Creating a written language, maybe some would like to help?

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<a href="/it/translator/trent-anderson" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1173256">Trent Anderson <div class="author_icon" title="Page author" ></div></a>
Iscritto dal: 15.04.2013
Pending moderation

So, I am creating a written Germanic type language and I was wondering if anyone would like to help.

Feminine nouns: Actual female things (animals, plants in the case of adjectives), nouns ending in -e and -a, names of elements.
Masculine nouns: Actual male things, nouns ending in -i and -o, planets
Neutral: Genderless things such as Pokemon, nouns ending in -u and -r

Feminine "the" - Da
Feminine "a" - La

Masculine "the" - Di
Masculine "a" - Lo

Neutral "the" - Du
Neutral "a" - Lu

Alphabet:
A, ä. å
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O, ö
P
Q
R
S
T
U, ü
V
W
X
Y, ý
Z

Da Kopa - The cup
Di Miri - The sea/ocean
Du Týr - The animal

Posessive pronouns:

My/mine - Sýt
Your/yours (informal) - Týt
His - Týlot
Hers - Týlat
Its - Týlut
Our/ours - Týlost
Your/yours (Formal) - Týdt
Your/yours (plural) - Týdirt
Their - Týot
Their - Týat
Their - Týut

Subject pronouns:

Sý - I
Tý - You (Informal)
Týlo - He
Týla - She
Týlu - It
Týlos - We
Týd - You (formal)
Týdir - You (plural)
Týo - They (masculine)
Týa - They (feminine)
Týu - They (neutral)

Indirect/direct object pronouns:

Mý - Me
Wý - You
Nýo - It (masculine)
Nýa - It (feminine)
Nýu - It (neutral)
Nýos - They (masculine)
Nýas - They (feminine)
Nýus - They (neutral)
Nýot - Us

Demonstrative adjectives:

This and these (masculine) - Tiesto, tiestos
This and these (feminine) - Tiesta, tiestas
This and these (neutral) - Tiestu, tiestus

To make a plural of a noun, add an -it.
If the noun already ends in -i, add a -t.

Da Lobre - The book
Da Jota - The day
Di Miri - The sea/ocean
Di Milo - The mile
Du Jutu - The apple
Du Týr - The animal
Da Lýa - The woman
Da Nimýe - The girl
Di Sini - The man
Di åto - The boy
Du Tünu - The bed
Du Famar - The flame

All verbs end in -en

Indicative present verbs

Säen - To see

Sý sät - I see
Tý säen - You see
Týlo, týla, týlu säst - He/she/it sees
Týlos säyos - We see
Týd, týdir säla - You see
Týo, týa, týu säens - they see

Sien - To be

Sý siet - I am
Tý sien - You are
Týlo, týla, týlu siest - He/she/it is
Týlos sieyos- We are
Týd, týdir siela - You are
Týo, týa, týu siens - They are

Mussen - To be obligated to, to have to

Sý musset - I have to
Tý mussen - You have to
Týlo, týla, týlu musst - He/she/it has to
Týlos mussyos - We have to
Týd, týdir mussla- You have to
Týo, týa, týu mussens - They have to

Veterano
<a href="/it/translator/purmela-punpkin" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1190414">Purmela Punpkin </a>
Iscritto dal: 16.10.2013

I`m not shure if I understood everything (well I have to admit that I only scaned the text) - but why do you do that? I mean, it`s a funny thing, I see , but...??

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<a href="/it/translator/trent-anderson" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1173256">Trent Anderson <div class="author_icon" title="Page author" ></div></a>
Iscritto dal: 15.04.2013

I am doing it because the subject of linguistics interests me, and if I can create a synthetic Germanic language, I could teach it to a small group of people and we could speak without others knowing what we are saying.

Veterano
<a href="/it/translator/purmela-punpkin" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1190414">Purmela Punpkin </a>
Iscritto dal: 16.10.2013

and why did you choose german?

Membro
<a href="/it/translator/trent-anderson" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1173256">Trent Anderson <div class="author_icon" title="Page author" ></div></a>
Iscritto dal: 15.04.2013

Not German specifically, but the Germanic family tree. (Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, etc.) Those are all models for it, with the exception of some words kind of sounding Finnish. I am not planning on taking many words from other languages, just making it kind of sound like it belongs in that category.

Moderatore in pensione and Scholar of a Dark Age
<a href="/it/translator/sciera" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1077079">Sciera </a>
Iscritto dal: 16.02.2011

Hm, I consider such projects to be rather unnecessary but I also don't really like Esperanto and the like anyway. So my perspective might be a bit biased. Only artificial language I currently are quite fond of is Neutsch - and even of that I'm rather sceptical (but Neutsch is mostly a parody anyway).

Such languages are (obviously) pretty artificial. And that means that they don't have the advantages of naturally grown languages.

Esperanto for example seems to be easy to learn due to being quite free of irregular words etc. - but are such languages comfortable to use? The frequent words are too long I'd say (in the case of your project that's especially the personal pronouns). But that's just my first impression. The verbs have suffixes to mark person and number, so maybe the personal pronouns can normally be left away anyway, so in that case they wouldn't be too long.

Also, in which way do you want the syntax/cases to work? Word order? Affixes?

What is the difference between y and ý?
Do we really need f, v and w? Two of them normally are enough.
How is j to be pronounced?
How is the length and stress of syllables marked orthographically?

Btw, at least you admit that it's based heavily on Germanic languages.
Esperanto claims to be language easily learnable by everyone on the whole world yet mostly consists of Romanic, Germanic and Slavic expressions.

PS: Most pokemon aren't genderless.

