Forum:Group Project/Vocabulary

Start-General-Vocabulary-Organization-Innovations

I don't like the idea of recurring to other languages for vocabulary. Of course, we can use "international" words like "telephone", "internet" or "bank", but I think the language core should be mostly original. Panglossa | Talk 02:26, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

I concur. Razlem 02:29, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

Well at least make them logical. Come to think of it, I'm starting to really like te idea of a Tiengviet-style language that is purely syllabic. Here are some ideas:

•No distinction of anything in noun; particles, even for number, are used instead

•Verb conjugation is done somewat like this: hypothetical verb "nong" meaning "to eat": past nung, future/present nǝng, adjectival/adverbial ning, passive adds long stress (é), noun adds nazalization. This is really pushing it, but hey.

•further distinction is made in particles.

•There might be some form of Chinese-style classifier to substitute for gender. Maybe ì could be a classifier for artificial and ò for natural. Those could be used alone to be a definite particle and then one (say yam) could be indefinite so say "a bank" becomes "yam ì bãnk." —Detectivekenny; (Info) Preceding text certified by R. Xun as of 03:39, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

Just an idea, but does anyone here know Icelandic's way of building words? It's quite fascinating. Icelandic went through a period of linguistic purism, so a lot of loanwords were erased and replaced with clever new words. For example, "police" in Icelandic is "lögreglan"; "lög" means law, and "reglan" means rule. Nurse, hjúkrunarfræðingur; "hjúkrunar" means "nursing", and "fræðingur" means "scholar". Another not so direct way is the Icelandic word for "electricity", "rafmagn", which comes from "raf", or "amber", and máttur, or "power". Just a thought! :) LctrGzmn 04:36, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

Is there a system? It would be interesting, but if there isn't it would be best to keep an auxlang an auxlang. I never knew that, though. Thanks. —Detectivekenny; (Info) Preceding text certified by R. Xun as of 04:45, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

Well ususally it just follows a simple compound word formation rule, with the occasional epenthetic vowel to help them connect (since some words don't connect as easily). However, it does not need to be as extreme as compounding, for that might give you words like hjúkrunarfræðingur, :P Another idea I think could work is a less agglutinative way, though by use of combining words. Like in Spanish, the word for "toothbrush (oh hey, compound word ", "sepillo de dientes", literally means "brush of teeth". It's quite common, in many languages. Another example is shown in French such as the word for "toe", which is "doigt de pied", or "finger of foot". Get creative with it! It can be both really regular, or really irregular :) LctrGzmn 04:57, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

Compounding exists in many languages including Esperanto (pomsuko, kantobirdo, kaftaso), and most languages include the system you mention here. However, both systems lack regularity. Take the example pomsuko in Esperanto and jugo de manzana in Spanish, both meaning "apple juice." Say you had no idea of the relation between "manzana" and "jugo." Is it juice made out of apples? Is it juice made from apples? Is it juice that you drink out of hollowed-out apples? Is it juice used to wash apples? One doesn't really know the relationship, so that method is highly irregular. However, it sounds really cool and should be considered. —Detectivekenny; (Info) Preceding text certified by R. Xun as of 14:33, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

In Spanish, there is no of/from distinction, so the first two would mean the same thing. Juice from a hollowed-out apple would be "jugo de la manzana corta" (or something to that degree). Juice to wash apples would be "jugo para lavar manzanas." Ambiguity is inescapable for words taken out of context. If you clean apples for a living, one can infer that you're talking about "jugo para lavar manzanas". If you're a child at the grocery store, one can infer that you're talking about the beverage made from apples "jugo de manzana". Razlem 15:42, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

But still. There is no definite meaning of "de." It is not the same in cepillo de dientes as it is in jugo de manzana, Museo de Oro, or castillo de arena. —Detectivekenny; (Info) Preceding text certified by R. Xun as of 15:57, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

Yes, you are right. But that's the thing. You really can't escape ambiguities. Were you to say "I went to the museum of natural history and drank apple juice" in your above argued analytical style, it would probably be twice as long. No matter how analytical or synthetic a language will be, it will always have ambiguities. LctrGzmn 16:09, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

Not really. Check out. Even if it can't go to that level, it is still possible to have an analytical-like language that's still efficient. —Detectivekenny; (Info) Preceding text certified by R. Xun as of 16:28, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

Well if you're going for a philosiphical language... whatever happend to "..it would be best to keep an auxlang an auxlang..."? :p Just saying! LctrGzmn 16:36, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

True. I think it would just be more logical to distinguish "made of" meaning of "of" from the other definitions. —Detectivekenny; (Info) Preceding text certified by R. Xun as of 21:44, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

Logical to whom? If it's an auxlang, then wouldn't it have to play with a feature everyone is familiar with? Not every language carries the same so-called logic, but I guess that also differs on your objective of the language. Aside from that, I never said you had to use the prepostion "of". I was merely stating that you could use mini phrases that describe another word. But hey, if you want to have to invent a new root for every word, be my guest :p LctrGzmn 22:33, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

Not logic, just a reduction of ambiguity. And that's what I was thinking too, mini phrases. —Detectivekenny; (Info) Preceding text certified by R. Xun as of 00:44, May 29, 2010 (UTC)

Is the idea above in green ruled out? —Detectivekenny; (Info) Preceding text certified by R. Xun as of 02:12, May 29, 2010 (UTC)
 * For future projects, we can include a syllabic system. But for an auxlang, we should stick with a system like Esperanto with the junction of two roots. Razlem 19:09, May 30, 2010 (UTC)

Vocab Idea
I'm moving the discussion here (copied from official page)

For artificial nouns ("noodle", for example) we could borrow the word from the language form the country that developed it. In this case, "noodle" could be something like "mijaantij" from the Chinese 面条. Natural nouns can be a priori. Just thinking out loud. Razlem 18:10, June 7, 2010 (UTC)

Not a bad idea. But it's better not to just use google-translate-like translations in that case. Mian means bread or flour and tiao means something long, so we might use mjen or mjan to mean noodles rather than that gigantic word mijaantij. However, are we dealing with a large vocabulary or a small one? —Detectivekenny; (Info) Preceding text certified by R. Xun as of 23:20, June 7, 2010 (UTC)


 * Granted, it will take some digging to find words for "cup" or "plate" (unless someone happens to know ancient Sumerian/Egyptian?). A small vocab would be easier to deal with as long as we have a regular junction system. As this is an auxlang, the word base should be limited to basic conversation (nothing technical, like "hypothermic"). Razlem 23:41, June 7, 2010 (UTC)
 * For those cases, just make something up. Just an example: taapa for cup and Pjaan for plate. There's a little resemblance to real world languages, but not total. —Detectivekenny; (Info) Preceding text certified by R. Xun as of 00:11, June 8, 2010 (UTC)
 * I actually found some sources in Sumerian and Egyptian :D . I can cross-check for validity, but it's certainly possible to use some of these such as "priest" or "house." Razlem 15:09, June 8, 2010 (UTC)