Reference: Key to comparative examples

Key to Languages

The languages used in the comparative examples from this date forward are:

EN = English
FR = French
IA = Interlingua
IN = Interlingua [alternative] ¹
MO = Mondial
LP = Lingwa de Planeta
SB = Sambahsa
FK = Frenkisch
XP = Expériment ²

Suggestions and Corrections

Readers are welcome to suggest changes to the comparative examples or to make corrections. Just add a comment to the blog post in question and I will update it accordingly. I especially hope that experts in French, Interlingua, Lingwa de Planeta, and Sambahsa will contact me regularly. In this way we can make this blog a useful resource for students of these languages.

Marking of Stress: Interlingua

I choose to mark the stressed syllable of all irregularly stressed words in Interlingua by using an acute accent, as is done in Spanish, to ensure that the pronunciation of Interlingua is not much more difficult than that of Spanish. Officially, Interlingua is not written with accents, so readers should just ignore the accents when looking up words in Interlingua dictionaries. Here is an example:

EN = man

IA = hómine

To find the Interlingua word in the Interlingua-English Dictionary, look up homine without any accent marks.

Marking of Stress: Sambahsa

Similarly, I choose to mark the stressed syllable of all polysyllabic words in Sambahsa by using an acute accent, merely as a learning exercise for myself to ensure that I fully understand the entirely regular stress patterns of Sambahsa. Unlike Interlingua, Sambahsa has no irregularly stressed words, but the rules of accentuation in Sambahsa are somewhat complicated. Officially, Sambahsa is not written with accents. Here is an example:

EN = writer

SB = scriptór

To find the Sambahsa word in the Sambahsa-English Dictionary, look up scriptor without any accent marks.

Marking of Stress: Lingwa de Planeta

The official orthography of Lingwa de Planeta (LdP) currently uses doubled vowels to indicate irregular stress, but I prefer instead to place an acute accent above the vowel in question and not to double the vowel. For example, the following word is stressed on the final syllable just as it is in French; the LdP word sounds virtually identical to the French word from which it is derived:

FR = voilà

LP = walá

To find the word in the LdP-English dictionary, replace any vowel marked by an acute accent with the same vowel doubled twice without the accent; thus, you should look up the word as walaa.

¹ Interlingua: Alternative Form

The official Interlingua-English Dictionary lists some words in square brackets. For example, [somos]. Such words are valid alternatives which may be used in Interlingua; these include a handful of irregular forms of the verb esser (to be) which will be instantly recognisable to speakers of Romance languages but which do make the language slightly more difficult. Where this would cause a difference compared to standard Interlingua, I show the alternative phrase. Furthermore, when there is a choice of using a highly idiomatic and highly naturalistic expression, I also show this as an alternative phrase even if it does not use any alternative words. Generally, the alternative form is more suitable for writing fiction as it retains more of the flavour and character of natural Romance languages. The standard form is more suitable for non-fiction writing, where one wishes to use the simplest possible expression rather than the most literary expression.

² Expériment

This is not a real language, and certainly not a stable language, it is just a series of thought experiments, playing with grammatical ideas. Loosely based on the fledgling grammar of a language called Olive which I began to develop recently and then abandoned, which featured a complicated but entirely regular set of mandatory articles. These mandatory articles, combined with the grammar, effectively mark parts of speech to a considerable extent, but without mutilation of words. I will mark the stressed syllable of all polysyllabic words with an acute accent. Compound nouns will always be formed using hyphens. There will be no polymorphism of words whatsoever: no declension, no conjugation, no inflexion; a word is a word is a word and never changes. A system of particles will compensate for this to preserve precision; for example, number will be indicated by a particle or assumed from context since nouns will never be declined, not even to indicate the plural. A great advantage of this is words from virtually any language can be imported since there is no need for their form to be amenable to any kind of change; this is a good approach for a worldlang. I will use an ad hoc vocabulary which may not be consistent from example to example (in other words, for now I will just choose any old word I feel like for the purpose of the grammatical example, just as a placeholder). The whole point is just to experiment with grammatical ideas in order to develop new grammatical constructs through a process of creative improvisation. I recommend that readers should ignore the Expériment entries completely, they are of little or no significance at this stage. You may consider them to be merely the private notes of a madman, unless you have a particular interest in conlanging...