Re: Artyom Kouzminykh: Answes&proposal

>Some remarks. I wasn't clear  writing "natural" pronunciation of
letters c, g, s, "natural ac-centing" and "natural suffixes". Of course
I meant common ("natural") in ROMANCE (interlingua) AND/OR LATIN
pronunciation, accenting and suffixes, because, as you saw, I prefer
this (romance) style in conlanging. So, I prefer to write "dolorosa"
(not "doloroZa") and "presidento" (instead of "preZidento") in "my"
conlang as it is more "natural" (in the meaning I explained above).

Ok, you have decided that 'natural' means 'romance'. So wtf (excuse my
French) didn't you say so in the first place? However, I still think you
need to be more specific, as I suspect that the only two romance languages
that agree completely on the pronunciation of these letters are Spanish and
Portuguese. the others all vary, sometimes they can be very different. <ce>
is [se] in French, [tSe] in Italian. You need to decide which, merely saying
'romance' or 'natural' is meaningless.

Fabian wrote:
>What about foxes, rabbits, and badgers? They don't seem very neuter to
me.And humanity in the abstract sense?
I consider, nevertheless, that it's useful to use neuter gender meaning
people/animals of unknown sex, or a group of them of both sexes, or of
which sex doesn't matters in the context. Ex. patres - parents, patro -
father, matra (madra?) - mother.

If you are trying to create an IAL, have obviously living creatures use the
neuter form could be confusing, especially to speakers of more exotic
languages. What is obvious to you is not at all obvious to me, and may be
completely ridiculous to the Chinese (especially your pronunciation rules).

Don HARLOW wrote:
>The plural -s is not inappropriate for a language where nouns take no
other endings, but how is it pronounced?
The plural -s must be pronounced usually, like in I-a - [s].

*Usually*, in French, <s> often doesn't make a significant difference to
pronunciation.

Charles wrote:
>But what about imperfect and other aspects?
We have no any perfect's and imperfect's (as well as pluperfect's!) in
Russian, and still feel ourselves OK. So, it isn't necessary for a IAL,
but it's possible, I agree.

Hmm, my old Russian teacher would have disagreed there. Admitedly, these
aspects are analytical, so you might not have counted them because of this.

Fabian wrote (about plurals):
>Why not with an -en ending, as in German? or -i, as in Latin? Or -in,
as in Hebrew? Why mark it at all, as in Japanese? Why not a dual form,
as inArabic? Or...

It isn't common ("natural") in the Romance langs, isn't it?

At the time, you made no mention that this was to be a romance language. Say
what you mean to say.

>Tenses are necessory because they ARE "natural" (see above that is
"natural" in my under-standing). I don't see how imperative or
infinitive can be difficult for a human being from our planet.
Conditional in Esp-o and Ido doesn't bother me, too. I don't like "a
priori grammatical endings" because they ARE not "natural".

About the infinitive; neither Japanese nor Maltese have infinitives. And
certainly in the case of Maltese, this does cause real problems. Bear in
mind that there are plenty of ways a language can live without an
'infinitive'.

Fabian wrote:
>Personally, I suspect analytical tenses are simpler than inflected
tenses.

>About auxiliaries. Do you think it's OK to you use verbs "have" and
"be" as auxiliaries in a simple and logical IAL? And creating a priori
auxiliaries, as in Novial, wouldn't be very "natural" for a Romance
conlang, would it?

I agree, they can be considered wrong, if you take the meaning of these
words at face value. But these words have a far broader meaning than you
give them credit for, and their use becomes sensible when you consider their
full meaning.

I have eaten - I 'own' an 'eat' - there is food comfortably inside me (yum!)

The cat was fed - perfectly transparent, when you consider that 'fed' is a
past participle. I am sure we all agree that 'the cat was feed' makes no
sense.


I need to know whether you are making an artlang or an IAL.

If you are really against a priori auxiliary verbs, you had better derive
your noun prepositions from verbs, as Tagalog(?) does. For example, in "I am
going to the house", "to" would be derived from the verb "go". Prepositions
as they generally stand in romance languages are ALL arbitrary.

>Why not write them as they sound, and rid yourself of unneccesary
memorization? If ph = f, then write f for every ph. Why not anarkia?
Because IT IS NOT BEATIFUL (to say nothing about it isn't "natural")!
"La nympha" is BEATIFUL (for me) and "la nimfa" (or even "nimfo") IS
NOT!
Emerson Alcott wrote:

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. With an IAL, you ought to go for
simplicity, imho. With a conlang, do as you plase. But please do decide
which you are making, especially if you choose to ask for help.

Emerson Alcott wrote:
>I-a preserves 'internationally acknowledged forms' from the view of
Western Europe, not the world.
I'm searching (or already creating) a conlang for me, not for "the
world". It was probably my mistake sending such question in auxlang,
but I thought that perhaps some auxlangers could help me to find it.

When you originally posted your request, you said you were creating an IAL.
Now you change your mind. Please decide what you want, then I help.

Fabian wrote:
>And how is having an accusative form implicitly more difficult than
having a strict word order (every language must have one or the other)?
I have nothing against cases in a conlang, even 5-6 - 'cause it IS
"natural" in Latin, and Latin is a real base for a Romance conlang. But
cases in IAL - is it so necessary?

>I have nothing against tenses in a conlang, even 5-6 - 'cause it IS
"natural" in Latin, and Latin is a real base for a Romance conlang. But
tenses in IAL - is it so necessary?

As I still don't see much difference between auxlang and conlang lists,
so I send this letter to all lists just to be sure.

Conlang is for languages that are for fun, art, literature. auxlang is for
serious attempts to foster international communication by means of a single
easy to learn language.

Sahib, you meed to decide what you are making, and stick with that decision.

I appreciate that English may not be your first language, but the fact that
you claimed to be making an IAL was very clear in your first post, and this
seems to have changed in your second post, without a word of explanation.
That is far more annoying than any lack of ability with English (and I have
not noticed any serious problems with your English).

---
Fabian
If a flying horse ye see, mock ye not if it stays up not.