Mondilange

Overview

=Lesson One: Setting=

Mondilange is such a logicized world pidgin, made of words of languages of all linguistic groups.

Mondilange is as easily pronounceable as Tokipona.

Mondilange can be as logical as Lojban.

Mondilange has most of its words' functions identified by its ending, like Esperanto.

Mondilange is an art piece.

Mondilange can be used as an international auxiliary language if the world wants to someday.

=Lesson Two: Sounds=

Mondilange has relatively few sounds, and there are five pairs of interchangeable consonants, so that many alphabets (Latin, Greek, Cyrilic, etc.) or syllabaries (Japanese, Amharic, etc.) can be used to represent its sounds.

Vowels
a, e, i, o, u: basic vowels, pronounced approximately as in Spanish, Japanese, etc.

ai, ei, oi, au, ou, eu: each one pronounced as diphtong or hiatus, whatever you want;

iu, ui: idem;

ia, ie, io, ua, uo, ue: idem;

Consonants
h: as in house (but it can be similarly pronounced as the Spanish "j" as well);

l: as in long (if some Japanese can't pronounce it, they can use Japanese "r");

m: as in mother;

n: as in no;

t/d: as in table or dice; you can pronounce t as d and vice-versa, but preferably without the common aspiration of table;

p/b: as in pig or big; you can pronounce p as b and vice-versa, but preferably without the common aspiration of pig;

k/g: as in kart or girl; you can pronounce k as g and vice-versa, but preferably without the common aspiration of kart;

f/v: as in five or vanilla; you can pronounce f as v and vice-versa; those who speak Spanish (and others language which doesn't have sound /v/) should never pronounce v as b or w: you'd better use /f/;

x/j: as ch in chicago or s in measure; it is used to abbreviate or omit sounds; that is to say: it corresponds to the English apostrophe;

Note: These five pairs above are "unvoiced/voiced consonant pairs". Each two consonants of a pair have exactly the same articulation, with the only difference that the first one is pronounced without vibration of the vocal folds. To realize it, pronounce "tah" and "dah" with your finger in your throat and note that your throat vibrate before you pronounce the vowel only in "dah". In mondilange, you should preferably use unvoiced words (t, p, k, f, x) in the word begining and the voiced ones in the middle.

'ng, nd, mb: only these three consonantal encounters are possible;

nid, nig, mib, nud, nug, mub: these strings are not possible.

=Lesson Three: Making words=

Rules for making words
In general, every word in mondilange ends in one of the forms (1), (2), (3) or (4) below, where

"C" is for consonant,

"V" is for the vowels a, e and o,

"v" is for vowels i and u,

"w" is for any vowel, and

"X" is either for x or for j, with the only exception described in the sections Compound Words and How to put consonant or vowel encounters in the middle:

(1) CCw: memba, tongo, penimbu, etc.;

(2) vVCw*: nuova, lievo, tiede, toliedi;

(3) vVX: miex, tuox, honioj, etc.;

(4) CVv: holai, sai, kalei, nau, etc.

*: The consonant in (2) is never "n" nor "m", where they have to be substituted by "nd" and "mb", representing so case (1).

Making compound words
Compound words may be created linking two single words of types (1-2) by means choosing "i" as the final vowel. For instance, suade means "water", while lande means "land". So, suadilande is a word created from them. Its meaning depends on context and should be defined by its creator, but it might mean "land of water".

If the first used single word is in form 3 or 4, an additional "i" is used after it. For example, if you join the words sai and suade, you would have saiisuade. That's the only possible way of putting two equal vowels together, so you should pronounce each one separately: "sai-i-suade" (hyphen is always optional anywhere).

Exercise
Try to form some words following these rules.

Headline text
=Lesson Four: Making sentences=

Types of words
In this topic, morphology and syntax are mixed up, but don't worry about it. We don't need these words. Follow the presented logic and everything's gonna be all right.

Subject and object
By default, Mondilange follows the pattern SVO (subject-verb-object). The subject ends in vowel o and the object in e.

miemo halioha tiode

I love you.

tiodo halioha mieme

You love me.

Mondilange follows a logic a little inspired in computer programming,

s <- V o

i.e., the subject (s) receives (<-) the value of the verb (v) applied to the object (o).

The sign "<-" instead of "=" is to show that "verb-object" is not "equal" to the subject, but only one of its attributes, its predicates. If you know Lojban, the logic language that follows the logic H(x1,x2,x3,...), i.e., H is a "function" which states a relation between the "arguments" x1, x2, x3, etc., you should only identify "x1" as the subject and "x2, x3, ..." as the objects. Identifying the subject has the advantage of clear separation of sentences and definition of the main issue of each one.

Verb
Mondilange verbs usually ends in a. Mondilange has no adjectives or adverbs. If you want to say "She is beautiful", you have a verb "be beautiful" or "beautiful-be":

lialo lieda,

She/he/it is beautiful.

If you really want to use verb "to be", you can say

lialo sai lieda.

The word sai is not exactly "to be", it is a word to state that the following verb happens in the present. But, for many purposes, it works as the verb "to be".

Object
Every single word that can be a subject can also be an object, only changing the final o by a final e.

=Lesson Five: Some vocabulary=

Greeting
halohai: hi!

Hawaiian "aloha" (love, peace, etc.) - English "hello" - Spanish "hola"

tigabai: bye!

Yorùbá "ogabo" - Italian "ciao" - Portuguese "tchau"

Pronouns
mieme: I/me; mueme: we

Proto-indo-european "-mi", European "me", "mi", "mia", etc.

tiode: you/thou; tuode: you (all)/thee

Proto-indo-european "-te", Old Tupy "nde", English "thou", "thee", Thai "than" (polite) and "thoe" (informal), Spanish/Portuguese "tu" and "ti", Spanish "usted", Portuguese "você", etc.

liale: he/she/it; luale: them

Swahili "a-", "wa-", Spanish "él" (m) and "ella" (f), Portuguese "ele" (m) and "ela" (f), etc.

Verbs
haliova: to love

Hawaiian "aloha", English "love".

monka: to eat/to drink

Latin "manducare", Old French "mangier", Tokipona "moku", Esperanto "mangxi",

Nouns
tiehe: soil, ground, earth

Spanish "tierra".

suade: water

English "water", sound simbolism.

hiahe: air

Greek-European "aer", sound simbolism.

fuege: fire

Spanish "fuego", sound simbolism.

kuoke: rock

English, sound simbolism.

miade: wood

Spanish "madera", Portuguese "madeira".

lande: place, region, territory, earth

English.

lohiane: flower

Japanese "ohana", Latin "florum", Proto-indo-european "bhlo-".

Example text
miemo haliova tiode: I love you;

The word miemo is used instead of mieme because the final o indicates that it's the sentence subject.

miex haliova tiox: I love you;

miex monka suade: I drink water;