Forum:Group Project

Start-General-Vocabulary-Organization-Innovations I have split this up to ease things The Emperor Zelos 15:48, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

Alphabet and Regularity (proposed)
It would be best to have absolute regularity with all parts of speech. But in order to do that, we need to decide which letters can be used.

Vowels: a e i o u

Consonants: b d f g k l m n p r s t v w y z

Diphthongs: ng, ay, ey, oy

So for regularity: Anyone want to add/subtract anything? Razlem 23:48, May 27, 2010 (UTC)

Maybe not so regular. The -o rule drives me nuts in esperanto. How about nouns end in a consonant, and thenSo for regularity:

Stuff that requires shorter words should be able to end in consonants. —Detectivekenny; (Info) Preceding text certified by R. Xun as of 02:09, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

As long as it's a vowel followed by a consonant. The whole idea is to be able to change meaning without creating a new word/ending (Esperanto: teatro- "theater" teatra-"theatrical"). This is assuming that the roots all end in a consonant. Razlem 02:24, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

I was thinking, say theatre is "teater", then theatrical is "teatera," and theatrically is "teateri." Much like Esperanto. Note the changes I made above to verbs. —Detectivekenny; (Info) Preceding text certified by R. Xun as of 03:24, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

I suppose, but would every word end in R? If it has to be a consonant, L may be easier to say (and to hear). Razlem 03:51, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

Well no. Not every noun has to end in r. There could be a group of consonants that would be natural nouns (say r, p, t, k), artificial nouns (s, f, g, b, d) or something like that. But lol I was thinking a Korean/Japanese system where there's only one liquid which could sound like an l or an r depending on the situation. But check out my syllabic system and that would probably change all this. —Detectivekenny; (Info) Preceding text certified by R. Xun as of 04:02, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

I think Razlem's system is fine, the -o thing in Esperanto is fine and it sounds great. —Preceding signed comment added by TimeMaster (talk • contribs) 17:52, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

That was not biased at all… —Detectivekenny; (Info) Preceding text certified by R. Xun as of 02:00, May 29, 2010 (UTC)

Word Building
I'm not a huge fan of consonant clusters. I was thinking of a system similar to Japanese, with a successive alternation of vowel/consonant. Of course, this would eliminate some diphthongs. Razlem 01:56, May 29, 2010 (UTC)

That actually drives me nuts because I tend to find happiness in scant syllables (like Mandarin or Vietnamese which can be spoken surprisingly quickly and acccurately despite ambiguity in the former and large phonemic inventory in the second). I don't like consonant clusters much either, though. Maybe a system more like Thai/Khmer would be better. Like you can have some consonant clusters like phra, khla, phnom, krung, but nothing to the extent of Dutch. It increases the phonemic inventory, but you don't hear Thai speakers slow down to the hebetude of English. —Detectivekenny; (Info) Preceding text certified by R. Xun as of 02:05, May 29, 2010 (UTC)

We could do a maximum of any two consonants, any more must be separated by a vowel. I'm just trying to keep things regular. Razlem 02:58, May 29, 2010 (UTC)

Okay. And two consonants can't be next to each other at the end of a word. But we still need to decide on the phonology, right? —Detectivekenny; (Info) Preceding text certified by R. Xun as of 03:05, May 29, 2010 (UTC)

Right, but I'm not sure how to go about doing that. Voting is an option, but entrants shouldn't be able to vote. Razlem 03:42, May 29, 2010 (UTC)

Why not just debate on the divergences:


 * 1) Include "ǝ" as a vowel?


 * 1) One liquid (r) or two (l and r)?


 * 1) Voiced consonants?


 * 1) Consonants: nh, h, nq, q, x?


 * 1) Tones?


 * 1) Diphthongs with w? —Detectivekenny; (Info) Preceding text certified by R. Xun as of 14:02, May 29, 2010 (UTC)

What we must not forget is that it is an auxiliary language. So, we must keep it simple. Not to the point of minimalism, but we should avoid very complex clusters or very uncommon sounds. But there is one thing we can do so that it is at the same time simple and phoneme-rich: allophones. See e.g. how in Classical Arabic there are only three vowels, 'a', 'i' and 'u', but they are actually realized as at least five different sounds, 'a', 'e', 'i', 'o', 'u', because some consonants affect the pronunciation of vowels (mostly of 'a'). So we can establish limits of variation for some sounds. This would have several consequences. Imagine for instance we decide not to make a difference between 'r' and 'l'. "International" words would keep the original sound ("telephone" would be something like 'telefon'; "formula" would continue like it is), while original words would have only one letter or the other. Of course, this free variation would be applied wisely, only to a defined set of phonemes, for it should be a positive characteristic of the language, not something to create a complete mess. Panglossa | Talk 14:26, May 29, 2010 (UTC)

