text:
Descriptive Religion

This book describes many of the world's religions. As it would be practically impossible to detail all of the thousands of religions, denominations, sects, and cults, it focuses on the major religions, some interesting smaller groups, and some new developments in religious thought.

Prior knowledge of religious theory should not be needed to understand the content of this book.

Contents

 * /World religion/
 * /Describing world religions/
 * /Religions, denominations, sects, and cults/
 * /Major religions/
 * /Judaism/
 * /Christianity/
 * /Islam/
 * /Hinduism/
 * /Buddhism/
 * /Jainism/
 * /Woe-geo (Duk-in Joo Religion)/
 * /Zorastrianism/
 * /Sikhism/
 * /Taoism/
 * /Confucianism/
 * /Shintoism/
 * /Secularism/
 * /Agnosticism/
 * /Atheism/
 * /Animism, panpsychism, pantheism, and panentheism/
 * /Other religions, movements, and concepts/
 * /Marxism/
 * /New Age/
 * /Witchcraft, magic, and Wicca/
 * /Native American spirituality/
 * /Bahai/
 * /Unitarianism/
 * /Ecumenism/
 * /Sufism/
 * /Satanism/
 * /Paganism and Neo-Paganism/
 * /Kabala/
 * /Vudun/
 * /The Unification Church/
 * /The Way International/
 * /Armstrongism/
 * /Astra/
 * /Christadelpians/
 * /Christian Science/
 * /Divine Light Mission/
 * /Eckankar/
 * /The Family/Children of God/
 * /Foundation of Human Understanding/
 * /Guardjieff/
 * /Holy Order of Man/
 * /Jehovah's Witness/
 * /Krishnamurti/
 * /Lucis Trust/
 * /Gnostic Christianity/
 * /Rajneesh/
 * /Ram Dass/
 * /Mormanism/
 * /Religion Science/
 * /Ruhani Satsung/
 * /Sai Baba Society/
 * /Scientology/
 * /Self Fellowship/
 * /Silva/
 * /Sri Chemnoy/
 * /Swedenbourg/
 * /Theosophy/
 * /Transcendental Meditation/
 * /UFO cults/

Internal
There are Wikipedia articles for most of the religions.
 * World Religions

Books

 * Ankerberg, John & John Weldon (1999) Encyclopedia of Cults and New Religions . Eugene, OR: Harvest House Publishers ISBN 1736900748
 * Barrett, David, et al., (2001) World Christian Encyclopedia: A comparative survey of churches and religions - AD 30 to 2200, 2nd edition . Oxford University Press ISBN 0195103181
 * Gaer, Joseph (1978) What the Great Religions Believe . New York: Signet Books ISBN 0451155297
 * Halverson, Dean C. (general edition) (1996) The Compact Guide to World Religions . Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers ISBN 1556617046
 * McDowell, Josh & Don Stewart (1982) Handbook of Today's Religions: Understanding Non-Christian Religions . San Bernardino, CA: Here's Life Publishers, Inc. ISBN 0866050922
 * Mead, Frank S. & Samuel S. Hill (1965) Handbook of Denominations in the United States: 10th Edition . Nashville: Abingdon Press ISBN 0687014786

Internet sites

 * Adherents.com: Statistics about church membership and religious adherents of different faith groups
 * Electric Texts (Religious Studies Web Guide)
 * Virtual Religion Index

Courses

 * Johnson, Luke T., John L. Esposito, et al. (Presenters) Great World Religions, 2nd edition . Chantilly, VA: The Teaching Company

title: Descriptive Religion


text: Category:Book:WebObjects

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Category:Book:WebObjects


text:
Basic Computer Security/Further Reading

 * (Asymmetric key encryption)
 * Humor
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Further reading
 * https://security.stackexchange.com

Books
 * Hacking tools
 * S in The Computer Revolution

Courses
 * https://www.udemy.com/topic/cyber-security/
 * https://www.futurelearn.com/subjects/it-and-computer-science-courses/cyber-security
 * https://www.coursera.org/browse/information-technology/security

title: Basic Computer Security/Further Reading


text:
Horticulture/Mustard Greens

Mustard greens are a leafy vegetable grown for use as a salad green or as a cooked green.

title: Horticulture/Mustard Greens


text:
Wikijunior:What can you use math for?

