New international language, Rodinian, after 11 years of work

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Rodiniye
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New international language, Rodinian, after 11 years of work

Post by Rodiniye »

Project ended, thanks!

If anyone interested in joining a new project, please let me know: rodiniye@gmail.com

Now, on a new thread:

www.atlas-language.blogspot.com
Last edited by Rodiniye on 24 Jun 2017 22:30, edited 2 times in total.
Nachtuil
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Re: New international language, Rodinian, after 11 years of

Post by Nachtuil »

Hi Rodiniye,
Welcome to the forum! I appreciate all the work you've put into this and working on a single language (edit: for eleven years) is very impressive. What I am seeing is that you've put quite a lot of thought into this.

I think your pronoun chart would definitely benefit from more labelling. I am not sure what your intended organisation for person and number is. I am referring to this document: https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/2acef6_5 ... 978b64.pdf

Are mi, ni/yi, wi/gi the first person pronouns mi being singular, ni/yi dual, and wi/gi plural? Are the gender endings optional?
Is mi a valid word along with mir min mik, miz and mis? Is k only available for third person pronouns?

I don't want to assume anything, as I am just approaching it for the first time, but it seems contrary to your stated goal of sexual equality if someone is forced to self identify as masculine or feminine.

Update:
Ok, I have found this document here which seems to answer all the above questions:
https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/2acef6_c ... b21658.pdf
Last edited by Nachtuil on 14 Jun 2017 17:09, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: New international language, Rodinian, after 11 years of

Post by qwed117 »

Nachtuil wrote:Hi Rodiniye,
Welcome to the forum! I appreciate all the work you've put into this and working on a single language is very impressive. What I am seeing is that you've put quite a lot of thought into this.

I think your pronoun chart would definitely benefit from more labelling. I am not sure what your intended organisation for person and number is. I am referring to this document: https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/2acef6_5 ... 978b64.pdf

Are mi, ni/yi, wi/gi the first person pronouns mi being singular, ni/yi dual, and wi/gi plural? Are the gender endings optional?
Is mi a valid word along with mir min mik, miz and mis? Is k only available for third person pronouns?

I don't want to assume anything, as I am just approaching it for the first time, but it seems contrary to your stated goal of sexual equality if someone is forced to self identify as masculine or feminine.

Update:
Ok, I have found this document here which seems to answer all the above questions:
https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/2acef6_c ... b21658.pdf
I can't see anything that makes it easier to learn or such for individuals around the world. [:$]
Spoiler:
My minicity is [http://zyphrazia.myminicity.com/xml]Zyphrazia and [http://novland.myminicity.com/xml]Novland.

Minicity has fallen :(
The SqwedgePad
Rodiniye
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Re: New international language, Rodinian, after 11 years of

Post by Rodiniye »

Nachtuil wrote:Hi Rodiniye,
Welcome to the forum! I appreciate all the work you've put into this and working on a single language is very impressive. What I am seeing is that you've put quite a lot of thought into this.

I think your pronoun chart would definitely benefit from more labelling. I am not sure what your intended organisation for person and number is. I am referring to this document: https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/2acef6_5 ... 978b64.pdf

Are mi, ni/yi, wi/gi the first person pronouns mi being singular, ni/yi dual, and wi/gi plural? Are the gender endings optional?
Is mi a valid word along with mir min mik, miz and mis? Is k only available for third person pronouns?

I don't want to assume anything, as I am just approaching it for the first time, but it seems contrary to your stated goal of sexual equality if someone is forced to self identify as masculine or feminine.

Update:
Ok, I have found this document here which seems to answer all the above questions:
https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/2acef6_c ... b21658.pdf
So I think you found the document where everything is explained. Basically pronouns are:

1st per sing: mi-
2nd per sing: di-
3rd per sing: e-
1st per dual: ni/yi-
2nd per dual: ji-
3rd per dual: le-
1st per plu: wi/gi-
2nd per plu: vi-
3rd per plu: se-

So basically everything is neuter (3rd person needs to add a "k", this is to avoid confusion with some prepositions).

If you want to form the masculine, add -r, feminine, add -n. For things (concrete gender), add -z.

So you have:
- er (masc), en (fem), ek (neuter), ez (things).
or...
- mir (masc), min (fem), mi (neuter) [not 3rd person, does not need "k"]... "miz" would exist but it would be rare, as somebody would be discribing her or himself as a thing.

