is rather difficult and so I think I had better start with just one paragraph, the fifth-last paragraph of the chapter, which I have never read. Let's take a look at the Sambahsa:


Is sergeant, currend ex id herbehrg, hieb viso sien colonel falle, ed iom credih grave-ye vurnen. Currt apter Fabrices ekwum ed seht id ak os sien saber do ia nugvers ios fur; so fallt. Ies hussars, vidend ep id brigv tik iom sergeant ped-ye, upergaloppent ed feugent jaldi. So qui eet ped-ye mwaungsout do id rur.

Okay, here goes. First I will make a literal translation, to demonstrate some aspects of Sambahsa grammar. Highlighted in yellow are shown some interesting Sambahsa constructions:

The sergeant, running out of the inn, had seen his colonel fall, and believed him gravely wounded. He runs behind Fabrice's horse and cuts the point of his sabre into the kidneys of the thief; that one* falls. The hussars, seeing on the bridge only the sergeant on foot, gallop over** and flee quickly. That one*** who was on foot escapes into the countryside.
* meaning the thief 
** strongly implying "over the bridge"
*** meaning the one who was on foot (that is, the sergeant) 

I am no expert on Sambahsa tenses but it seems to me that the text is written using an unusual literary device of tense formation, namely that some of the text uses the present tense although the action occurs in the past. Since this is just the sort of trick that the original author, Stendhal, liked to get up to, I'm assuming it has been translated as such. Now let's convert all this into literary English:

The sergeant, running out of the inn, had seen his colonel fall and believed him gravely wounded. He ran behind Fabrice's horse and cut the point of his sabre into the kidneys of the thief, felling him. The hussars, seeing on the bridge only the sergeant on foot, quickly galloped over and fled. The man on foot escaped into the countryside.

Okay, that's about the best I can do without spending too much time looking up documentation. This was a fun exercise, didn't take too long, and I enjoyed it immensely. I was able to deduce here and there a few words which were not found in the dictionary, and was reasonably comfortable doing so, extrapolating from what is in the dictionary. This shows I am getting more comfortable with Sambahsa. Mind you, reading the whole chapter would take me a long time.

I must say, I like the literary quality of Sambahsa, it is very fine.

Okay, now for the result. How did I do?

Here is the original French:

Le maréchal des logis, en accourant de l'auberge, avait vu tomber son colonel, et le croyait gravement blessé. Il court après le cheval de Fabrice et plonge la pointe de son sabre dans les reins du voleur, celui-ci tombe. Les hussards, ne voyant plus sur le pont que le maréchal des logis à pied, passent au galop et filent rapidement. Celui qui était à pied s'enfuit dans la campagne.

And here is Scott-Moncrieff's translation (in grey) compared to my result (in green):

The serjeant, as he hurried from the inn, had seen his colonel fall, and supposed him to be seriously wounded. He ran after Fabrizio’s horse and plunged the point of his sabre into the thief’s entrails; he fell. The hussars, seeing no one now on the bridge but the serjeant, who was on foot, crossed at a gallop and rapidly disappeared. The one on foot bolted into the fields.

The sergeant, running out of the inn, had seen his colonel fall and believed him gravely wounded. He ran behind Fabrice's horse and cut the point of his sabre into the kidneys of the thief, felling him. The hussars, seeing on the bridge only the sergeant on foot, quickly galloped over and fled. The man on foot escaped into the countryside.

Another fantastic result for Sambahsa! Almost exactly correct.

Sambahsa really is an amazing literary language of great quality. It's only drawback is its difficulty.

Bravo, Olivier!

= Reading Frenkisch (Senin, 10 Oktober 2011) =

David Parke has kindly been making a Frenkisch translation from the French novel La Chartreuse de Parme. Hopefully I will soon find the time to contribute some tentative paragraphs there myself but first I thought it would be interesting to repeat the exercise I recently did with Sambahsa, but this time with Frenkisch. Let's take a paragraph of David's translation and translate it into English, then compare the result with Scott-Moncrieff's 1924 English translation. This tests the precision of Frenkisch. I have read the original paragraph before but not in the last few days.

Here we go! Below is David's translation in Frenkisch:


“Lad dyn musket ond sett di after dat triew, insonderheid, schut nejt befor myn befel… Genaideleus Godd!”, roup’d de korporal aut fersteur’d, “hi kann nejt alssolk lade syn waipen!”. (Hi help’d Fabrice tou doue dis, fortgaiend mid syn opdragen.) “Infall mag en fyndlik ryder galopire an di om tou hacke di, leup om dyn triew, ond schut nejt antill hi is in naij reikwydde, hwann dyn ryder is tri schreden af di: wajt antill dyn bajonett treff naijgenoug syn uniform.”

Using the dictionary and grammar which can be downloaded from the Files section of the Frenkisch Yahoo Group (freely available once you have registered as a member of that group), I have made a translation of the above paragraph into English. Here it is, first literally:

"Load* your musket and position yourself behind that tree, don't shoot before my order... Merciless God!" the corporal cried out, disturbed, "He can not [as such] load his weapon!" (He helped Fabrice to do this, continuing with his orders.) "In case an enemy rider gallops next to and around you in order to hack you, run around your tree, and don't shoot until he is in close range, when your rider is three paces** from you; wait until your bayonet near-enough meets his uniform."

 * or, synonymously, "Charge"
** not sure why singular schryde has had a vowel change in the plural form schreden; I'm guessing either a typo, a new grammatical rule, or perhaps schrede is 'yard' and schryde is 'pace'.

Here it is changed into more literary, less literal, English:

"Charge your musket and take up position behind that tree. Don't shoot before my order.... Merciless God!" the corporal cried out in exasperation, "He can't even load his weapon!" (He helped Fabrice to do so as he continued issuing orders.) "If an enemy rider gallops at you to cut you down, run around your tree, and don't shoot until he's in close range, when your rider's three paces from you; wait until your bayonet is just about touching his uniform."

That was great fun. I enjoyed that immensely. What's not to love about a language with such marvellous constructs as genaideleus (merciless), fyndlik ryder (enemy rider), and naijgenoug (near enough, nearly)? It is quite simply lovely. Easy too, for an English speaker with some knowledge of German, when it comes to recognising words and decoding constructions.

Okay, now for the result. How did I do?

Here is the original French:

- Charge ton fusil et mets-toi là derrière cet arbre, et surtout ne va pas tirer avant l'ordre que je t'en donnerai... Dieu de Dieu! dit le caporal en s'interrompant, il ne sait pas même charger son arme!... (Il aida Fabrice en continuant son discours.) Si un cavalier ennemi galope sur toi pour te sabrer, tourne autour de ton arbre et ne lâche ton coup qu'à bout portant, quand ton cavalier sera à trois pas de toi; il faut presque que ta baïonnette touche son uniforme..

And here is Scott-Moncrieff's translation (in grey) compared to my result (in green):

“Load your musket and stick yourself behind this tree, and whatever you do don’t fire till you get the order from me.... Great God in heaven!” the corporal broke off, “he doesn’t even know how to load!” He helped Fabrizio to do this while going on with his instructions. “If one of the enemy’s cavalry gallops at you to cut you down, dodge round your tree and don’t fire till he’s within three paces: wait till your bayonet’s practically touching his uniform.

"Charge your musket and take up position behind that tree. Don't shoot before my order.... Merciless God!" the corporal cried out in exasperation, "He can't even load his weapon!" (He helped Fabrice to do so as he continued issuing orders.) "If an enemy rider gallops at you to cut you down, run around your tree, and don't shoot until he's in close range, when your rider's three paces from you; wait until your bayonet is just about touching his uniform."

A great result for Frenkisch! Almost exactly correct except that I got the sense of exasperation (feeling disturbed or perturbed) rather that interruption (being disturbed or interrupted) for the corporal, and also a few very minor stylistic liberties by myself and by David in making our translations.

This demonstrates the power, precision, style, and expressiveness of Frenkisch for literary use. Remember that speakers of Germanic languages could probably easily read such a translation with little or no prior study, an advantage not to be sniffed at!

Bravo, David!



= Writing in Sambahsa (Selasa, 11 Oktober 2011)

Okay, now I am going to attempt to translate into Sambahsa a paragraph from a famous French novel. This is just a learning exercise, since the paragraph has already been translated by an expert, but I have not yet read that translation. Let's see how well I can do. This is the original French:


- Tais-toi d'abord! Avance-toi là, à cinquante pas en avant du bois, tu trouveras quelqu'un des pauvres soldats du régiment qui viennent d'être sabrés; tu lui prendras sa giberne et son fusil. Ne va pas dépouiller un blessé, au moins; prends le fusil et la giberne d'un qui soit bien mort, et dépêche-toi, pour ne pas recevoir les coups de fusil de nos gens.

And here is an approximate English translation (C. K. Scott–Moncrieff, 1924):

“Will you hold your tongue? Go forward there: fifty paces in front of the wood you’ll find one of the poor fellows of the Regiment who’ve been sabred; you will take his cartridge-pouch and his musket. Don’t strip a wounded man, though; take the pouch and musket from one who’s properly dead, and hurry up or you’ll be shot in the back by our fellows.”

And, just for comparison, here is my Interlingua translation:

- Tace! Avantia la. A cinquanta passos avante del bosco, tu trovará alcuno del povre soldates del regimento qui ha essite sabrate; tu le prenderá su cartuchiera e su fusil. Non spolia un vulnerato, al mínus; prende le fusil e le cartuchiera de un qui es ben morte, e hasta te pro non reciper le colpes de fusil de nostre hómines.

Okay, now here is my best attempt to make a Sambahsa translation. I am a beginner at Sambahsa:

- Sweighe ! Avance ter, ad penkgim stieups ant id bosc, tu trehvsie un iom orm soldats ios regiment quoy ste sabert; tu ghendsie eys palaska ed eys bunduk. Bet ne skehne un veurnto; ghends id bunduk ed id palaska os un qui es druve-ye mohrt, ed speude te, pro ne bihe strehlt ab nies wirs.

Oh boy, that was absolutely exhausting. Sambahsa is a language which clearly works extremely well, with great precision and expressiveness, when written by an expert; as a reader you can clearly appreciate these benefits of the language. In other words, the language clearly works and works very well; it is also highly educational. However, as a writer, it is very difficult until you become an expert, and becoming an expert would be no easy task. Just by way of comparison, today I have made short translations in four auxlangs: Interlingua, Lingwa de Planeta, Frenkisch, and Sambahsa. The difficulty of writing in these languages was in exactly that order: Interlingua easiest, Sambahsa hardest. Just to keep this in perspective, writing in Sambahsa is hugely easier than writing in Latin and very significantly easier than writing in French. It is far more logical, regular, and consistent than those more difficult natural languages. Nevertheless, Sambahsa is not for the faint-hearted.

All right, let's see how I did. I am far too exhausted to attempt to make any further corrections. Lets compare my translation (in purple) with the expert translation by Dr Olivier Simon (in green):

- Sweighe ! Avance ter, ad penkgim stieups ant id bosc, tu trehvsie un iom orm soldats ios regiment quoy ste sabert; tu ghendsie eys palaska ed eys bunduk. Bet ne skehne un veurnto; ghends id bunduk ed id palaska os un qui es druve-ye mohrt, ed speude te, pro ne bihe strehlt ab nies wirs.

- Tayc preter ! Gwah perodh tetro, penkgim stieups ant id bosc, trehfsies sem iom orm soldats ios regiment quoy hant just esen sabern; ghendsies ud iom eys palaska ed eys bunduk. Bariem mae gwah ad spolye un vurnt; ghend id palaska ed id bunduk os oin qui est druve-ye mohrt, ed spehd, kay ne ses hiht ab ia strehls niesen leuds.

Hmmm. Interesting. Right away I have learned some useful things:

* oin (not un) should be used for "one", in the sense of oin qui est druve-ye mohrt
* kay (not pro) should be used for "in order to"
The latter I think is listed somewhere in the documentation. The former I am not so sure is documented adequately. Anyway, I was not able to find it despite going looking for it; that is, I did find oin but I interpreted it to mean only the number 1.

Apart from those observations, obviously I need to learn a bit more about conjugation in Sambahsa. However, I was pleased to see quoy hant just esen sabern as that is pretty close to what I had almost decided to write, namely quoy just hant esen sabert, but which in the end I had decided against because it was so lengthy and if one is sabred one stays sabred so I thought quoy ste sabert might be acceptable and I liked it because it was shorter. This is tricky because it has to do with whether or not the thing which occurred in the past is considered to be continuing in the present or not.

That's about all I can interpret. Hopefully this exercise will be useful for Olivier, perhaps it will highlight some common errors which the typical student might make.

Incidentally, I now believe that it would take about five years to master any auxlang to fluency such that one could write a good novel in it, and that time estimate applies to all of the four auxlangs mentioned above. That is, although the initial difficulty of writing in Sambahsa is greater than the other three auxlangs mentioned, I believe that after five years of dedicated study all four of these languages would seem to be of equal difficulty; that is, all would seem quite easy to write in.

So what it comes down to is not really a comparison of difficulty, since in the long term they are all about the same in difficulty despite large initial differences in difficulty. Other factors influence the choice of auxlang for the novelist, such as the genre you are writing in, the target audience for the novel, personal preference, available documentation, and so on.

Bear in mind that five years of study of a natural language, such as French or English, is nowhere near long enough to be able to write a good novel, unless you are a genius. Twenty years would probably be a more reliable estimate for French or English, unless your editor writes your book for you!

So, by comparison, five years to learn one of these auxlangs is entirely acceptable to me now.

If only there were 48 hours in a day, I would gladly simultaneously learn all four of these languages to fluency! Each of them has so much to offer. Alas, time constraints prevent me from doing so.


= Frenkisch Grammar 2.01 released! (Sabtu, 15 Oktober 2011) =

David Parke, the creator of the excellent Germanic international auxiliary language, Frenkisch, has updated the grammar of that language. This is big news for any writer interested in writing literature for readers who speak a Germanic language. If you were to write a simple short story in Frenkisch, chances are that such readers will mostly be able to read your story at first sight without prior knowledge of Frenkisch; or, at the very least, they will probably have a good idea of what the story is about.

Just as you can write a story in Interlingua which is easily accessible to speakers of Romance languages, now you can write a story in Frenkisch which is accessible to speakers of Germanic languages.

Do you speak a Germanic language? If so, please take a look at this translation of the start of a French novel into Frenkisch. Are you able to understand it? Please let me know!

If you need a little help to read Frenkisch, you can download its dictionary (the beautifully formatted De Greut Frenkisch Englisch Wordbouk V2 is a little out of date, better to use the HTML files instead) and the newly updated grammar (De Frenkischgrammatik fon David Parke V2.01) from the Files section of the Frenkisch Yahoo Group. All you have to do to obtain these documents is to register as a member of that group, then you can freely download the dictionary and grammar.

Alternatively, you can view the grammar and the dictionary online by following the links at David's new blog, Konstspraik. There you can find out about Frenkisch and his other auxlangs in development. On the right margin of the page you will find the "Useful Files" section.

Frenkisch is one of my top-four favourite auxlangs: Interlingua, Lingwa de Planeta, Frenkisch and Sambahsa. Although it is in a relatively early stage of its grammatical development, it has an excellent large dictionary and is one of the best new auxlangs. I highly recommend checking it out.

Thanks very much to David for this latest update of an exciting new language.



= One Year of Study: October 2011 to October 2012 (Minggu, 23 Oktober 2011)

All right, let's see what I can do in a year of serious study.


The following four languages will be my focus:

English
French
Interlingua
Lingwa de Planeta

For each of these languages, my goals for the year are:

English : to read and write literature
French : to read literature and other texts
Interlingua : to read and translate literature
Lingwa de Planeta : to read and translate literature

The aim is to make this study synergistic. For example, Latin terms which I learn from studying French and Interlingua might be incorporated into my English writing; certainly they will be useful to me as a reader of sophisticated texts in the English language, as will be terms from Arabic, Persian, Russian, Hindi and Chinese which I will learn from studying Lingwa de Planeta. This is not just about expanding my linguistic horizons, it is also about gaining cultural and historical knowledge—useful things indeed for a writer.

This is different from the many lists of languages to study which I have previously made on this blog, each of which I quickly abandoned and changed. What's the difference? I grew up.