{| style="width:100%;"
 * style="width:50%;" |

About the book
'''Welcome to the Wikijunior "What can you use math for?" project.'''

Our society is in need of people who know math. A big motivation for learning math in the first place is to have some idea of what it can be used for. This is an attempt at catching children early on, and giving them some ideas of what math can be used for: both now, and later in life.

Please add any article that you think will spark interest instead of quelling it. Thanks.

 * /Authors/
 * /Contributing/
 * Stub Template
 * style="vertical-align:top; width:50%;" |

Contents

 * /Introduction/
 * /Buying Something/
 * /Guessing Jellybeans/
 * /Money/
 * /Area/
 * Architecture
 * /Video Games/
 * /Puzzles/
 * Glossary of basic terms
 * }

Preliminary outline
A guide to what children may be able to use maths for, now and in the future.

Basic
 * Find out how much candy to get for $50, while in a store.
 * Build a boat
 * Find the number of squares on a chessboard, without counting

Advanced (overviews)
 * Draw pictures with graphs
 * Know the easiest way to do something (optimization)
 * Make a video game (programming)
 * Know the best move in a game
 * Solve puzzles like Rubik's cubes, Tower of Hanoi, and Sudoku (logic)

title: Wikijunior:What can you use math for?


text:
Wikijunior:What can you use math for?/Introduction

Introduction
Math is sometimes difficult to understand, and may sometimes even seem like it is pointless, but still teachers are convinced that learning math is important. Why? It's not easy to answer that because math doesn't have just one single use. It is used everywhere- even in places that you wouldn't expect.

Math can — believe it or not — be used to make very hard problems much easier, and it can solve some problems that could not be solved at all without it. Many of the uses of math are just too hard to understand without actually knowing the math, but there are also many uses you can probably do now! This book will try to help you understand what kinds of things you can do with the basic math you already know, and then it will show you some of the cool things you can do with math and what you need to learn to get there!


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Wikijunior:What can you use math for?/Authors

 * Alexander Rødseth Proposed and started book
 * Ian Burnet I am new to Wikijunior and am quite busy, but I am very interested in this project. I will try to write a few sections when I have the time.
 * 42 pwnzor I have written one of the pages so far and hope to write more
 * Nutcracker100 I am fixing up the story.


text:
Water Resources Directory/Data

Satellite Imagery
One Planet, Many People: Atlas of Our Changing Environment - 405 powerpoint slides showing earth maps from state-of-the-art remote sensing technology, covering 11 themes – Introduction to the Planet, People and Planet, Atmosphere, Coastal Areas, Urban Areas, Water and Lakes, Forests, Cropland, Grassland, Tundra and Polar Areas and Extreme Events – and 6 geographical regions – Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Latin America, North America and Polar Regions.

International Data Centers

 * GRID unit of United Nations Environmental Program, at USGS/EROS Data Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota (USA)

title: Water Resources Directory/Data


text:
Game Maker Programming/Mathematical calculations

GameMaker can perform mathematical functions on integers, on variables containing integers. Writing in code:

2*2

would equal 4. If a=2, then:

a*a

would also equal 4. Game Maker can perform basic addition, multiplication, subtraction and division, as well as square rooting, as shown below:

sqrt(integer);