As in: "Min vûes te'wanju, mai ez s xerii" ("I like this toy, but IT is very expensive").

There are a few other things (inclusive/exclusive, demonstrative/referential) which make the language a bit more accurate than others, but that is it in a nutshell.
qwed117 wrote:
I can't see anything that makes it easier to learn or such for individuals around the world. [:$]
Well it is not intended to be the easiest (like Esperanto), as the language pursues different goals, but it is certainly easier than many languages:
- no exceptions.
- no verb conjugations (mi vis, di vis, ek vis...)
- no complex verb forms (I have been hit => mi iskert)
- logical use of prepositions (i-locative, u-time, o-quantity... not as in English where "in" has multiple uses).
- no declensions.
- gender is biological purely.
- etc....

Thanks for answering!
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Re: New international language, Rodinian, after 11 years of

Post by Davush »

While I admire the effort, I also agree with Qwed. I think any language that proclaims itself to be an 'international' language that is 'easy' for everyone to learn ultimately receives the same criticism as Esperanto. No language can be completely unambiguous even if the morphology is very transparent with few irregularities. Lexical, syntactic and other stuff always creates the possibility for ambiguity.

The amount of vowels and diphthongs is also very high for a language which is intended to be learnt by speakers from all over.

Certain forms are ambiguous and usage isn't made clear such as:
'experiential: -y: very close to the perfect aspect, describes events in the past that have an effect in the future.'

You give this example:
Er veyt zu Frans ê pyataŝ – He has been to France five times.

This doesn't have any reference to the future, it looks like a standard experiential to me.

Then you give the example:
Min x’vees zu ilaajleku leo – I have been to hospital today.

Why not use the normal perfect form? Or even the experiential? Is this usage lexically/semantically determined? If the perfect was used here, would it have a slightly different meaning?

Overall I like the look of the language, but I can't see anything which makes it particularly 'easy' or more 'international' (if such a thing is even possible). In fact, it seems to have quite a lot of morphological complexity. Tense, aspect, mood, voice, causality can all be stacked onto a verb. The verb particles, which operate like phrasal verbs, also seem quite idiomatic among other things. Actually, I think this complexity and 'realism' adds to the language (but not in a way which makes it any 'easier or 'international').
Last edited by Davush on 14 Jun 2017 12:49, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: New international language, Rodinian, after 11 years of

Post by Salmoneus »

I don't see the 'international' element. It seems targeted just at speakers of European languages? It certainly doesn't seem an easy language to learn for much of the world, with many baroque features. A dual? Lexical gender? Five lexical genders? [and no, they're not 'natural', they still have to be learnt. Different cultures differ in what they consider masculine or feminine (what about transexuals? what about intersex and third gender? what about eunuchs? what about babies? what about dogs? what about lice? what about plants?), what they consider animate or inanimate (what about cars? what about birds? what about lice? what about waterfalls? what about computers? what about soil? what about mould?), and what they consider concrete or abstract (what about love? what about gifts? what about communities? what about valleys? what about the sky? what about my height? what about thoughts? what about my mind?), so this would all have to be memorised. Which in practice I suspect will mean forcing everyone else in the world to think more like modern Europeans?

You can't have derivational processes without 'exceptions', because derivations rely on analogy. Pilot is to airport as car driver is to... drive? garage? multistory carpark? car repair place? taxi rank? Aircraft is to flight as wall is to... weight-bearing? defence? shelter? All these derivational processes are culturally determined, and having some European say "oh it's obvious, just do it the way that seems most obvious to speakers of my particular European language!" doesn't make it very international.

Attitude particles!? Three voices! Three tenses!

Massively complex verb conjugations!? As a hint here, the world's two biggest languages are English and Chinese, and both languages are highly isolating. As, indeed, are pidgins, the languages that arise specifically to be easy to learn...

Highly diomatic phrasal verbs that have to be learnt by rote!? Is there any reasoning behind avoiding analytical tense structures but then encouraging analytical semantic structures? It's the opposite way around from how you'd probably do it if you really wanted the language to be easy to learn for a wide range of people.

More generally, a language cannot be 'without exceptions' or 'simple', because the things people want to convey are complex and sui generis. If you don't see the complexity, it's because you're just incorporating your own assumptions, which makes it even harder for other people to learn.

