The phrase refers to flying an aircraft in such an extreme manner that it's in imminent danger of ceasing to fly at all; speed, altitude, angle of attack, or g-force is so great that it's at the limit of what the aircraft can tolerate. The smallest mistake could then result in the aircraft 'departing' from controlled flight, becoming uncontrollable, and tumbling to the ground like a brick.
Sambahsa pushes the envelope. Right up-front it challenges the student and makes it clear: this is not going to be easy. I think Sambahsa is right on the limit of the degree of difficulty that is practical for an international auxiliary language. Has Dr Olivier Simon, the brilliant inventor of Sambahsa, got it right? Or has he pushed the envelope just a little too far?
Will people volunteer to fly this language, step up into its cockpit, strap themselves in, learn its complicated check-lists before they can even switch on the engine, and then finally take off and fly? Or will they assess the difficulty as too great and merely admire the language on the ground, never flying it?
I'm not sure yet. I cautiously volunteer that yes, they will fly. And I suspect that once they are in the air they will fly beautifully. But getting Sambahsa off the runway for the first time is like taking flying lessons on a 300,000 kilogram Boeing 747 rather than a 1,000 kilogram Cessna 172. There are a lot more switches and dials in the cockpit and it is pretty intimidating; of course, once you become familiar with it, it all becomes second nature.
Quite frankly I don't expect many people to learn Sambahsa right now, unless they can speak French, because the English-language documentation is not sufficient for such a complex language, except for dedicated language enthusiasts who are not going to let a little lack of documentation stop them.
Fortunately, I am one such enthusiast. And what does an enthusiast do when he gets into the cockpit of a new language, looks at all the dials and switches and hasn't got a clue what they all do? Why, he writes a flight manual, of course. Then he studies the manual. Finally, he takes off and flies.
All right, so here it is: for anyone out there who, like me, would like to learn Sambahsa but is finding it impossible to do so without better documentation, here begins my attempt to produce, bit by bit, a flight manual.
Let's get started.
Step One: The Walk-Around
Before getting into the cockpit, a good pilot always performs a preflight inspection. This involves walking around the exterior of the aircraft, taking a careful look at it, kicking the tires, checking the control surfaces, and generally making sure all the parts of the aircraft are in good order. Since we are going to be walking around a language rather than an aircraft, what we need to do is make sure we understand its chief components.
And with Sambahsa, there is one place to start: the pronouns and articles. When it comes to the third person (he, she, it, they, them), pronouns and articles are one and the same thing in Sambahsa.
Instead of saying "The woman gives the man the letters." we say something roughly equivalent to "She woman gives him man thes letters." Here, "thes" represents a hypothetical, imaginary English definite article which is declined in agreement with "letters" (a plural noun, neutral gender).
Welcome to the 747 cockpit...
Third-Person Pronouns and Articles
Before I go any further (since it's about to get scary) I need to explain something. Why am I bothering to learn Sambahsa?
The short answer is that a Boeing 747 is more capable than a Cessna. If I want the advantages of a sophisticated jet airliner I'm going to have to put in more study time up-front than is required by a single-engine trainer.
The long answer is because I have discovered, as discussed in a previous post, that writing literature in a new language requires the investment of time in two parts: 'start-up time' and 'composition time'.
Start-up time is the time you need to invest up-front, before you can get started writing in the language. This investment only needs to be done once. In the case of Sambahsa this is a large investment: Sambahsa takes time here.
Composition time is the time you need to write each page of literature you produce. This investment occurs repeatedly, thousands of times, for the rest of your life. Even a small increase in composition time required per paragraph can result in a massive overall increase in the amount of time required to create works of literature. Therefore, if in exchange for greater start-up time you can gain the advantage of reduced composition time, that is a very well worthwhile trade-off. I believe Sambahsa could possibly deliver this. Excessively simple languages usually increase composition time.
My main concern with Sambahsa is that readers may not be able to comprehend literature written in Sambahsa without themselves investing a very considerable amount of time in learning the language. And things like the third-person pronouns and articles discussed below may deter them from trying. However, for now, let's be optimistic and hope for the best.