Membro
<a href="/it/translator/trent-anderson" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1173256">Trent Anderson <div class="author_icon" title="Page author" ></div></a>
Iscritto dal: 15.04.2013

I was thinking of giving it the generic nominative, accusative, and dative cases for the most part until I can make anything else work. And the Y is like a yuh, and the ý makes kind of the same sound as the "ous" in French. The J is like a Y. It will be used in the case that a word with a Y already exists and I want to make something alike, just with a J. The length and stress, I am not sure about. I was thinking of having help with that from people. And when I said Pokemon, I meant the things like legendaries.

Master Translator
<a href="/it/translator/franciscotranslate" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1196876">francisco.translate </a>
Iscritto dal: 14.12.2013

Hi Trent,
Your are not the first one with that idea, as for sure you know.
It seems your project is similar with Euronord (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euronord), Folkspraak (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folkspraak) or others based on the Germanic languages family tree (usually including English).
Among the planned or constructed languages, there are two main types, some more "artificial" (such as Esperanto) and some more "natural" (such as Interlingua). I'm a native speaker of Portuguese (a Romance/Latin) language and I know the basics of some other Romance and Germanic languages. So, I can read most of Esperanto, but it seems rather unnatural to me. By the other hand, I read Interlingua almost as easily as Portuguese or Spanish and it sounds natural to me.
Well, if I created a constructed or planned language based on a language family tree (for instance Germanic, based on English, Dutch, German and Scandinavian languages), I would try to follow these guidelines:

> Make it as simple as possibe, even simpler than Esperanto. For complexity we have already the existing languages. Maybe some Creoles could be a model for simpler features. I know Cape-Verdean Creole, which is mostly based on Portuguese lexicon, but with much simplified grammar. Even so, Cape-Verdean is, say, a normal language, used in every situation, able to every subject.

> For each case, use the most common word in that family of languages, or the etymological root.
For exemple, "the" exists in these variants in several Germanic languages: the - de - die - der - das - den - det. The first sound is "th" or "d", and "d" is the spelling in almost all (and also in "da" for the informal English speech of "the"). The second has "e" as the most common spelling. Thus, for the word "the", I would choose just "de". And, according to my first "rule" of keep it simple, it would be always "de", in any case, any declension nor inflection (number, gender, etc), like the English "the".
Other examples:
- "that - das - dat - at - (etc)", simplify and use just "dat";
- "for - für - voor - för - (etc)", use "for";
- "cat (the feline animal) - Katze - kat - katt", use "kat".

> Simplifly also the spelling and the alphabet, if possible based on cases of some of the languages. Some examples:
- change 'c' to 'k' in words like "cat" (kat) or "come" (kome, or kom);
- change 'ck' to 'k', 'ph' to 'f', 'y' to 'i', 'w' to 'u' ou 'v', double letters (ll, tt, mm, etc) to single ones, 'mp' and 'mb' to 'np' and 'nb', etc.
- use 'g' just for the sound like in "get" and the 'j' for the sound like in "jam" (thus "jeneral" instead of "general");
- use 's' for 'c' like in "center" or "civil" (Norwegian "senter" and "sivil");
- use 'x' for 'sh' and 'tx' for 'ch' (if you don't follow the natural ethimology of most languages);
- use 'ks' for 'x' when it has that sound (for example "taxonomy" is "taksonomi" in Norwegian).

> Simplify the grammar.
- for example simplify the verb tenses (even more than in English);
- don't use irregular forms of verb tenses or plurals;
- perhaps the plural could be adding 'en' or 'n', as it happen in many cases of Germanic languages, including some cases in English; or just always only 's'.

> Don't use diacritics (accents) nor "special" letters. For example, my Portuguese keyboard has direct access to 'ç', but don't have to 'ö'. keyboards in other languages have similar problems with diacritics.

Let's try some possible (among many) phrases according to my suggestions for the Germanic family tree:
De kat kom hus - The cat come to the house.
I be fro Europ (or ik zen fro Europe) - I am from Europe.
Dit is de niu sprak - This the new language.
Vi no verst - We don't understand.
;)

Moderatore of the Moana
<a href="/it/translator/silentrebel83" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1082168">SilentRebel83 <div class="moderator_icon" title="Модератор" ></div></a>
Iscritto dal: 22.04.2011

Just gotta give you kudos on the work you've done here, Trent. Keep it up.

Membro
<a href="/it/translator/ristoncor" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1209227">Ristoncor </a>
Iscritto dal: 04.06.2014

If you join the ImpishIdea forums (writing forums), a user by the name of Taku Gifian does things similar to this.

Membro
<a href="/it/translator/ristoncor" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1209227">Ristoncor </a>
Iscritto dal: 04.06.2014

It looks awesome so far, though.

Super Membro
<a href="/it/translator/1998ruby1998" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1224663">1998Ruby1998 </a>
Iscritto dal: 31.10.2014

Oh yeah, I have been doing the same thing too! Only that I don't base on Germanic languages, I use Kartvelian, Slavic, Sino-Tibetian, trying to make the language almost new and exotic.
Currently, I won't try to set up feminine or masculine to make things simpler. If there are too many rules, it will be hard for both users and creators. After all, there are trillions of words and it would be troublesome if you are the only one creating the language.

Novizio
<a href="/it/translator/tecno-milton" class="userpopupinfo" rel="user1285519">Tecno Milton </a>
Iscritto dal: 31.03.2016

Trent. Take the Folkspraak languaje, change the verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, conjunctions, and interjections and the numbers names, taking of the normal English languaje (Revolutionary Idea)