[If you want it to be international, the first and easiest thing to do would be to not make it so incredibly European phonologically, and instead to make it something that everyone could pronounce without too much difficulty. I mean, you've got a phonology that even we poor English speakers would struggle to get our tongues around, let alone the Rotokas speakers!]

---------------

I think the root problem here is a confusion as to intent. What is this language for? Because some elements, and particular the way you talk about it, suggest an 'easy to learn' international language. But huge amounts of it are unnecessarily baroque and Eurocentric. A lot of it suggests a 'logical', 'philosophical' language that wants to make lots of distinctions - but that's an entirely different, and contradictory, sort of project from an easy-to-use international language. And at the same time, much of it is clearly a matter of personal preference and artistry. And that's fine too, but it contradicts both of the previous conceptions of the project!


---

If you think "give me a reason" doesn't have a meaning, you just don't understand English, I'm sorry. Likewise, much of the philosophical-conceptual guff is just nonsense, sorry. And boasting about how well you did at school is not only unimpressive, it... kinds of conforms to the stereotype?

-----

Helpful hint: please, please, please, page numbers. contents page? Thanks. But when there aren't any page numbers it stops being so useful...
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Re: New international language, Rodinian, after 11 years of

Post by Frislander »

I concur, the language does look interesting enough as an artlang, but falls down as an "easy-to-learn" auxlang (like Esperanto and really any auxlang project). The addition of grammatical gender, while it is based on semantic criteria and isn't arbitrary, is a weird addition for an auxlang. And it's expressed with those weird "word-class" suffixes thing like Esperanto, which I'm not too keen on (though in one or two ways your system is better, like you don't have a seperate suffix for imperatives).

The vowel system is also too large for such a project (and bloody hell that is way too many diphthongs), and the front-rounded vowels in particular stand out as being North Eurasian-biased: see the WALS map for an explanation of why that is. I do like the base vowel system in itself, though. The consonants are also unusual: you have /d͡z d͡ʒ ʒ/ but no /z/, and you expect everyone to distinguish /ʃ ç/.

Wow that is a weird list of derivational suffixes (suffixes for regular and irregular sided shapes with another pair for three-dimensional ones as well?).

Why do you have dual number in an auxlang?

And don't kid yourself, you can call your "noun-dependency" a genitive case because that's clearly what it is from how it behaves.

WTF you have four definite articles (admittedly the first one is a marker for generic nouns, not really a "definite" article in that sense)? I mean sure, if you give nice long texts which show the different forms being used in context then it's a nice feature, but in an auxlang?

Having clusivity is a nice touch. I'm not sure I buy your 4th and 5th persons, I mean sure I get having an impersonal construction, but do you really need a separate pronoun for the weather?

You have evidentials, yay! We don't see those so often in conlangs. I think you could call your "action" prefixes sub-aspects, because that's kind of what they are (it's nice that you have aspect, though). And that is a lot of mood/modality distinctions, wow.

Your middle voice seems rather multi-varied in its use, which is interesting; I might borrow some of that variability sometime.

Oo, you have a separate system of relative tense, that's interesting!

Inflected comparative, very European.

Your prepositions look neat but strike me as rather unnatural. And comparative prepositions? I don't think I've seen that before, nor do I ever expect to see it again.

Oh my giddy aunt your relative pronouns (also extremely European).

"non-personal"? The term for that is "non-finite", as opposed to "finite" verbs. I'm slightly bemused as to why you have these when you seem to encode basically every tensal, aspectual and modal concept with verb suffixes anyway.

I like your four-way distance contrast in your demonstratives.

Your attitudinals look rather interesting as a concept (I'm pretty sure I've seen similar in natlangs somewhere), but why do the all look so similar?

And in the "emphasis" section, when you say "tone" you really mean intonation; tone is something different.

Verdict: looks interesting in many respects, and with a bit of tweaking would be perfectly good as an artlang, but this is no good as an auxlang.
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Re: New international language, Rodinian, after 11 years of

Post by Frislander »

Oh yeah, and
Having a neuter gender is extremely useful for many situations. First of all, it ELIMINATES SEXISM from language.
Hahahahahahahahahahaha! [xD] You really cracked me up there!

[Don't take this to mean I don't like your gender system, it's just that this is probably the silliest response I've seen to the "European languages are so sexist" thing which has dogged conlanging for a century of more.]