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Novial/AIL Novial

=Novial=

In this special part I venture to sketch the new Interlanguage which I have tried to construct on the basis of a lifelong study of various national languages and a study begun in 1903 of the best schemes of artificial languages. I have found the problem an extremely complicated one, and cannot pretend in every detail to have hit upon the best solution. My attitude has been the scientific one of not issuing ukases, but rather of stating arguments wherever I deviate from my predecessors. To these I owe, of course, a great debt, both for showing me practicable roads and negatively for striking paths which to my mind would land us in impasses. I might have contented myself with criticizing previous schemes and throwing out some scattered new proposals, but I have thought it more valuable to show how my ideas fit together as an aggregate whole: I have therefore given a sufficient number of specimens for the reader to form an idea of the looks and sounds of the first interlanguage ever framed by a professional philologist. Among novel features I may mention the perfect agreement in flexion between between substantives and pronouns, the use of the ground-form of verbs even in the perfect and passive, the elimination of c and z, and the e/a/o-words. Some of my suggestions may be accepted singly and worked into other schemes, but others are so intimately knit together that they must be taken or rejected jointly. Though I have tried to work as far as possible on scientific lines, i.e. objectively, it has not been possible totally to exclude individual tastes and preferences; my hope is that thing which at first may look unpleasant will be found less so on closer inspection; that, at any rate, has been my own experience with some of my forms. In regard to some points I have hesitated a good deal before deciding on the form here proposed, and am perfectly willing to accept criticism and new suggestions: though, as I have said in Part I, we are approaching a period of agreement on the principle of language-construction, that period has not yet arrived, and interlinguists must therefore show the widest toleration of each other's systems and provisionally admit alternative forms, which will have to be tested thoroughly in practice before the bad ones are weeded out finally. I shall be happy if it is recognized that I have contributed in some slight measure to bring about the victory of the idea in general and to give its final shape to the International Auxiliary Language of the future. In this part the following abbreviations have been used:

D = German (Deutsch).

E = English.

F = French.

I = Italian.

L = Latin.

P = Portuguese.

Po = Polish.

R = Russian.

S = Spanish.

Sc = Scandinavian.

Esp = Esperanto.

N = Novial.

Occ = Occidental.

Z = Zamenhof, i.e. Esperanto.

adj = adjective.

adv = adverb.

sb = substantive.

vb = verb.

title: Novial/AIL Novial


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Game Maker Programming/InputOutput

All of Game Maker's visible output is performed in the Draw event of an instance. By default, the object will be drawn at its specified coordinates, but this can be overridden by creating a draw event. Functions that deal with output have the prefix draw_, and these functions are not guaranteed to provide any visible output if used outside of a draw event.

To receive input, built-in variables are used. keyboard_string holds the last 1,024 characters typed while the window is in focus. mouse_x and mouse_y hold the x and y of the mouse relative to the top left hand corner of the window.

Together with output functions, you can create interactive games very easily based on user input. For example, in the Draw event of an instance:

draw_text(0,0,keyboard_string);

would draw the last 1,024 characters the user typed, starting from 0,0 - or the upper left hand corner.

Drawing surfaces

 * Note: This is not available in the free version of Game Maker.

It is possible to draw images on a canvas instead of directly on the screen. To do this, you will need to use the functions starting with surface_ and draw_surface_.

title: Game Maker Programming/InputOutput


text:
Novial/AIL Sounds and Spelling

Sounds and Spelling
Before dealing with the sounds themselves, it will be well to say something of the alphabet to be used in our international language. Most people will at once agree that it would be quite impossible to take the Russian, Greek, Hebrew or Arabic, or any other Oriental alphabet, in a language which must first and foremost be destined for use in the West-European and American world. Nor would it do to try and invent a purely phonetic alphabet independent of the Roman letters, although it would be possible and even fairly simple to devise an alphabet that would be simpler and much more systematic than the traditional Roman alphabet with its many deficiencies (nothing in the shape of the letters to show the parallelism between the pairs p:b, t:d, k:g, f:v; no sign for the simple nasal spelt n in finger, sink, and ng in singer, sing, etc.). There can be not the slightest doubt that we must take the Roman alphabet such as it is, simply because it is already used by the greatest number of people, at any rate of those who are likely to use an international language, and who are thus saved the trouble of learning a new one.