Okay, let's look at the third-person pronouns and articles. We're not even going to mention the first-person and second-person pronouns for now; they are straightforward and nothing to worry about.
In my notes below, I assume the reader is familiar with the grammatical cases typical of European languages: nominative, accusative, dative, and genitive. Nominative means the subject ("I am hungry"). Accusative means the object ("He saw me"). Dative means the recipient ("He gave the hamburger to me"). Genitive means the owner ("This door of the house is small"). In English, the dative and genitive cases are indicated by prepositions (to, of). In Sambahsa, this information is contained in the pronoun or article itself and there is no need to use a preposition to indicate the dative or genitive case.
In my most recent post I described my terror upon seeing the approximately one hundred third-person pronouns and articles which exist in Sambahsa...
Writers who are now feeling faint should sit down, take a few deep breaths, and consider learning Frenkisch instead (an excellent choice if you wish to get some of the same benefits which Sambahsa provides but without the extreme difficulty; think of it like flying a smaller airliner). I would not recommend turning to Interlingua instead; in my experience the composition time Interlingua requires is very great unless you are a native Romance-language speaker. In any case, Sambahsa and Frenkisch are more logical and consistent.
The good news is I have figured out how to reduce the burden of learning the third-person pronouns and articles in Sambasha. By following five simple rules, the student only needs to memorise 33 words. The rest can be deduced without memorisation. For reading, one could carry a small reference card.
Sambahsa nouns have one of four genders depending on the intrinsic gender of the entity they represent (woman is feminine, man is masculine, basketball is neutral, and person is undetermined). So, to decide which pronoun or article to use, ask yourself: (a) is the entity singular or plural; (b) what is the gender of the entity (masculine, feminine, neutral, or undetermined); (c) what is the case applicable to the entity (nominative, accusative, dative, or genitive); (d) which kind of article or pronoun do you wish to use (types (1),(2),(3),(4) below). Although this sounds complicated it is in fact extremely simple. There is only one problem and one problem only: memorising the 33 words; assuming you have memorised these, the decision-making process is absolutely trivial.
Four Categories
The following categories are used in the tables below.
(1) = Personal and impersonal pronouns; definite articles (e.g. he, his; the)
(2) = Distant demonstratives (e.g. that)
(3) = Nearby demonstratives (e.g. this)
(4) = Relative and interrogative pronouns (e.g. who, whom, which, that)
Five Rules
The forms highlighted in green are special cases; these 33 words must be memorised (17 singular words and 16 plural words). All other forms can be derived, without requiring memorisation, using the following five rules:
The C Rule: for each case, prefix the (1) form with c- to derive the (2) form, unless the (1) form begins with a, in which case prefix the (1) form with ci- to derive the (2) form (thus cial and ciay; this preserves the [ts] pronunciation of the c). Please note that, although grammatically correct, these distant demonstratives are currently rarely used in Sambahsa.
The T Rule: for each case, remove any leading i- from the (1) form, then prefix the remainder with t- to derive the (3) form
The Q Rule: for each case, remove any leading i- from the (1) form, then prefix the remainder with qu- to derive the (4) form
For Neutral: nominative and accusative forms are the same; dative and genitive forms are the same as those of the masculine
For Undetermined: nominative and accusative forms are the same; dative and genitive forms are the same
Generally speaking the system is logical except for two problem-words: ia, highlighted in red, can mean "she", "they" (e.g. basketballs), and "them" (e.g. basketballs); and iom, highlighted in yellow, can mean "him" and "of the" (e.g. of the men; or of the basketballs). This is a bit of a worry. It would also be nice if the patterns were perfectly regular along one or both axes of the tables, which could halve or maybe even quarter the number of words requiring memorisation (but it's not that sort of language).
How practical this system is in real-world use remains to be seen. Nevertheless it is beautiful when seen in sentences: precise and concise. I'm not going to prejudge it; I'll give it some time and see if it sinks in.
My apologies for any typographical errors below. Readers interested in learning Sambahsa should see the official grammar .