While hopefully I have not lost my youthful sense of humour, I have lost the youthful magical thinking that a language can be mastered in six months. Therefore I no longer am inclined to jump from language to language in the vain hope that one of them will deliver the magic ability to gain fluency quickly. Instead I see obtaining mastery of any auxlang, for a novelist such as myself, as a five-year process, and I am more inclined to choose languages which suit my literary goals rather than which are the easiest to learn. Since learning French is a labour of love to which I am already committed, the combination of English, French and Interlingua makes perfect sense; the combination is undoubtedly highly synergistic. Lingwa de Planeta provides what none of these three languages does: a true worldlang, equally welcoming to everyone, and which is primarily designed to be easy rather than faithful to any existing grammar or grammars.

In the longer term, if I wrote a novel in English and simultaneously translated it into Interlingua and Lingwa de Planeta, I could theoretically reach readers anywhere in the world without further translation. Many people interested in international communication already read either English or a Romance language. Those who read a Romance language will be able to read Interlingua with relatively little study since it so much resembles natural Romance languages. For those who speak no European language, Lingwa de Planeta (LdP) is the best solution I have seen; I would not expect a speaker of Chinese or Indonesian to find Interlingua easy to learn, but I would expect them to find LdP very accessible; I confidently expect that such students could easily become fluent readers of LdP after five years of study. LdP is a welcoming language to all, more so than any other literary auxlang I have ever seen; the emotional benefit of seeing words from your own language in an auxlang, no matter what country you come from, cannot be overstated.

Incidentally, at this stage in my journey I would not even consider Esperanto at all. It is outclassed by the other choices available. For novelists seeking a naturalistic auxlang I would instead recommend Interlingua. For novelists seeking an easy-to-learn auxlang, I would instead recommend LdP.

One thing I have found, with regard to time management, is that I find it very stressful to try to do too much, and trying to do too much results in very little getting done. Accordingly as much as I would love to simultaneously study Sambahsa and Frenkisch this year, I have decided to put them to one side for now while focussing on the above four languages. This is probably good timing anyway since the documentation for both of these languages is currently being expanded and improved and a year from now both of these languages will probably be significantly easier to study because of this improvement in documentation. I remain extremely impressed by both of these languages and hope to see their user communities grow.

To follow my ongoing translation of a famous French novel into Interlingua and Lingwa de Planeta during the coming year, please visit The Joy of Literature, a companion site to this blog. There you will also find translations in other auxlangs, including Sambahsa and Frenkisch, kindly made by others.

Hopefully at the end of this one year of study I will be able to comfortably read literature in French, Interlingua, and LdP, and able to comfortably make translations into Interlingua and LdP.

But only time shall tell. Onward....



= One Year of Study Revised: October 2011-2012 (Sabtu, 26 November 2011) =

It's been just over one month since my last post, in which I declared my one-year study plan for languages. One month down, eleven months to go. So how has it been going? Good and bad.

First, the good: I made 900-word parallel literary translations into Interlingua and Lingwa de Planeta (LdP) from the novel La Chartreuse de Parme. The translations can be found at The Joy of Literature.

Now, the bad: it has sadly become clear that, given my other commitments, I simply do not have the time to learn two auxlangs to fluency at the same time as learning French. Therefore I have been forced to make a choice between Interlingua and LdP. And my choice is LdP. So my revised plan is exactly the same as my original plan except that Interlingua has been removed.
The following three languages will be my focus:

English
French
Lingwa de Planeta

For each of these languages, my goals for the year are:

English : to read and write literature
French : to read literature and other texts
Lingwa de Planeta : to read and translate literature


Explanatory Note:
Why LdP instead of Interlingua?

I believe LdP is clearly a better auxlang than Interlingua for global literary use, being easier to read, easier to pronounce, and incorporating vocabulary from around the world rather than just from Romance languages. It is also easier to speak and to write for those like myself who are not native speakers of a Romance language. Lastly, LdP is primarily designed to be easy whereas Interlingua is primarily designed to be naturalistic; this really counts when it comes to truly global use... for example I cannot imagine readers in China being willing to learn Interlingua but I can easily imagine them being willing to learn LdP. Apart from being easier, the design of LdP pays attention to making people feel welcome by including words from a much more diverse collection of natural languages than the small number of source languages of Interlingua. Since my intention is to write literature for global consumption, rather than merely for European consumption or merely for those who speak Indo-European languages, LdP is clearly a better choice, even taking into account its relative immaturity. In my opinion LdP has greater potential than Interlingua to succeed globally. In other words, for global literary use I have now come to believe that worldlangs are the answer.

As a minor additional note, I have stylistic problems with Interlingua. It is very difficult to write well without being a native speaker of a Romance language, perhaps impossibly so without assistance. To be honest, I also find French easier to read than Interlingua, for passive comprehension, despite the fact that my command of French is so poor that I can barely carry out even a simple conversation. This greater ease of reading is partially because French resources are more readily available. I also enjoy reading French far more than reading Interlingua because in my opinion French is a much more beautiful language. So, to be honest, I'd rather be reading French than reading Interlingua.


= The Strange Journey (Sabtu, 03 Desember 2011) =

Ah, what a strange journey it is, to learn constructed languages. It is indeed a strange journey to learn unfamiliar natural languages when one is already an adult, but to learn constructed languages is doubly strange. 

On the plus side, I am now 22 months into this (some might say ridiculous) journey and yet I'm still here and ultimately have not given up. Still learning, still growing, still journeying, still adventuring. And still constantly surprised. Every time I turn a corner I learn something new and unexpected.

When learning a natural language one learns not only the language itself but also something of the culture or cultures in which that language is used. For example, learning French is opening my eyes to French culture and to the cultures of the francophone world. Becoming progressively more able to read newspapers and novels and magazines in French, for example, is slowly opening up a whole new world to me; such a skill is indeed a profound change and improvement in one's life, especially in this world in which the anglophone media has become so riddled with propaganda and so devoid of real information that being able to read another language is extremely helpful to maintaining a more balanced outlook on the world. Sure, the francophone media might also be riddled with propaganda but at least it is different propaganda. At least one gets different perspectives on the world.

When one learns a good constructed language the cultural effect is even more profound: it throws the door open to all cultures, to learning about the whole world, at least in theory. If a constructed language is easy enough to be learned to a useful degree of international fluency in five years, regardless of one's mother tongue, then in theory it can effectively open the door to all cultures, especially if its design is welcoming to people from all over the world, for example by including words from many languages. One such language is Lingwa de Planeta (LdP), which indeed is the only remaining constructed language which I am currently actively using (that is, not just reading but writing). Through it I am learning words from Sanskrit, Persian, Hindi, Arabic, Mandarin, Russian, Indonesian, and several European languages. It is still in its early stages of development but is nevertheless mature enough to allow me, with expert help, to gradually translate a famous French novel into LdP; my translation is already 900 words in length and should exceed 1000 words soon. It is a pleasure to work on.

I don't want to make too much of a song and dance about it in this particular post but, admittedly, LdP has indeed become my de-facto Best Literary Language of 2011, just as it was my Best Literary Language of 2010. I judge it to be so because, voilà (or should I say walaa): it's the only constructed language which I'm still actively using for writing. Even after abandoning it for some months and instead writing in Occidental and later Interlingua, the good design of LdP has magnetically pulled me back to its charms.

So, how is that for a strange journey? I've come full circle.

I also realised that learning any language, constructed or otherwise, is inevitably at least a five-year journey and that nothing shorter should be hoped for, except for gifted polyglots or under conditions of total immersion. In fact I even came to believe that a better name for international auxiliary languages (IALs) would be five-year languages, as such a name would fully prepare the student for the reality of the investment required for fluency. Whereas five years is generally nowhere near long enough to become fluent in English or French, it is probably sufficient for well designed auxlangs.

But wait, there's more...

I discovered that (surprisingly) not only can I now read French more easily than Interlingua and that (unsurprisingly) I much prefer reading French to Interlingua because of its greater beauty and utility, but that something has happened to my brain and that I can now to some extent also read Esperanto (with the aid of a dictionary), even without recent study. (Esperanto is a language which I did considerable study of at the start of my journey and by which I was repeatedly and bitterly disappointed.) There is a part of me that now might prefer to read Esperanto rather than Interlingua when it comes to passively using a constructed language for reading only. Partly this is because of the highly artificial nature of Esperanto, with its parts of speech marked by mandatory endings which although ugly do greatly increase the ease of reading, but mostly it is because there is far more literature available to read in Esperanto, from many more writers around the world. So this is another unexpected outcome of my strange journey: I feel right now that there is some chance that I might begin to use Esperanto passively, a use for which it was never really designed, instead of using Interlingua, a language which was primarily designed for passive use by readers. Meanwhile I have at this time no interest in using Esperanto actively. Oh, the irony!

Whether I will actually do any significant amount of reading in Esperanto remains to be seen. I might indeed do none. I just happened to notice today that I no longer find it too difficult to read, so I might use it passively.

For writing I remain far more interested in LdP.


= 1000 Words of Lingwa de Planeta - Best Literary Language of 2011 =

Kamis, 
I have reached a major, happy milestone.

My translation of the French novel, La Chartreuse de Parme, into Lingwa de Planeta (LdP) has now reached over 1000 words in length.

You can find the translation over at The Joy of Literature. It consists of the opening scenes of the fourth chapter of the novel (mainly because I had grown tired of repeatedly translating the opening of the first chapter into several other languages).

This makes LdP one of only two constructed languages in which I have made a literary translation longer than 1000 words. The other language is Occidental, into which I translated over 5000 words of the same novel. Recently I gave up on the corresponding Interlingua translation after about 900 words. With other constructed languages I never made it past a few hundred words. Which means that LdP has survived my practical, hands-on test. It is in fact the only constructed language in which I am currently still interested in producing literary translations; I was not happy with Occidental, despite creating a long translation, and therefore abandoned it.

I am happy with LdP. It hits the sweet spot between being easy enough to learn and use despite my relatively limited free time, and being sophisticated and expressive and precise enough for serious literary use. It really does fit the description of being a practical International Auxiliary Language in that it is significantly easier than most alternative constructed languages, for literary use in which a relatively high degree of precision is required. And it has the huge advantage of being a highly educational worldlang.

Did you know snova is Russian for "again" / "anew"? Did you know swasti is Sanskrit for "may fortune favour you"? Do you know that hampi is Indonesian for "almost"? You might know that danke is German for "thank you" but do you also know that a synonym from Arabic and Hindi is shukran? How about the word hao, which is Chinese for "good", or jamile, Arabic for "beautiful"? This is seriously educational stuff and a real joy to use for a writer. It is a joy.

Lingwa de Planeta is a language which — although it is new and will take a few years yet to fully develop and stabilise — I highly recommend to any writer interested in producing literature for a truly global audience.

Lingwa de Planeta es jamile lingwa!
Lingwa de Planeta is a beautiful language!

Incidentally, this means that LdP has unexpectedly but indubitably turned out to be my favourite constructed language for literary use, two years in a row: first in 2010 and now again in 2011. Accordingly...


Lingwa de Planeta
is the winner of the Gold Medal

Best Literary Language of 2011
Category: International Auxiliary Languages

Of course this is not any kind of public competition, it is just my personal opinion based on two years of long and dedicated study of many different constructed languages. It will be interesting to see whether or not my opinion changes in 2012 or 2013 but for now LdP is the winner of my personal quest to find an IAL which I feel is best suited for truly global literature.

I've given up Interlingua, another fine language, in favour of spending time improving my French. Strangely, I now find French easier to read.

Incidentally, for any concerned Esperanto readers who may be reading this, although my favourite constructed language for writing literature is definitely LdP, I have recently returned to learning to read literature in Esperanto and there is some chance that I might, after all, warm to the idea of regularly reading in Esperanto, mainly because studying all these other languages has gradually resulted in Esperanto becoming not quite so impossible to read. I'm not sure if my temporary resurgence of interest in reading in Esperanto will amount to anything however; I'm quite likely to lose interest and give up. Whereas I do not expect to lose interest in LdP any time soon.

I expect to reach 5000 words of LdP translation during 2012.

It would not even surprise me if I reach 10000 words. 

Onward...


= Esperanto suddenly easy to read (Jumat, 16 Desember 2011) =

Something very weird has happened.

Due to time limitations, recently I gave up reading and writing Interlingua in order to concentrate on reading and writing Lingwa de Planeta (LdP) and to continue my long-term commitment to learning to read French.

I had finally discovered that I could read French much more easily than I could read Interlingua, assuming in each case that I had a good dictionary and grammar available to which to refer. I would not have predicted that a natural language would prove to be easier to read than an auxlang, once an intermediate level of proficiency had been acquired in both, so this was quite a surprising finding. I suppose the best way to interpret this is that perhaps the study of Interlingua acted to accelerate my progress in French; once it had done so, it no longer seemed necessary to continue with Interlingua.

All this followed my earlier conclusion that, contrary to the sales pitch, it probably takes about five years to master any auxlang. So I was finally in a frame of mind in which I was willing to study for years, not mere months, to learn auxlangs. In this state of mind, then, having given up Interlingua, but still being interested in the passive use of an auxlang for reading only, it seemed reasonable to take another look at Esperanto. Regular readers of this blog will know Esperanto is a language which I have been bitterly disappointed by and which in general I have strongly disliked; however, that was mostly when I expected results in mere months instead of years.

As a writer, I am enthusiastically doing a literary translation in LdP and intend to keep doing so. As a reader, however, there is not yet any opportunity to read news and current affairs and opinions from all around the world in that language. Interlingua to some extent offered me that benefit but my Romance language of choice for such reading is now French rather than Interlingua. So I decided to try some reading in Esperanto, with a good dictionary and grammar to refer to, but without any further study. Having had bad experiences with Esperanto in the past, I did not want to waste any more of my time formally studying it. Either I could read it or not.

To my great surprise, something really weird happened in the past few days.

I returned to Claude Piron's introductory novella, Gerda Malaperis!, which had previously been almost totally impenetrable to me despite extensive Esperanto study and repeated attempts. With great difficulty many months ago I had managed to get a few pages into the novella after studying several Esperanto textbooks over several months and basically getting nowhere. Giving up in disgust, I turned to other auxlangs and even gave up on all auxlangs for a time. Over the last few months I have studied mainly Interlingua and to a lesser extent LdP; I have done no Esperanto study.

Now, just as Interlingua seems to have helped me to learn French, it seems Interlingua and LdP and French must have helped me to learn Esperanto, because without having done any Esperanto study for several months, suddenly out of nowhere I find that I can now easily read Piron's novella! In a few days I have read the first 26 pages of Gerda Malaperis! without having any English translation available yet having no difficultly.

Now that is very, very weird and totally unexpected.

I now see that Esperanto, although quite difficult for speakers of European languages and very difficult for everybody else, actually works surprisingly well for literary use and is easier than most natural languages. There is something about it which really suits the way the human brain works, something about it which makes it uncannily easy to read once the penny drops and you 'get it'; that is, at first the Esperanto system is like a gigantic wall which seems terribly unnatural and impossible to climb over but there comes a time when you find yourself having climbed the wall and suddenly the view from up there is very fine and there is little or no trouble understanding texts of moderate complexity. Suddenly it seems very natural; not 'naturalistic' but natural in the sense of suiting the thinking patterns of the human brain (however, it differs from many natural languages so greatly that at first it can be very difficult to learn indeed). My former intense dislike of the language has now turned into a moderate degree of liking the language; it no longer seems ugly to me but seems practical and clever in design. To be sure, it is somewhat utilitarian in appearance but nevertheless not without its charms. It just... 'makes sense' to me now. I now can... 'feel it'. That is, when reading sentences rapidly aloud, they just 'make sense' and seem to convey meaning in a natural, 'human' manner. It is unnatural in appearance but natural in its ability to be comprehended. It... 'works'.

Now, don't get me wrong. I would still be a bit worried about using Esperanto to write the operating instructions for a nuclear reactor! I think there is rather a lot of potential for misunderstanding in Esperanto since speakers can invent an unlimited number of words by combining affixes, however I now understand that this is analogous to people inventing an unlimited number of phrases by combining words and does not necessarily lead to misunderstanding among experienced users, although undoubtedly it does introduce the difficulty of not being able to find words in the dictionary. Presumably, in the fullness of time, it might be possible in the far future for the operating instructions of a nuclear reactor to be written in Esperanto without causing misunderstanding, as the language and its resources continue to mature. But for now that is beside the point.

Anyway, while I find LdP more beautiful than Esperanto, and more interesting than Esperanto, and more educational than Esperanto, and incomparably easier to write than Esperanto, I am nevertheless amazed to report that I now find Esperanto easier to read than any other auxlang. This is totally amazing to me because I have not studied Esperanto at all in the last several months.

