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What you think abaut Novial?

od noroots, 2 stycznia 2009

Wpisy: 12

Język: English

noroots (Pokaż profil) 2 stycznia 2009, 23:24:08

ceigered (Pokaż profil) 3 stycznia 2009, 05:46:52

noroots:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novial
Even though Novial is not entirely understandable to me, I find it easier than Esperanto from first glance. It seems to reflect natural languages more, while smoothing out irregularities. Grammatically, I'd say it resembles a cross between Scandinavian languages and Afrikaans, vocabulary-wise I'd say it's similar to English, French and German. I would actually debate that this is better suited to international use, but because it has no where near the backing of Esperanto it is unlikely it will be able to be used as a widespread IAL.

Another interesting factor is that it uses bits of well known English words (such as 'may' etc), and while that isn't quite as fair on non-English speakers, it definitely is practical as English gains more ground as an international language.

Ultimately, while I personally like the look of Novial more (please don't flame me lango.gif) it unfortunately does not have the resources of Esperanto... Interesting though how Jespersen has designed it though, his nationality does shine through in the language.

Frankouche (Pokaż profil) 3 stycznia 2009, 10:38:13

Verbal system seems more complicated. I can't.

ceigered (Pokaż profil) 4 stycznia 2009, 04:19:37

Actually as a further addition to my previous post, I'd also have to add that it, like just about every other IAL, has heaps of Romance roots - I just think the whole 'romance IAL' thing has been slightly overdone, if you consider that there's already Esperanto, Ido, Lingua Franca Nova, Interlingua etc.

noroots (Pokaż profil) 8 stycznia 2009, 00:11:37

Did anyone read Jesperes`s book?

erinja (Pokaż profil) 8 stycznia 2009, 01:08:59

I never read any of Jespersen's writings. He seems to me to be a little flaky; he hopped from IAL to IAL like there was no tomorrow. He never really stuck with anything. I have no doubt that even if Novial had taken off, he would have hopped on to something else anyway, or had a better idea for more improvements.

I don't know a great deal about Novial but it seems good for people who just love the way that English words. The grammar seems to be the most like English, of all of the IALs. If you look at Esperanto and think "Gee, I wish this worked more like English", then probably Novial is the language for you.

Whatever its strengths or weaknesses, Novial has few speakers. I am not very familiar with the Novial community, but if they are like other IALs, then most of their speakers are probably committed Esperantists who like to dabble with other IALs on the side. This is certainly true of Volapuk (a very small community anyway, but I think there are very few Volapuk speakers who don't also speak Esperanto, or perhaps none at all, and the latest Volapuk book that I heard of being published was a Volapuk/Esperanto dictionary).

I personally know of at least one Esperanto speaker (speaks it as his home language with his wife and kids) who speaks a couple of other IALs, on one level or another, and corresponds on internet forums in those languages. But his main interest is Esperanto; you might say that those others are a hobby. In this sense, the existence of the Esperanto movement has been useful to languages like Novial. While these Esperantists chose Esperanto as their preferred international language, when they use another IAL, they also help give life to these other movements, even though they wouldn't describe themselves as being "Ido supporters" or "Novial supporters", etc.

ceigered (Pokaż profil) 8 stycznia 2009, 08:53:35

Actually quite interesting Erinja, when I was reading your post it reminded me of how many IAL's are based off of Esperanto or any other older IAL.

Hopefully things don't get to the point where we need IALAL's - international auxiliary language auxiliary languages.

Spanglanese (Pokaż profil) 8 stycznia 2009, 16:19:11

One of the enduring critisims of Esperanto is that it primarily derived from European langauges; outside of Europe (and the parts of the rest of the world where European culture and Language remain prevalent) it is difficult to learn Esperanto. The success of (mainly Japanese) people worldwide to learn Esperanto, albiet with more difficulty than people who speak European Languages first, shows that the language is learnable worldwide. One of the reasons for this is the fluid yet rigid structure of Esperanto; "La pomon la viro mangxas" and "La viro mangxas la pomon" are both equivalent to "The man eats the apple."
By contrast, Novial relies on a structured word order and instead of endings. This is contrary to the logic found in most langauges around the world. For example, in Japanese, one indicates the direct object by means of a partical: "o/wo," very much like our own "-n" accusitive ending. Word order is fairly unimportant.
Also, Jesperesen missed the boat on another problem with Esperanto. It is somewhat difficult to pronounce for non-Europeans. This language, however, has worsened this problem by introducing more Germanic pronounciations; most of the world tends towards a consanant-vowel-consanant-vowel pattern. Novial appears to be even more germanic than Esperanto, stacking consenents up one after another.
While I agree that Esperanto has its flaws, they are at best minor, and do not compare to the ones found in Novial.

jchthys (Pokaż profil) 16 lutego 2009, 18:19:40

All constructed languages except Esperanto, Ido and Interlingua look weird or awkward. Volapük also looks better to me, since the words are not recognizable; it looks more like Finnish to me.

ceigered (Pokaż profil) 17 lutego 2009, 03:44:35

jchthys:All constructed languages except Esperanto, Ido and Interlingua look weird or awkward. Volapük also looks better to me, since the words are not recognizable; it looks more like Finnish to me.
There's the solution right there then - let's all start learning Finish! From now on, 'lernu!' will be called 'oppikaa!' rido.gif
I personally find Ido to be less awkward looking than Esperanto or even many natural languages, simply because it uses no combination of accent marker thingos (what's the word.. dicritives? argh). But of course, same goes for Dutch, English and sometimes Italian, (and probably German, as the umlauts are the only d-thingos in the language).

But Interlingua does look awkward to me - unlike Esperanto and Ido, which tend to borrow latin words in what I would call less-controlled ways, the Interlingua vocab seems sort of compromised - e.g. dis instead of de, which can be confusing.

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