Sambahsa
Third-Person Pronouns and Articles
| Masculine Singular (Plural) | Nominative | Accusative | Dative | Genitive | ||||
| (1) | is (ies) | iom (iens) | ei (ibs) | ios (iom) | ||||
| (2) | cis (cies) | ciom (ciens) | cei (cibs) | cios (ciom) | ||||
| (3) | so (toy) | tom (tens) | tei (tibs) | tos (tom) | ||||
| (4) | qui, quis* (quoy) | quom (quens) | quei (quibs) | quos (quom) | ||||
| * qui = relative pronoun, quis = interrogative pronoun | ||||||||
| Feminine Singular (Plural) | Nominative | Accusative | Dative | Genitive | ||||
| (1) | ia (ias) | iam (ians) | ay (iabs) | ias (iam) | ||||
| (2) | cia (cias) | ciam (cians) | ciay (ciabs) | cias (ciam) | ||||
| (3) | sa (tas) | tam (tans) | tay (tabs) | tas (tam) | ||||
| (4) | qua (quas) | quam (quans) | quay (quabs) | quas (quam) | ||||
| Undetermined Singular (Plural) | Nominative | Accusative | Dative | Genitive | ||||
| (1) | el (i) | el (i) | al (im) | al (im) | ||||
| (2) | cel (ci) | cel (ci) | cial (cim) | cial (cim) | ||||
| (3) | tel (ti) | tel (ti) | tal (tim) | tal (tim) | ||||
| (4) | quel (qui) | quel (qui) | qual (quim) | qual (quim) | ||||
| Neutral Singular (Plural) | Nominative | Accusative | Dative | Genitive | ||||
| (1) | id (ia) | id (ia) | ei (ibs) | ios (iom) | ||||
| (2) | cid (cia) | cid (cia) | cei (cibs) | cios (ciom) | ||||
| (3) | tod (ta) | tod (ta) | tei (tibs) | tos (tom) | ||||
| (4) | quod (qua) | quod (qua) | quei (quibs) | quos (quom) | ||||
Remember, only the 33 words in green require memorisation.
The other words are obvious by extrapolation.
Footnote: I have not given up on Frenkisch. I am currently writing my first literature in that language and hope to publish it soon on this blog. It is a translation of an earlier piece of short prose I wrote in Lingua Franca Nova. Onward...
I agree that the documentation in French is more detailed; but the problem was that native speakers of French told me that this was "too" detailed, so I tried something shorter for English. The more translations I make in Sambahsa, the more I see which forms occur and which forms can be omitted from basic grammars. For example, at the beginning, I would have omitted the "vocalic euphonisation" of nouns and adjectives but I realise that this system was very helpful in the written language and that's why I finally included it in the grammar in English. On the contrary, there is a small "vocalic euphonisation" for verbs conjugated at the present; indeed, its use was so rare that I prefered to drop it from the short grammar.
ReplyDeleteClearly, it's true that the Sambahsa pronoun system could have been less detailed; for example no declension. I took my inspiration from most IE languages and tried to get something relatively simple and etymologically credible.
The English system with "I, me, my" may be obvious for you, but complicated for an Indonesian who knows only "saya". And, when you'll try to learn real European languages, you'll surely find that Sambahsa was relatively relaxing.
German may be close to Sambahsa (4 cases, 3 genders) but you have to learn by heart the genders of substantives and the use of declensions is ruled by arbitrary principles. Ex: "neben" (beside) is followed by accusative, but "nach" (after) by dative...
Slavic languages (as well as old IE languages)have far more cases and endings than Sambahsa.
Even modern Romance languages have pronouns with remnants of declensions.
Ex: (in French) "I know him" = "Je le connais"
But "a book for him" is not *un livre pour le, but "un livre pour lui" because the pronoun is stressed.
"I give him a book" = "Je lui donne un livre" not *je le donne un livre !"
"the professor" is "le professeur", but "to the professor" is not * à le professeur, but "au professeur" (and other modern Romance languages have similar systems).
So, the time spent with Sambahsa may be considered as a preparation, a "pre-training" before having to cope with "real-world" European languages ;-)
And above all, thanks for this analysis, I shall fix these errors soon, and maybe add some more examples... I like the comparison with an aircraft; personally I had already thought at a comparison with a car ! Indeed, if there were a motto for Sambahsa, I'd propose "stahalmos excellence" = "we deserve excellence". Not everyone on Earth could afford a 747 or a Ferrari, but I think that, with some study, everyone can afford an elaborated auxlang...
