Re: CHAT: another new language to check out

Quoting Trebor Jung <treborjung@...>:

> Chris wrote: "I personally like Swahili as an international language (a job
> it already does after all within Africa). It already does the job and its
> quite simple in many respects... its certainly less irregular than most
> European languages I know. If I were designing an IAL, just to be different
> I'd make it agglutinating like Swahili instead of isolating like most of the
> existing examples, since I think Swahili proves an agglutinating language
> isn't necessarily any more difficult than an isolating one. :)"
>
> Hmm... never considered that! Interesting idea. The syllable structure is
> easy for everyone, and I think with a few modifications, such as getting rid
> of /T/ and /D/ (or at least allowing allophonic variation) and simplifying
> the noun-class system - completely regularizing it and getting rid of
> concordance - Swahili would become a good choice for the Terran IAL. I also
> like Tok Pisin, except I don't think English speakers would accept it
> because they might look down on it - "It's only baby talk!" As well, Tok
> Pisin doesn't have the syllable structure best suited to an IAL like Swahili
> does.
At the risk of bringing the curse of Rotokas down on me, I'm gonna assume that
Swahili might be the native name, and wonder if allowing CYV, where Y=glide,
syllables, really is optimal if we want the phonology to be as easy as possible.
Very many languages, or so I'm told, only accept CV syllables.

                                                          Andreas

PS The above should not be construed as implying that I think that a simple
phonology necessarily should be a high priority design goal for an IAL, only
that I'm assuming it for the sake of the argument.

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