Bartlett's Model Language Summaries

Mr. Bartlett has posted these summaries by e-mail, and kindly gave me permission to include them here.

Afrihili: an African IAL

Yesterday, I was browsing at the U.S. Library of Congress, and I came across a rather unusual auxiliary language. As the readers of CONLANG know, the overwhelming majority of international auxiliary language (IAL) projects are of European ambiance: their authors are from Europe or North America, with a few from Latin (i.e., European) America. Afrihili is different: it comes from Africa.

K. A. Kumi Attobrah
Ni Afrihili Oluga: The African Continental Language
Accra, Ghana; 2nd ed., 1973
Lib. of Cong. call no. PM8063.A8 1973
no ISBN

Language of discussion is English, and the physical format is a bit odd. Although I did not measure it, the dimensions of the book were perhaps 12x35 cm. It was a book of ten lessons. Regrettably, there was no English key for many of the examples.

El-Afrihili is an African language which has been created incorporating grammar and words from the languages of the African continent. It also contains words from many other sources so Africanized that they do not appear foreign.

El-Afrihili has been created with a view for it being adopted as the lingua franca of Africa.

Unfortunately, the author does not identify his source languages, and as I have no experience with such, all I can say is that the result was totally unintelligible at sight to an Indo-European-only speaker.

From what I could tell, the phonology of Afrihili would not be too difficult for Indo-European speakers. The orthography used the unaccented Roman alphabet with the addition of two non-Roman letters: an e-vowel much like the vowel in French meme (SAMPA IPA /E/) and shaped much like a backwards Arabic numeral '3', and an o-vowel much like the vowel in English nought or naught (SAMPA IPA /O:/) shaped like the IPA symbol representing the same sound. In the sample, I will represent these letters by e^ (e-circumflex) and o` (o-grave).

Afrihili's grammar, at first perusal, was definitely non-Indo-European. It used categories and made distinctions unknown to IE tongues of my acquaintance. However, I did not have the time to copy down copious examples, but I noted such things as different kinds of future tenses, and so on. Consider nouns. As a somewhat schematized synthetic language, in Afrihili all nouns, and only nouns, both begin and end in vowels. To form the plural of a noun, convert the initial vowel into the terminal vowel! There were also various kinds of infixes which change the meaning of a word, such as relationship to the speaker.

The following is a short sample of Afrihili. Again, because there was no key, I cannot give a translation of it.

Kwaku na Akua mai atapiro atajirin we^na liwa yide fu kusa. Ni atapiro atajirin mai imulezi ibarin we^na ye^ f'amotsoala. Ni amotsoala ye^ arenobo kika Kwaku na Akua baitu fu duka ye^ ukuetu upapam tare.

Ku atapiro mai afu okisiwa so nehi nesa be^, na ni imao no inta tabonadi you. Fumai arafi f'amotsoala to` okisiwa.

Eurolengo: the Language for Europe

Yesterday I was at the U.S. Library of Congress, and I had the chance to peruse the book on Eurolengo. Some of you may already be familiar with it, but I thought I would toss out a brief review.

Jones, Leslie
Eurolengo: the Language for Europe
Newcastle upon Tyne: Oriel Press
1972
ISBN 0-85362-140-3
Lib. Cong. call no. PM8310.J6
apparently out of print in US and UK
decent printing job

There are only 7 pages of introductory material, which outline the author's purpose, phonology (nothing startling) and spelling, grammar, and miscellaneous matter (numbers, calendar, etc.), followed by 60 pages of lessons in Eurolengo and English on facing pages, 15 pages of words and phrases in common usage together with prepositions, conjunctions, primary adverbs, and the like, and two vocabularies. The Eurolengo-English vocabulary appears to have about 1800 entries.

Eurolengo, as one might expect from the name, is a sort of Euroclone, another Anglo-Romance hybrid. The author says that the primary languages are English and Spanish, as these are the two most widely spoken (world-wide) west European languages. He also used the other Romance and Germanic languages to some extent.

In many ways, Eurolengo reminded me of Phil Hunt's Eurolang (and more than just in similarity of name). Although Eurolengo did not seem to have Eurolang's word-building affixes, its verb system was a little more extensive than the latter's. I found that after glancing at the pronoun table and the verb endings list, I could more or less read texts without too much difficulty, which, of course, was probably the author's intention.