Oh, and watch out for strong-Whorfianism in the introduction.

And could you please explain how you got these, and how a Hebrew speaker is supposed to recognise these words as such?
Hebrew ehzor, coming from לחזור lḥzwr (return); yn coming from עין ʻyw (eye)
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Re: New international language, Rodinian, after 11 years of

Post by elemtilas »

Coo, I always love it when some ragged prophet wanders out of the marches of Auxlangiastan, gospel in hand and ready to preach to the heathens!...
Rodiniye wrote:So basically everything is neuter (3rd person needs to add a "k", this is to avoid confusion with some prepositions).
That's a doublespeak way of saying this is an exception.
If you want to form the masculine, add -r, feminine, add -n. For things (concrete gender), add -z.
Curious: Why bother with gender (either grammatical or natural) at all? Many languages get along very well without. Unless it becomes a matter of specificity requirement, does gender even need to play a role? Especially in an auxlang whose stated design goals are "fairness" and the elimination of "sexism".
- mir (masc), min (fem), mi (neuter) [not 3rd person, does not need "k"]... "miz" would exist but it would be rare, as somebody would be discribing her or himself as a thing.
Perhaps to "avoid sexism"?
There are a few other things (inclusive/exclusive, demonstrative/referential) which make the language a bit more accurate than others, but that is it in a nutshell.
I find such distinctions terribly useful. I also think a system of evidential particles is terribly useful. I make frequent use of these things in my own languages. But are they useful in an auxlang? Not so much. Especially one that proposes to be easy to learn and that purports to facilitate simpler communication between people of differing language. Auxlangs kind of have to shoot for least common denominator. Especially those whose stated design goals are things like "fairness".
Well it is not intended to be the easiest (like Esperanto), as the language pursues different goals, but it is certainly easier than many languages:
- no exceptions.
Except the exceptions already noted!
- no verb conjugations (mi vis, di vis, ek vis...)
Why not? Verb conjugation is a certain requirement for accurate communication.
- no complex verb forms (I have been hit => mi iskert)
In English these are nòt "complex" verbs. They serve to accurately pinpoint and describe minute and extremely important distinctions of time, manner, mood and perspective.

Curious: why is it that auxlangers are so fond of dispensing with features they think are "hard" or "complex", but do actually serve a purpose, and not only serve a purpose, but also serve a purpose entirely in line with their own creation's stated goals!; whereas they often inject features contrary to their stated design goals?

Case in point. A stated design goal of your auxlang is "accuracy". Which is more accurate (in English): "she sang when..." or "she had certainly been singing when..."?

In any event, looking at your grammar description, I see that the verb system you have designed is actually every bit as "complex" as the English system. Rather than separating the modal, perspective, and aspect parts of the verb, you've simply shoved them all together in one neat agglutinative package. This is a (typical) ruse of auxlangers, to decry some feature in another language (be it a natural language or a rival auxlang) on the one hand, while liberally promoting & propagandising that same exact feature within their own auxlang on the other hand!
- logical use of prepositions (i-locative, u-time, o-quantity... not as in English where "in" has multiple uses).
What makes your system more logical?
- no declensions.
Sacrificing accuracy again.
- gender is biological purely.
Why bother with it at all? Why is it logical to include a system of gender in an auxlang whose stated design feature is the elimination of sexism?

Another stated design goal is creativity. How can one express oneself creatively in a severely limiting language?

The keymost aspect of any auxlang worth it's salt is the one you never mention. You seem to be ignoring the 8000 pound oliphant in the room: you say you've invented latest and greatest fabrication of the auxlanger's craft, so what are you going to do about English?

English ìs the de facto IAL of the present time. Where's your manifesto on toppling that hegemony? For an auxlang to compete, not just against the veritable giant, but also against all its siblings, there has to be some underlying philosophy, some plan for advocacy, propaganda and advancement of the cause. I like a good bit of auxlang propaganda tract writing every now and then: let's see yours!

Convince me: why should I abandon English in favor of Rodinian?

