Re: Really Intersistemal (was: INTERSYSTEMAL CONLANG)

Simple solution - base the very next IAL on Sumerian with heavy Chinese
(tonal), Basque, Tamil and Ancient Egyptian conjugation and declination
influences.  But skew the pronunciation towards Shona, for very obvious
reasons - no one else has done so yet, so it's free, and add in a large
number of (Anatolian) Hattic, Urartian and Elamitic roots.

Then don't forget to derive the physiological and anatomical vocab from
Mishnaic Hebrew and Islamic Arabic theological terms, simplifying what is
complicated, and complicating what is simple ...

That way you'll hack everybody off.  Which is what an IAL is supposed to do,
anyway, judging from the rear-guard actions every manjack of them is fighting
against the previous ones ...

Sic est vita! (sigh!  moo!  baa! :)

Wesley Parish

On Tue, 02 Jul 2002 18:07, Jan van Steenbergen wrote:
>  --- Joe wrote:
> > I've always wondered why IALs are mostly Romance clones.  Romance is
> > annoying.
>
> I wouldn't put it that bluntly, but I understand your point. To a certain
> degree I even agree with you.
>
> All I can think of:
> - in the Top 10 of World Languages, at least two are Romance (French and
>   Spanish); two others (Portuguese and Italian) are spoken by a substantial
>   amount of people as well, or have played a very important role in
> history; - Latin can easily be considered the cradle language of western
> civilization, and don't forget that IALs are predominantly a matter of
> western civilization;
> - English is just to weird to serve as the basis for an IAL. Besides,
> English is soaked with Romance influences and loans anyway;
> - not only English, but a great number of other languages (including
> Slavic) are full of Latin/Romance loanwords;
> - the Romance languages have a comparitively simple grammar.
> - they seem to please a lot of people aesthetically.
>
> Please note, that not every Romance-based conlang is a Euroclone. There are
> very good examples very fine languages. And for what it is worth: yes,
> Euroclones are undoubtedly boring. But bear in mind that they were
> conceived for a purpose completely different than being exciting. I agree
> with Ray, that Mr. Mitrovitch should be given the benefit of the doubt.
>
> Now, I realize that IAL discussions are to be avoided, and I definitely
> don't want to be expelled to AUXLANG. All I can say, is that I hope this
> reply remained within the boundaries of the acceptable...
>
> =====
> "Originality is the art of concealing your source." - Franklin P. Jones
>
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--
Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?"
You ask, "What is the most important thing?"
Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata."
I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."

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