I'm looking forward to see some litterature in Frenkisch; I did only translations, but no original creation !
Olivier
Sellamat Robert !
ReplyDeleteAs always, it's a fascinating analysis. There are no typos in your text; indeed, I have discovered a small gap in my grammar and that's completely my fault: For the "distant" demonstrative pronoun, the "c" shall always be pronounced [ts] and a "i" should be added to avoid that the "c" be pronounced [k]; then "cial" instead *cal, and "ciay" instead *cay.
I completely apologize for this; but I know why I forgot this: in fact, the distant demonstrative object pronoun is used only very seldom so it could be dropped from your tables (but I'm gonna fix that); it can even be replaced by the determinant and the substantive followed by "her" (here) and "ter" (there).
This is true that there are a lot of forms; as your analyses show, many are fortunately parallel (you can compare here with IE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proto-Indo-European_pronoun#Demonstrative_pronouns )
And, through my own statistical analyses, I can see that some forms are more used than the other ones:
"id" must be the most used Sambahsa word.
Apart "un", other most used pronouns are "tod", "ia", "iom", "is", "iam", "ios"
Indeed, I have stated in the grammar that the genitive of "is" and derived forms is not used as a possessive pronouns. (In other words "ios" only means "of the", not "of him" nor "of it"). There are special forms for the possessive pronouns (as in English with "his, its")and if one really wants to say "of him/it" without risk of confusion, he can use the declinable preposition of possession + accusative (all prepositions trigger accusative). In this case, "of him/it" = "os iom/id".
Nice work! Sambahsa reminds me a bit of German in that way, but a German without all the irregularities. The colour-coding is a good idea to show what needs to be memorized vs. what the student can easy figure out without work.
ReplyDeleteThe other interesting thing about Sambahsa is how much literature has already been written in it in spite of Olivier being the only fluent speaker. He likes to challenge himself with new times and settings for the stories just to see if the language is up to the task.
@Mithridates: Thanks, Dave. Yes, Sambahsa does have a slightly Germanic feel to it at times. I like that about Sambahsa. One does not have to be a native speaker of a Romance language to feel that one perhaps has some chance of being able to learn and use Sambahasa successfully. You see, I've finally figured out why I've been so unsuccessful at trying to learn the better-known IALs: most of them are based on Romance languages, and I'm no good at Romance languages. It's taken me quite a while to realise this. I think this may also be true for most speakers of English who do not speak a second language, and perhaps for most people around the world who have no exposure to Romance languages.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I suspect that the greater initial difficulty of Sambahsa, which hopefully I will successfully mitigate with tables such as these, may be offset by not being trapped in Romance-language idioms when it comes to composing literature in Sambahsa. I don't know enough Romance-language idioms to write successfully in Interlingua, for example.
@cafaristeir: Thanks, Olivier. I have made the corrections to the table (added "cial", "ciay") and have corrected the C Rule. I have a question...
Regarding "ia" (highlighted in red in the tables) and "iom" (highlighted in yellow in the tables). I am concerned that these two words are reused for quite contradictory meanings. It is potentially confusing and seems to destroy some of the excellent precision otherwise provided by the system.
Was this by design or by coincidence? That is, do you have a strong justification for why these two words are reused in this manner? If so, could you please explain the justification as perhaps this might help students to remember these better?
If however it was more by coincidence than by design, would you consider changing it so there is not this clash of meanings? Or is it too late to change such fundamental things in Sambahsa? I'm not suggesting that it should be changed, only that perhaps change should be considered if there is not a strong justification for the current reuse.
I remain in awe of the excellent design of Sambahsa. It's not for the faint-hearted but it seems to be wonderfully precise and expressive.
Sellamat quantims !
ReplyDelete@dave: thanks for recalling the existence of Sambahsa texts. The listing of the major texts is here: http://sambahsa.pbworks.com/%22Vocabulary-keys%22-to-some-Sambahsa-texts
That's right, the colors enhance the diverse declined forms. If
only I could copy-paste it on my pbworks !