Eurolengo seemed to me to be a modest but sincere attempt to provide a common west European auxlang. I don't know whether it went anywhere after the publication of the initial book, as often happens with one-man projects.

Recently I posted on CONLANG a brief review of the IAL Eurolengo, published in Britain in 1972. One reader asked for a sample, which I neglected to copy off. Since then, I have had the chance to look at the book again, and I photocopied what I think is a reasonably representative sample of the language, with its English translation.

Eurolengo does use an acute accent over some vowels solely for the purpose of marking stress, not vowel quality. This is a little curious in practice, since the monosyllabic particle 'ke' is often marked. Why a monosyllable is marked for stress I don't know, but I have reproduced the accents in this sample. (I apologise for not having copied off the pronunciation guide, but the author gave a whole list of "difficult" sounds from various European languages he had eliminated.)

Aur no parlara de visitar in autland. If it istara voster primer visit in autland, it istara saje irar a un ajent de voyages and areglar voster voyaje and voster akomodasion per lo. Vos nesesitara savar in avanse voster date de depart, vo vos desara visitar and quand vos returnara. El ofrara vos un opsion de voyajar per air, per mar and per tren or per bus, akordant a voster gusto. El fixara also un hotal de kelquero klas o un pension, akordant a le monie ke' vos kano afordar. Jeneralik, el donara vos un inklusive prys for voster voyaje and voster akomodasion, so dat, in un pok de dags, vos kano ira a loz ofis para kolektar voster tikets. Komo le wurld deveno petiter and mucher persons deso voyajar in autland, dar isto mucher demand for reservasions, espesialik in le popular monds de mai a september inklusive; it isto saje ferar fru voster plans. If vos habo un karavan o un tent, it isto nesesarie solik reservar voster kros-kanal pasaje for le depart and return, perkause dar isto so mucho bie'n equipado kamping plases. If vos isto unlukos and vos findo ke' le kamping plas ke' vos habo selektado ist= o ful, vos kano pasar un nakt in un feld o a le kote de le rute. Apre' al, vos isto komo un eskargo, kon voster home on le dos and vos habo bast manjar and trinkar in voster karavan o tent. If vos isto un experter voyajor, vos ferara sel le areglements, menos posabelik le mar-krosants.

Now we will talk about visiting a foreign country. If it will be your first visit abroad, it will be wise to go to a travel agent and arrange your journey and your accommodation through him. You will need to know in advance your date of departure, where you will wish to visit and when you will return. He will offer you a choice of traveling by air, by sea and by train or by bus, according to your taste. He will fix a hotel of whatever class or a pension according to the money you can afford. Generally, he will give you an inclusive price for your journey and your accommodation, so that, in a few days, you can go to his office to collect your tickets. As the world becomes smaller and more people wish to travel abroad, there is more demand for reservations, especially in the popular months from May to September inclusive; it is wise to make your plans early. If you have a caravan or a tent, it is only necessary to book your cross channel passage for the departure and the return, because there are so many well equipped camping sites. If you are unlucky and you find that the camping site you have selected is full, you can spend a night in a field or at the side of the road. After all, you are like a snail with you[r] home on your back and you have enough to eat and drink in your caravan or tent. If you are a more experienced traveler, you will make the arrangements yourself, except perhaps the sea crossings.

Frater: an IAL from Vietnam

Most international auxiliary language projects seems to originate in western Europe and the Americas. Today I had the opportunity to examine one from what was to me an unexpected venue: Vietnam. And the author being Vietnamese in the 1950s, I would have expected the discussion of it to be in French. On the contrary, it was in good English.

Pham Xuan Thai
FRATER (LINGUA SISTEMFRATER): The Simplest International
Language Ever Constructed
Saigon: TU-HAI Publishing House
1957
no ISBN
275 pp.
decent printing job, some corrections made by hand
paper bound (originally)

Although the vocabulary is largely, though not totally, Greco-Latin in origin (with some roots modified to fit the phonology), Frater is not just another Euroclone, for its word building and syntax are rather un-European.

