The Five-Page Language.

First of all, I do not believe in the the whole
auxlang concept. I think any auxlang is doomed before
it even gets off the ground. That said, it's still
interesting to play with "make believe" auxlangs.
Here's my idea for what I call a "five-page auxlang."

I recently found a copy of the book FRATER (LINGUA
SISTEMFRATER) by Pham Xuan Thai and subtitled "The
Simplest International Language Ever Constructed".
It's a proposed auxlang which uses Latin and Greek
roots and a Chinese-like isolating grammar.  Since I
had already begun an isolating Latin project, the
first thing I did was look for ways to modify and
improve on "Frater".

The grammar consists of 12 rules on two pages, but the
vocabulary is "hand made" by picking and choosing from
among the available Greek and Latin words and
modifying those originals in one way or another.
While looking through the glossary it occured to me
that what would really make this language "the
simplest" would be to have a fixed set of rules for
deriving the Frater word from the Latin dictionary
entry.  Instead of having to build up the glossary
word by hand-crafted word, any ordinary Latin
dictionary could be used to stand in for a Frater
dictionary.

My proposal, then, is to completely specify an auxlang
in five pages.  There would be one page covering
orthography and pronunciation, two pages covering all
the grammar rules, and two pages covering the rules
for deriving words from any Latin dictionary entry.
Thus, by learning five pages of material the auxlang
would be completely mastered.  What could be easier?
:)

--gary

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