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Re: Theory of Language

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kingkiller1000 is not online. kingkiller1000
Joined: 12 Dec 2008
Total Posts: 26415
19 Nov 2012 06:31 PM
Most languages are overly complicated, which is expected, because they're not constructed. Nobody sat down in the early Roman ages and discussed how Latin should be spoken. Not until 1827 that is, with the invention of Solresol, and the birth of International Auxiliary Languages. Four IALs later was Esperanto, the most popular one with a few millions speakers. Although these kinds of languages are great and easy to learn, they're not very well known. Esperanto, the most popular, has only a few millions speakers. These languages are meant to be easier to learn, and have as few or no exceptions.

Exceptions aside, languages are still messed up. It seems quite inefficient. Some parts of speech aren't even needed (not as a whole word, at least), such as adjectives, prepositions or adverbs. And no, it's not impossible to say things without them! Instead of saying, "the sky is blue", why can't one say, "the sky blues"? In fact, in Esperanto, and probably many other languages, you can. As for prepositions, it would be a lot harder to go without them, but they need not be a whole word. It could instead be just a simple prefix or suffix. Adverbs technically are adjectives, or I classify them as so, but the -ly suffix gives more description of what it's describing. In some languages, like German, adverbs don't exist at all and are replaced by adjectives.

I am in the process of creating a language that is similar to Esperanto. It has sort of a Cyrillic-looking alphabet, because I like the letters looking like they can fit in boxes, whereas the Latin alphabet, in my opinion, is horrendously ugly. Letters shouldn't be different heights, and they shouldn't be different than the rest if they start at the beginning of a word. I've decided to call it Athnican, and I plan it to be similar to Esperanto. I've borrowed some traits of it, such as the correlatives, but is most certainly not derived from it. Mine is very different, heavy stress on prefixes, and no suffixes exist. I do everything logically- even stress makes a difference.

In my language, there are roots, just like any other. But prefixes are the only modifiers. Prefixes can determine several things, from verb tense to levels of extremeness (not good, bad, terrible, absolutely awful, etc). All prefixes are in consonant-vowel pairs, so that I don't have to worry about collisions with unpronounceable chains of consonants or vowels. It also gives me, with about eighteen consonants and six vowels, 108 prefixes to give definitions. Though, this does limit me so that I can't produce roots beginning with a vowel (the only one I have done is ene (eh-neh), meaning I/me).

Language also has twice or even thrice the vocabulary as needed. The words "like" and "hate" are totally different in English, they both must be seperately memorized, though they are related in that they are opposites. In Athnican, there are only positive words; negative words do not exist. To create a negative, add a prefix "fe" (feh). Therefore, you cannot be "poor", just "not rich". You can even do this with non-verbs, to say something along the lines of, "it wasn't ME that did it! (It was him). Esperanto does the same thing as this- add the prefix mal and it has the same function. But the whole concept is limiting- what if you want to say "neither rich nor poor/in the middle"? Surprise, surprise- I have created another prefix to handle that as well. In essence, with just this one prefix, half of the language's vocabulary is wiped out. Even more words, adverbs in particular, can be destroyed with prefixes. I've created six prefixes all starting with R that describe levels of extremeness. That can get rid of many adverbs, like "very" or "extremely" and adverbs related to them. But we're not done- even MORE words can be knocked out by taking out nouns as separate words! In Esperanto, the ending of a word determines the part of speech, so it's easy to turn an adjective into a noun. In Athnican, you guessed it- you add a prefix to make it a noun. But different prefixes mean different things. "Se" (seh) means "a", "De" (deh) means "the", and there are others that are unnecessary to mention. But when any of these prefixes are attached, the word can automatically be assumed a noun. Otherwise, it is a verb. There aren't any other parts of speech (if you count pronouns as nouns).

Adjectives shouldn't exist. It should all be based upon verbs. So instead of saying "the house is blue", you would say "the house is blueing". Or, if you're not using a copula verb, you could simply say "the blueing house" or "the house that is blueing". The latter seems sort of long, but that's because English isn't built to support this. This completely destroys the need for the verb "to be", and makes things just simpler.

Plurals are a useless piece of required information. I despise Latin for this- there's no word for a/the, but plurals exist. It should be the other way around. In English and most other languages which have plurals, they're not optional. If there's more than one, you must make the object plural. My language doesn't even have plural pronouns unless you add a verb that makes it multiple. What I mainly don't understand is, why is it that two or more has its own version? Why isn't there anything for three or more? Five or more? Ten or more? Ten or less? I hate random numbers and cutoffs like that, they're not very mathematical. Words should remain the same despite number, and if you would like, add an adjective (or in my language, verb) that describes the number.