All in all, and agreeing with many of the points brought up by especially Frislander and Salmoneus, I think you have a terribly neat language. It has a lot of features in it that I find highly commendable in the artistic point of the Triangle. But I wonder if perhaps you haven't misplaced your true calling? Rodinian seems to make a far better artlang than an auxlang, in my opinion!
Last edited by elemtilas on 14 Jun 2017 14:14, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: New international language, Rodinian, after 11 years of

Post by elemtilas »

Frislander wrote:And could you please explain how you got these, and how a Hebrew speaker is supposed to recognise these words as such?
Hebrew ehzor, coming from לחזור lḥzwr (return); yn coming from עין ʻyw (eye)
Well, she's not supposed to recognise those words as such. That's not even the point. As I see it, the crazy-quilt-draw-random-vocabulary-words-out-of-a-
hat-in-order-to-satisfy-my-sense-of-social-ecumenism-and-fairness-to-all-languages motif is a common one among modern auxlangers. They have this idea that
for an auxiliary language to be "international", rather than Eurocentric, it can easily be done by tossing in a few token words from languages here and there while
keeping the underlying grammar pretty much SAE. [o.O]
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Re: New international language, Rodinian, after 11 years of

Post by masako »

Looks to me to be just another Esperanto, in form, substance, and in stated goals.
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Re: New international language, Rodinian, after 11 years of

Post by Lao Kou »

Yeah, for an artlang, it's fabu! [:D] For an auxlang, I'm not at all prepared to accept the tracts or drink the Kool-Aid. [:|]
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Re: New international language, Rodinian, after 11 years of

Post by Nachtuil »

I was also going to suggest myself why bother having gender at all. The only one I would encourage is sentient Vs insentient. Chinese and Persian are large languages that don't distinguish between he and she and get on fine.

If you want to make your language easily accessible I recommend the following sounds which are in 50% of languages. This is according to phoible. Given in IPA symbols:
i e a u o
m n ŋ
p b t d k g
s h
l j w

Not that I think you should scrap what you've done. Those are the sounds I would use myself if I were aiming for ease of access.
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Re: New international language, Rodinian, after 11 years of

Post by masako »

Nachtuil wrote:If you want to make your language easily accessible I recommend the following sounds which are in 50% of languages. This is according to phoible. Given in IPA symbols:
i e a u o
m n ŋ
p b t d k g
s h
l j w
And make it mostly CV with a sprinkling of CVn or CVs. The grammar would also need to be trimmed down a good bit.
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e
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Re: New international language, Rodinian, after 11 years of

Post by Rodiniye »

Wooow lots of very interesting posts, thank you!! [:D]

Quoting everyone would be long and boring, so I will just answer the main points.

- European-based: might be a bit, I am not saying otherwise. But I think the European way is fairly easy in many many aspects.
- Too many sounds: this is a common one. Might have a look into this. However as I said, it has got far less sounds than English.
- Unidentifiable roots, as the Hebrew ones: some of them might be. However, every root needs to be adapted to the "look" of the language. Ones of the things I think I do have achieved is that it does not sound as a cheap mixture of languages, so sometimes the root or the word is just twiked a bit, and it becomes difficult to recognize. I agree, but it is necessary.
- Why gender? Good for accuracy. Discrimination in gender does not come when using gender, it comes when you are using for instance the masculine gender to describe a feminine human being, or when you are using the masculine to refer to both masculine and feminine people (happens in lots of languages, like Spanish).
- Pages in the grammar: it's coming!
- Logical prepositions: it is simpler because each preposition has got only one meaning. Take preposition "in" in English. It con be locative (in Spain), time (in two hours), manner (in blue)... etc.
- No declensions sacrificing accuracy: not really, it is done through prepositions.
- Tone will be changed by intonation (good point). Actually Frislander great comments, thanks.
- Davush, about your question: Then you give the example:

Min x’vees zu ilaajleku leo – I have been to hospital today.

Why not use the normal perfect form? Or even the experiential? Is this usage lexically/semantically determined? If the perfect was used here, would it have a slightly different meaning?

You could not use the experiential here, because you say leo (today). So it is not an experience you have had, it something you have done on the day. You could say, however: Min veys zu ilaajleku (I have been to hospital), which means that you have been there that day, and other times too. In the past tense "Min veyt zu ilaajleku" it means that you have been to hospital, but not on the same day.

Somebody has said that the complexity adds some good points, I have the same point of view. Overall:
- no declensions.
- easy tenses, easy grammar categories.
- no exceptions (one or two things could be considered as such yes, but no exceptions! ;) )
- no verb conjugation
- fixed phonetic rules.
etc.

