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18 word language

de k1attack, 2010-marto-06

Mesaĝoj: 147

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Greyshades (Montri la profilon) 2010-marto-10 16:53:14

I've worked on modifying Vuyamu for a more practical use, anyone interested in working with me on it, just send me a message or email. In my eyes, it's much more of an experiment and it doesn't have much more potential than that. In fact, Esperanto is the only language that I believe does have potential to be more than just a hobby.

We all understand how superior Esperanto is, so can we get back to the minimalistic/oligosynthetic language topic? I for one, am very interested in it okulumo.gif

jan aleksan (Montri la profilon) 2010-marto-10 18:00:07

Greyshades, I'm interested by the project (are you the creator?)

Greyshades (Montri la profilon) 2010-marto-11 01:50:52

No I'm not the creator, in fact I don't know who is. But I found it and started editing and modifying part of it. My current work is on the Conlang Wikia, but there isn't much on it.

Any ideas where we could collaborate on it?

trojo (Montri la profilon) 2010-marto-11 03:11:54

Greyshades:We all understand how superior Esperanto is, so can we get back to the minimalistic/oligosynthetic language topic? I for one, am very interested in it okulumo.gif
One thing on that topic I was thinking about today was words for body parts, e.g. leg, arm, head, etc. Such words are tremendously productive, e.g. "head" can refer to literal head, a leadership position, or the top of some physical object. Or "leg": people and animals have legs as do most pieces of furniture, and you could also use "leg" to mean "to support". The word for "foot" could double as the word for "to go", and the word for "hand" could mean "to have". These are the kinds of words you can give loads of different definitions to and yet still be mostly clear what you are talking about, and they would mostly be easy to remember since everyone capable of learning a new language should already be familiar with the functions of their own various body parts. I think "minimalist" conlangs would do well to include lots of body part words.

That's one thing I think Toki Pona got right. Body part words form a rather large chunk of its tiny vocabulary.

k1attack (Montri la profilon) 2010-marto-11 12:56:00

Greyshades:In my eyes, it's much more of an experiment
A thought experiment he said.

k1attack (Montri la profilon) 2010-marto-11 13:04:36

Greyshades:I've worked on modifying Vuyamu for a more practical use, anyone interested in working with me on it, just send me a message or email. In my eyes, it's much more of an experiment and it doesn't have much more potential than that. In fact, Esperanto is the only language that I believe does have potential to be more than just a hobby.

We all understand how superior Esperanto is, so can we get back to the minimalistic/oligosynthetic language topic? I for one, am very interested in it okulumo.gif
I support Esperanto, but I admit, the minimalistic languages also look really tempting. They're not for idiots, I was wrong. They're made just for fun!!!

I think Vuyamu should add an extra word, "li", which could be used before and after a proper name, since every other syllable has a meaning.

Also, I think adjectives should go before a noun, not after it, in order to make compund words easier to understand. E.g. it should be "fasting-moving-object" rather than "object-moving-fast" and the new name of the language will be "Muyavu" (li muyavu li" in the language itself) instead of "Vuyamu".

k1attack (Montri la profilon) 2010-marto-11 13:10:45

What about Bon Wen?

ceigered (Montri la profilon) 2010-marto-11 14:23:08

k1attack:Also, I think adjectives should go before a noun, not after it, in order to make compund words easier to understand. E.g. it should be "fasting-moving-object" rather than "object-moving-fast" and the new name of the language will be "Muyavu" (li muyavu li" in the language itself) instead of "Vuyamu".
I actually was reading into word order like that not long ago. It's interesting - languages with a subject-object-verb order tend to work interestingly with adjectives first and the described-noun after, because it keeps in line with the whole underlying structure of a sentence - your standard sentence is basically, in most languages anyway, describing an action or a state of being - in SOV/OSV (verb final) languages, the finer details of the action (e.g. the thing that did the action) get emphasised by coming first. In Adjective-noun order, the finer details of the noun (e.g. whatever could be used to tell it apart from other things) also get emphasised by coming first.

However, flip everything around so the verb is first (VSO like in Irish, or VOS if there are any languages like that) and the corresponding change for the adjective-noun order would be noun-adjective, because in VSO style languages the general detail of the action/state is emphasised, rather than the finer details (e.g. "Ta tu go hiontach, in Irish (see link) is basically "Be me wonderful", so to the listener the first thing they hear is "be", thus they know the sentence is going to be about being. In "Rex sum" (Latin: I am king), the first element "Rex" is emphasised, so the listener would be "Oh, this fellow's talking about kings" straight after hearing the first element of the sentence).

Note though this isn't a rule or guideline or even an observance (Non-poetry latin breaks this rule quite horribly, then again, Old/Early Latin is where it's at, not this "Classical" rubbish rido.gif (just joking)), but rather just showing how word order depends on what you want to stress, so if word order were to change it might change the way the listener deduces/interprets/parses the sentence while listening.

k1attack (Montri la profilon) 2010-marto-11 15:47:14

I think Bon Wen and Toki Pona are less clumsy to use than Vuyamu and other oligosynthetic languages. It's wierd when every word has only one syllable. It makes a language unnatural and really wierd. And Bon Wen contains some needless words.
One thing on that topic I was thinking about today was words for body parts, e.g. leg, arm, head, etc. Such words are tremendously productive, e.g. "head" can refer to literal head, a leadership position, or the top of some physical object. Or "leg": people and animals have legs as do most pieces of furniture, and you could also use "leg" to mean "to support". The word for "foot" could double as the word for "to go", and the word for "hand" could mean "to have". These are the kinds of words you can give loads of different definitions to and yet still be mostly clear what you are talking about, and they would mostly be easy to remember since everyone capable of learning a new language should already be familiar with the functions of their own various body parts. I think "minimalist" conlangs would do well to include lots of body part words.

That's one thing I think Toki Pona got right. Body part words form a rather large chunk of its tiny vocabulary.
You're right. One thing wierd about Toki Pona is the lack of the verb "to be" which makes things confusing, and its word order. Toki Pona puts adjectives after the noun, which is wierd.

k1attack (Montri la profilon) 2010-marto-11 15:51:48

Puna, Bon Wen, Toki Pona or Vuyamu?
You choose!

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