This of course means taking over also a certain number of orthographic habits, such as the differentiation of small and big (capital) letters, though the use of such pairs as a and A,n and N, etc., really means an unnecessary complication, and is, strictly speaking, an infringement of the principle one sign for one sound. There is also some disagreement between various nations as to the extent in which capital letter are used: while all nations agree that they should be used after a full stop and in proper names in the strictest sense, some nations use them also in adjectives and verbs derived from proper names (E French, F français, etc.). Such details, however, are of no importance and need not be discussed here. But all constructors of artificial languages seem to agree in rejecting the specifically German practice of writing all substantives with capitals.

If it is our endeavour to use as many international words as possible in the shape that most readers and speakers would readily recognize, we shall soon discover a great number of difficulties, for even in the most international words the orthographic and phonetic habits of various nations go widely apart. The task of selecting the best forms is therefore to be likened to a dance among eggs: you are sure here and there to jar upon the feelings of someone, and people's feelings in these matter are not to be lightly treated as prejudices. If we compare the written forms of E F nature, D natur, I S natura, it is easy to see that natur with or without a final vowel is perfectly international, but what would have been the result if we had had only the spoken forms to compare? Then we should have discovered that n and perhaps t were the only elements common to all forms. In this case, and in many others, the solution is obvious: we must take the international spelling and give to each letter the most international value: we must therefore pronounce natur as in D I S and leave aside the E vowel in the first and the F vowel in the second syllable. But we cannot in every detail follow the traditional spelling of words, even if it is fairly international, for too great a number of irregularities would make the language too complicated - and we must remember that a great many people have to struggle all their lives to master the orthographic intricacies of their own language.

In the dilemma arising from the tendencies to keep traditional spellings and yet to have easy rules for pronunciation it is perhaps well to keep in mind the fact that a change in spelling does not trouble readers very much, provided it goes in the right direction, i.e. gives well-known values to well-known letters and uses them consistently where the ordinary spelling is inconsistent. English people will therefore have little objection to such a spelling as tsar for czar or skeptic (or even skeptik) for sceptic, but scin for skin would be intolerable. We should therefore avoid irritating the ordinary West-European by telling him that ca and co are to be pronounced as [tsa, tso]:¹ such deviations from his time-honoured habits would only be palatable if they could be proved by unanswerable arguments to be absolutely necessary - which is not the case. Esp caro will be taken by the uninitiated to mean either `dear,' or `meat,' but it stands for `tsar.'

The spelling must be as regular as possible; there should therefore be no mute or silent letters: English and French learners must be specially warned that all written final e's should be clearly sounded with the same vowel as in the middle of a word. For E rhythm, D rhythmus, F rythme we must write ritme (two syllables; cf. the I spelling ritmo). Words beginning with th should be written and pronounced with t: teatre, teologia, teorie, tese; also in the middle of a word: entusiasme, sintese, E synthesis. In all such cases the sound [t] is found everywhere except in E and Greek.

Another orthographic simplification that is self-evident is f for ph: filosofia (as in I Sc), sfere, sofa (F D sometimes sopha).

Where ch represents Greek kh, it should similarly be written and pronounced k: kaos, kimere, Kristo, kronologia, arkeologo, skole, etc. Karaktere = E character, F caractère, I carattere, S character, D charakter, Sc karakter.

The Roman alphabet should not be further complicated by the addition of new letters or diacritical marks over or under the letters. It is true that some such signs are used in some of the national languages, such as the F cédille (ç), accents over vowels, č and š in Czech, n con tilde (ñ) in S, etc. These signs are not used universally, nor are they found in all printing-offices, and some of them are used for very different purposes; thus accents over vowels sometimes indicate stress, sometimes length, sometimes different vowel qualities (F é, è), and sometimes different meanings of totally homophonous words (F ou où). Two dots over o (ö) are used in E to denote separate pronunciation (coöperation, also spelt cooperation or co-operation), in D to denote the rounded front vowel, similarly in Hungarian, which even has the variant with two strokes instead of dots to denote the long vowel. All such signs present unnecessary difficulties in writing, in telegraphing and in printing. Printing with extra letters implies greater expense, and it is clear that an international language should be easy to print without extra cost in any, even the smallest, printing-office and in any type whatever (roman, italics, heavy type, small capitals, etc., all the various forms used in advertisements, etc.).