I think it is pretty easy. Certainly easier than English grammar for instance.

---

Thanks everyone for your contributions, highly appreciated.
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Re: New international language, Rodinian, after 11 years of

Post by Davush »

Rodiniye wrote: - Davush, about your question: Then you give the example:

Min x’vees zu ilaajleku leo – I have been to hospital today.

Why not use the normal perfect form? Or even the experiential? Is this usage lexically/semantically determined? If the perfect was used here, would it have a slightly different meaning?

You could not use the experiential here, because you say leo (today). So it is not an experience you have had, it something you have done on the day. You could say, however: Min veys zu ilaajleku (I have been to hospital), which means that you have been there that day, and other times too. In the past tense "Min veyt zu ilaajleku" it means that you have been to hospital, but not on the same day.

Somebody has said that the complexity adds some good points, I have the same point of view. Overall:
- no declensions.
- easy tenses, easy grammar categories.
- no exceptions (one or two things could be considered as such yes, but no exceptions! ;) )
- no verb conjugation
- fixed phonetic rules.
etc.

I think it is pretty easy. Certainly easier than English grammar for instance.

---

Thanks everyone for your contributions, highly appreciated.
Thanks for answering, however this is still quite unclear and certainly not easy for a learner. It seems now that the tense/aspect combinations actually refer to specific days as well as past events. Having a perfect/past/experiential/'orbital' past distinction is neither intuitive nor easy to grasp. (Which is perfectly fine and natural in languages, but perhaps not when you're describing it as an easy to learn, international language.)

What you describe as the 'perfect' aspect in your document, actually seems more like the perfective aspect (there is an important distinction). You write that the 'perfect' aspect is for:

'actions that happened in maybe a fraction of a second', giving the example: 'I saw the bird'. Sounds more like a perfective.

Also: "*Verbs of movement are normally expressed in the perfect aspect, even if the action conceptually is longer. Examples as: besok veez min zu vidyarleku (“tomorrow I am going to school”). The action might take 30 min, but what we are expressing here is the departure (or the arrival, or movement with other verbs) which has a very limited lifespan." - This is definitely not a 'perfect' as it is commonly understood.

Whether or not the grammar is easier than English is highly subjective. I think English would be easier for speakers not used to languages with high levels of agglutination and complex tense/aspect/mood interactions. There appear to be a lot distinctions made which are actually quite idiomatic and morphologically complex.

As others have said, I like it as an artlang, but I'm not keen on 'auxlangs' in general and I don't really see any 'auxlang' features as a selling point here.
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Re: New international language, Rodinian, after 11 years of

Post by lsd »

In a sense I prefer the qualification of auxlang than artlang...

Even if I do not believe at all possible international use, they tend towards a rationalized language made to communicate in the real world...
The risk is to take oneself too seriously and to impulse a too political character to the project, Sapir Whorf, or the equality of the sexes, or the non-european taste, and the formated anti-exotic a posteriori look, and in underlying the "it must remain one"...

In contrast to the artlangs, which, even if they avoid the pitfall of competition, and extol diversity, tend to simulate a language of an exotic imaginary world... And end up losing themselves in the imaginary and losing sight of language...

I have for myself a universal language aim, even if the project is very personal and not made to be public...

My goal in conlangistan is not to learn a new language tool, nor to visit an imaginary world, the goal is to play with core target a refounding of meaning... Exoticism is part of the Game, but applied to the real world with this new filter...

Any project can claim it, if it remains centered on the language and on our vision of the real world ...
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Re: New international language, Rodinian, after 11 years of

Post by Lao Kou »

Rodiniye wrote:- Logical prepositions: it is simpler because each preposition has got only one meaning. Take preposition "in" in English. It con be locative (in Spain), time (in two hours), manner (in blue)... etc.
Different languages divvy these spaces up differently. Not the end of the world, certainly, but one would have to learn it, so it's not just easy-peasy.
Min x’vees zu ilaajleku leo – I have been to hospital today.

Why not use the normal perfect form? Or even the experiential? Is this usage lexically/semantically determined? If the perfect was used here, would it have a slightly different meaning?