I don't get the big deal with "international" words. Chinese doesn't do that stuff and even then, it doesn't let "international" words disrupt its phonology. For example, there are some words that are made using compounding, i.e. diànhuà, lit electricity-speech, meaning telephone, or gōnggòngqìchē, meaning "bus" which translates literally as public-vapor-vehicle. And then there are some which are edited to fit the phonology, like hànbǎobāo, which translates to Chinese-castle-bag (???) but it doesn't add extra letters to the alphabet. I think we should take an approach like the Chinese because it reduces irregularities. —Detectivekenny; (Info) Preceding text certified by R. Xun as of 15:16, May 29, 2010 (UTC)
 * The reason I proposed that is to allow words continue to be pronounced the way they already are pronounced throughout the world. Imagine e.g. the language doesn't include the letter 'v', but we decide to keep words like "television", the sound [v] would be allowed in this word. That is more of a tolerance level, considering it is an international language, rather than a complex dual pronunciation system. More or less the same thing that happens in Esperanto: although the letter 'r' has a standard pronunciation, Americans pronounce it like English 'r', Italians like Italian and so on, and this doesn't interfere with communication.Panglossa | Talk 18:07, May 29, 2010 (UTC)


 * 1) Include "ǝ" as a vowel?

Perhaps as an accented letter or diphthong

Two, Alveolar lateral approximant for L, alveolar trill for R.
 * 1) One liquid (r) or two (l and r)?

L, M, N, R, V, Z
 * 1) Voiced consonants?

nh, h, nq , q , x (as kh?)
 * 1) Consonants: nh, h, nq, q, x?

Not for an auxlang
 * 1) Tones?

Ok
 * 1) Diphthongs with w?

Razlem 15:36, May 29, 2010 (UTC)

1. I would rather not include diacritics. They are sort of redundant. I think many people can type ǝ easily on their keyboard, and keep in mind it would be easier to write than ǒ or something. —Detectivekenny; (Info) Preceding text certified by R. Xun as of 15:48, May 29, 2010 (UTC)

2. Cierto.

3. Let's add NG and take out V and Z because neither exists in Chinese or Korean, and voiced obstruents might be difficult for Chinese and Korean people anyway. :P

4. X as in kh.

5. At least keep long and short consonants. They seem intimidating at first but they come naturally after a short while.

6. Cierto. —Detectivekenny; (Info) Preceding text certified by R. Xun as of 15:48, May 29, 2010 (UTC)

ǝ can't be easily typed on an English Mac. There aren't any keyboard shortcuts for it. Razlem 16:19, May 29, 2010 (UTC)

Nevermind, I figured out a way :)

For future reference (Mac Users)

System Preferences > Language > Keyboard Input > Azeri

Set up the [Command+Space] shortcut to switch keyboards

ə is the apostrophe/quotation key

Razlem 17:56, May 29, 2010 (UTC)


 * Lol yes it can; I have a mac and I can type almost anything. Set the input to "US extended."  There are several random ways to create symbols.  Fot ǝ, try shift+alt+; and then press e.  You can easily type ŋ, ɲ, ƥ, ǒ, ɔ̂̀, Ƣ, ő, ḿ, ũ, ŭ, ŷ, ì with a little practice.  —Detectivekenny; (Info) Preceding text certified by R. Xun as of 18:08, May 29, 2010 (UTC)

Panglossa | Talk 18:07, May 29, 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) Include "ǝ" as a vowel? -> yes, provided we find a simple way to represent it (that is, no accents or unusual characters)
 * 2) One liquid (r) or two (l and r)? -> A single one, maybe varying, like in Japanese or Korean.
 * 3) Voiced consonants? -> OK
 * 4) Consonants: nh, h, nq, q, x? -> What sounds do they represent? We should rather avoid digraphs.
 * 5) Tones? -> I like tones, but for an auxlang, definitely no!!!
 * 6) Diphthongs with w? -> yes

Future Plans
I'm showing this page to a couple of my friends; one offered to create a Rosetta-Stone-like program when we're finished. I thought that was an excellent idea (but it might be while before we get to that point). Opinions? e easily on 02:08, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

Isn't this just sort of practice? —Detectivekenny; (Info) Preceding text certified by R. Xun as of 02:09, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

Wow, great plans for our dear offspring :D Panglossa | Talk 02:14, May 28, 2010 (UTC)

Well, if we like how it turns out at the end, then we should try it. Razlem 02:18, May 28, 2010 (UTC)