So I find, to my surprise, for me personally at this particular point in time the following rankings to be true:


Ease of Reading

From easiest to hardest:

English [my native language]
Esperanto
Lingwa de Planeta
French
Interlingua

Interlingua is hugely easier than French to pronounce when reading aloud, but when reading silently French is now easier for me to understand. Esperanto requires less frequent dictionary use than LdP; the etymology of words in LdP is far more interesting but requires frequent dictionary use, slowing down the experience of reading compared to Esperanto. This frequent dictionary use makes LdP slower than French for me to read, but nevertheless French is definitely more difficult to read than LdP; that is, sometimes difficulty and speed do not correlate.

Aesthetic Beauty

From most beautiful to least beautiful:

French
English
Lingwa de Planeta
Interlingua
Esperanto

Of course beauty is in the eye of the beholder and these are just my personal preferences in terms of aesthetic beauty for reading and writing literature. Esperanto still has its own beauty but feels more utilitarian than the other languages, all of which more often favour beauty over ease of use.

I would say all five languages are beautiful but in different ways.

I am simply amazed to now find Esperanto so easy to read.

Ease of Writing

From easiest to hardest:

English [my native language]
Lingwa de Planeta
Interlingua
Esperanto
French


I can hardly write any Esperanto at all, at this stage.

Lingwa de Planeta hovers near the middle in all three lists: it is a nice compromise for reading, writing, and aesthetic beauty, and it is in my opinion far easier than Esperanto for those who speak no European language. It is currently by far my favourite auxlang for writing literature.


= One Year of Study Revised Again: October 2011-2012 (Sabtu, 17 Desember 2011) =

Update: As part of my New Year's resolution for 2012, I decided to cancel this change and to return to the previous revision of the plan which was made on 27 November 2011. That is, I will not be studying Esperanto but will only study a single auxlang: Lingwa de Planeta. There is only time for one.

Nothing new here. I'm just documenting the recent change in plan brought about by the discovery that I can now read Esperanto with very surprising ease. Esperanto has therefore taken the place filled by Interlingua in my previous plans.

I have the late Claude Piron to thank for this change.

The following four languages will be my focus:

English
French
Lingwa de Planeta
Esperanto

For each of these languages, my goals for the year are:

English : to read and write literature
French : to read literature and other texts
Lingwa de Planeta : to read and translate literature
Esperanto : to read literature and other texts

Explanatory note: My preferred auxlang for writing literature is currently Lingwa de Planeta, not Esperanto. At this stage I am merely reading in Esperanto.


= New Year's Resolution for 2012 (Minggu, 01 Januari 2012) =

Okay, I have made a New Year's Resolution!

My resolution is to ignore the most recent change to my one-year study plan and to go back to the version of the plan dated 27 November 2011. In other words, to focus on studying just one auxlang: Lingwa de Planeta (LdP).

Recently I had been pleasantly surprised to discover that I could suddenly read an introductory Esperanto novella reasonably easily (with the help of a good dictionary) despite not having studied Esperanto in recent months. That was a pleasant discovery. It conforms to my current hypothesis that (extrapolating from my experiences over the past two years) it probably takes about five years to learn any good auxlang to true fluency. Sure, now I can read a little Esperanto; that's great. But to be able to fluently converse in Esperanto or to write a novel in Esperanto would take me a few more years of study, beyond the few months of work I have invested studying that language so far. The question is: Do I want to put a few years into studying Esperanto?

A key factor here is time. I am a person with many interests and I chronically over-estimate the number of things which I can simultaneously undertake or learn. The truth is that because I am very busy with many other commitments, and also committed to learning French, I really only have time for learning one auxlang. This forces me, as the new year begins, to make a decision and choose between Esperanto and LdP. I choose LdP.

There is a compelling reason to do so. Almost two years ago, when I first started on this long journey, I had the good sense to write the following statement. Since then I have made many mistakes and have gone down many wrong roads. But in retrospect I still think that the following statement is one of the most valuable things I have ever written on this blog. Here it is:




Any constructed language which had more than 1,000 to 10,000* reasonably fluent speakers in 1993, when the World Wide Web was popularised, and which has had a considerable online presence (including lessons and dictionaries) for several years, and which nevertheless has not grown exponentially in number of speakers since that time, has already failed. That is, the language has failed to gain popular acceptance and probably never will gain popular acceptance (unless induced artificially, such as by government decree). This is probably due to the language being more difficult than consumers were willing to accept, relative to the perceived benefits of learning the language.



* That is, a population of reasonably fluent speakers which numbered in the thousands rather than in the hundreds. By reasonably fluent I mean either able to correspond as a pen pal by writing simple letters, and/or able to read texts such as easy Wikipedia articles, and/or able to have spoken conversations.

Esperanto does work, as I discovered recently when suddenly it had become relatively easy for me to read. However, Esperanto has already failed according to the above definition. And I still think that matters.

Please don't misunderstand my intentions here. I certainly do not wish to discourage anyone from learning Esperanto. And I have finally come to understand, from personal experience, that although Esperanto is not perfect it really is a workable language; I can see that if I wanted to put a few years into learning it, I could use it to write novels, and people would be able to read them effectively if they themselves had put five years or so of studying into learning Esperanto to fluency. However, I do think that it is highly significant that, according to the above definition, Esperanto has not succeeded despite there being nothing to hold it back now that the internet is so globally accessible to billions of people. Anybody who wishes to learn Esperanto can now do so for free, using abundant resources freely available online. Yet people are not doing so except in rather limited numbers. Esperanto has thus, according to the above definition, already failed.

Now, one could say, perhaps this means that the whole concept of auxlangs has already failed. One could say that perhaps the failure of Esperanto is just a symptom of the failure of the concept of auxlangs in general. Maybe the vast majority of people will never have any interest in auxlangs and maybe the failure of Esperanto demonstrates this. Maybe. But until we have some mature twenty-first-century constructed languages which offer a global rather than regional approach in their design, we cannot be sure. Much has changed since 1887 when Ludwig Zamenhof (who was undoubtedly a genius) first published Esperanto. Asia is now poised to become the centre of the world's economy by the middle of this century. Travel and the internet has rendered the globe smaller than ever, with more and more interaction between people with no language in common, and with a much larger percentage of these interacting persons speaking no European language. It could be that the failure of Esperanto (which is not a total failure but a partial failure, since thousands do use the language successfully) actually indicates the unrealised potential for the greater success of auxlangs, but that what is needed is an auxlang much more accessible to speakers of Asian languages while remaining accessible to speakers of European languages. Maybe, just maybe, there is a literary future for such an auxlang.

Lingwa de Planeta (LdP) is in my opinion the most mature and promising of the currently available candidates for such an auxlang, for literary use, which fits the accessibility requirements noted above. These accessibility requirements, for speakers of Asian languages, mandate the use of a grammar that is not so dependent on prior knowledge of European grammar as is Esperanto; for example, there certainly should not be any definite article and it is probably best if constructions of tense are fewer and easier than those found in Esperanto. Although I doubt that LdP itself will necessarily be the auxlang which, in the far future, might succeed in gaining the interest of millions of readers of literature worldwide (including readers in Asia) it does seem to me that if the future is to bring the global success of any auxlang, it will be an auxlang that is more accessible to those in China than is Esperanto (and not just to those in China but to those throughout the entire Near-, Middle- and Far-East regions of the planet). In short, the successful auxlang of the future will be less Eurocentric than Esperanto, particularly in the formation of its grammar (and, to a lesser extent, its vocabulary; a lesser extent because Western vocabulary already dominates science). The East, not the West, holds the key to auxlang success. In other words, it is absolutely paramount that an auxlang should bridge the East-West gap; in my opinion Esperanto, although it can certainly be successfully used by most people, contains insufficient Eastern features to optimally be that bridge. LdP I think is closer to what the auxlang of the future might be.

Bear in mind that I am talking specifically about literary use. That is my interest. I am a writer of fiction. I want a language which is good for reading and writing literature. It may be that for science and business it will always be better to use a natural language, due to the great precision of natural languages and the enormous resources available for them; however to be able to use a natural language with such precision probably takes between one and two decades of very dedicated study, unless that language already resembles your native language. I think to be able to fluently use a good auxlang for reading and writing literature takes perhaps five years.

Even if no auxlang ever truly makes it big in the global market for literature, there is the educational benefit of learning auxlangs. For me personally, I'm more interested in the educational benefit which LdP offers than that offered by Esperanto. LdP teaches me words from Hindi, Arabic, Persian, Chinese, Russian, Indonesian, Swahili, and so on which Esperanto does not. It's fun to learn Hindi, Mandarin, Persian and Arabic words and be able to talk about them with my friends. Esperanto does not give me that benefit. I think perhaps I could maybe convince some of my friends to take a look at LdP and to learn a little of it, just based on its use of words from their own native languages. Again, this is something Esperanto does not offer.

Lastly, I think I can make more difference as a writer by choosing LdP rather than Esperanto. One more writer using Esperanto is hardly significant. But one more writer using LdP is highly significant because by comparison the community of LdP users is so tiny. Since apparently it takes about five years to become truly fluent in any auxlang, it hardly makes any difference either way in that, either way, readers would have to invest a few years of study before they could read any novel I might write in either language. Thus very few people would read any novel I might write in Esperanto, anyway, so it is not as if choosing Esperanto over LdP would magically make it far easier for readers to access such a novel. In essence, my original dream when starting this blog, that maybe some auxlang exists in which novels could be written and readers could quickly and painlessly learn to read them, is forlorn. However, for reasons mentioned above, I think LdP is closer to what the successful literary auxlang of the future might look like.

Also, I note curiously, my journey has brought me back to LdP again and again. Every time I have gone off down different roads with other languages, in the end I have returned to LdP. While LdP is not perfect, there is something about it which brings me back again and again. It is, I think, at least somewhat on the right track, at least somewhat an indicator of what a successful auxlang of the future might look like.

By the way, I think the fact that I am an Australian weighs heavily into this decision. I live in Australia. I happen to speak a European language, English, but those of my friends and colleagues whose first language is not English speak Asian languages, not European languages. I cannot imagine getting any of my Chinese, Indonesian, Malaysian, Indian, Pakistani, Japanese, Korean, or Arabic-speaking friends and colleagues to learn, say, five Esperanto words for fun over lunch. But I can easily imagine having lunch with any of them and getting them interested in learning five LdP words, because LdP contains words from diverse languages around the world, including some prominent Asian languages. This makes it relevant.

Also significant is that the grammar of the European language which I speak, English, is simpler than the grammar of other European languages such as French; the grammar of LdP is more accessible to me than Esperanto grammar, a fact which is of no small significance when one considers that English is the most popular second language spoken in Asia. For example, like English, LdP favours using a standard word order rather than inflection to indicate the accusative, and there is no adjectival agreement. For me as an English speaker, LdP grammar seems much more familiar and less demanding than the unfamiliar grammar of Esperanto; whereas if my first language were French (uses adjectival agreement) or Turkish (uses agglutination), Esperanto grammar would probably seem less intimidating to me.

In 2012 in Australia, the vocabulary of LdP is more immediately relevant to my life and to the life of my friends and colleagues than the vocabulary of Esperanto, which was relevant in 1887 in Eastern Europe. That's not to say that the vocabulary of Esperanto is better or worse than the vocabulary of LdP, but the vocabulary of LdP is I think better suited to the global outlook of the twenty-first century, which is heavily influenced by Asia. Having said that, LdP combines the best of both worlds since most of its vocabulary is from the major successful European natural languages of the world and it still, like other languages, favours Western vocabulary for scientific terms.

I think that studying LdP is the best way to spend my auxlang time this year, at least until the end of my one-year study plan this October. In essence, I've decided it's better to learn one auxlang well than two auxlangs badly.

Onward during 2012...

= Finished reading my first story in LdP! (Minggu, 15 Januari 2012) =

I have for the first time finished reading a story written in Lingwa de Planeta (LdP). Today I finished reading Mey nocha, o Dronigina (May Night, or the Drowned Maiden); actually it is a fragment, about 1970 words in length. It is one of a number of literary short stories available at the LdP website. 

The story was much funnier than I was expecting. Quite hilarious, in fact. I've never read Gogol before; it's obvious, even from reading only the LdP translation, that he was a marvellous writer. It begins with the most beautiful description of Ukrainian nights and then descends into wonderfully light comedy as a drunken Cossack wanders the streets of his village, making a fool of himself and finally barging into the home of the village chief, which he mistakenly takes for his own. It is clever and entertaining.

It is true to say that, providing I only write a paragraph or two at a time, I find it easier to write LdP than to read it. This is a good sign in that, for writers, it proves that the language is reasonably accessible. However, for readers, it demonstrates that reading literature in any language is indeed difficult and that it takes a long time to learn how to do so.

The main challenge for me in reading LdP is the vocabulary: because it is a world vocabulary rather than a regional one or one restricted to just one language group, it is unavoidably difficult to memorise the large number of words required for literary use. To be honest, I find doing so exhausting and am sometimes tempted to give up; what keeps me going is the educational value of learning the words. It would be much easier to learn a language whose vocabulary was already more familiar to me, such as languages whose vocabulary is primarily Latin in origin; however, the available languages in that group (for example, Interlingua) are more difficult than LdP in other respects. It would also be easier to memorise the vocabulary of a language which absolutely minimised the number of word roots and used agglutination or some similar mechanism to create a large vocabulary by extrapolation from this small number of roots (for example, Esperanto as first published); however the available languages in that group have other difficulties. In any case, LdP uses preceding hyphenated particles (syao-gramatika), non-hyphenated prefixes, and non-hyphenated suffixes to achieve this to some extent, although in my opinion the more hyphenation the better (without hyphens, parsing and the determination of stress is sometimes difficult). Apart from the vocabulary, one still has to learn some idiomatic expressions and constructs, as is true in any language. So, it is challenging.

To put this in perspective: Esperanto is challenging, Interlingua is challenging, Ido is challenging, and so too LdP is challenging. They are all so challenging that one must doubt that readers will bother with them, except possibly in the case of Interlingua which is relatively easy to read for native speakers of Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and closely related languages. Actually, just the other day I found I could read some Spanish, probably mostly as a result of studying Interlingua; however it seems rather far fetched that Asian readers would bother to learn Interlingua. Anyway, fortunately I've made a New Year's resolution to stick to learning LdP, which removes the need for me to make any further decisions. All I have to do is just stick to LdP, keep reading it, keep writing it, and hopefully sometime this year I will reach a sort of "critical mass" at which time my brain will have sufficiently adapted to LdP that it suddenly becomes dramatically easier. I expect that to happen by about July this year. Let's see if that turns out to be the case.

By the way, it is now almost two years into my journey in the land of constructed languages. So it took me a long, long time to get to the point of finishing reading my first story in LdP. However, for most of that time I was not studying LdP. It's difficult for me to estimate the total study time which I've devoted to LdP over those two years, because I have only studied it intermittently and have meanwhile studied countless other languages and been extremely busy with countless other commitments, but my guess is that I have probably done something equivalent to about six months of part-time study at a comfortable pace. That is, if somebody started studying LdP today and kept going at a comfortable pace for about six months, several short sessions per week, my guess is that they would probably have about my level of proficiency. Although that sounds like a long time, it's not much for language study. So if indeed it starts to become dramatically easier for me by about July 2012, then in round figures that would probably be equivalent to about one year of study time overall. It will be interesting to see. 

I will finish this post with a quotation from the story. I've added an English translation which is not intended to be dogmatically literal but rather to convey the general flavour of the text, paraphrasing it somewhat and adding to it a little to capture the personal experience I felt when reading.

So here is the beautiful description of night-time in the Ukraine: 


Original LdP

Ob yu jan ukrainska nocha? Oo, yu bu jan ukrainska nocha! Kan ba inu it. Fon mida de skay luna-dilim zai lumi-kan. Gro-vaste kupula de skay fa-chaure, fa-vaste yoshi pyu gro. It glimi e spiri. Ol arda es in argenta-ney luma. Mirakla-ney aira es i lenge i warme, it es fule de juisa e dulitaa, it mah-muvi osean de aroma. Bohlik nocha! Charmaful nocha! 

Literal Translation from the LdP 
     (by Robert Winter)

Do you know Ukrainian nights? Oh, you don't know Ukrainian night! Look into it. From the middle of the sky the moon-clove is shining and looking. The greatly vast dome of the sky becomes wider, becomes yet more greatly vast. It twinkles and breathes. All of the earth is in silver light. The miraculous air is both cold and warm, it is full of delight and tenderness, it causes oceans of aromas to move. Divine night! Charming night!