There are 18 pages of forward, largely given over to a brief survey of the IAL movement. Towards the end of the foreward, the author writes,

With the hope of contributing a modest part in the construction of a satisfactory international language advocated by peace-loving people, I have much pleasure in publishing my world auxiliary project, named Lingua Sistemfrater (Brotherhood Language) or merely Frater.

Frater based on Latin and Greek roots of international currency is designed with due regard to needs of the Chinese, Japanese and other non-Aryan speech-communities. [Note: this probably accounts for a lot of the root modification-pb]

Frater is usable as an efficient instrument of communication in everyday life and technical discussion. It is easy to learn whatever the mother tongue of the beginner may be. The memory of the beginner has something to bite on thanks to the mnemonic method used in the Frater lexicon.

To learn, to read, to write and to speak it fluently, it would take an educated man three months and a plain man six months.

In the foreward, Thai acknowledges the influence of Bodmer's The Loom of Language.

Following the forward are the 12 Rules of Frater (Lingua Sistemfrater):

Rule 1.-In Frater, there is neither article nor flexion, nor elision, nor affix, nor concord of tense, of mood, of gender, of number.

Rule 2.-The noun, the adjective, the verb and the adverb have the same root.

Rule 3.-The adjective is always placed after the noun with the exception of cardinal numbers.

8; nona: 9; deka: 10; senti: 100; mil: 1000; milion: 1.000.000; miliar: 1.000.000.000.

The multiplicative numbers are formed by adding the word TEM (time) to the cardinal numbers.

The fractional numbers are formed by adding the word UNISUR (one above) to the cardinal numbers.

The possessive pronouns are formed by adding the word OT (of) to the personal pronouns.

The passive voice is formed by adding the auxiliary verb Es (to be) to the infinitive.

Rule 7.-There is no inverting in the following word-order of Frater, except in poetry:

Rule 8.-Each word is pronounced absolutely as it is written: each letter has always the same sound.

Rule 10.-Compounds are obtained by the mere combination of the elements that form them, the fundamental one being always placed at the beginning.

Rule 11.-If there is in the sentence another word having a negative meaning, the adverb NE (not) is omitted.

Rule 12.-Foreign words, namely international words, if they are formed by the roots existing in Frater, change according to Rule 10. In case their roots do not exist in Frater, they do not change. They only take the spelling of the language.

Following these rules are thirteen pages which largely elaborate on them and also deal with interrogatives, which the Rules do not discuss. There are also lists of primary adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions. Here can can see some non-Greco-Latin elements, such as BSERA (yesterday) and SAFTRA (tomorrow): but compare POSTESAFTRA (day after tomorrow).

Frater's phonology is fairly simple: there are five vowels and thirteen consonants, written with eighteen letters of the Roman alphabet, CHQVWXYZ not being used. There is little actual description of the sounds, but the vowels AEIOU seem to have more or less the so-called continental pronunciation. Consonants are about as one would expect, except that J is pronounced /z/.

This simple phonology means that some words, especially proper names, undergo some modification, such as V -> B, as Venezuela -> Benesuela. Also, there seems to be some adaptation to the phonetic habits of non-Europeans: ABRIKO (apricot); ABSOB (absorb).

Nevertheless, more consonant clusters persisted than I might have expected in a language designed by an Asian. (I am not especially familiar with Vietnamese, and maybe they don't have as much problem with consonant clusters as some other east Asians.) However, if a largely Greco-Latin vocabulary is to be at least marginally recognizable, the roots cannot undergo too much mangling.

There are several distinctive features of the language which I noted. Roots can serve indifferently as nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs with no modification. (There are no part of speech markers, not even something like Glosa's u/plu.) Except for cardinal numbers, _all_ modifiers come after the word they modify. (A following number is an ordinal.) MENSA MI is "my table." Unlike most west European languages, Frater does not have separate gender forms for the third person pronoun, even in the singular.

In compounds, the lexically most significant element comes first, with qualificative roots coming after-this is just the exact opposite of English usage. Frater has no particular system of lexical affixes, in the manner of Esperanto, Ido, Novial, or even Interlingua, but it makes very heavy use of compounding, even in what I call "grammatical stickum" words: TEMKIA (when: TEM = time + KIA = what). Also, sometimes a compound is used in place of an existing Greco-Latin form: ASURAU (alphabet: A + SURA = till + U).

