Re: Unilang: the Lexicon

At 11:27 pm -0400 21/4/01, Oskar Gudlaugsson wrote:
[snip]
>On Sat, 21 Apr 2001 21:35:47 +0000, Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
>wrote:
[snip]
>>What Leo Moser did with his Acadon project was to look for the widest
>>spread of words or related words among as many of the world's languages as
>>possible.  I think he spent some seven or so years this - it's not an easy
>>undertaking.
>
>During my last month or so on AUXLANG, I exchanged words with Leo Moser,
>and familiarized myself with his Acadon project. I was fascinated with his
>premises, and his way of thinking, but I remain disappointed with the
>actual results; primarily, I find that he does not address adequately the
>problems of phonotactics.
Exactly my own feelings!
I was fascinated with his premises and fully supported his approach to the
way he was compiling his vocabulary but, like you, I am disaapointed with
the actual results.  The phonology & orthography seem to me to leave much
to be desired.

>But Moser's Acadon is definitely a step forward.
Agreed.

>I am still affected by some of his rhetoric, especially in what regards
>unilang orthography, but also to some degree in lexical matters. His work
>should be credited, though I have found myself unwilling to embrace Acadon
>as a language :|
Again, I agree whole-heartedly.

I've had quite a few private & public exchanges of views with Leo over
these matters; but I must say I've always found Leo takes the criticisms in
the helpful way they are meant and we both respect one another's positions.
Indeed, altho I don't always agree with him, he is someone whose views I
respect very much.


[snip]
>
>"Flavor" is certainly something worth considering. If we were to design
>some sort of garment for all Earthlings, sheer practicalities might not
>suffice to make people wear it; clothes must have some flavor to be
>fashionable, and I think this applies to language as well, to some degree.
I think so.  Whatever one may think of Esperanto, Zamenhof gave it a
decidedly distinctive flavor; and IMO that distinctive flavor has probably
be one the main reasons why it has attracted people.  Bland "Euroclones"
lack the distictive flavor.  Indeed, other conIALs that attracted a wide
following in their time, i.e. SolReSol and Volapük, clearly had distinctive
flavors of their own.

Indeed, if Uusisuom achieves a following, the main reasons IMO will be its
distinctiveness & Daniel's enthusiasm.

>>The idea of a basic a_priori vocab, with a_posteriori borrowing for more
>>specific and for local/cultural specific items is certainly an interesting
>>idea; it looks like a neat balance between the universal neutrality a
>>a_prioriism and a_posteriori familiarity of more specific concepts.  Go for
>>it!
>
>Thanks! :) The borrowing part is essentially why I've made room
>for "renderability" in the phonological design.
So I gathered.

>>>But we must also consider the inner
>>>structure of the language; words like "democracy" and "philosophy" might
>be
>>>tempting to borrow, but perhaps some fairly logical constructions from
>>>native morphemes would do better.
>>
>>Doesn't Icelandic favor that?
>
>Well, now you know where those thoughts are coming from :) :)
'twasn't too difficult to work that one out :)

[snip]
>no "telephone", "television", or "computer". The Icelandic "word-smiths"
>(neologists) have mastered the technique of designing the words to be short
>and handy, which has succeeded in gaining popularity for them. Thus, we
>have "sími", "sjónvarp", and "tölva" for the above three words, all much
>shorter and easier words for our Icelandic tongues.
I like it  :)

Ray.


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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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