Literary Translation from the LdP 
     (by Robert Winter)

Do you know night in the Ukraine? Oh, you don't know night in the Ukraine! Look into it. From the middle of the sky the crescent moon is shining and watching. The great vast dome of the sky widens and falls into ever greater vastness. It twinkles and it breathes. The whole earth swims in silver light. The miraculous air, both cold and warm, is full of joy and tenderness. It brings into motion sweet oceans of aromas. Divine night! Night of charms!


Reference Translation from the Russian 
     (from the University of Adelaide)

Do you know a Ukraine night? No, you do not know a night in the Ukraine. Gaze your full on it. The moon shines in the midst of the sky; the immeasurable vault of heaven seems to have expanded to infinity; the earth is bathed in silver light; the air is warm, voluptuous, and redolent of innumerable sweet scents. Divine night!

I had not read any English translation of the story prior to reading it in LdP, and also made my translation of the above paragraph without referring to any English translation. I think this demonstrates the literary power of LdP. It's interesting to note the embellishments which I made, when making my literary translation into English, somewhat resemble those in the reference translation (for example, my addition of the word "sweet").

Many thanks to Dmitry and the whole LdP team for this wonderful translation of a classic Gogol story. I hope one day the fragment will be extended to include the entire text. This has indeed been a joy!

I hope this demonstrates the great potential of LdP for literary use. It is very important to note that the LdP is much easier than my equivalent English literary translation, yet conveys the same rich reading experience. Furthermore, the LdP is incomparably better than the English translation from the University of Adelaide; the former is rich and beautiful, the latter is dreary and tasteless, as if written by some dull academic. I suspect that the reason the LdP translation is so wonderful is that it is a translation of Russian literature made by a Russian translator. Reading the LdP makes me feel almost as if I am somehow magically reading the original Russian and through it the genius of Gogol shines. It is a privilege to read it.

Onward...


= Second Anniversary of the Joy of Languages (Sabtu, 04 Februari 2012) =

I started this blog just over two years ago, on Friday 29 January 2010.

During that time I've generally made a fool of myself by changing my mind countless times, repeatedly making so-called 'final' decisions which didn't last very long. That's the embarrassing part. The less embarrassing part is that hopefully at least to some small extent I've made a worthwhile contribution to the topic of the use of international auxiliary languages for literature.

Well, I suppose I should not feel so embarrassed since, after all, a blog is a very different thing to a book. In a blog, the writer does his thinking and does his experimentation in public, more or less in real time. Of course it is natural that by a process of trial and error some things will work well and other things will not work so well. And of course it is natural that if hardly anything works well, and there do not seem to be any credible alternatives left to try, one will revisit those things which have already been found not to work so well, in the hope that perhaps upon the second, third, fourth or fifth try they might start working, perhaps due to having in the meantime gained more experience.

That is pretty much the story of this blog.

Curiously, the one language to which I have successfully returned and to which as it happened I awarded my personal "Best Literary Language" award two years in a row was Lingwa de Planeta (LdP). Like many of the other auxlangs, I repeatedly abandoned and then resumed the used of this language; unlike the others, I am still very actively using it now.

Lingwa de Planeta is currently the auxlang in which I have made my second-longest translation (currently 3766 words and rapidly increasing); my longest translation so far was in Occidental (about 5787 words). I have no doubt that in the near future my LdP translation will surpass the length of the Occidental one. In short, for whatever reason (these things are rather difficult to reliably predict or to analyse) it so happens that no other auxlang has been so productive for me in a literary sense than LdP. To put it another way, it seems that in general LdP has been very effectively designed.

Recently I found that I could read Esperanto much more easily than before, despite not having studied it much in recent months. Actually I now realise that this is pretty much true of any of the major auxlangs, I just happened to notice it first with respect to Esperanto. I have also noticed that my comprehension of written French has greatly improved (whereas I still can hardly write a correct sentence in French, far less a literary paragraph). That is, there seems to have occurred a simultaneous improvement in my ability to read multiple languages, even those languages I have not been actively studying. I now understand, after reading an excellent non-fiction book called The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains by Nicholas Carr, that what really was happening was that my brain was changing as a result of the intensive study of languages, in such a way that improved my ability to parse and comprehend written language; this is known as brain plasticity. Presumably this is the physiological mechanism which explains why the study of auxlangs has been found to be beneficial to learning natlangs.

I have focussed nearly entirely on written language and hardly at all on conversational language; thus I cannot undertake significant conversations in any auxlang. However I can read aloud quite fluently and expressively in LdP, Occidental, and Interlingua, providing that I have previously studied the text in advance, using a dictionary to identify any words which are unfamiliar to me. In the case of French I have focussed nearly entirely on reading and hence can hardly write or converse in the language. This focus on written language is appropriate for me as a writer and reader, here in Australia.

So, where to from here? To paraphrase Douglas Adams, "I've got the answer but I don't think you're going to like it..." 


Enter the Twenty-First Century

I noticed something recently. It's obviously no longer the nineteenth century, when Esperanto was invented, a fact of which I was already well aware. But what dawned on me very recently was something equally profound: it's also no longer the twentieth century, when Interlingua and most of the other major competitors to Esperanto were invented and published. What I mean is, it dawned on me that we now live in a very, very different world.

In short, times have changed.

The relative importance of different languages in the world (that is, in the global economy and in international trade and politics) has changed. The languages of Asia and the Middle East have become very important and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future; the region of Central Asia and the Near East also holds a place on centre stage in world events such that its languages will continue to increase in global importance. And for me as an Australian writer in the twenty-first century it is now absurd to think of using a language for world literary use which does not include great influences from non-European languages. Business people in Australia regularly learn Mandarin, Japanese or Indonesian; we do not expect our customers and suppliers and business partners to necessarily be fluent in English. Nevertheless, English remains of paramount importance in the world today and is the de facto international language of business and science. Other major Western European languages are also highly important globally, especially Spanish, French and Portuguese, or regionally, especially German and Russian. As the saying goes, we live in interesting times.

What I am interested in is the idea of writers and readers from all over the world, from very different cultures and whose native language is very often not a European one, being able to enjoy literature without translation. This would be achieved by the use of one or more auxlangs designed for global rather than regional use. Such an auxlang should be of sufficient ease such that professional writers could write flawless novels (with the help of a professional editor but without a translator) after only five years of dedicated study and such that regular readers could use it to comfortably read a novel (with the aid of a dictionary) after only five years of casual study. I had previously hoped that shorter time-frames might be possible but after two years of studying auxlangs I have concluded that five years is realistic. (By the way, such a five-year time-frame is unrealistically low for English literature. One or two decades might be more realistic.)

Writers reading this will understand why I seek to use an auxlang for such international literature rather than writing in a natlang and relying upon translations into other natlangs; a translation increases the distance between writer and reader and much is lost in translation. By choosing a language which both writer and reader can use, the full literary value of a work of literature, aimed at a truly global market, can be realised. For example, even with my lowly intermediate-level French, which allows me to read French novels painfully slowly (so slowly that I've never completed one), it is absolutely obvious that the English translations pale by comparison to the original French text, reducing the great to merely good.

Now, does writing in an auxlang mean that we have to forego some of the incredibly subtle nuances of natlangs? Yes, absolutely! But we should not worry about that since such things are generally lost in translation anyway, especially to languages dramatically different to the original language. Furthermore, writing in an auxlang forces us, if we endeavour to write well, to abandon the idiomatic expressions of our native language and instead make a conscious effort to reach out to the reader (whose first language might be, for example, Farsi or Mandarin) using literary plain language which could reasonably be understood despite major cultural differences between writer and reader. This is a wonderful, creative way to write.

Furthermore, I could embark on spending the next decade learning Russian in order to fully enjoy a short story by Gogol but might well still be oblivious to much of the fine nuance in his prose. Maybe it would take me two decades to become fluent enough as a reader of Russian to truly understand every aspect to a level similar to a native speaker. But by reading the same works translated into, say, Lingwa de Planeta by a native speaker of Russian, I could enjoy probably 70-80% of the full effect of reading the original Russian text after three to five years of studying that auxiliary language. The next week, hypothetically speaking, I might read a novella translated from Chinese or Arabic or Indonesian, made easily accessible via Lingwa de Planeta. All of that is merely good, but where it really becomes great is when writers from around the world start writing directly in Lingwa de Planeta, such that readers from all around the world can read their works without translation. Of course, all this is pie in the sky stuff, but it could well become real.

And just in case you think that computers will remove the need for auxlangs because computer-aided translation will make cross-cultural communication easy, I have three things to say: firstly, this is literature we are talking about and literature is quintessentially human and should remain so: an interplay between human writer and human reader, not a machine language; secondly, when it comes to art we should not become dependent on machines and neither should we depend on machines for international cross-cultural understanding if we wish to survive as a planet and as a species; thirdly, we are a very long way from having good machine-translations of literature.

So why not Esperanto, Interlingua, or one of the other major auxlangs from the nineteenth or twentieth centuries? Because they have already failed, and they are gaining less and less traction rather than more and more traction with the general public, because times have changed and the world has moved on. Esperanto, the world's most successful auxlang, is simply too European, too difficult, and too old-fashioned to capture the imagination of writers and readers on a large scale throughout Asia, Africa and the Middle East. It is like a kind of quirky wind-up toy, a gigantic and impressive toy which consists of a great mechanism of springs and cogs; certainly an interesting curiosity but one quickly grows tired of it when one notices that it hardly contains a single word root from one's own region of the world.

Quite frankly, Esperanto by and large does not even capture the imagination of many people in English-speaking countries. I'm not saying, dear reader, that you should not learn Esperanto, by all means go ahead and learn it if you wish to, but in my opinion although Esperanto is a workable language it is rather like a nineteenth-century European locomotive, puffing its way around the world in a great cloud of coal dust and steam, engendering bemused looks of disbelief from those it passes by. Nevertheless I think its inventor, Ludwig Zamenhof, was a genius, was apparently a man of very noble convictions, genuinely did something good for the world, and that his invention, Esperanto, was a great achievement... for the nineteenth century. Times have changed and it is time to move on. The same goes for other highly artificial constructed languages of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Interlingua and its kin are less like clockwork toys, being more naturalistic in appearance; that is, people could easily think Interlingua or Occidental were actually natural languages at first glance. However they are relentlessly European to the point of being largely inaccessible to those whose native language is not a European one. By the way, I'm not implying that naturalistic auxlangs are necessarily better than more artificial ones; rather, my conclusion is that none of the auxlangs of the nineteenth or twentieth centuries, regardless of whether they are naturalistic or artificial in flavour, will succeed in the twenty-first century (failing a government decree).

My personal conclusion, then, is three-fold:

- all auxlangs suitable for literary use are difficult

- the auxlangs from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries lack relevance in today's changing world in which non-European languages and cultures are now of first-order importance globally; they are therefore not seen as being worth the effort (especially since the already considerable difficulty of learning them is at least doubly difficult to those who do not speak any European language; those accepting such heroic effort generally choose to learn English instead of a constructed auxlang)

- only those twenty-first century auxlangs which include a large degree of influence (in vocabulary and grammar) from non-European languages and which are truly "up with the times" in their design paradigms (thus making them of acceptable difficulty to consumers globally) have any chance of great global literary success in a free market (without government decree).

This leads me specifically to my decision that, unless I have a change of heart, I'm not going to bother learning any nineteenth- or twentieth-century auxlangs. I hereby permanently give up Esperanto, Interlingua, and all the rest of the auxlangs of the last two centuries.


What I am saying is: the answer lies with the new not with the old.


Fortunately there are two good candidates that I am currently aware of, and should neither of these prove to be successful for my writing endeavours then I will probably seek to become a co-inventor of some new language, unless in the meantime another excellent language is released.

The two auxlangs which remain for me are therefore, quite clearly:

(1) Lingwa de Planeta
(2) Sambahsa

I am currently focussing on LdP for the remainder of 2012, in order to give it a really thorough and fair literary evaluation and not just a half-hearted test drive. If it turns out that LdP does not meet my needs then the next step will be to focus on Sambahsa in 2013. I do expect, however, that with some relatively minor evolutionary changes to improve its still-young grammar, which presumably will be made by the LdP community over the course of the year, it is quite likely that LdP will meet most of my literary needs. Furthermore, LdP is easier than Sambahsa for those from the Far East.

I do think that the solution to a viable twenty-first century literary auxlang for popular global use lies somewhere on the continuum between these two worldlangs: the relatively easy LdP, with its free-wheeling and non-threatening grammar which is accessible to everyone but which at times lacks precision, or the intimidating and demanding grammar of Sambahsa (simplified from Proto-Indo-European) which delivers relentless precision. Mostly I prefer the former but sometimes I crave the latter.

If neither LdP nor Sambahsa work out for me, then I will be looking for other new twenty-first century auxlangs or becoming involved in creating one myself, perhaps as a kind of compromise between the two (such a project would probably require international collaboration right from the start, with at least one team member representing each major language group; it would not be an impossible or endless task with the right team).

I will not, however, be writing literature in nineteenth-century or twentieth-century auxlangs. So, it's goodbye to Esperanto, Interlingua, et. al.

Nau nu zai go for!
Now we are making progress!

Onward...

P.S. Many, many thanks to the brilliant inventors of LdP and Sambahsa. Your work is keeping the dream of better international communication and understanding alive for the twenty-first century.


= Journey's end? LdP and Sambahsa (Rabu, 08 Februari 2012) =

This should be an interesting and useful post, I think.

Really what this post is about is taking into account everything I've leaned over the past two years of voyaging amongst auxlangs and compressing it into one small diamond.

Language, I think, is a vast interconnected net of associated concepts which cannot be entirely understood by analysis at any one stratum alone (from the microscopic world of the grapheme, to the medium of the individual word, to the macroscopic worlds of the idiomatic expression and the sentence) because interrelationships exist within and between all strata simultaneously, and these are inseparable from our culture and from the nature of our brains and bodies. Like the myriad connections and relationships and associations and interactions which exist at all strata in the human world (from the infinitesimal world of neurotransmitters at the synapse, to the vast interconnected neural network of the brain, to the elegant musculature of the larynx, to the sublime physiology of the ear and the eye, to the intricate symphony of neuromuscular coordination that allows the hand to hold a pen and write, to the everyday world in which we shake the hand of a friend, to the worlds of the family and the town and the city and the province and the nation and the United Nations) language is connected and holistic and, in its human form, inseparable from our nature and our cultures. Art, science, culture, language, history, evolution, human nature are all intertwined with and connected to the languages we speak, write and read. Language is as mysterious and as vast in its interconnected structure as is the human brain and as is human history. Language is culture and biological human nature, inseparable.

So, no wonder I have not found it easy to try to understand language well enough to understand what the ideal auxlang would look like! Trying to understand that, as the lyrics of the pop song say, is like trying to throw your arms around the world. And, as the song suggests, you are going to wake up with a bad hangover.

The thing about a language is that once you've learned it, it seems easy. Once you've learned it, you've changed the structure of your brain because your brain actively adapts in response to studying the language. This is known as brain plasticity. Your perspective concerning the relative ease of a language compared to other languages is changed by the very act of learning a language. It's all circular.

Several thousand concepts, expressed in words, the grammatical relationship between words, and in other structures such as idiomatic expressions, must be learned in order to fluently use a language for literary purposes. These cannot properly or accurately be learned in total isolation from culture but must be related to culture; they are extensions of culture, one might say. Although some languages are easier than others, depending on the current structure of your brain, its inherent abilities, its age, and the languages you already know well, there is no short cut. Languages are hard. All of them.

Nevertheless, as long as we generally understand all of the above and thus do not fool ourselves into thinking that there will ever be an effortless auxlang, and provided we go into the endeavour of learning an auxlang on the basis of it being expected to take us about three to five years to learn to a good level of general utility, then we can arguably call certain auxlangs "easy" but only relative to more difficult languages, and bearing in mind that one man's meat is another man's poison (what is easy for a native speaker of Chinese may be difficult for a native speaker of English, and vice versa).