It was therefore the greatest blunder in the history of auxiliary languages when Zamenhof in 1887 created his Esperanto with a number of consonants surmounted by circumflexes: he probably took the idea from Czech, only he made č and š into ĉ and ŝ, and put the same marks over g, h, and j, thereby showing, by the way, that he was no phonetician, for phonetically there is no parallelism between the modifications intended by these signs, which are thus less systematic than the Czech letters. There can be little doubt that the spread of Esperanto might have been many times greater, had all sympathetic newspapers been able without trouble to print specimens and articles in Esperanto. In 1894 Zamenhof saw this clearly, and was even for a moment inclined to abolish these letters, but unfortunately he was later on obstinately opposed to that as well as to other reforms in his own creation. If he and his followers in 1894 had carried out the reforms he then proposed himself, we should have been further than now by some decades in the fight to convince an indolent world of the feasibility of an auxiliary language.

''Occ uses an apostrophe after n and l to denote palatalized pronunciation ("mouillé"): this is not so bad as Esperanto's circumflexes, as it can easily be printed; but the sounds are not quite easy and are employed in an inconsistent way. Nothing is gained by writing attin'er for 'attain' - neither sound nor spelling is found in any language. It is much better to do away with these superfluous sounds. Besides, Occ pretty often uses accents over vowels to indicate the place of the stress: this, too, is something which is better left out in an I.A.L. (Cf. below on in- in Occ., p123.)''

¹ Phonetic transcriptions are put in brackets [ ]. The only special symbols needed in this book are ʃ for sh in E shall and ʒ  for F j, E s in measure.

title: Novial/AIL Sounds and Spelling


text:
Novial/AIL Vowels

Vowels
There can be no doubt that we must have in our language the five vowels a, e, i, o, u, and only those, and that they must be pronounced with their continental values, which are found also in certain words in English, though English very often has shifted the values of the vowels. A thus must never be pronounced as in E tale, e never as in me, i never as in fine, o never as in do, u never as in but, etc. The proper sounds to be given to these signs are seen in the following examples:

a: E father, F la, part, D Vater, fasse. e: E yes, F père, été, D sehn, denn. i: E machine, in, F fille, ici, D viel, in. o: E so (cf. below), hot, F beau, tôle, D so, von. u: E rude, pull, F tout, jour, D du, dumm.

A phonetician will easily see that the vowels given in these examples are not pronounced exactly alike, neither within the same language nor when we compare the three languages cited. But this is one of the beauties of an international language, that it needs only five vowels, and therefore can allow a certain amount of liberty in pronouncing these sounds without any misunderstanding arising, as is often the case in national languages when small differences are disregarded which are significant in the language itself but which cannot easily be kept apart by foreigners. It would be a serious mistake in an artificial language to distinguish an open and a close e (as in F chanté and chantais) or two a's (as in F patte and pâte). We must not give too strict rules for pronunciation, and the only thing on which we must insist is to make each vowel as clear as possible: a must neither be too near e nor too near o, etc. It is then for teachers to know and to tell their pupils where their particular language is apt to deviate from that clear and neutral pronunciation which will make it possible for their words to be understood by foreigners. Thus English people must be warned not to make vowels in unstressed syllables indistinct, as in banana, perceive, polite, suppose, and not to dipthongize long vowels, as in shade, home, so. Nor should they pronounce the short written o with too open a sound; especially in the mouth of many Americans not, stop sounds as containing a continental a rather than an o-sound.