You could not use the experiential here, because you say leo (today). So it is not an experience you have had, it something you have done on the day. You could say, however: Min veys zu ilaajleku (I have been to hospital), which means that you have been there that day, and other times too. In the past tense "Min veyt zu ilaajleku" it means that you have been to hospital, but not on the same day.
You could say this, but not that, and "X" suggests this, but not that, means you need to learn it, and whether it's intuitive or not would probably depend on your native language.
Somebody has said that the complexity adds some good points, I have the same point of view. Overall:
- no declensions.
Professing "no declensions" is all well and good, but a long laundry list of "accurate" prepositions and how to use them is just as difficult as any declension.
- easy tenses, easy grammar categories.
- no verb conjugation
Well, at first blush, it looks like I could come up with something like, "She could have been screaming." But making it agglutinative doesn't mean there's any less to learn.
I think it is pretty easy. Certainly easier than English grammar for instance.
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Re: New international language, Rodinian, after 11 years of

Post by Xing »

Rodiniye wrote:
- Why gender? Good for accuracy.
There are more straightforward ways to indicate the gender of something, when that is necessary. You could just use regular compounds ("man-cat", "woman-cat"), or adjectives ("male dog", "female dog"). There is no need to have dedicated morphemes to created gendered words, apart from the general lexical entries for "man", "woman", etc.
Discrimination in gender does not come when using gender, it comes when you are using for instance the masculine gender to describe a feminine human being, or when you are using the masculine to refer to both masculine and feminine people (happens in lots of languages, like Spanish).
Are you claiming that this in itself constitutes a form of discrimination, or that it causes discrimination in other fields?

Given that your projects seems to presuppose some rather strong version of linguistic relativism, I hope you're aware that such theories are highly controversial in linguistics. Any claim of strong linguistic relativism needs to be backed up by solid evidence. (It's not enough that it "seems plausible" to someone.)

- Logical prepositions: it is simpler because each preposition has got only one meaning. Take preposition "in" in English. It con be locative (in Spain), time (in two hours), manner (in blue)... etc.
[/quote]

Can't we just say that the different senses of "in" have a single meaning – namely, to indicate location? The differences between them concerns whether it is physical, temporal or abstract location. That time or abstract states are treated as physical space seems to be an analogy that's found in lots of languages. It's simpler to use, for instance, prepositions in such an analogous way, than to introduce dozens of new prepositions for every kind of location.


Generally, whenever someone comes up with a new auxlang that's supposed to bring eternal peace and happiness to all humans, the first question is always: What makes this language superior to the 5000 previous attempts to create a 'truly international' language'? (Including the countless attempts to 'fix' or 'reform' Esperanto...). Typically, they suffer from the same weaknesses: (1) The conlangers unconsciously incorporate various complexities from the languages they are familiar with (though sometimes they can have an aspergian obsession with certain aspects of the language ("the language *must* have this particular feature, otherwise it will be terribly ambiguous", though the feature in question is absent in lots of natlangs...)) (2) The conlangers mistakenly think that various features in natural languages – such as exceptions, irregularities, or lexical ambiguities – are bad things that we need to do away with. (3) The conlangers make bold claims about how "simple", "logical" or "easy to learn" their languages are – but they rarely present any hard evidence for these kinds of claims. (4) The conlangers seem to think that there's a "natural" or "logical" way of dividing semantic space, that natural languages messes up, but their auxlangs attempt to follow.



By the way, everybody, I'm back here [:)]
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Re: New international language, Rodinian, after 11 years of

Post by Rodiniye »

Hi everyone for your comments.

Here and there, main objections seem to be similar:
- gender
- sounds
- a few grammatical issues.

Now, I am keeping gender because it's part of the essence of the Language and its aim to be accurate. I strongly believe it is a logical grammar categorization, and I think people have not really understood that neutral gender is what you need when you do not want to indicate masculine/feminine, so there is no need to constantly use one or the other. I might be wrong, but as I said it is essential to the Rodinian purpose. I could, however, simplify it a bit and make if fairer. But it is essential, especially when using morphemes.

So... what would you think if I made the following changes?
- gender a bit simplified, making the point again that neutral is there same as "hen" in Swedish.
- sounds: get rid of all accented letters ê,ŝ,û. Modify diphthongs so that they are easy easy.
- grammatical issues: get rid of dual number, get rid of experimental tense.

Anything else? What do you guys think?

Any other suggestions? anything I have not mentioned that you would change? Anything from other languages?

Thanks for your efforts, much appreciated.
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