@Robert: Thanks for the corrections. Except for the "undetermined" gender, the forms of Sambahsa pronouns rest on IE (see the article on Wikipedia; and those forms can be found, among others, in Latin, in Gothic). For example, the fact that the nominative and the accusative neutrals pronouns are the same is a characteristic of IE (you can still see it with "it" in English). Primeval IE may have had no feminine (as in Hittite) but as modern languages have at least a female personal pronoun (like English "she"), I felt obliged to include it. I had invented, for fun, an "elvish" artlang which used the same form for masculine and feminine: "an". But it was a mess in dialogues: "an" told me "an" can see "an"'s father...
Some linguists say that the IE neutral plural was not a real plural, but a "group" singular, rendered with the feminine singular. Hence the explanation for the similarity of forms.
But don't worry, I know by experience there are almost no risk of confusion. Most Sambahsa substantives bear a plural ending, so you can guess if it's plural or singular anyway. And even without an ending (ex: "iris"), you can guess that "ia iris" = "the irises" because an"iris" is a thing, not a female being.
Used as a personal pronoun, there may be some uncertainty at first sight with some conjugated forms. Ex: "ia ghohd" = "they (things) could" or "she could" ?
Indeed, this can often be deduced from the context and, moreover, Sambahsa has optional precision with the conjugational endings of the past tense. If you add them : "ia ghohdit" = "she could"; "ia ghohdeer" = "they could", no more confusion is possible.
Your other concern was about singular masculine and feminine accusative and the corresponding genitive plural forms. In IE, both already ended with "-m". Here, I can reassure you; most plural substantives bear a plural mark. And, furthermore, an accusative often comes after a verb while a genitive (a "nominal complement") always comes after a noun, since no sambahsa verb triggers the genitive. And, as stated in the grammar, the genitive forms in the table are only used as articles, not as genitive of personal pronouns, since there are possessive pronouns.
Indeed, the sole limitations are elsewhere.
As written in the part on syntax (at the end of the grammar), one must bear in mind that the same forms do often serve as articles and personal pronouns. Thus, one shall avoid:
"Dahm ei dvan" = "I give him bread" or "I give to the bread" ? (the second option is ridiculous though grammatically correct). For the first option, one shall rather write: "Ei dahm dvan" or "Dahm dvan ei" or even "dahm ei sem dvan" = "I give him some bread"
The other recommendation is with the similar "undetermined" forms for genitive and dative. "Dahm id pieut tim kwauns" = "I give the food to these dogs" or "I give the food of these dogs". For the first option, "Dahm tim kwauns id pieut" may be preferable.
To end my analysis, in written Sambahsa, you can annihilate most uncertainties described above with the optional declensional endings of the "euphonic vocalisation".
"Dahm ei dvano" = "I give him bread(acc.)"
"Dahm id pieut tim kwaunims" = I give the food to those dogs(dative plural)".
Khauris nawehrg !
Olivier a.k.a. "Top Gun"
@cafaristeir: Thanks for the explanation. I understand. Taking into account historical reasons, plus the precision made possible by other features of the language, the system works fine as it is. I will be interested to see, as I learn more, whether I will find myself learning the optional declensions of the system called "euphonic vocalisation". When I read the concise grammar, as soon as I saw the word "optional" I thought "Great! I will ignore them and not use them, that will make my life easier." But now that I understand that in certain 'corner cases' they add more precision and eliminate ambiguity, I think that perhaps I will learn them and will use them.
ReplyDeleteA 'corner case' is a computer-science term meaning an unusual situation which tests the edges or boundaries of a system; a case which tests the decision-making points. For example, is a particular colour black or white? At a certain shade of grey, defined as the decision point, a scanning machine would declare a dark enough grey to be black or a light enough grey to be white. To test the scanning machine, one would purposely feed it just the right shades of grey to ensure it was behaving correctly, thus testing the 'corner cases'. It seems to me that in the 'corner cases' of the Sambahsa grammar, at which a construct could equally mean one thing or another, those are the times at which I will employ the declensions of the euphonic vocalisation, or I will employ careful word-order, to make the meaning clear.