The examples given contain long as well as short vowels: in an I.A.L. it would not do to have words solely distinguished by the length of the vowel, as is done so often in many languages, e.g. F maître, mettre, D biete, bitte. Such distinctions are unknown in some languages, and must be reckoned among those phonetic subtleties which would make an I.A.L. too difficult for practical use. We should therefore give no rule for the quantity of any vowel, but leave it to the convenience of each speaker separately, though it is inevitable that most nations would make, for instance, the o long in rose and short in poste. In this connexion we may also mention that it would be a fatal mistake to have double consonants in an I.A.L.: though some nations (e.g. Italians, Swedes, Finns) pronounce written double consonants so as to keep them easily distinct from single consonants, the same is not true of most other nations: neither E, D nor Dan pronounces t in bitter as a double (or long) consonant, and the spelling with two t's practically serves only to show the shortness of the preceding vowel. Therefore in Novial, as well as in Esp-Ido, we simplify the spelling in all words containing double letters in the national languages, from which the words are taken: pasa (E pass, F passer), efekte, komun (F commun, E common), etc. In this we follow the beautiful example of Spanish, which writes pasar, efecto, común, etc., and even extend it to cases in which Spanish makes a distinction in sound and spelling, as with ll and rr: bel S bello, F belle, koresponda, S corresponder, etc. We thus get rid of something which as a matter of fact presents very great difficulties to all spellers in English as well as in other languages.

The rounded front vowels found, e.g., in F pu, peu, peur, D über, höhe, Dan syn, sø, sön, are unknown in a great many important languages (E I S), and therefore inadmissible in a language that should be easy to many millions; the first of these vowels was what at first was meant by the letter y, which has now become [i] in many languages, and should therefore in the international language be spelt i as in I sistema, sintomo, sintesi (here sisteme, simptome, sintese); note also the spellings D Sc stil, I stilo, where E F have style, I S silvano = E sylvan, F sylvain.

Nasal vowels as in F an, vin, un, on cannot be tolerated in an I.A.L.

When two vowels occur side by side, each of them should be pronounced distinctly with its proper sound, thus eu in Europa, neutral with the sound of e in net + the sound of u in put or F fou, accordingly not like the D pronunciation of eu and of course not with the sounds of the same words in E. Here we have naturally a dipthong, and similarly in audi, boikota, etc. But whether the two vowels in naivi, arkaiki, kokaine, peisaje, fideikomise and other similar words are pronounced rapidly enough to form a dipthong or are kept apart, does not matter very much, so long as each of them is pronounced distinctly. The same is true of the combinations found in natione, filio, filia, sexual, vertuos, etc., which in rapid pronunciation tend towards a pronunciation with y and w respectively.

title: Novial/AIL Vowels


text:
Novial/AIL Consonants

Consonants
We next proceed to the separate consonants; some of these need not detain us long, because there is such agreement between the principal languages with regard to their pronunciation and spelling that there can be no doubt as to their employment in an IAL. This is the case with regard to the following pairs: b p d t g k (see below on g) v f, the former of which represent the voiced and the latter the corresponding voiceless sound: here again we can disregard such smaller nuances as that between an unaspirated ("sharp") p, t, k as in F, and the aspirated sounds in E D Sc. It is best to give everywhere the same sound to t, thus to make the two t's in intentione identical.

Further we have l m n s r h.

Of these, l is best pronounced as in F D without that velar modification which is often found in E and in an exaggerated degree in Russian and Polish. N naturally takes the sound of ng in E sing before g, k (and qu). On s see below under z.

R should be pronounced very distinctly and best with trilling of the point of the tongue; English learners should be particularly careful to pronounce it also before a consonant and thus to make the distinction between such pairs as arm- and am-, bark- and bak-, farm- and fam-, kart- and kat- clearly audible (I have here purposely omitted the final vowels of these words as unimportant for the question which interests us in this place).