I don't think there is any way around needing a large vocabulary. No matter how many schemes we invent to try to form words out of regular constructs by compounding and by the use of affixes and the like, there is in this universe an infinite number of things to be named and an infinite number of concepts to be referred to. Certainly we should make an effort, when designing auxlangs, to use regular patterns which make the memorisation of vocabulary easy, but this need not be overdone; that is, we should not fool ourselves into thinking that an infinite number of things can be given names in the vocabulary of an auxlang without having to remember at least several thousand unique nouns such as "rose" or "petunia". We cannot go about the place saying "red-flower-with-thorns" instead of "rose" in any general-purpose language. So, it's an illusion to try to endlessly simplify vocabulary. Words are words. We need thousands of the little buggers. And there's no way around that in the long run.

The next logical step from the above paragraph is that although there may be a place for some a priori words and other a priori elements in a language, the majority of concept clusters need to be based upon a posteriori words; apart from anything else, since vocabulary is theoretically infinite in size, and ultimately any a priori scheme would need to be defined by its relationship to existing a posteriori vocabularies in other languages, we might as well just cut out the middle-man, save everyone a needless additional layer of pain, and use an a posteriori vocabulary. Since grammar is not entirely separable from vocabulary (everything is interconnected at multiple strata simultaneously, including both vocabulary and grammar), quite frankly we might as well use many a posteriori grammatical constructs as well (obviously we may wisely employ a scheme to simplify and make more regular these constructs, and the addition of some a priori grammatical constructs can also be worthwhile).

As far as what vocabulary to use, derived from which natural languages, that really comes down to the central question: who is going to use the language and for what purpose? Since we've already decided above that a posteriori vocabulary is best (albeit simplified and made more regular), it makes sense to choose source languages whose vocabulary will appeal to or be culturally relevant to the expected users. I'm interested in writing literature in auxlangs for global rather than regional consumption, in such a way that makes that literature easier for most people than the extensive difficulties of reading (silently or aloud) literary English. The most likely readers of that literature would be internet users from around the world who are well educated, probably already speak a European natlang for international communication (most commonly English) but as likely as not do not speak any European language natively. They will most likely be people interested in learning about many other cultures, present and past, like I am. Therefore the sensible choice of vocabulary would probably be divided about equally between English words (or words which are easily memorised by English speakers), and words from major non-European languages. In other words, a worldlang with a very significant, if not major, influence of English on its vocabulary but replete with a culturally diverse vocabulary of significant past and present world languages.

Just in case it is not clear from the above, Esperanto would absolutely not meet these vocabulary requirements! Neither would Interlingua and neither would any of the other major auxlangs from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Those languages were invented when the world was a very different place.

Compared to the monolithic task of importing and documenting vocabulary, the other desirable features of an auxlang are relatively trivial to achieve except the first:


self-referential (dictionary and grammar written in the auxlang itself)
very easy pronunciation
very easy orthography
very easy dictionary use (quickly and easily find any word seen in a text)
relatively easy to memorise, at least compared to most natural languages
regular, logical grammar of moderate difficulty (the moderate difficulty is required in order to: retain very good precision when needed; minimise the need for the idiomatic expressions which a weaker grammar would unfortunately require; allow the idiomatic expressions of natlangs to easily be translated into plain language which is globally accessible regardless of cultural background)
extensible (able to accept an infinite number of new words and concepts in future, from diverse languages around the world, to express concepts from diverse cultures)

Putting this all together, my journey has very clearly and very definitely brought me to two languages: Lingwa de Planeta (LdP) and Sambahsa. These two languages are the destination of my two-year voyage amongst constructed languages.

The train has reached the final station. I've arrived. Two years of research paid off.

Welcome to the destination: "LdP-Sambahsa Station".

The answer to my literary needs lies somewhere on the continuum between LdP and Sambahsa. At present it appears that LdP will best meet my needs but I can always switch to Sambahsa next year if for any reason it doesn't.

LdP outscores Sambahsa on points 2, 3, 4, and 5 although even it is not as easy (intentionally so) as it potentially could be on these points. Sambahsa outscores LdP on point 6 and maybe 7 but at a cost of greater overall difficulty; this is by design.

And, most significantly, should neither LdP nor Sambahsa meet my needs then the solution would be simply to write in a modified dialect of one of these two languages (which essentially would merely represent a middle-ground between them, by slightly modifying one of the languages to be slightly more like the other). I think, in summary, that the best compromise for a global literary auxlang has already been invented in the form of these two languages; both are excellent approaches. There is nothing much to be gained by starting from scratch and reinventing the vocabularies; their vocabularies are already excellent, although with different regional biases.

Well, I'm off to see if they sell cups of tea at this station.

It's been a long ride...


= BIG NEWS: L’Étranger by Camus in Sambahsa! (Kamis, 16 Februari 2012) =

Recently the inventor of Sambahsa, Dr Oliver Simon, announced that for the first time an entire novel has been translated into the language.

That would be exciting enough in itself, but it gets even better: the chosen novel is L’Étranger by Albert Camus. This is one of the great novels of French literature, written by one of its greatest authors. In English the title is often translated as The Stranger but is perhaps better thought of as The Outsider. That Sambahsa is capable of translating such a classic bodes very well.

This is exactly the kind of thing I want to see in the new auxlangs of the twenty-first century, such as Sambahsa and Lingwa de Planeta. Serious, major literary translations which retain most of the literary expressiveness of the original but which are easier to read and which are thus, at least theoretically, more internationally accessible.

The title in Sambahsa is Is Gospoti.

For further details, please see the original announcement.

Bravo, bravo, bravissimo!

Thank you, Olivier!




P.S. This news is a major temptation for me to take time out of my Lingwa de Planeta studies to read Is Gospoti in Sambahsa, however due to being extremely short of time I will probably delay reading it until 2013. This could be good timing since there is now increasing interest in Sambahsa and new students are currently joining its small community; accordingly by 2013 there will probably be further improvements in resources and documentation, produced by the community, which will make reading easier. For example, an online Glossword-style dictionary would be very convenient; even better would be an online dictionary in which one could type the conjugated form of a verb, as read in the novel, and which would automatically retrieve the corresponding verbal stem and its meaning.
Diposkan oleh William Salinas di 17.54 0 komentar


Joy of Literature: Kotava and Occidental added
The Joy of Literature, a companion site to this blog, contains reference translations which are useful to students of auxlangs.

The site continues to grow and now contains translated literature in Lingwa de Planeta, Sambahsa, Frenkisch, Interlingua, Occidental and Kotava. Apart from myself, the very kind contributors to the site include Dmitry Ivanov (Lingwa de Planeta), Dr Olivier Simon (Sambahsa), David Parke (Frenkisch) and Sabrina Benkelloun (Kotava).

The main focus of the site is currently the French novel by Stendhal, La Chartreuse de Parme, from which various chapters are being translated into various auxlangs. This serves as a comparative showcase of the literary capabilities of these auxlangs.

Today I have added a Kotava translation kindly supplied by Sabrina Benkelloun. Kotava is a mature a priori language in which a significant body of literature already exists, hosted at the Wikikrenteem site.

Personally, a priori languages are not currently my preferred cup of tea, since I prefer a posteriori languages partly for practical reasons and partly for their educational value. However, as Henry David Thoreau said, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...", so there is nothing to stop me from changing my mind in future and coming to like a priori languages. After all, an a priori language, suitably designed, does not so much favour one group of students (say, speakers of European languages) over another (say, speakers of Asian languages) but is approximately equally difficult for everyone, thus making it neutral. However, the trouble with Kotava is the English-language resources available for learning Kotava are rather limited; accordingly I've never been able to properly assess the language. Kotava would presumably become more popular if it were better documented in languages other than French; good French documentation exists.

I am of course unfortunately far too busy to learn any additional languages myself this year. I'm already fully committed to working on my LdP translation of the Stendhal novel, which is now 4200 words long. 

Today I have also added the lengthy Occidental translation from the first and second chapters which I completed a year ago in January 2011; I had neglected to add it to the Joy of Literature site until now. It is my longest translation into any auxlang to date, 5787 words long. I no longer work in Occidental, having abandoned it in favour of LdP; therefore the LdP translation will undoubtedly soon become my longest.

Many thanks to everyone involved for your very kind contributions, advice and assistance. I hope the Joy of Literature continues to be useful for students interested in reading and writing literature in auxlangs.



P.S. By the way, I am aware that there are some other translations of the start of Chapter 1 in various auxlangs which are not yet available on the Joy of Literature site. They are however available in the form of earlier posts within this blog, the Joy of Languages. My apologies; I just haven't had time to transfer them yet due to being very busy with other things in life. I plan to do so when eventually I get around to translating the entirety of Chapter 1 into Lingwa de Planeta, so they will all be there for comparison.


= Auxlang 2012: A New 'Anglo-European' Project (Jumat, 17 Februari 2012) =

I am quite happily translating Chapter 4 of La Chartreuse de Parme into Lingwa de Planeta, my current auxlang of choice. The translation has now reached 4200 words. I love LdP for its excellent worldlang features which make it accessible with relative ease to everyone, without requiring the student to have any prior knowledge of European languages. Lingwa de Planeta is welcoming to all and is remarkably expressive.

However, I do look with great temptation from time to time at Sambahsa, an Indo-European auxlang with greater inherent precision than LdP but which is much more difficult to learn and much less accessible to those without good knowledge of at least one Indo-European language. Sambahsa is precise, concise, naturalistic and expressive; however one currently needs a brain the size of a planet to learn and use it successfully. This poses a problem.

Unfortunately, my brain is only the size of a large turnip, so every time I've tried to learn Sambahsa I've only gotten a short distance before giving up and concluding that I must wait until the documentation is so extensive that even turnip-brains such as myself will be able to learn it with relative ease.

Nevertheless when you look at wonderful translations in Sambahsa, you can sense that for those readers who are already fluent in an Indo-European language it could potentially deliver huge literary benefits; quite frankly it probably outperforms all other auxlangs in its suitability for writing sophisticated literary works in the Western tradition. For example, even well respected and highly naturalistic auxangs such as Interlingua seem like creoles (at best) compared to the withering power of Sambahsa; only Sambahsa would dare to have three incredibly irregular verbs, many regular but difficult verbs which undergo major stem changes, a fleet of articles and pronouns and declensions which would make a professional linguist swoon with joy, and vocabulary from Proto-Indo-European. I feel faint...

I blacked out for a while there. I've now regained consciousness.

Sambahsa's not for the faint hearted.

Having said all that, I still really want to learn Sambahsa and I still think that the ideal auxlang for global literary use lies somewhere on the axis formed by Sambahsa at one end and Lingwa de Planeta at the other.

Meanwhile I remain tempted to create my own auxlang.

However, I have now decisively learned:

(1) I cannot create a worldlang. I'm not a polyglot and lack the necessary knowledge. I tried it before with Bahasa Internasional and wisely stopped. To create the best worldlang would require a team of persons knowledgeable in its various source languages; it's not really a job for one person. Meanwhile I'm generally quite happy with LdP. Therefore the worldlang solution for me is to continue writing in Lingwa de Planeta and to continue being a part of its community. That's the best option for reaching readers in Asia, for example. Eventually the necessary bilingual dictionaries will arise.

(2) I still yearn however to use something like Sambahsa which, when used in the specialised niche of writing highly sophisticated literature in the Western tradition, has advantages over a true worldlang; Sambahsa is only part worldlang, it mostly stands firmly in the Indo-European tradition. The nineteenth- and twentieth century auxlangs do not deliver what I'm looking for in this regard. Occidental pointed the way but only Sambahsa continued the journey to a level almost sufficient to rival English or French.

(3) "Write what you know." That is the Golden Rule for writers. Hence, as noted above, I cannot create a worldlang because I'm not a polyglot. However, I do have good working knowledge of English, French and German, sufficient to design an auxlang aimed at writing literature in the Western tradition for those already fluent in a Western European language, providing I make the language closer in design to English than to French or German, because English is the language I know best. Fortunately I do not have to reinvent the wheel because I can stand on the shoulders of giants such as Olivier Simon, the creator of Sambahsa, and Edgar de Wahl, the creator of Occidental. Occidental failed partly because it requires too much knowledge of Romance-language idioms; Sambahsa does not suffer from that problem.

(4) I learn best by doing and by exercising creativity. Probably the best way for me to learn Sambahsa is to learn a little of its grammar at a time, apply those grammatical features to a different vocabulary, analyse how it all works, and modify the grammatical scheme somewhat to suit the different ecosystem. By 'different ecosystem' I mean a vocabulary derived entirely from English, French and German without the Proto-Indo-European words except as they already exist in those three modern languages, and a grammar considerably more influenced by English (especially the verbs) but retaining many Sambahsa-like characteristics. Meanwhile, since the vocabulary I will use is going to be heavily influenced by French, this project will help me to learn French, an ongoing goal of mine. So it's a win-win endevour.

The immediate objection might be: why bother?

My answer is: why not?

It seems like a good learning exercise, and it will be fun.

What I'm proposing is not another Occidental. I've tried Occidental extensively and it is not sufficient; compared to Sambahsa it feels very weak for literature and, like Interlingua, by comparison feels like a creole (at best). However Occidental has important lessons to teach me about the regular yet reasonably naturalistic formation of clusters of words around related concepts; for that it is a worthwhile reference, along with Sambahsa. Probably the best way to describe what I'm considering is that whereas Sambahsa is a "modern Proto-Indo-European auxlang", I am proposing a "modern Anglo-European auxlang" heavily influenced by English, French, and Sambahsa (mainly the grammar rather than the vocabulary), with considerable Germanic elements, and unlike Occidental not requiring any knowledge of Romance-language idioms. It will indeed be very unlike Occidental. The essential features are as follows:


The project's working title is "Auxlang 2012". A better name will be chosen once the language has started to take on a recognisable form from which an appropriate name can be derived.

Vocabulary will be from English, French, German. Words shared by English and French are preferred, but there will be a good smattering of German vocabulary also, mainly used in cases where there is no agreement between English and French and neither the English nor French word is well suited for the orthography and phonetic structure of the language. Except for rare exceptions like articles and pronouns, Sambahsa vocabulary will not be used, although of course the above process will result in many modern words which appear similar to their Sambahsa forms. The main influence of Sambahsa is to be on the grammar, not the vocabulary; in fact the influence of English on the vocabulary will be far more marked than the influence of Sambahsa.

Generally speaking, where there is no agreement between French and English, many nouns will be French, many adverbs will be German, and many verbs will be English; however, English nouns will take precedence in technical fields in which English terms already dominate, such as aviation and computer science. Very special attention will be paid to making the language suitable for easy use by English-speaking scientists who might wish to write scientific abstracts in the language (but unlike Interlingua they will not need to know any Romance-language idioms to do so). The language will, overall, be very obviously more Germanic than either Interlingua or Occidental, and far easier for English speakers.

Grammar will be heavily influenced by the brilliant design of Sambahsa, which has achieved such a wonderful combination of brevity and precision. However, some of this will be sacrificed in order to reduce difficulty; in particular a major design goal is to ensure that verbs can be very easily found in the dictionary (accordingly the verbs in Auxlang 2012, while they may undergo stem changes, will do so to a lesser degree and in a more limited and more regular fashion; for example there may be ablaut but probably not nasal infix changes). Verbs will be based on a simplification of the English scheme; the system of tense, aspect and mood will not resemble Romance languages at all. Adjectives will precede their nouns, as in English. There will be no adjectival agreement. There will be less declension than in Sambahsa. Plurals will generally be somewhat more regularly formed, although some irregularity may still be retained. The grammar will probably end up as a cross between Sambahsa and English; the most likely Sambahsa feature to remain at the core of the language (but in a more regular form) is the system of articles and pronouns, which is a highly successful system.

Orthography will aim to be easier than Sambahsa but more difficult than Lingwa de Planeta. The language shall not attempt to be a worldlang, so it does not have to be capable of faithfully importing so many words as Sambahsa can, but its design will keep in mind the aim of allowing English- and French-speaking scientists to easily read and recognise technical words. Nevertheless the orthography must of course be vastly easier than English or French overall; to this end the stressed syllable of all polysyllabic words will always be marked with a grave accent. Furthermore, the language freely accepts the use of the acute accent as imported from French words; this means the language will be more difficult to type on a computer than Sambahsa but will be easier than Sambahsa and Interlingua to read aloud. There will never be any doubt as to which syllable is to be accentuated. The phonetic system shall allow a few more verb sounds than most auxlangs, and there shall at times be a distinction between short and long vowels, often indicated by doubling the following consonant to indicate a short vowel.

A final e at the end of a word, coming directly after a consonant, will mostly be silent as in French; however, final consonants will always be pronounced even without any e, unlike French. Also unlike French, the pronunciation of vowels will never be strongly nasalised.