Following the didactic matter, there are 112 pages of parallel texts in Frater and English, including the entire 1945 Charter of the United Nations. Then come 51 pages of the English-Frater lexicon and 71 pages of the Frater-English lexicon.

I might note here that I could not make a good estimate at first glance how many primary roots there are because of the extensive number of compound entries in the vocabularies.

I put the book on reserve at the Library of Congress in case I can get back to it in the next three days, but my preliminary impression is that Frater is a workable language which might be more acceptable to east Asians than many of the Euroclones. With its non-west-European compounding and syntax, the learning difficulty is spread out a little more. However, I am not aware that it ever "went anywhere," like so many IAL projects.

(Apart from the UN charter, most of the texts have to do with ethics, religion, and peace.)

SISTEMINDI

Kones na, mi es ili, na es senti per donmaga e rigidauto, Sefal maga ot geo tuta, filo ot stofbio tuta, ili gain a pasi.

O antrop arme-forse, oto re logo surantrop ot mi, na logo futur ili a oto alegro ot ni, kon desir pro beni ni.

Mi don Lega ot kones a ilis, ne es temtuta sub Lega, ador mi kon aktofilo, ilis aribe per dis a mi.

HINDUISM

Knowing that I am he whom sacrifice and austerity touch, the great lord of all worlds, the friend of all born beings, he wins to peace.

Again, O strong-armed one, hearken to my sublime tale, which in desire for thy weal I will recite to thy delighted ear.

On these, who are ever under the Rule, worshipping me with love, I bestow the Rule of understanding, whereby they come to me.

SISTEMSINTO

Benkia antrop prepara pro mis uni dom pur, e don na stof rare ot geo, benkia ilis pende stofdon ot sep stof balormaga, e deman kon kardi berita a mis in sentimulti jur, promulti mis aksepne futur pro paso in dom ot andro moralne e abaris. Sed mis bisit futur sekur dom ot ilis, omo in sentimorta abenne deman, si aktoben-filo es temtuta na. Reson es, mis fakto aktoben-filo domador ot mis.

SHINTO

Even though men prepare for us a pure abode and offer there the rare things of the land, though they hang up offerings of the seven precious things, and with anxious hearts pray to us for hundreds of days, yet will we refuse to enter the house of the depraved and miserly. But we will surely visit the dwellings even of those in deep mourning without an invitation, if loving-kindness is there always. The reason is that we make loving-kindness our shintai.

Hear all men! If you desire to obtain help from the Gods, put away pride. Even a hair of pride shuts you off from the Gods as it were by a great cloud.

Hear all men! The good Kami find their strength and their support in piety. Therefore they love not the offerings of those who practise tedious ceremonies.

SISTEMJUDA

Ni benjanse ne, sentianti ne infanmulti ot demo ni, sed ni obliga filo androbisini ni omo ni; Mi es Dio.

Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, I am the Lord.

Oz: an A Priori Language

Charles Milton Elam
The Case for an A Priori Language
Cincinnati: Open Sesame Press, 1932

Oz is an a priori language [with invented vocabulary rather than borrowing vocabulary from natural languages]. Elam also came up with a non-Gregorian calendar and a separate script, inasmuch as he admitted that in the Roman alphabet it presented an "uncouth" (his word) appearance. (It looks like an explosion in a typesetting shop: upper and lower case vowel letters represent different sounds, and 'Q' is a vowel.) The vocabulary was to be based on Roget's Thesaurus. (He seems not to have worked it out in its entirety.) [See Roxhai for an independent attempt at this type of language design.]

"A misapprehension under which the opponents of the a priori method of language construction labor is that an a priori language can be constructed only on the principles of Bishop Wilkins' Real Character or Foster's Ro. An examination of this book will thoroughly demonstrate
the fallacy of this assumption."

ep ipIv adgIv az afbQt.
I came to the city.
ep ipIv adglIv az afblQt.
I came from the country.
ep iplIv adgIv az afblQt.
I went to the country.
ep iplIv adglIv az afbQt.
I went from the city.
ep iptIv adIf az afbQt.
I entered the city.
ep iptIv adlIf az afbQt.
I departed from the city.
hEv az andAslUt iftlEplezlais kek anpAtpyaup, ek iftEgtOg adpad astlaup.
Because the wicked do not recieve their just deserts immediately,
they grow bold in transgression.

