Mondilange

Overview

=Lesson One: Introduction=

What's Mondilange?
Mondilange is a phantastic language.

Mondilange is made of words from all linguistic groups of the Earth.

Mondilange is such a world pidgin made logical.

Mondilange is politically correct.

Mondilange is a piece of art.

Mondilange learning must be instructive on world cultures.

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.

Building rules
(1) Take into account words from as many languages as possible.

As European international languages, we already have Interlingua, Esperanto, and, naturally, English. Naturally, many words will have their form much modified in order to fit Mondilange patterns.

(2) Equilibrate analogy and differentiation.

For instance, "I" should have in its form some similarity to "you", but the differences must make them clearly distinguishable.

(3) Try to make more common phonetic errors not much important to comprehension.

Some people can't distinguish /f/ from /v/, /l/ from /r/, /ua/ from /wa/, /old/ from /owd/, etc.

=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, but before "g" it is a velar nasal stop;

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 consonants (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 inside a word, in order to avoid confusion with the consonantal encounters.

=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:

(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 of choosing "i" as the final vowel of the first one. 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).

Stress, tone and rhythm
Mondilange has no defined stress, tone nor rhythm. This mean that you can choose which syllable you want to stress, which you want to speak treble or bass, and the speed you want to speak.

Exercise
Try to form some words following these rules.

Headline text
=Lesson Four: Making sentences=

Verbs
Mondilange sentences are based on the verbs.

liova: to love

Who loves?

mieme fau: "I do" = "I love."

Who do you love?

tiode sou: "You are" = "It's you I love."

liova mieme fau tiode sou

I love you.

Well, fau is a particle that follows the subject and sou follows the direct object. Anyway, If you don't like particles, feel free to omit them, but keep in mind that the subject must always be before the direct object:

mieme liova tiode

OR

liova mieme tiode

OR

miex liova tiox (abbreviations)

Choose which looks more romantic for you.

=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;

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

tiode: you/thou;

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;

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

Verbs
liova: 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". Besides, affricate sound of "t" reminds me earth. Please confirm it! :-D

suade: water

English "water", onomatopoeia "shwah...".

huahe: air

Greek-European "aer", onomatopoeia (aspiration ~ wind).

fuege: fire

Spanish "fuego", onomatopoeia "fffff...".

kuoke: rock

English, onomatopoeia ("k" reminds rock breaking, don't you think?).

miade: wood

Spanish "madera", Portuguese "madeira".

lande: place, region, territory, earth

English.

lohiane: flower

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

=Lesson Six: Cases=

I really don't need to explain what's a case. Just keep in mind that, in English, cases are made with prepositions:

to you / to our destiny

for you / for me

by you / by someone

of you / of my heart

on you / on the table

etc.

In Mondilange, they are generally made by postpositions (come after the noun)

sangu: on

tuabe sangu: on [the] table

Mandarim "shàng": on

Latin "tabula": table

Spanish "queda": to stay, to lie

lohiane kieda tuabe sangu

[The] flower lies on the table.

But they can be made by prepositions as well:

sangu tuabe lohiane kieda.

Note that the same word sangu is a preposition now, as it came before the noun.

'''So... Why do I know where to put it?'''

In truth, sangu is neither a prepositon nor a postposition: it is simply a case particle. The rule is quite simple:

The noun is always between its verb and its case particle.

It is look like an equation. Imagine that you have right-hand and left-hand sides, and the verb is the sign = ("equal to"). In the equation, when you get a term from a side and put it into the another side, you change its sign.

a = b + c

a - c = b

Pretend that the "verb" kieda is the equal-to sign, so

lohiane kieda tuabe sangu

maybe written as

LOHIANE = TS (tuabe sangu)

so

LOHIANE - TS = 0 (nothing)

Now, accept that the minus sign only change letters, i.e., -TS = ST, so

LOHIANE + ST = 0

or

ST + LOHIANE = 0

Translating into Mondilange:

sangu tuabe lohiane kieda

If you asked yourself if you could translate LOHIANE + ST = 0 directly, you got the point:

lohiane sangu tuabe kieda