Stress is required in English, but it serves no point. Originally, my language had no stress, but I decided to use it. I have taken advantage of stress in my language. You know by now that prefixes are the main key to my language, and so I have decided to put it to use to avoid possible confusion. To put it simply, the first syllable in the root is stressed. So you say all prefixes, and when you start saying the root, stress the first syllable to indicate that it's the root, and everything previously said was prefixes. Remember- Athnican is a logical language. I avoid as much uselessness as possible.

Questions in English are also illogical. I don't even know why they exist, in all honesty. One day, I realized someone asked a question, but it was a statement, not a question. I figured out how it worked, and implemented it into my language. Basically, you have one common question word, and treat it like it's a real noun or verb or whatever. In fact, treat the whole sentence as it's a question. The recipient will understand that you do not know what goes in place of that word, and will fill it in for you.
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callmelegobob is not online. callmelegobob
Joined: 18 Jul 2010
Total Posts: 1595
19 Nov 2012 07:30 PM
[ Content Deleted ]
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StarFire289 is not online. StarFire289
Joined: 10 Oct 2009
Total Posts: 6339
19 Nov 2012 07:37 PM
@cllmlgbb

hr s yr wsh
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callmelegobob is not online. callmelegobob
Joined: 18 Jul 2010
Total Posts: 1595
19 Nov 2012 07:43 PM
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StarFire289 is not online. StarFire289
Joined: 10 Oct 2009
Total Posts: 6339
19 Nov 2012 07:50 PM
like dis?

fhkdhsldhgslghsklghsklhgskl gdkgdfkgl fhsdklhsdkghkdhksdlghs dgklshgksdghdkls
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callmelegobob is not online. callmelegobob
Joined: 18 Jul 2010
Total Posts: 1595
19 Nov 2012 07:59 PM
[ Content Deleted ]
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kingkiller1000 is not online. kingkiller1000
Joined: 12 Dec 2008
Total Posts: 26415
19 Nov 2012 09:06 PM
There is a language, Arabic, I think, that includes no vowels.
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TheMyrco is not online. TheMyrco
Joined: 13 Aug 2011
Total Posts: 15105
20 Nov 2012 10:37 AM
Cool and interesting.
What are the words gonna be like?
As in, what would be the base if any at al? (Germanic, Romanic, Asian, ...)
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TheMyrco is not online. TheMyrco
Joined: 13 Aug 2011
Total Posts: 15105
20 Nov 2012 10:40 AM
Oh and what about accents and different letters? (i.e: ê, ü, ð, þ, ij, æ...)
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TheMyrco is not online. TheMyrco
Joined: 13 Aug 2011
Total Posts: 15105
20 Nov 2012 10:40 AM
(And digraphs, lol)
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kingkiller1000 is not online. kingkiller1000
Joined: 12 Dec 2008
Total Posts: 26415
20 Nov 2012 03:49 PM
The words will be as short as possible. I will do every combination possible of one syllable words, then every combination of two syllable words, etc. Hopefully, I should have all the words in two syllables, if not a couple with three.

The alphabet I completely made up with no intention of it being similar to current alphabets. There is a coincidental resemblance with already existing characters, though. For example, since my alphabet is sort of square-ish (no letter takes up more room than another; they all can fit inside imaginary squares the same size) and the Cyrillic alphabet is similar, there are some letters that resemble:

и looks like my T
н looks like my B
о looks like my N
п looks like my D
с looks like my L
х looks like my S
ה (except slightly thinner and upside-down) looks like my TH (as in Cloth, always unvoiced)
ך looks like my K

and some others which I won't post. There are no capitals.

Accents in my language exist, but they're not really accents, they're vowels. You know how I said stress indicates the beginning of the root? Well, to tell which one is stressed in writing, I have created six different accent marks, each corresponding one one of the six vowels. These accents are written on the _consonant_ preceding the vowel, and the vowel is skipped, because you can tell what to say afterward based on what the accent looks like. (If there are no prefixes, no accent is required.)