This leaves us with the following letters of the ordinary Roman alphabet on our hands: c j q x y, and we must discuss each of them separately. The easiest to deal with is x, which may be considered a convenient, shorthand-like abbreviation known to everybody from a great many international words like example, excellent, etc. Not only is this extremely easy for everybody, but it also saves us the necessity of choosing between ks and gz. F and E pronounce [ks] in some words, [gz] in others, the two languages not always being in agreement on the same words; most other languages have always the sound [ks], which will probably be the pronunciation generally adopted in the final IAL, though it does not matter very much if some people may here and there pronounce [gz]. Z's unphonetic spelling kz (ekzameni, etc.) will probably please no one outside of Russia.

Q means the same thing as k, but is scarcely ever used in any language except in the combination qu, which is familiar to most Europeans from words like quality, quarter, etc. Only doctrinaires could object to our using this combination in such international words: it is true that the same sound is then written in two different ways, but by this means we keep the familiar aspect of these words and get rid of a fair number of k's (an awkward letter to write), with no more danger than to give some nations a temptation to pronounce [k] instead of [ku, kw] or [kv]--for both these pronunciations must be allowable for qu.

As already mentioned, we have no use for y as a sign for a vowel; but this letter may with advantage be used as a consonant with the only consonantal value ever given to it, namely as in E yes; it is used for the same sound in S (yerba herb, yegua mare) and internationally in a few words like yak, yatagan, yacht.

Instead of y for this sound some people would perhaps propose the letter j, used in this way in D I Sc. But as this letter is known practically everywhere in such international words as journal, jaloux, taken from F, it is better to use j in these and similar words, attributing to it either the French sound or the English one in journal, jealous (which is the F sound with d preposed): the latter is more distinctive, but it does not matter greatly if some prefer the F sound of j.

The same letter j with the pronuncation just indicated must also be used in some cases in which the traditional spelling is g. This spelling has its historical reason in the development of the Romanic languages, through which the sound [g], found everywhere in classical Latin where g was written, has undergone changes similar to, though not exactly parallel with, those we shall soon see in the case of the corresponding voiceless sound [k], written c. But it would not be practical to use j in all those words in which I E have the sound [dZ] and F [Z] spelt in this way, for in some words D R Sc still have the sound [g], and it will therefore be best (as being easiest to the greatest number) in such words to keep the spelling g with the normal sound of that letter. This is especially the case with some more or less learned words, which it would be awkward to spell with j: geologia, geografia, and others with geo-, genealogia and others in -logia; further, gigante, gimnastike, tragedie, genie, general, original, geste; to these I count also rege 'king' on account of regal, regalia, though Ido has rejo. We must also have gardene on account of D E (Sc), though F has jardin and I giardino. But j is preferable, where in popular words the meaning is more or less changed from what it was in Latin: jena F gêner, jentil, jendarmo, plaje F plage 'beach'. J is also preferable in jeneros generous, which in D Sc is pronounced with an imitation of the F sound. Imaje is better than image, and there is some justification for the Ido differentiation of this word and imagina vb imagine. The ending -aje is found in other words as well: kuraje courage, voyaje, etc. N of course spells intrige without u; similarly garda to guard, gida to guide (u pronounced in I only).

Occ has the courage here to follow the practice of some languages, giving to the letter g two pronunciations, before e, i, y as in F, elsewhere as in D. But this extreme "naturalness" is unnatural in the artificial language, which should have the advantage of being more regular than the national languages. In the grammatical scheme of N the Occ double pronunciation would be particularly intolerable, because we have regular word-formations like lege law, legal; rego kind, rega queen, reges royalties; vagi vague, vagum something vague, etc.