To get started, I am experimenting with translating a list of 1000 common words in seven languages from langsites.com, which describes itself as "a site for language-lovers" where "knowledge is free and 100% recyclable!" I am eternally grateful for this wonderful website, apparently created by professional conference interpreter Brian Huebner. 

Having nearly gone insane searching unsuccessfully for a decent trilingual word list for English, French and German (at least 1000 words long), finally by luck I stumbled across the aforementioned list. Voilà, pas de problème. Thus saved by the gods,I have continued with some tentative ideas as below.

The tentative Auxlang 2012 words are shown in green. Note the use of the grave accent to indicate the stressed syllable; further note that mostly the stressed syllable is as would be found in English (this language is not intended to be yet another a Romance clone; Auxlang 2012 is more closely related to Sambahsa and Frenkisch than Interlingua, and it makes no attempt to be comprehensible to Romance-language speakers without prior study). The other thing to note is the "Plural / past" column, which shows either the plural or the simple past tense forms, as appropriate; the influence of English is very obvious here. The verbal system is not a Romance one!

Anyway, that's all for now. Further details as I figure them out...

I'm not proposing this as any kind of great auxlang to solve all the world's problems, I'm just having some fun experimenting with a literary and scientific auxlang which might be worthwhile for some limited purposes. Auxlang 2012 is not intended to be a serious competitor to Sambahsa, Lingwa de Planeta, or any other language. It's just a hobby!

The other major reason for embarking on this project is to use my skills as a software architect and software developer to experiment with generating extensive self-referential documentation for the language. For example, after the 1000 "seed words" have been defined (each seed word being defined in the 7 natural languages: English, Greek, French, German, Arabic, Italian and Spanish as per the aforementioned list) I will then write software to generate a large monolingual dictionary, defining all other words using only the seed words and a few additional grammatical words (or at least coming as close to doing so as possible). That is, the computer will generate a large dictionary which will make it possible for readers to easily find every word in a text such as a short story or scientific abstract. The design philosophy will be to write both the grammar and the dictionary in the language itself, and have the computer auto-generate as much of that documentation as possible.

Accordingly, you will notice the language will have, somewhat like Occidental, a rather rigid yet logical system of word formation which is highly regular and less naturalistic than Sambahsa and Interlingua. For example, you will notice that the word for "actor" and "actress" is acter; there will not be sometimes -or and sometimes -er to represent a person who carries out a particular activity or profession, instead it will always be -er. Furthermore, I see no need for male and female forms of such nouns which describe people; obviously modern English usage is a major influence here. And so on.

Well, this should be lots of fun...


= Auxlang 2012: Second 50 words: Pain (Sabtu, 18 Februari 2012) =

Update: I've realised there is a better way and accordingly I've abandoned these attempts, as it is pretty clear that I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to designing an orthography. Therefore I've decided instead to turn to the experts for orthographical help. See my next post for details. Everything below can be ignored, since it represents a failed experiment. I've moved on.


I'm in a world of pain.

I've now imported 100 words into the Auxlang 2012. 

It's not working at all.

However, on the plus side, valuable lessons are being learned.

It is clear that either:

(1) I must abandon the attempt to retain so much etymological information in the orthography, in which case many or most written words will become unrecognisable to speakers of the native source languages, many written collisions will occur between homophones, and scientific vocabulary and taxonomic terms will be difficult to properly accommodate; and/or

(2) I must be willing to accept large differences between how a word is pronounced in Auxlang 2012 and how it is pronounced in its source language, in which case spoken words will become similarly unrecognisable and furthermore people will tend to ignore the pronunciation rules, using instead their native habits and causing much auditory confusion; and/or

(3) I must adopt extensive use of diacritics to indicate differences in vowel sounds (something which, quite frankly, is probably the best option); and/or

(4) I must simplify the orthography of the whole language, perhaps in the direction of a kind of imaginary Scandinavian language, with words from all three source languages (English, French, German) being passed through a kind of imaginary filter which transforms them into simplified forms in a consistent scheme with a sort of Scandinavian or maybe Dutch flavour.

Examples:

début 
anniversaire
Schönheit
brakes
to break
breakfast
become, became
blind
bicycle, biciclette
accompany
add
room
book
boat
bath
bed
bifore
below 

(1) Abandon etymological orthography while retaining vaguely similar pronunciation [more extreme alternatives are shown in brackets]:

note: grave accent indicates stressed syllable (e.g. biciclètte), not any change in vowel sound; you can see that sometimes this produces ridiculous words (e.g. belò or bilò which are so confusing it is better to just exclude them from the language, in this case by using unter)

débu 
aniversair          [anivesà]
shònnheit          [shònheit]
braks
tu brek
brek-fast
bekòm, bekàmm

blèind
beiseikel, bisiklètt

akòmpani
ad
rum
buk
bot
bath          [bat]
bed
bifòr          [bifò] 
belò          [bilò]



(2) Mostly retain etymological orthography but accept unnatural pronunciation which does not resemble source languages:

note: these mostly look okay but some of these (e.g. break, breakfast, book, boat, below) would sound extremely bizarre, almost unrecognisable, to any native English speaker; confusion and inconsistency would result between different speakers unless they were already fluent in the source language. Similarly début and plural débuts would sound ridiculous to French ears.

début 
anniversàire
shònnheit
brakes
to break
break-fast
becòme, becàme
blind
bìcycle, biciclètte
accòmpany
add
room
book
boat
bath
bed
bifòre
belòw 


(3) Extensive use of diacritics [compromise in brackets]:

note: stressed syllable is indicated by a preceding apostrophe (a better scheme, using diacritics, would be devised for this); all accents indicate changes to vowel sounds; a silent letter at the end of a word is indicated by a following forward tick (´); for convenience we shall assume that as e at the end of a word, after a consonant, is always silent.

début´ 
anniver'saire
'Shönheit
brákes
to breák
breák-fast
be'cóme, be'cáme 
blínd
'bícýcle, bici'clette
a'cómpany
àdd
room
bôk (?)
bõt (?)
bath
bèd (?)
bi'fore  


(4) An imaginary, simplified quasi-Scandinavian scheme:

débu 
aniversär
schönheit
bráks
brekk
brekk-fast
bekom, bekam
bleind
bisýkel
akòmpany
add
room
bok
bot
bath
bedd
biför
belöw 

There is another option: adopt Sambahsa orthography! Which perhaps is what I should have done in the first place. However I would much prefer if Sambahsa orthography marked stress. But I digress. 

More to the point, I have to put some more thought into why I am designing this language anyway, which will help me to chose the best path.

For example, am I really trying to achieve a sort of English spelling reform which maintains etymological information, combined with a simplified Sambahsa-like grammar? Or am I trying to make a completely standalone language with little resemblance which just happens to draw its vocabulary from these three languages? I might even be better just to pick a Northern European language which has already absorbed words from the three source languages, and use its vocabulary instead (simplified, of course); I think what is stopping me is that those languages have too much Germanic influence, not enough French influence, and thus are further from English vocabulary. Needless to say I have great respect for Frenkisch here, although it too is more Germanic overall than what I am looking for in Auxlang 2012.

Meanwhile, the other thing I have learned is an even greater and deeper respect for the designers of Sambahsa and Lingwa de Planeta. Those designers really know what they are doing! Matters of how to deal with the verbs "to be" and "to become", as well as matters of how to handle vowel sounds for verbs present and past, and orthography in general, have been wisely considered in those languages (taking opposite paths).

How to handle the verb "to be", for example, is a massive decision; I now understand why Sambahsa went nuts here and threw a massive irregular structure at the problem. It works fantastically well. But wow, it's difficult. Anyway my point is that even if I map the English "to be" into the language (maybe using different words but schematically similar to English) this might be insufficiently precise to match the precision of Sambahsa. Meanwhile, Lingwa de Planeta works surprisingly well using context instead.

I realise what I must immediately do is take a look at a Sambahsa paragraph and try to map it into an Auxlang 2012 scheme experimentally.

I'll do that in the next post.

Meanwhile, are any of the above alternatives (1) to (4) better than the forms shown in the table below? That is the big question... 


ENGLISH	AUXLANG	FRENCH	GERMAN	Plural / past
back	back	dos	Rücken	backs
backpack	back-pack	sac à dos m.	Rucksack m.	Back-packs
bad	bad	mauvais, vilain	schlecht	n/a
balcony	bàlcony	balcon m.	Balkon	bàlconys
ball	ball	balle f.	Ball m.	balls
banana	banàna	banane f.	Banane f.	banànas
bank	bank	banque f.	Bank	banks
basil	bàsil`	basilic m.	Basilikum	no plural
basis, foundation	bàsis	base f.	Grundlage f.	bàsises
bath	bath	bain m.	Bad n.	baths
bathroom	bath-room	salle de bains f.	Badezimmer	bath-rooms
batteries	bàttery	piles	Batterien	bàtterys
be able to	kann	pouvoir	können	n/a
be, to	{En-like/Sb-like scheme?}	être	sein	{En-like/Sb-like scheme?}
beard	bart	barbe f.	Bart m.	bìerds
beautiful	shonn	beau	schön	n/a
beauty	shonnheit`	beauté f.	Schönheit f.	no plural
become	becóme	devenir	werden	becáme
bed	bett	lit m.	Bett n.	betts
bee	bee	abeille f.	Biene f.	bees
beef	beef`	boeuf m.	Rindfleisch	no plural
beer	beer`	bière f.	Bier n.	no plural
before	befòre	avant	vor(her)	n/a
beginning	début´	début m.	Anfang m.	débuts
behind	behínd	derrière	Hinter	n/a
believe	believe	croire	glauben	n/a
below, under	belòw´, unter	sous	Unter	n/a
better than	besser als	meilleur que	besser als	n/a
between	betwèen	entre	zwischen	n/a
bicycle	biciclètte	biciclette f., vélo m.	Fahrrad	biciclèttes
big	bigg	grand	groß	n/a
bill, invoice	bill	facture f.	Rechnung f.	bills
bird	vògel	oiseau m.	Vogel	vògels
birthday	anniversàire	anniversaire m.	Geburtstag m.	anniversàires
bitter	bìtter	amer	bitter	n/a
black	black`	noir	schwarz	no plural
blind	blínd	aveugle	Blind	no plural
blond	blond	blond	Blond	blonds
blood	blut`	sang m.	Blut	no plural
blue	bleu	bleu	blau	no plural
boat	boot	bateau, -x	Boot n.	boots
book	book	livre m.	Buch n.	books
border	bòrder	frontière f.	Grenze f.	bòrders
boring	bòring	ennuyeux	Langweilig	n/a
bottle	bottel	bouteille f.	Flasche f.	bottels
box	boxx	boîte f.	Schachtel	boxxs
brain	brain	cerveau m.	Gehirn	brains
brakes	bráke	freins	Bremsen	brákes
bread	bredd	pain m.	Brot n.	bredds
break	break	casser	brechen	broke
breakfast	break-fast	petit déjeuner m.	Frühstück	break-fasts

Key: Red and blue indicate problem words which I think need either to be reconsidered altogether or might need respelling; red ones are considered worse than blue ones. Green (the text, not the background shading) indicates words imported from Sambahsa... mostly small grammatical words. Backtick (`) at the end of a word indicates the word has no plural form (for number; it may have a plural form for varieties). Grave accent indicates the stressed syllable (e.g. àppel). Acute accent modifies the vowel sound, as in French (e.g. café); some accute accents modify the vowel sound, to reproduce English sounds. Pronunciation is similar to but often not exactly like the source languages.


Warning: the above table will quickly become out of date as the language changes during its development. This table will not be updated to reflect future changes in the language made after this post.
Diposkan oleh William Salinas di 20.49 0 komentar


Auxlang 2012: First 50 words
Okay, moving right along.

I've done the first 50 words or so of the 1000 words to be created for the initial core vocabulary of Auxlang 2012. Another 19 sessions to go.

Once the core vocabulary has been created, then will come the task of generating clusters of words for related concepts, by using standard affixes (nothing so extreme as the Esperanto approach; more like Occidental) and some compounding. That will maybe triple the number of words. This should be thought of as a prototype of a vocabulary: if I don't like it, I can just throw it away. We're not playing for sheep stations here. Anyway, at each stage many valuable lessons will be learned and experience will be gained. Hopefully the end result will be that I will better understand the design considerations for languages such as Sambahsa and Occidental.

Watching the iterative process of me creating this vocabulary over the next 19 sessions is going to be like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Already plenty of problems and mistakes are visible. However, some ideas are beginning to form in my mind for how to deal with them.

We can see I've gone for a reasonably etymological orthography, not to mention I've got some ideas about short and long vowels, which together are contributing to perhaps an excessive number of doubled consonants. In general the current orthography is a little difficult, but not impossibly so; perhaps something workable can come from this.

You can see my philosophical beliefs, for an auxlang, of always using hyphens to form compound words, and always marking the stressed syllable in polysyllabic words; the former helps the latter, because clearly breaking up compounds into their component words assists with accentuation.

You can see some weird stuff like my current tentative practice of placing a backtick (`) immediately after a word to indicate that the word does not have any plural form (that is, for number; it may have a plural for varieties). The idea is to constantly instruct the reader, so that everytime a reader reads a text these facts are constantly reinforced. If the reader wishes to use that word in a sentence to discuss the text, she knows it has no plural and she knows how to pronounce it aloud as the orthography indicates all of this in  reasonably regular manner (although here unexplained).


ENGLISH	AUXLANG	FRENCH	GERMAN	Plural / past
abdomen	àbdomen	ventre m.	Bauch m.	àbdomens
belly	vènter	ventre m.	Bauch m.	vènters
above	ùber	au-dessus de	über	ùber
absent	àbsent	absent	abwesend	àbsent
accept	accèpt	accepter	annehmen	accèpted
accident	àccident	accident m.	Unfall m.	àccidents
accompany	acòmpany	accompagner	Begleiten	acòmpanyed
accomplish	acòmplish	accomplir	Vollbringer	acòmplished
accuse	accùse	accuser	anklagen	accùsed
actor, actrice	àcter	acteur, actrice	Schauspieler -in	àcters
add	add	ajouter	hinzufügen	àdded
address	addrèsse	addresse f.	Adresse f., Anschrift	addrèsses
administrative	administratìf	administratif	Verwaltungs-	n/a
adventure	avènture	aventure	Abenteuer	avèntures
adventurer	avènturer	aventurier, aventurière	
avènturers
adventurous	avèntureus	aventureux, aventureuse	
n/a
advice, counsel	còunsel`	conseil m.	Rat m.	no plural
after	àfter	après	nach	n/a
afternoon	àfter-noon	après-midi	Nachmittag m.	àfter-noons
age	àge	âge	Alter m.	àges
agricultural	agricùltural	agricole	Agrar-, landwirtschaftlich	n/a
agriculture	agricùlture`	agriculture f.	Landwirtschaft f.	no plural
air	air`	air m.	Luft f.	no plural
air conditioning	climatisation`	climatisation, Air conditionné	Klimaanlage f.	no plural
airplane	aviòn	avion m.	Flugzeug, flieger	aviòns
airport	air-port	aéroport	Flughafen m.	air-ports
almonds	àmond	amandes	Mandeln	àmonds
alphabet	alfabet	alfabet m.	Alfabet n.	alfabets
always	ìmmer	toujours	immer	n/a
ambulance	àmbulance	ambulance f.	Krankenwagen	àmbulances
and	ed	et	und	n/a
and	ed	et	und	n/a
ankle	ànkel	cheville f.	Knöchel m.	ànkels
answer n., response	respònse	réponse f.	Antwort n.	respònses
ant	ant	fourmi	
ants
apartment	apàrtment	appartement m.	Wohnung f.	apàrtments
apple	àppel	pomme f.	Apfel m.	àppels
approximately, circa	circa	environ	ungefähr	n/a
apricot	àpricot	abricot m.	Aprikose	àpricots
April	àpril	avril	April	àprils
argument, dispute	dispùte	dispute f.	Streit m.	dispùtes
arm	arm	Bras m.	Arm	arms
around	aròund	autour	Um, ringsum	n/a
arrive	arrìve	arriver	ankommen	arrìved
art	art	art m.	Kunst f.	arts
ashtray	ash-tray	cendrier m.	Aschenbecher	ash-trays
ask	ask	demander	Bitten	àsked
August	àugust	août	August	àugusts
aunt	tànte	tante (du côté du père)	Tante (väterlicherseits)	tàntes
available	avàilible	disponible	erhältlich	n/a
bachelor, single	célibatàire	célibataire	Junggeseller, unverheiratet	célibatàires
Key: Red and blue indicate problem words which I think need either to be reconsidered altogether or might need respelling; red ones are considered worse than blue ones. Green (the text, not the background shading) indicates words imported from Sambahsa... mostly small grammatical words. Backtick (`) at the end of a word indicates the word has no plural form (for number; it may have a plural form for varieties). Grave accent indicates the stressed syllable (e.g. àppel). Acute accent modifies the vowel sound, as in French (e.g. café). Pronunciation is similar to but often not exactly like the source languages.