The six vowel accent marks are (pretend the letter underneath is a consonant in my alphabet, not the roman alphabet):

ó = eh (as in Bed)
ò = ay (as in May)
ô = oh (as in Low)
ŭ = ah (as in Father)
ō = oo (as in Do)
ȯ = ee (as in Machine)

It's a lot easier than it looks since I have to explain it with words only and no examples...
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TheMyrco is not online. TheMyrco
Joined: 13 Aug 2011
Total Posts: 15105
20 Nov 2012 03:52 PM
Verb conjugation? Future? Past? Now?
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TheMyrco is not online. TheMyrco
Joined: 13 Aug 2011
Total Posts: 15105
20 Nov 2012 03:55 PM
How about one form for all the vowels in all tenses, like Norwegian.

like the whole verb would be
ô hóиô

Then the 'Now' is always with an -r:
hóиôr

Future always with -ròr
hóиôròr

And the past always with -rŭr:
hóиôrŭr
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TheMyrco is not online. TheMyrco
Joined: 13 Aug 2011
Total Posts: 15105
20 Nov 2012 03:56 PM
And all verbs should be regular c:
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kingkiller1000 is not online. kingkiller1000
Joined: 12 Dec 2008
Total Posts: 26415
20 Nov 2012 03:57 PM
For past, add the prefix "ge". For future, "be". For conditional-ish tense, "la(h)".
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kingkiller1000 is not online. kingkiller1000
Joined: 12 Dec 2008
Total Posts: 26415
20 Nov 2012 03:59 PM
> And all verbs should be regular c:

They are.

I'm not sure what you mean by the Norwegian-like thing though...
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kingkiller1000 is not online. kingkiller1000
Joined: 12 Dec 2008
Total Posts: 26415
20 Nov 2012 04:00 PM
> I'm not sure what you mean by the Norwegian-like thing though...

Never mind, I do. But I can't do that, because not all words end in a vowel, so adding an R to the end would be hard to pronounce.
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TheMyrco is not online. TheMyrco
Joined: 13 Aug 2011
Total Posts: 15105
20 Nov 2012 04:01 PM
@king:
å lære

Jeg lærer
Du lærer
Hun/Han lærer

....

It's the same.

And btw, should the infinitive forms of the verbs have an infinitive indication? Like "å" in Norwegian and "to" in English?
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TheMyrco is not online. TheMyrco
Joined: 13 Aug 2011
Total Posts: 15105
20 Nov 2012 04:02 PM
@king: Well the prefix(/appendix) could be changed.
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kingkiller1000 is not online. kingkiller1000
Joined: 12 Dec 2008
Total Posts: 26415
20 Nov 2012 04:05 PM
The root is the infinitive, I guess. There isn't any need for infinitives. But, the conjugations are all the same.

In fact, roots are just roots. They don't have a specified type of speech. Prefixes are what modify it to become understandable. I never really thought of this, but I suppose parts of speech can simply be forgotten...
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TheMyrco is not online. TheMyrco
Joined: 13 Aug 2011
Total Posts: 15105
20 Nov 2012 04:06 PM
Don't worry, think now, do later.
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kingkiller1000 is not online. kingkiller1000
Joined: 12 Dec 2008
Total Posts: 26415
20 Nov 2012 04:36 PM
I'm in the process of creating a prefix dictionary. I plan to fill all 108 possible prefixes.
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XxJimmyxX is not online. XxJimmyxX
Joined: 15 Feb 2009
Total Posts: 7380
20 Nov 2012 04:54 PM
Will there be any kind of flow in the language? Such as in French if you have two vowels together in a sentence/phrase you put an apostrophe.

e.i., je aime (I like) -> j'aime (I like)
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sinii is not online. sinii
Joined: 30 Sep 2011
Total Posts: 15218
20 Nov 2012 05:55 PM
"Some parts of speech aren't even needed (not as a whole word, at least), such as adjectives, prepositions or adverbs. And no, it's not impossible to say things without them! Instead of saying, "the sky is blue", why can't one say, "the sky blues"?"

In my first two languages, there are no articles or present "to be" conjugations, so we say something with the structure "sky blue," literally. Небо голубое. That's a lot more efficient than "the sky blues."
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kingkiller1000 is not online. kingkiller1000
Joined: 12 Dec 2008
Total Posts: 26415
20 Nov 2012 10:01 PM
Yes, but in Russian there is no verb for "to be" ONLY in the present tense. In mine, there are no copulas at all.

> That's a lot more efficient than "the sky blues."

How? Both are two words (The and Sky are attached in mine), and you don't add any extra letters for conjugation.
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