I'm still not sure if I'm a good enough pilot to graduate from Top Gun flight school, but I shall try. Hopefully I won't end up like "Goose"...
Check six! (= Look behind you for enemy aircraft...)
Hey, I mentioned this post on auxlang and I thought you'd like to see Steve Rice's response since you don't subscribe to the list (I think):
ReplyDelete>That's actually very clever. I admit that Sambahsa is the one auxlang that makes me feel like a wimp. Even Ido isn't as daunting. Has Olivier pushed the envelope too far? He's not only pushed it, he's sealed it, stamped it, and stuck it in the mail.
>But he seems to get a lot of mileage out of it, and it is a magisterial achievement.
>I admit also that I am surprised Robert took on Sambahsa: if he found Ia too difficult, Sambahsa should definitely run him out of town. But he seems to have realized what I occasionally say: all languages (less frills) and especially all auxlangs are about equal in difficulty; they just load the difficulty differently. Sambahsa drops a piano on you when you ring the doorbell, but after that it's probably a gracious host. Ia is more polite, but whenever you relax, it bludgeons you from behind. Perhaps it's better to get the shock over with.
Re-sellamat Robert !
ReplyDeleteIndeed, as a writer, you cannot escape "euphonic vocalisation" !
Shortly after I had invented the ancestor of Sambahsa 11 years ago, I had the idea of this system by learning a little Arabic. In modern Arabic, the endings of Classical Arabic are used only for matters of euphony.
IE, like Latin, Sanskrit, Old English and modern Slavic languages worked with a complicated set of declensions. Substantives and adjectives display all kinds of endings.
The disadvantage is that it lengthens words, but sometimes it brings more precision and eliminates such consonantal clusters.
Then, taking my insipration from IE, I deviced a new set of optional endings, which can be added to substantives and adjectives if they are compatible with their accentuation.
I haven't set other rules for their use; I just recommend that the semi-pronouns "alyo" (another) and "vasyo" (all of the) be declined accordingly.
De facto, I use them in written texts to avoid some consonantal clusters; and this system proved finally to be so useful that I included it in the grammar in English.
An example: "un smiegd geront" (a frail oldman) = [un smyegd_dgërOnt] can become "uno smiegdo geront" [Uno smyEgdo dgërOnt] which may be more pleasant to read.
On the contrary, the "euphonic vocalisation" for the present indicative of verbs is nearly never used. It was subjected to the severe conditions that already existed in IE; that is:
the verbal endings of verbs at the present indicative can be -mi, -si, -ti, and 3° plural: "-nti"
if:
- it is compatible with the accentuation
- the verb is in absolute initial position
- there are no adverbs in the sentence.
OOPS ! Such conditions seldom occur together...
For "to be", we get "esmi, essi, esti, and 3° plu: sonti".
Not all Indo-europeanists know that, but the ending "i" of present indicative disappear if there was an another adverb in the sentence. This may be proved by old Irish "berid" = IE *bhereti (he bears) but "ni beir" = IE * ne bheret (he does not bear).
And the IE imperfect was made through a prefixed adverb called "augment". *ebheret = "he was bearing", with the loss of the "i" is attested everywhere.
Then, Sambahsa can have "behrti" vs "ne behrt"
But, you can forget it...
The augment still exists in Sambahsa; it is "ee-" and it has the same meaning as the English expression "used to". It is prefixed to any verb (except "to be") at the present tense.
Ex: "behrt" = (he) bears; "ee-behrt" = (he) used to bear.
The verb "to be" is special in Sambahsa since it has two different pasts, as in the Romance languages.
The imperfect "was being" which denotes a long period: eem, ees, eet, eem(o)s, eete, eent
Ex: "Australia eet un britisch colonia" = "Australia was/used to be a British colony".
and the simple past,(buim, buist(a), buit, buam, buat, buir) which refers to a punctual event:
"Australia buit attaquen ab iens Japanesens unte Mund Weir Dwo" = "Australia was attacked by the Japanese during WW2"
"buit" is cognate with Latin "fuit", Spanish "fue", Parsi "bood".
I suppose that's enough for today.
