R: Re: Uusisuom's influences

Ray Brown wrote:

> Yes, and I thought the development of adjectival declensions in Finnish
> (and Estonian?), which is not found AFAIK in other Finno-Ugric langs, was
a
> comparatively recent development.  I think the claim that it is one of the
> oldest modern languages in Europe is controversial, to say the least.
About the adjectival declension foun in Finnish, I've heard it's due to
contacts with Germanic peoples and languages, but I can't bet it. It's
intriguing enough, anyway, that the Finnish word for 'father' comes from
Gothic.

> >>I think it's inaccurate to say that Uusisuom's influences are very
> >>'european'.
> >>
> >>It's major two influences have been Finnish and Lithuanian:
> >
> >Can't get much more European than a European country!
>
> In this case - _two_ European countries!
>
> >>Finnish = one of the oldest modern languages in Europe;
> >
> >Oh?
>
> Indeed - well may you say 'Oh'.  I think quite a few other languages have
> more well-founded claims to that title.
What's more Finnish seems to be terribly unstable. Just right now it's
undergoing, AFAIK, a /ti/ > /tsi/ > /si/ passage, for exemple; the infamous
word initial stress will someday cause a terrible syncope phenomenon, IMO,
which will mix up almost everything, in a language which allows 25syllabic
words.

Then it's not exactly the language I'd choose as model for an AUXLANG.
Here's why:

1_ It's difficult to learn. Ok, every language is difficult to learn, but,
as someone said, 'if you can master Finnish, then you can learn almost
everything'. Then why should anyone rely on a Finnish inspired artificial
language, when there out there are about 5000 natural languages, most of
whom do have a simpler syntax?

2_ It has a difficult phonology (yessirs, and here's why): Ok, it lacks word
initial and final clusters, and allows very few within the same words. OTOH,
it has a quite complicated vowel system: there are, indeed, 8 vowels (/a/,
/e/, /i/, /o/, /u/, /y/, /Y/, and /&/), and they can be either short or
long. While short/long vowels are not that rare amongst real langs, the only
European langs I can think of which do have geminated consonants are Italian
(only Central-Southern varieties; my dialect completely lacks them), Finnish
(Estonian? Saami?) and some German dialects. It has vowel harmony.

3_ It has an inflective case system with _14 fourteen_ cases and lots of
pospositions. What's more, the way these cases are used is purely
indiscriminate.

4_ It has an inflective verbal morphology: 6 persons, 2 principal tenses,
modal distinction.

5_ It distinguishes singular and plural.

I could go on for hours, I think.

Finnish is, however, a wondrous model for everyone who's aiming at the
construction of an ARTLANG.

> >>The last thing anyone can call Uusisuom is a 'Euroclone'.
> >
> >I'd agree here.
>
> Yes, there'll be nor argument that Uusisuom is not one of the
> Esperanto-Novial-Interlingua-Eurolang clan, collectively known, a little
> derogatively maybe, as "Euroclones".
This has, however, a dark side, as well. Picking up vocabulary from Finnish
and Lithuanian means using roots known by almost 10 mio. people, to say the
least, while at least a fifth of the world population speaks a language
whose roots have inspired Euroclones' vocabulary (English, French,
Spanish...).

> Indeed not - the distinction between (some) long & short vowels, single
and
> gemminate consonants will cause problems for very many.  The grammar
> presented so far, tho as regular as Volapük and Esperanto, seems to fall
> between those two in order of difficulty.
See above...

> >Neutrality? Probably not. Once you decide to base your auxlang on one
> >or more realworld languages, you throw "neutrality" out the window.
>
> Indeed, the only way, as far as I can see, that one can be completely
> neutral is to take the a_priori approach.
Which, anyway, using a vocabulary based on made up roots no language uses,
would turn back as a boomerang.

> >> It is also worth mentioning that Uusisuom's grammar system is more
similar
> >> to languages such as Urdu, many African language systems and other
WORLD
> >> languages than to simply 'European' ones.
> >
> >Ah.  This was not obvious to me.
>
> Nor is it obvious to me.  I suppose Uusisuoms noun suffixes are comparable
> to Urdu's use of postpositions, but they reminded me more readily of
> Finnish case endings.
They indeed are Finnish case endings (see locative/essive ending in -sa)

> I too - as Padraic said there were very good reasons for having two
> separate lists: CONLANG and AUXLANG.
I have to agree. I have to say, OTOH, that Daniel's lang would be a really
nice Conlang... if he gave up the statement 'this is an AUXLANG'.

Funny to notice, I find beautiful conlangs terrible auxlangs... this is,
anyway, probably due to the naturalness many conlangs aim to. And I love
naturality, while auxlang *have* to be so neutral that they become bland,
without an own spirit, losing naturalness.

Luca

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