Re: CHAT: another new language to check out

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.

T

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