Have a good flight :-))
Olivier
@Mithridates: Thanks, Dave. That was nice of Steve to say. Yep, I have come to believe more and more that Steve's philosophy regarding equivalent difficulty of languages is approximately correct. All other things being equal, if we compare two reasonably well-designed, reasonably high-quality constructed languages, and we start from zero knowledge and we try to reach the stage of being able to write flawless, professional-quality literature in them, the overall difficulty of any of the constructed languages is about the same. What changes is how the difficulty is distributed. This however may still be of significance because of: (a) personal strengths and weakness and how they tally up with the difficulty distribution of a particular language; (b) personal taste and therefore how pleasant or unpleasant one finds the learning experience; (c) 'start-up time' versus 'composition time' as discussed here:
ReplyDeletehttp://joyoflanguages.blogspot.com/2010/03/satori-on-language-learning-and-use.html
That last one is highly important to a writer and big time savings can be made if 'composition time' can be reduced, even if it is at the cost of much greater 'start-up time'. This is one of the attractions of Sambahsa for me. I'd rather have the piano dropped on me up front than be bludgeoned from behind every time I try to use the Romance-language idioms expected by readers of Interlingua. I have, you see, finally realised that I am fundamentally no good at Romance languages (with the possible exception of French, which is rather closer to English than the others). The 'composition time' demanded by Interlingua would be very large, for me, and the darned start-up time was still looking to be pretty significant too. Interlingua just didn't deliver the goods.
I still like to hope that there is some kind of "Impossible Dream" language out there that some genius has invented, probably after a few sessions employing Edward de Bono's formal thinking techniques (quite seriously, these can generate revolutionary ideas, not merely evolutionary ones), which actually does have a lower total amount of difficulty and not just a redistribution of difficulty.
But if such a language exists, I'm not aware that it exists. I rather suspect that if such language were to exist, it would be 'a priori', therefore the difficulty would switch to the vocabulary, which would be foreign to everyone. However, who knows, perhaps there is some brilliant approach possible even for that, which reduces difficulty. Until the early 20th century we didn't even think heavier-than-air flight was possible. In the 22nd century, for all we know, we might be capable of faster-than-light travel or have discovered Alien languages in radio transmissions which open our eyes to vastly better paradigms. Revolution is possible, if unlikely.
But, back to reality. For now, as we say in Australia, there is no alternative to hard yakka (hard work). The trick is not to make it too hard for READERS otherwise we writers are wasting our time writing for no-one. That's my main concern now. I think I can probably learn Sambahsa, but can readers read the language without an enormous investment of study time? Perhaps yes, with suitable quick-reference cards. Maybe yes. But only for highly dedicated readers. What the hey, I'm enjoying it, so why stop now?
@cafaristeir: Thanks Olivier, that is great information. I now understand better the significance of the euphonic vocalisation. Excellent. I will come back and study that information when I have learned a little more. Next step for me is the rest of the pronouns and special prepositions, followed by the present-tense verb conjugations. I am utterly ignoring pronunciation for now; that will have to be next cab off the rank, but I want to get a bare minimum grammar under my belt first, a kind of critical mass to get the ball rolling. Still cannot write anything yet.
ReplyDeleteMy brain is pummelled and has turned to jelly. I've been dealing with the redistribution of difficulty in Frenkisch. Much easier than Sambahsa up front but it has a hidden difficulty: pluralization. Really, really, really hard. Such a shame because pluralization is normally such a trivial aspect of constructed languages. To see me struggle with this, see the following detailed post:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/frenkisch/message/385
I hasten to add, I am not criticising Frenkisch at all here. The plural forms look good, sound good, and are pleasing in all respects. It's just that the only way I personally can use them is to look them up. I'm just mentioning this as another example of the distribution of difficulty hypothesis. I'm even happy to just look them up and eventually rote-learn them from repeated use, as one does in English. However in a perfect world, simpler, more consistent rules would be desirable; I believe David might be considering simplifying them a bit, which would be great.