Warning: the above table will quickly become out of date as the language changes during its development. This table will not be updated to reflect future changes in the language made after this post.


= Auxlang 2012: Sambahsa orthography, English vocabulary (Sabtu, 18 Februari 2012) =

The beauty of experimentation is that it can tell you when you are on the wrong path. Sometimes a failed experiment is more valuable than a successful one. And as the Turkish proverb says, "No matter how far you have gone down the wrong road, turn back." Excellent advice.

My recent experiments with trying to create a vocabulary very clearly failed due to orthographical problems. Clearly it would take years for me to develop the necessary expertise to be able to design an orthography capable of reasonably faithfully importing words from English, French and German (in which Romance-language grammar will not be used for verbs).

Now, let's do a thought experiment:

(1) Imagine I already have a capable orthographical system, one which is not only capable of reasonably faithfully absorbing words from Western European languages but also from other languages such as Arabic and Persian, and imagine that orthography has already passed extensive testing;

(2) Imagine I wish to take that orthography and use it to import words from various source languages in order to create a prototype vocabulary;

(3) Imagine I then want to experiment with applying various grammatical systems to that prototype vocabulary in order to test a prototype language in different forms.

The key point here is that what I am really doing is prototyping. A prototype is something you build and then potentially might throw away; several prototypes might be built before you decide to keep one and turn it into something more permanent. Hmmm...

It is at this point in the thought experiment that my brain finally switched on. The truth is, it does not matter what source language I import words from into the prototype language, providing the orthography can handle words from the chosen source language and that the words are reasonably compatible with the grammatical systems I might try. I can make a small vocabulary from a single source language, that would be fine for building and testing a prototype auxlang. If it works, I can throw that vocabulary away and make a new vocabulary later using the same orthography.

So, what I need for prototyping is a suitable source language for vocabulary which (taking into account my interests) has both French and Germanic words. There is such a language. It's called English.

Ah. Penny drops. Thought experiment is now getting somewhere.

The necessary orthography already exists: Sambahsa orthography. The only thing I need to do is just add a grave accent to that orthography, which shall indicate the stressed syllable in polysyllabic words. No other changes.

All right, so I can easily build a prototype vocabulary simply by respelling English words in Sambahsa orthography: this will result in some phonetic changes to the English words but will remain reasonably etymological.

There is a major ancilliary benefit: I will soon have learned how to read Sambahsa texts aloud simply by the practice I will get from transliterating English words into Sambahsa.

Now let's do another thought experiment. Imagine a fictitious scenario in which a language closely related to English in vocabulary, but with a different grammar, could have developed. Here's one scenario...

First, let's imagine as suggested a couple of years ago on an excellent blog, that a country exists and has existed for many centuries, a country in which Sambahsa originated and where it is still fluently spoken by millions today. The imaginary country is located in Asia Minor, near eastern Turkey.

Second, let's imagine that there is a friendly professor of Sambahsa who lives there and who has a keen interest in auxlangs. He decides that he would like to enlighten English speakers concerning the benefits of Sambahsa grammar, by creating a language called Sambahsa-Anglodialect (as opposed to Sambahsa itself, whose full name is in fact Sambahsa-Mundialect). The Anglodialect uses grammar very similar to the Mundialect but its vocabulary is chiefly taken from English words transliterated into Sambahsa orthography. Thus, Anglodialect forms a kind of a bridge or gateway language, introducing students to Sambahsa grammar without any vocabulary difficulty, because once they have learned the orthography they will easily recognise nearly all words.

So the professor transliterates a few thousand English words into Sambahsa orthography, publishes a grammar for the new language, and voilà! Now all English-speaking students have to do is learn the orthography and they can quickly understand nearly all words. They thus quickly learn Sambahsa grammar. Later, they learn Sambahsa-Mundialect with ease.

So that is my idea. To help myself learn Sambahsa, I am going to play the role of the imaginary professor and transliterate 1000 English words into Sambahsa orthography (with the sole addition of the grave accent to indicate the stressed syllable). Then I will play around with those words to do two things: (1) properly learn Sambahsa grammar; (2) experimentally see if a useful prototype Auxlang 2012 can be thus built. That's win-win.

I was wondering (hint, hint) if some kindly scholar (hint, hint) could perhaps give me a flying start by offering to transliterate the following 100 English words into Sambahsa orthography, using the grave accent to show stress (using whatever stress pattern is necessary for the Sambahsa orthography, not necessarily English stress). (The French words are only shown to eliminate ambiguity, clarifying the sense of the English word.) Thus, I will see how to write English phonemes in Sambahsa orthography (approximately, of course, since not all English phonemes exist in Sambahsa orthography).

If not, no worries, it will just take me a bit longer.



Update: Indeed some kind scholarly passer-by did assist me with filling in the first 100 words, see below. Many thanks to Dr Olivier Simon! This is a very good start, although mixed results. More discussion later...

ENGLISH	ANGLODIALECT	MUNDIALECT	FRENCH
abdomen	abdòmen	abdòmen	abdomen m.
belly	bèlly	gvènter, gwiwòt	ventre m.
above, over	abòve	ùper	au-dessus de
absent	absènt	absènt	absent
accept	accèpte	accèpte	accepter
accident	accìdent	
accident m.
accompany	accompàny	
accompagner
accomplish	accòmplisch	
accomplir
accuse	accùse	
accuser
actor, actrice	actòr, actrìce	
acteur, actrice
add	add	addeih	ajouter
address	addrèsse	
adresse f.
administrative	administratìve	
administratif
adventure	adventùre	aventure	aventure
adventurer	adventùrer	
aventurier, aventurière
adventurous	adventuròus	aventureùs	aventureux, aventureuse
advice, counsel	[ concìl ]	concìl	conseil m.
after	àfter	
après
afternoon	afternòun	
après-midi
age	àge	
âge
agricultural	agriculturàl	
agricole
agriculture	agricultùre	
agriculture f.
air	air	
air m.
air conditioning	air conditiòning	
climatisation, Air conditionné
airplane	airplàne	
avion m.
airport	airpòrt	
aéroport
almonds	almònd	
amandes
alphabet	alphàbet	
alfabet m.
always	olwàiyse	
toujours
ambulance	ambulànce	
ambulance f.
and	aind	
et
and	aind	
et
ankle	àinkel	
cheville f.
answer n., response	respònse	
réponse f.
ant	àint	
fourmi
apartment	apàrtment	
appartement m.
apple	àpel	àpel	pomme f.
approximately, circa	cìrca	
environ
apricot	apricòt	
abricot m.
April	aprìle	
avril
argument, dispute	argùment, dispùte	
dispute f.
arm	arm	
Bras m.
around	aràwnd	
autour
arrive	arrìve	
arriver
art	art	
art m.
ashtray	aschtràiy	
cendrier m.
ask	ask	
demander
August	augùst	
août
aunt	ont	
tante (du côté du père)
available	aveilàble	
disponible
bachelor, single	bàitschler, sìnghel	
célibataire
back	back	
dos
backpack	backpàck	
sac à dos m.
bad	bad	
mauvais, vilain
balcony	balcòn	
balcon m.
ball	ball	
balle f.
banana	banàne	
banane f.
bank	bank	
banque f.
basil	bàisel	
basilic m.
basis, foundation	bàse, fundatiòn	
base f.
bath	bath	
bain m.
bathroom	bathròum	
salle de bains f.
batteries	batterìe	
piles
be able to	→	ghend	pouvoir
be, to	→	ses	être
beard	berd	
barbe f.
beautiful	beautéitplen	
beau
beauty	beautéit	
beauté f.
become	→	bih	devenir
bed	bed	
lit m.
bee	→	bei	abeille f.
beef	beuf	
boeuf m.
beer	bir	
bière f.
before	bifòr	
avant
beginning	bighìning	
début m.
behind	bihàynd	
derrière
believe	bilìve	
croire
below, under	bilòw, éunder	
sous
better than	bètter dthan	
meilleur que
between	bitwìhn	
entre
bicycle	bic`ycle	
biciclette f., vélo m.
big	big	
grand
bill, invoice	bill, invòys	
facture f.
bird	beurd	
oiseau m.
birthday	beurthdèy	
anniversaire m.
bitter	bìtter	
amer
black	black	
noir
blind	blind	
aveugle
blond	blond	
blond
blood	blod	
sang m.
blue	blou	
bleu
boat	boot	boot	bateau, -x
book	buk	
livre m.
border	bòrder	
frontière f.
boring	bòring	
ennuyeux
bottle	botèl	
bouteille f.
box	box	
boîte f.
brain	bren	
cerveau m.
brakes	braiks	
freins
bread	bred	
pain m.
break	→	bregh	casser
breakfast	[ brehgfàst ]	
petit déjeuner m.


= Auxlang 2012: Bravo LdP! Bravo Sambahsa! (Rabu, 22 Februari 2012) =

Update: this approach has since been abandoned. Upon closer examination, using LdP vocabulary with Sambahsa grammar was found to be unsuitable since Sambahsa grammar demands an etymological orthography. Eventually I completely abandoned Indo-European grammar and settled upon using Swahili grammar with vocabulary from English, French and Swahili. The tentative name for this project became Lugha ya Afrika, which means "Language of Afrika" in Swahili. 

Auxlang 2012 has been given a temporary name: Prototip. This is a simplification of Prototỳpe. I launched a website on which the progress of the language can be followed. You'll start to see some experimental grammar there over the next few weeks. The name of the site is Prototip: An Auxlang.

The reason for the simplification of the name comes from my recent experimentation with vocabulary. Seeking a way to replace some of the superb but unfamiliar vocabulary of Sambahsa with words more familiar to English speakers, or at least with modern words rather than Proto-Indo-European words, I found to my surprise that the vocabulary of Lingwa de Planeta was consistently better than anything I could come up with, despite it containing many words from unfamiliar languages such as Hindi, Russian, Chinese and Arabic. The way LdP words are written makes them reasonably easy to remember and easy to pronounce, and they look harmonious and believable. Trying to include too many English and French words, as I was doing, does not work because English and French are highly etymological in their orthographies; in many cases a better and more harmonious result comes from other languages rather than, as I was, slavishly using an English, French, or Germanic word. Sometimes the best word really is Swahili or Persian. It just works better.

In other words: if you want to use English vocabulary, speak English; if you want to use French vocabulary, speak French; if you want to use a mixture of modern Indo-European vocabulary and historic Proto-Indo-European vocabulary, speak Sambahsa; if you want to use a simplified worldlang vocabulary, speak Lingwa de Planeta. After this experiment, I can see why Sambahsa doesn't use a much greater proportion of English and French words: because doing so wouldn't work. One needs a very diverse Indo-European vocabulary to make Sambahsa work optimally.

Anyway, bravo Sambahsa!

And bravo LdP!

Once again, I just keep returning to these two languages in particular. But now, for my current needs at this particular point in time, it is mainly the grammar which keeps bringing me back to Sambahsa and mainly the vocabulary which keeps bringing me back to LdP, although overall LdP is my current favourite.

I realised today, as a result of recent experimentation, that the best way forward for further experimentation with Prototip is to use LdP vocabulary for experimentation with elements of a Sambahsa-like grammar.

There is no harm in this, since it means I get to continue learning the vocabulary I am currently learning, which is that of LdP, rather than switching to a different vocabulary, and simultaneously I get to continue learning about the grammar of Sambahsa, as I experiment with a related dialect. If the experiments all fail, I will just go back to using LdP and Sambahsa separately, having meanwhile gained a better understanding of both.

It's a win-win scenario.

Onward...

= Lugha ya Afrika: An Auxlang (Senin, 05 Maret 2012) =

Update: the Luqa ya Afrika project has been discontinued.
 Please instead visit the Simpel project.

Well, my Auxlang 2012 project (also briefly known as Prototip) has taken an unexpected and fortuitous turn. I've abandoned the agonies of Indo-European grammar, which is rather difficult for those who speak no Indo-European language, and instead have adopted Niger-Congo grammar. More specifically, I've decided to adapt the grammar of Swahili. More about that in a moment.

The trouble with trying to use naturalistic Indo-European grammar for an auxlang is that the result always seems to end up in one of the following three categories:
The Advanced Category: Preserving the full power of Indo-European grammar also requires preserving many of its quirks and difficult features such as a system of inflection so convoluted that half the time one cannot figure out what the verb stem is at all. You've got ablaut and nasal infixes causing dramatic changes in verb stems, you've got irregular verbs which are often totally unpredictable, you got inflected nouns and complicated articles and pronouns, you've basically got a complete nightmare for speakers of Asian languages. However, once you have climbed the mountain and learned all this stuff, it works great. If you can climb it. Example: Sambahsa.

The Illusory Category: Recognising that the Advanced Category is prohibitively difficult, language designers forgo its trials and instead try to take neither the high road nor the low road but make a path which purports to be halfway between the two. Look! they say, You can have your cake and eat it too! You can have all those European words you know and love, complete with their difficult spelling so they look like real French or English or Latin, but with a simpler grammar. Hooray! And look how great it all works... if you already fluently speak a Romance language and thus already unconsciously know hundreds or thousands of Romance-language idiomatic expressions. For anybody else, these languages are just illusions. Neither as easy as creoles nor as capable as natural languages, they are in some respects the worst of both worlds. Examples: Occidental (the better of the two) and Interlingua.

The Creole: Recognising that neither the Advanced Category nor the Illusory Category are practical propositions for those who speak no European language, except for a few very dedicated and brave souls, language designers forgo both and sprint straight towards the only naturalistic solution which is proven to work in the real world: the creole. With grammars stripped right back to the bare minimum, more isolating than synthetic, and spelling and pronunciation simplified in the extreme, these languages do actually make quite good sense from a design point of view. They are, initially, easy. However when one tries to write sophisticated literature in them, one discovers that their simple grammars lack the tools needed to easily deconstruct the idiomatic expressions of natural languages into plain language which can be understood regardless of cultural background; languages in the Advanced Category provide better tools here, reducing the dependence on memorising idiomatic expressions. Accordingly, the Creole is easy to get started with but fiendishly hard to write really advanced sentences in, the kind of sentences needed for sophisticated literature. The solution is to learn hundreds or thousands of idiomatic expressions in the constructed Creole itself, unique to it. This is very similar to the situation with the natural languages Indonesian and Afrikaans which previously seemed to me to be possible solutions; they also require massive memorisation of idiomatic constructs. Examples: Novial (to some extent) and Lingua Franca Nova (fully).
Personally, I've not been entirely happy with any of these three categories.

Now, you could use Esperanto, but its grammar is also essentially Indo-European grammar but transformed into a kind of mechanical clockwork. It's very nineteenth century. It's a kind of lumbering, ponderous, nineteenth-century steam train puffing its way around the world in great clouds of steam and coal dust, making whirring and grinding noises like a giant industrial-age factory. My point here is that Esperanto is not naturalistic, it is extremely artificial, like some creaky old factory with a leaky roof and rows of rusting machines. However, the factory is still productive and it cranks out very cute little biscuit tins quite reliably for export around the world, and people enjoy the biscuits too. Unfortunately it's just not my cup of tea, although it does work; however, it is also not particularly accessible to those who speak no Indo-European language, so let's move on...

Next we arrive in the twenty-first century, boldly dive into the intrepid realm of worldlangs (a realm to which Esperanto absolutely does not venture) and we find Lingwa de Planeta. This is something truly special. Although containing mostly Indo-European words, there is a fundamental influence of Chinese on the grammar, including many of the most frequently used words, and languages such as Russian are far more influential on the grammar than are Western European languages. Arabic and Hindi also play prominent roles in the vocabulary. LdP is very clearly more precise than the Creoles such as Lingua Franca Nova, while being only moderately more difficult; by means of an ingenious mechanism known as facultative precision and a series of fiendishly precise and well designed grammatical markers and particles, LdP manages to deliver good precision despite having an isolating grammar, which means that there is less need to memorise countless idiomatic expressions. The language is beautifully expressive for literature but admittedly does rely heavily on context; on the other hand, all languages rely on context so this is not necessarily a bad thing. LdP is currently my favourite auxlang, and so much so that I am working on a lengthy translation with pleasure. It is probably the only auxlang which in my opinion is definitely likely to be easily accessible to speakers of Asian languages, including for the purpose of reading highly sophisticated works of literature.