--
Paul <bartlett@smart.net>
..........................................................
Paul O. Bartlett, P.O. Box 857, Vienna, VA 22183-0857, USA
Keyserver (0xF383C8F9) or WWW for PGP public key
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Tutonish: an Anglo-German Union Tongue

I have not participated in the Folkspraak effort, because the only Germanic (more or less) language that I know is English. However, in my conlang browsings at the U.S. Library of Congress, I came across material on what seems to be at least superficially a similar effort from the late 1800s and early 1900s, and I was wondering if the Folkspraakischers have given it any consideration.

Tutonish was designed and advocated by Elias Molee, an American-born Norwegian, as an Anglo-Germanic "union tongue." He literally intended it to become the new mother tongue of the Germanic speaking countries, not just an IAL. It has a phonetic spelling, a simplified grammar based somewhat on that of English, and a semi-pan-Teutonic vocabulary. In a manner somewhat reminiscent of Peano, in one of his books he starts out in standard English and introduces changes as he goes along, winding up writing in Tutonish (with a few words explained in parentheses).

I got the idea that there might be just a touch of "Aryan" racialism in his idea, but it looked like an interesting language experiment at least somewhat akin to Folkspraak.

Here is the Lord's Prayer in Tutonish. Note that the Tutonish orthography does not use upper-case letters.

vio fadr hu bi in himl; holirn be dauo nam;
dauo reich kom; dauo vil be dun an erd, als it
bi in himl; giv vi dis dag vio dagli bred;
en fergiv vi vio shulds, als vi fergiv
vio shulders; en lied vi nit inzu fersieku
but frie vi fon ievl. let so bi.

Molee published several books, starting in the 1880s. I didn't look at the earlier ones, but apparently they were an appeal for a "Teutonic" English rather than the Romano-Teutonic hybrid it now is. (At least, that's my guess.) He may have later expanded this idea into a common mother tongue (literally) for all the Germanic peoples (all the way to Australia and NZ). Molee proposed that Tutonish be taught in all the schools in all the Germanic countries for a period of time and then phased into official use.

However, in all fairness I did read one remark about the "Romanic" peoples having a "union tongue" of their own. (Obviously, he was a little early for IALA Interlingua.) From a cursory glance he may have thought that the "Aryan" peoples (I didn't see him actually use the term) should have their own common language, and seemed to think they had/have some de facto superiority in the world, but he was not averse to other "peoples" having their own common tongue, as well.

His methodology makes quick perusal a little difficult. As I mentioned earlier, he starts with standard English and develops the idea as he goes along, rather than giving any formal description all at once, so you almost have to read the book from the start to pick up all of it (although once you get the phonetic spelling down, you can read a fair bit of it, which was part of the whole idea).

I am appending an extract from the LoC's online catalog for Molee's works. As with all older items in the online catalog, there is the possibility of transcription errors. (Mainly I looked at item 9, which was the largest and presumably most complete.)

1. ltf91-41631: Molee, Elias, 1845- Plea for an American language, or Germanic-English, showing the necessity of systematic spelling and of making our words pure, self-developed and self-explaining according to Greek, German, and Irish models, with a grammar, reader, and vocabulary of the proposed American language ... The present English proven to be a national misfortune, Chicago, J. Anderson, 1888. 303 p.

4. unk82-84784: Molee, Elias. Plea for an American language or Germanic-English [n.p.] 1888. 1 v. cm.

6. 24-23460: Molee, Elias, 1845- Tutonish, an international union language, [London, K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & co., ltd, 1908. 48 p. 22 cm.

7. 24-23459: Molee, Elias, 1845- Tutonish, et internationalt faellessprog under angelsaksisk ledelse; Kristiania, Tutonish forlag, i hovedkommission hos H. M. Lund [1909] 44 p. illus. 22 cm.

8. 04-32300: Molee, Elias, 1845- Tutonish; a Teutonic international language, Tacoma, Washington, U. S. A., E. Molee [c1961] 9 p. illus. 15 cm.

Bartlett's Unfamiliar Model Languages