Important note: the pluralization difficulties for the WRITER are of no significance to the READER. Frenkisch is easy to read and the reader can recognise plurals 99% of the time just by knowing they nearly always end in either -en or -s. Frenkisch has an advantage in its redistribution of difficulty here, for passive use by readers. Were it to become a spoken language, however, the problem would become significant again, except perhaps for well-educated Europeans for whom the pluralization might be second-nature.
Sellamat Robert !
ReplyDeleteIndeed Sambahsa has relatively complicated rules for making the plural too. The problem with Frenkisch seems to be that the plural is partly unpredictable if the writer does not know the origin/the stress of the word.
This difficulty of finding a compromise between Germanic and Romance explain why Sambahsa stress rules are complexe (but at least they don't require the speaker to know the etymology of a word).
When I have time, I shall rewrite more clearly those stress rules for Sambahsa.
Sambahsa plurals are in "s", unless the ending of the word "swallows" the "s". (i.e. endings in s, z, ch, j, etc). Then you must use "a" for things or "i" for brings [these are in fact the endings of the euphonic vocalisation and you can decline them if you wish]. Where those endings do not match with the accentuation, then there is no plural ending at all.
Neutral endings in "-os" and "-es" turn to "-sa". Ex: "corpos" (body) = "corpsa"
Neutral endings in "um" turn to "a": "territorium" = "territoria".
Dave translated a few sentences from H.Hesse's "Demian" in German. There were mistakes, but I had no problem in understanding what he had written. If we go on with the aircraft comparison, I have the feeling that it is difficult to fly with the full capacities of Sambahsa but that, on the other side, the risks of fatal crash are reduced thanks to the high number of parameters...
Now, have some fun with Steve Rice comparing Sambahsa with a piano crashing on the visitor. You check it there:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHPVWp_Ytug
Olivier
http://sambahsa.pbworks.com/
@cafaristeir: Nice piano video! And I must say, Sambahsa sounds very nice. More recorded Sambahsa, please! Could you possibly record one of your translated stories in full? That would be a joy to listen to and would give a nice demonstration of the literary potential of Sambahsa. If I can manage to learn Sambahsa I will make some recordings of some stories myself. I also plan to do this with LdP, Frenkisch and Idiom Neutral to compare them. Fun, fun, fun. I'm actually looking forward to that very much.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the pluralization information. I will study it after I'm finished learning basic verb conjugation.
By the way, I went and looked at the pluralization of German nouns. I had forgotten just how difficult German is in this respect: way harder than Frenkisch. So, since Frenkisch is a naturalistic language, I can see the justification for its difficult pluralization.
However, I remain adamant that for the success of Frenkisch the dictionary ABSOLUTELY MUST list the plural form of all nouns. Otherwise the language will be impractical for active use since the user is sometimes required to know the origin of words (Romance or Germanic) in order to determine the stress and therefore in turn to determine the plural. In my opinion that is never going to fly for users with no prior experience of Romance languages or Germanic languages other than English, unless they can fall back on looking up the plural in a dictionary and thus basically just memorise the plurals one by one until a pattern builds up in their brains.
I actually would give up Frenkisch if the plural forms of all nouns were not listed in the dictionary; this explains why I am overjoyed that the HTML version of the Frenkisch dictionary includes just that. Bliss! This means I get to continue using this wonderful language, which is a very fine achievement.
Sellamat Robert !
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I fear that recording full stories would exceed the capacities of my laptop but here there are some other recordings:
http://sambahsa.pbworks.com/exempels-tarjten-textes-fr
http://sambahsa.pbworks.com/tarjems-texten-ex-id-net-fr
Yes, German is far harder for pluralization, there are -en, -e, ¨-e, -er, ¨-er, -, ¨- and -s... Fortunately, I generally find the right solution.
For Frenkisch, the stress should be indicated in the dictionaries, so that the plural can be easily found. Personally, I have no problem with this, but I am a speaker of both Germanic and Romance languages... French has a fixed stress on the last syllable but other Romance languages can have it on the last, the penultimate and antepenultimate...
On 200 pages of Sambahsa dictionary, I just indicated the stress less than 10 times, when I myself had doubt at first sight.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/30039352/Dictionnaire-francais-sambahsa#fullscreen:off
Khauris mingo !
Olivier
Fantastic!
ReplyDelete