Re: Picto & Dil

In a message dated 4/16/2005 9:48:32 AM Eastern Daylight Time, tsfsi@WEB.DE
writes:

>Thanks for the information. I will try to find the book here.
Another thing I should mention is that Libert's book depends heavily on an
earlier book by two French authors. (He apparently didn't have a primary source
for Dil.) Here's the citation from Libert's bibliography:

Couturat, L. & L. Leau.  1903 and 1907/1979.  _Histoire de la langue
universelle_ bound with _Les nouvelles langues internationale_.  Hildesheim: Georg
Olms Verlag.

If you can read French, you might look for that book.

While I'm here, I'll pass along a few facts about Dil from Libert's book.

Here's the declension of "om", meaning "man":

case    sing.    plural
nom    om        omez
gen    oma        omaz
dat    omo        omoz
acc    omi        omiz

Here's the present tense of lob-, "praise":

person    sg        plural
1st        lobeb        lobebz
2nd        lobel       lobelz
3rd        lobem        lobemz

The endings -eb etc. are identical to the corresponding pronouns.

And here are the tenses:

Present        lobeb
perfect        lobab
pluperfect    lobib
future        lobob
future perfect    lobub

The numerals 1-9 are
un, tun, zan , fir, bej, siz, sib, sek, nov

Dil's creator got a bit carried away with symmetry, and the words for various
opposed concepts are often distinguished only by vowel changes, making them
similar to an impractical extent [in my humble opinion]:

spe = late; spi = early
le = before; la = after
goj = left; gaj = right
ne = no; nei =yes
laf = laugh; laef = cry
kriv = Catholicism; kriev = Protestantism

Doug