However, obviously I am still not one hundred percent happy, otherwise I would not be dabbling in the creation of a new auxlang myself. Essentially, I want the ease of LdP combined with the greater precision of Sambahsa (lesser reliance upon context); essentially I want the gain without the pain, to paraphrase a bodybuilding expression. It's not that LdP isn't adequate; it is more than adequate. It's just that it troubles me that it forces me to heavily compromise on things such as the expression of tense; essentially I sometimes feel that stylistically it occasionally seems a bit too creole-like.

Anyway, wouldn't it be nice if some kind of compromise could be found between Sambahsa and LdP? That's kind of what has been driving me on this Auxlang 2012 project.

Finally, a potential solution came to me. I had looked previously in the direction of Indonesian and Afrikaans, thinking they would deliver what I was looking for, but their grammars turned out to be too reliant on memorising countless idiomatic expressions; essentially their grammars are a bit too simple to deliver the full toolbox of grammatical features needed to deconstruct natural-language idiomatic expressions into plain language. English itself, by the way, also suffers from this problem. And then finally, over the last couple of weeks, I studied Swahili grammar. Wow!!!

Swahili is like a wake-up call for auxlang designers everywhere. Studying Swahili, anybody with an interest in constructed languages can quickly see how the amazingly powerful and precise features of Swahili grammar could easily be made a little more regular and converted into an incredibly precise and powerful, yet easy, auxlang. How about a synthetic system of verb conjugation so precise that it arguably even exceeds the precision of Sambahsa, yet does not require changes to verb roots (to use the Swahili terminology), and uses prefixes rather than suffixes?! How about a system of grammatical gender and concordance which is in some ways similar to the precision of French but which is incredibly easy since the 'gender' (class or category) of nouns is indicated by a prefix?! How about the ability to import many words from many languages yet not have to worry about mutilating them when forming the plural, since plurals are formed simply by adding a prefix to nouns?! I mean, wow!!! Swahili is fantastic inspiration for conlangers. It looks likely that Swahili will prove to be the language I was hoping Indonesian or Afrikaans to be: the ideal candidate upon which to model the grammar of an auxlang for sophisticated literary use. Only time will tell.

However, for vocabulary, English and French and Arabic are good compatible choices which provide internationally recognisable words. So my intention is to combine English and French vocabulary with Swahili vocabulary and grammar; since Swahili already contains many Arabic words, this essentially results in an international vocabulary of English - French - Arabic - Swahili.

Finally, Swahili is not an Indo-European language. It is a Niger-Congo language. So we avoid the aforementioned problems associated with Indo-European grammar; instead, we begin with a kind of grammar already proven to be successful for those who do not speak any European language.

The tentative name of the language is Lugha ya Afrika. This means "Language of Africa" or "African Language" in Swahili. For further updates concerning this language, visit the official website; at some time in the future this link may stop working as the site is migrated to a more permanent home.

Personally, I very much doubt that I could create anything as good as Lingwa de Planeta or Sambahsa, but at least I can have fun trying. Whatever happens, it will be a good learning experience.

Onward...


= Simpel Симпел ㄙ—ㄇㄆㄜㄌ सिमपल سِمپَل : An Auxlang (Senin, 26 Maret 2012) =

The Auxlang 2012 project continues.

After two months of iterations (including brief experiments called Prototip, Luqa ya Afrika, and Scientifica), the project has stabilised in a form called Simpel.

Meanwhile, I have stopped work on the literary translation into Lingwa de Planeta; unexpectedly I found myself burning out, becoming totally exhausted working on that translation. The exhausting part was (as is the case with nearly all auxlangs) translating idiomatic expressions; there is not enough grammar to make doing so quick and easy. It takes a huge amount of thought (but once written, the result is relatively easy to read and understand). After an estimated 131 hours of work I had translated 5331 words of French into 4731 words of LdP. In the end, the best speed I could manage was a little better than 1 word per minute. I noticed that it was no longer getting any easier and that no matter how hard I tried I could not increase my speed of translation; it probably would have taken a few more months to increase significantly. My comfortable reading speed of LdP is about 30 words per minute, including use of the dictionary. Thus, I can read LdP 30 times faster than I can write it. My unexpected conclusion is that LdP, at least in its current form, is a language which I prefer to use for reading rather than for writing. There are some great stories to read: 'Mey Nocha, o Dronigina' (by Nikolai Gogol) is superb and 'Marjen Raterford she maoris' is good fun and very enjoyable so far (I've read the first three chapters). However, overall I remain concerned that LdP retains too much of a pidgin-like or creole-like flavour at times. The longest literary translation I have made into any auxlang remains 5787 words of Occidental. To the best of my recollection, writing Occidental was similarly difficult but was much faster than 1 word per minute; therefore it appears that Occidental is the fastest auxlang for writing that I've discovered (however, to write Occidental literature one needs extensive help from an editor who speaks a Romance language... just as I needed extensive help from an editor fluent in LdP). Unfortunately I was never fully happy with the style of Occidental either, but for different reasons. However, putting aside all emotions and all considerations of aesthetics and style, from a completely objective point of view the current situation is that the best language I've discovered for writing is Occidental and for reading is LdP. By the way, Sambahsa is wonderful and inspiring but unfortunately I can neither write nor read it easily.

Nevertheless I still dream of a language which combines the respective advantages of LdP and Sambahsa yet minimises their respective disadvantages; Occidental is somewhat in this space but not quite what I'm looking for. And so, unexpectedly, I suppose my two-year journey has led me to understand that perhaps what I really want to do is to use existing auxlangs for reading and to invent a new auxlang for writing. Thus, I shall continue work on Simpel.

For a description of the features of Simpel, visit its homepage.

A true worldlang, the language has four official orthographies! But these are very, very easy and you can choose whichever one looks the most familiar to you. Transliteration between them is direct and trivially easy. Here is the name of the language in the four/five orthographies:

Simpel
Симпел
سِمپَل
ㄙㄧㄇㄆㄜㄌ
सिमपल

I very sincerely hope that a Perso-Arabic orthography will be added in the future, as this is a very important writing system used around the world; however there are significant software challenges with automatically transliterating to and from Perso-Arabic script which I was not able to quickly overcome. I also lack the knowledge and experience required to properly design the best transliteration scheme to map Simpel into Perso-Arabic script. Help from native speakers would be much appreciated.

The person, tense and mood of verbs is indicated by a particle preceding the verb which uses the powerful, precise, concise forms taken from Swahili; this is combined with a largely Western vocabulary which will also contain a very large number of words from other languages around the world. The design of the language is also influenced by Sambahsa, LdP and Occidental.

Visit the Simpel website to stay up to date with latest developments.


= ... and the journey ends (Selasa, 01 Mei 2012) =

More that two years ago, on Friday 29 January 2010, I wrote the first post of The Joy of Languages, which was entitled The journey begins...

Nothing lasts forever. It's time for this journey to come to an end. And this time, to really end.

So I will finish that sentence ... and the journey ends.

I've essentially already gone through several cycles of this blog. Ending it and starting it again, revisiting each of the major international auxiliary languages several times in a desperate and frustrated attempt to make one of them work for me as a writer and as a reader, for the purposes of creating and enjoying sophisticated works of literature, only to find in the end that the language other than English in which it is now by far the easiest for me to read literature is French!

Something is badly wrong here. After devoting more than two years of my life to the serious study of constructed auxlangs, they were all outperformed by a complicated and difficult natural language, French, which despite its enormous difficulty for the writer is relatively easy for the reader.

Since I'm a novelist and my intention all along has been to find some auxlang in which I could write novels which supposedly would have been easier for people around the world (for example, in China) to read than reading the equivalent novel in English, that is not a great result.

It has been a bizarre discovery for me to have found, without any doubt, that French is much easier for me to read than any constructed or planned language. The reason is mostly because either an auxlang is too difficult to read, having an exhausting and unnatural grammar (such as Esperanto, which seems mechanical and also very unsatisfying stylistically) or because it is too ambiguous due to being naturalistic but lacking important features of the natural languages from which it was derived which (although difficult for the writer) supply precision for the reader which makes it much easier to comprehend sophisticated literary texts without confusion (a good example here is that French is hugely easier to read than Interlingua after a few years of study of both).

So, what have I learned from all this? A surprising fact:

Being easier to speak or easier to write does not make a language easier to read. On the contrary, generally speaking it seems the usual result is that this makes a language more difficult to read.

Auxlangs are primarily designed to be easier to speak and easier to write than natural languages, because they are designed for active use in everyday, general-purpose communication. They are not primarily designed for writing sophisticated works of literature. That is, they are not primarily artistic. And, here's the clue: literature is art. Reading literature is experiencing art.

So, I've been barking up the wrong tree for the past two years. Failing to understand that ease of writing does not equal ease of reading, I've been focussing my attention on auxlangs (which, on this blog, is a term I use to mean constructed international auxiliary languages) which were, in fact, never going to deliver what I was looking for, which was ease of reading sophisticated works of literature; and not just ease of reading but also having robust artistic merit and richness.

I'm not saying that worthwhile works of literature cannot be written in Esperanto or Interlingua, for they surely can and surely have been; but I am saying that it is utterly ridiculous to me that they are more difficult to read than French. I'm just not interested in pursuing them, given that fact.

So, the destination of this blog, the end point, is that I've realised that what I'm looking for is not an auxlang at all. I'm looking for an artlang. I'm trying to create internationally accessible art.

My attempts to work around the problem by creating an auxlang of my own invention were similarly barking up the wrong tree, because firstly (as I wrote in my previous post) it is completely impractical for one person alone to create a modern auxlang suitable for global use in the twenty-first century (such a project requires a team of at least twenty people) and secondly because a typical auxlang is not in fact what I should be looking for. I should be looking for an artlang, one which is reasonably easy to read but also highly expressive and beautiful for literary use. A key feature of such an artlang would be that it is more difficult to speak and to write than most auxlangs, but easier to read (that is, for the purposes of reading sophisticated works of literature rather than merely simple texts).

If the above seems preposterous then imagine the following: suppose that French did not exist as a natural language. Some brilliant group of inventors then invents a language exactly like French, calls the language la langue de la littérature (LdL) and declares it to be an artlang. The world has never, in this hypothetical scenario, seen French before, but suppose that Esperanto exists. Esperantists would look at LdL and declare it to be so absurdly difficult to write that it could never be a viable auxlang; they would laugh at it and say it is ridiculous to think that anybody, for example in Australia, would be able to or wish to learn to read literature in such a difficult language. Then along would come me, a monolingual English-speaking Australian, and I would spend a couple of years trying to learn Esperanto and trying to learn LdL. I would give up on Esperanto several times, finding it incredibly frustrating. I would be able to speak and write simple sentences fairly easily in Esperanto. I would find LdL very difficult but would keep studying it. I would not be able to speak and write in LdL to any very significant degree, because doing so is much more difficult than it is in Esperanto. Nevertheless, I would to my great surprise discover that it is much easier to read sophisticated literature in LdL than in Esperanto, because the former is far more precise and far less ambiguous. This is definitely not preposterous because this is exactly what happened in my journey.

I studied auxlangs for two years and ended up choosing French as my preferred second language for the purpose of reading sophisticated works of literature, partly because it was the easiest.

Now, the interesting thing about this outcome is that an artlang (although not one as massive as French) is quite possible for one single writer to create, and there is an established historical precedent for doing so (for example, Tolkien). Also, people will gladly read short passages or dialogue written in such artlangs, as seen in blockbuster movies, television series, or best-selling novels, whereas few people will gladly read literature written in any auxlang.

So, my journey is over. This blog has ended. I'm finished with auxlangs (at least until such time as a better auxlang, suitable for the twenty-first century, matures or is invented, which will probably require a major project over a decade or so by at least twenty dedicated professionals; when I say "matures", a good example here is Lingwa de Planeta, which shows potential for the future).

I remain interested in writing in constructed languages, but the constructed languages in which I write will be artlangs rather than auxlangs. But such a massive and fundamental change in my approach deserves a new blog, or perhaps even a new book, and does not belong here.

I am currently working on the creation of an artlang and might also possibly be interested in writing in Sambahsa, which in my opinion is arguably better classified as an artlang rather than an auxlang, which explains why it managed to somewhat hold my interest right to the end of this journey.

I would like to very sincerely thank everyone who has commented on this blog and especially those very generous people who have assisted me at length in my endeavours here and elsewhere.

Now at the end of the journey, I will close with what Hemingway described as probably one of the finest words in the entire English language: farewell. 

Robert Winter
Brisbane, Australia
May 2012


Diposkan oleh William Salinas di 14.47 0 komentar


End of the Auxlang 2012 project
The last seven posts I've made have tracked my Auxlang 2012 project, which was an attempt to create a workable international auxiliary language, through various iterations and using extremely different approaches, all of which in the end turned out to be abortive.

This is the end of that project. It is now cancelled.

The reason is that I came to understand that for me personally to attempt to create a general-purpose auxlang for widespread international use is folly. It's just not a viable thing for me to undertake.

The days of Zamenhof (the nineteenth century) and later von Wahl (the twentieth century) are gone. Polyglots who speak only European languages will not create the successful auxlang of the future.

In my opinion, to make a general-purpose auxlang which could be truly popular for global use in the twenty-first century would require an initial team of at least twenty highly skilled people from around the world. Even so, those twenty people would represent nothing more than a small pilot project, a proof of concept, a demonstration that such a language is indeed possible.

The initial team would in my opinion have to include:

at least one highly talented, highly motivated native speaker for each of the six official languages of the United Nations (Arabic, English, French, Mandarin, Russian and Spanish); this means the team must have a minimum of six source-language experts
at least one professional linguist capable of editing the grammar
at least one professional lexicographer capable of editing the dictionary
at least two software developers capable of writing software to support the language
at least one project manager capable of planning and coordinating packages of work
at least one technical writer capable of producing documentation for the public
at least one professional psychologist to advise on human factors relevant to good design
at least one test manager who could manage trials of written and spoken communication
at least one business executive willing to assess the language for business use
at least one senior scientist willing to assess the language for scientific use
at least one experienced writer willing to test the language for literary use
at least one experienced manager to lead the project
After adding administrative and accounting support to this, and taking into account the need to oversee trials which would involve dozens of people in testing the language conversationally from time to time during its iterative development, nothing less than twenty people would be sufficient.

Realistically, perhaps the most likely scenario would be a cooperative project between at least six universities with at least three people involved at each university. This would provide the necessary administrative and accounting support, physical and virtual infrastructure, and intellectual ecosystem most likely to engender a good outcome. It would have to be a highly multidisciplinary, interdepartmental project not isolated merely to linguistics departments.

However, universities are not the only places such a project could be undertaken. Nevertheless, a successful project would have to be seriously managed and approached with the same degree of commitment found, for example, in leading not-for-profit humanitarian organisations.

Until we get that serious about creating a good auxlang for global use, we're not going to get one. Considering that there are nearly seven billion people in the world, the fact that no university has managed to get twenty professionals from around the world to collaborate on a pilot project to demonstrate a proof-of-concept new language (which could facilitate global communication and improve intercultural exchange and intercultural understanding) is, quite frankly, pathetic.

But one person alone cannot do the work of twenty. And even the twenty could merely demonstrate the potential, hopefully to the point where there would be sufficient interest from major governments, corporations, not-for-profit organisations or inter-governmental agencies in undertaking a large project replete with bilingual grammars and bilingual dictionaries in dozens of languages. Not for the purpose of establishing some kind of linguistic tyranny (which would be abhorrent) but rather for the purpose of providing practical means of international communication which would be welcoming to all; for example, rather than having a single global auxlang project there could initially be three alternative projects and over time people could decide and vote upon which they preferred to continue funding. Why bother? Because it would be worthwhile having an effective, neutral means of international communication suitable for the twenty-first century and it would perhaps be significant, in the long term, to the survival of humanity; as a civilisation and as a species we must learn to understand each other better in order to build a sustainable and workable future together.

But I digress.

So, my Auxlang 2012 project is cancelled. However, there is something useful which I am capable of doing as one person and as one writer: not an auxlang but an artlang.

More on that in my next post.