## 1995 Vorlin Update

from Journal of Planned Languages – 22nd edition, second half 1995

©1995 by Rick Harrison

Since late 1993, I have been re-designing my language project Vorlin. I have removed almost all of the a priori items from the vocabulary; I have replaced many Latin/Romance morphemes with new morphemes of Germanic and Slavic origin. (There are already far too many IALs based on Latin-Romance vocabularies.) The transitive and intransitive verb suffixes have changed from ic and iz to o and i. (Based on my subjective impression that i has a yin sound and o has a yang sound– a bit of phonetic feng-shui in accordance with the principle of vor.)

Vorlin has a very noun-based vocabulary; its adjectives, adverbs, and most of its verbs are derived from nouns in a regular and predictable fashion. For the past two years, I have been experimenting with an affix (-u) that makes it possible to derive prepositions from nouns. At first the use of this affix resulted in some words that might have several different interpretations, but careful re-definition of some nouns and more careful specification of transitive verb arguments have reduced the possible ambiguities. (The -u suffix seems to be somehow semantically related to the -o suffix which creates transitive verbs. Many of the derived prepositions can be translated as English transitive verbs: havu = with/having, senu = without/lacking. In fact, English can generally be paraphrased to the point that it does not need prepositions; you can say "traversing" instead of across, "penetrating" or "permeating" instead of through, etc.) Now that I am convinced that it is practical, I have made the -u suffix an official part of Vorlin. (Some of the words created with -u can also function as conjunctions**: futu = after / in the future of; naku = before / prior to / in the past of; rezu = resulting from / because.) Now all 5 vowels serve as suffixes:

a - adjective
e - adverb
i - intransitive verb
o - transitive verb
u - preposition/conjunction

The most striking trend that I see in the development of Vorlin is the increase in the vowel-to-consonant ratio of most sentences. In its first days, before publication, Vorlin was an a priori "philosophical" language in which all morphemes, including the pronouns, conjunctions and other function words, were 3-letter CVC words. Consonants out-numbered vowels by a ratio of 2 to 1, and there were many difficult consonant clusters. (Not to mention the fact that the a priori vocabulary was almost impossible to memorize.) The gradual creation of a more sophisticated morphology has resulted in a nearly 1 to 1 consonant-vowel ratio, as you will see below.

The first text to be published in the new version of Vorlin is a translation of a song lyric. (Please don't ask for a translation of the "Paternoster.") Translating lyrics is a good test of a vocabulary's robustness (and also of a translator's skills), as it is often necessary to rephrase an idea in order to create a translation that rhymes and has a reasonable number of syllables in each phrase. (Getting the stressed syllables into singable positions is slightly more important than duplicating the exact number of syllables in the original version.)

The song I selected is "Don't Let it Show," which was recorded in 1977 by the Alan Parsons Project. (This song appears on their "I, Robot" and "Best of" albums, published by Arista Records.) I have not printed the original English lyric here for fear of violating the copyright law. Below is the Vorlin lyric, along with a free translation back into English.

Pronunciation guide (for those of you who want to sing along): Most of the letters in Vorlin's alphabet have "obvious" phonetic values. The exceptions: c = English "sh" (Esperanto s^), j = "zh" (Esperanto j^), x = English "ch" (Esperanto c^), y as in "yes". A polysyllabic word is stressed on the next-to-last syllable if it ends in a vowel; stress the final syllable if it ends in a consonant.

xu kaco di

ca tag bi hi leta yu naka tag.
xu kaco di. xu kaco di.
loxe ca mot bi hasberinda cag.
nu pajo di. nu pajo di.

Each day is less easy than previous day(s).
Conceal it. Conceal it.
Their every word is a hate-carrying blow.
Don't pay attention to it. Don't pay attention to it.

se loxe tab mixe nom geno bol,
xu neko kudo mi;
wa se di helo vi fino teno bol,
xu neko tugo mi.

If their speaking my name creates pain,
Deny knowing me;
And if it helps you to finish holding the pain,
Deny grieving over me.

swe vi kogo ke twa bi mutsena ban,
xu teno di ni vi.
nu zedi!
nu voko di ge lo!
xu kaco - xu kaco di.

Although you think that this is a courage-lacking route,
Hold it within you.
Don't submit!
Don't vocalize it to them!
Conceal - conceal it.

swe vi keno ke di no hava rek,
xu neko zori. xu neko zori.
swe vi volo teno hof ni vixe men,
fut seno mi. fut seno mi.

Although you know that it's not right,
Deny caring. Deny caring.
Although you want to hold hope in your mind,
The future lacks me. The future lacks me.

dan se vi leci te kuso mixe nom,
lo yalo rego vi;
wa se vi ridi te lo culdelo mi,
lo yalo nego vi.

But if you smile when (you) hear my name,
They (will) fail to control you;
And if you laugh when they assign guilt to me,
They (will) fail to destroy you.

swe vi no kogo ke vi noto kaco,
xu teno di ni vi.
nu zedi!
nu voko di ge lo!
xu kaco - xu kaco di.

Although you don't think that you need to hide (anything),
Hold it within you.
Don't submit!
Don't vocalize it to them!
Conceal - conceal it.

commentary written in 2001:

**What?!? Prepositions can be used as conjunctions? That's balderdash!

In spite of its melodramatic contents, this specimen of Vorlin does a fine job of showing the evolution of the language at this point in time. Verbs in their most common forms had changed from CVCVC to CVCV in shape. Pronouns had changed from CVC to CV and were no longer inflected to indicate the accusative. The letter q had been abolished, the semi-vowel [j] had moved from the letter j to the letter y, and (for a very brief time) the sound of "ch" as in "chew" was represented by the letter x. The copula and the equivalent of the pronoun "it" had not yet been banished, but there were signs that a more original and internally consistent syntax was about to hatch.

footnotes

The original English lyric of the song is online at this site or findable by this search.

Click the following link to read the 1995 Vorlin-English Lexicon File.

Click the following link to read the 1995 description of Vorlin grammar.

return to vorlin.org homepage