Artyom Kouzminykh: Answes&proposal

Dear members of conlang/auxlang!

Thanks for all of you valuable answers to my question about conlang
with 8 "main distin-guishing features". I supposed that there wasn't
such conlang, but I wasn't sure of it, now it seems that I'm sure.

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).
Don HARLOW wrote:
>I'm dubious about the need to use an ending to show gender -- and even
more dubious about the need to make gender mandatory in words.
Charles wrote:
>In the modern world, why carry on with obsolete gender distinctions?
But perhaps the distinction between animate/inanimate is useful.
As for gender of the nouns, I certainly meant that only _biological
sex_ must be designated with letters =96o and =96a respectively, I don't
like "masculine chairs or feminine books", as Fabian
wrote, too! Seeing "patrino" for "mother" in Esperanto is really
bringing me down! It would be rather pitiable in Romance-based conlang,
isn't it?
"The distinction between animate/inanimate" is very interesting, but
not in "Romance-based conlang", that I tried to find.

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 =96 parents, patro =96
father, matra (madra?) =96 mother.

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 =96 [s].

Charles wrote (about =96s ending for plural):
>That's probably best, but -i isn't so bad.
From roman langs =96i we can find only in Italian (I think!), but we can
still find =96s in: French, Spanish, Portuguese, Latin (among others),
and even in such not-Romance langs as English, Holland, German and
Greek (among others)! Italians lose in this linguistic battle=85

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.

Don HARLOW wrote:
>What about the possibility of _no_ grammatical endings, signing parts
of speech syntactically?
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?

Don HARLOW wrote:
>Why tenses? The Chinese do mostly well without them. And the
conditional, imperative and infinitive are also unnecessary -- these
are difficult forms for many people (e.g., in Esperanto the conditional
is, except in its most common usage, perhaps as great a problem as the
accusative ending -- when should you say "devas" and when "devus"?).
Also, I see no problem with a priori grammatical endings (though even
in Esperanto and Ido _none_ of the grammatical endings is _a priori_ --
all of them can be traced back to sources in the Indo-European
languages). And why not analytic tenses with auxiliaries? An auxiliary
is no different from a grammatical ending, IMHO -- just located
differently.
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". (In
Esperanto and Ido grammatical endings ARE a priori (not-natural) ENOUGH
- do you think =96is in Esp-o & Ido''s verbs is better than (for example)
=96ava, -as =96 better than (for exam-ple) =96a, -os =96 better than (for
example) =96ara?).
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?
Don HARLOW wrote:
>For instance, in your above list the first word should definitely be
"olYmpico" (and I speak as one who, two weekends ago, was hiking in the
OlYmpic National Park).
It was my error writing "OlympIco", I certainly meant OlYmpico!
Emerson Alcott wrote:

>Why not write them asthey sound, and rid yourself of unneccesary
memorization? If ph =3D 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:

>German looks shocking and repulsive. Not to the Germans! Who's to say
what looks bad to whom?
>Ex. Esp-o>words fraulo, shlosilo, halti, hundo, edzo (!!!), nepre,
krom=85 "Nepre" comes from your own native tongue, Russian!
I mean that (a small quantity of) German (Russian, English =85 Chinese,
Hebrew, Indian =85 Martian, Venerian, Sirius=85) words would be "shocking
and repulsive" in a Romance (Latin) =96based conlang!

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=85

Emerson Alcott wrote:
>As Don Harlow has said, there is no such thing as natural accenting.
Foreach of the above words, one would need accent marks to know exactly
wherethe words were intended to be accented.
In the end, accenting is not such important thing like others. Let
everyone accent words every place he wants (though I prefer I-a style
here)!

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 =96 'cause it IS
"natural" in Latin, and Latin is a real base for a Romance conlang. But
cases in IAL =96 is it so necessary?

Patrick Dunn wrote:
il ne es u lingua qi pote krea u no-guera. (There is no language that
can create peace)
I agree, but is there a constructed language that suits my unassuming
requirements?

In conclusion I'd like to say that may be it would better to create
THREE related conlangs instead of one. Well, you see:
1) The first one is as "natural" as possible, for example Latino
Moderne http://www.geocities.com/Athens/3150/latinomoderne.html or
Lingua Franca Nova
 http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/lfnintro.html or The Master Language of
Stephen Chase Houghton or at least I-a. It is "orthographical" lang
with cases (like Latino Moderne), genders, with no "one grammatical
ending for one part of speech", with "natural" for Romance
irregularity, no ANY a priori auxiliaries, affixes and so on. It's an
artlang for role plays, author's enjoinment as well as for literature
and solemn ceremonies, the conlang for "aesthetes", priests and poets.
You can call it "high" or "noble" speech, for more interest. There is
no need to create such conlang, it already exists (see mentioned above).
2) The second is "law" or "popular" speech, based on the first one, but
grammatically strict as Esp-Ido, Novial etc. Well, "one grammatical
ending for one part of speech", no any cases of nouns and pronouns,
only 3 tenses (+participles, inf., imper.), perhaps a priori
auxiliaries, affixes and so on. It is "orthographical" lang, too. This
conlang must really be created by simplifying the "noble" speech.
3) The third lang is the same that the 2) but this is strictly
"phonetical", regular and logical lang, as ex. Esp-o-Ido, so it can be
proposed as an IAL, too.


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.

Amikale,
Artyom Kouzminykh
P.S. Sorry for my poor English =96 I have not any practice here=85
P.P.S. Why is it the way it is?