The letter g creates difficulties in still another way, through the historical development of the combination gn into the palatalized sounds of F signe, I segno, S seño. In most cases it will be best to keep the traditional spelling and give to g its usual sound, which is often found in derivatives like E signal, thus digni with indignatione, signe, asigna, insigne, regna, stagna and others. But in other words it seems more natural to spell ni: lorniete, champanie, onione (E onion), linie, viniete, koniak (or keep cognac as a trade-name or proper name, like bordeaux?). If we take kompane for companion, we have the regularly formed derivative kompania company. Besono is from F besoin, not from besogne.

title: Novial/AIL Consonants


text:
Novial/AIL C

The Letter C
The greatest mischief-maker in European languages is the letter c. This is owing to the historic fact that the sound for which this letter stood when the Latin alphabet was framed, namely [k], in course of time has changed very considerably, and has changed in different ways in the various countries into which the Latin language and the Latin alphabet penetrated - but the spelling has generally been kept unchanged. Where the old Romans pronounced two [k]s in such a word as circulus, only the second c has kept its sound, while the first, like any c before i and e, was drawn forward by these front vowels, the result being that the initial sound is now [tS] in I circolo, [phonetic symbol] (pronounced like E th) in S circulo, [s] in E circle, F cercle, Sc cirkel and P circulo. Before becoming [s] the sound in F was [ts], and this pronunciation was taken over into D (where the spelling is now zirkel) as well as into Slavic languages: in these latter the same value of the letter c was extended so that c is even used before a, o, u and consonants: in Polish the Russian tsar is spelt car, the D loan-word zug (`draught, train') is written cug, and sugar (D zucker) cukier; the name Potocki is pronounced with [tski]. Similarly in Czech.

Now, what are we to do in our constructed language with this rebellious letter? So far as I can see, there are the following possibilities: (1) We keep c everywhere and give to it its ancient value of [k] in all positions. This seems to be absolutely impossible in spite of the fact that Latin is now taught in many schools in various countries with this pronunciation, Cicero being pronounced as Kikero, etc. But who could seriously think of pronouncing kivil, kirkle, kentigram, etc., in ordinary life ? (2) C is kept before a, o, u and consonants, where it has the value [k], but is changed in spelling to s before e and i. Thus we could write correspond, canon, sircle, sentre, etc. This is not at all a bad solution, as it would not lead any West-European or American into the temptation of mispronunciation; still I think this way out of the difficulty far inferior to the one proposed below. It has the inconvenience of having no less than three letters for one and the same sound: c,k, and q, and of causing difficulties with certain derivative endings: from critic, msic, fisic (physic) we must be able to form words in -ere, -iste: but how is the c to be pronounced before these endings or in scepticisme ? (3) C is kept everywhere, but is given two different pronunciations according to the letter following it. This would preserve the spelling known from E F S in most cases, and that of course is an advantage. Nor would there be any difficulty with the [k]-pronunciation, but should c before e and i be pronounced [s] or [ts], or how ? In Occ this system is followed with the pronunciation [ts]; and not only has the letter c thus two pronunciations, but the same root takes automatically two forms according to the derivative ending used; thus we find electric electricità, public publicist publication publicmen, etc. The reason alleged is that it is in this way possible to arrive at a great many forms found in existing languages by means of "regular" derivation - this, however, only means that the irregularity is hidden away behind the duplicity of the spelling or is shifted onto the rules for pronunciation. In order to have the regular formation simplicità Occ even is obliged to have a form simplic with a [k] for the adjective (and simplicmen for the adverb), which is found with that pronunciation in no existing language - and not only this, but Occ also has another form for the adjective: simpl, which is demanded on account of the word simplifiction, which also has to be formed regularly. Such is the simplicity arrived at when one follows consistently the inconsistencies of national languages.

Another objection to Occ in this respect is that the pronunciation [ts] given to c is not the one used for this letter in the most widely known languages; a form like simplicità with its ending and accent-mark would even downright tempt many people to give c its Italian sound.

(4) K is written for c when so pronounced; otherwise the letter c is used. The pronunciation of c is thus one and the same in all positions, but might be either [s] or [ts]; in the former case (as in the corresponding case sub 3) we should have two ways of writing the same sound, which might cause difficulties for those who are not familiar with traditional European spelling and who learn the I.A.L. orally - a class of people which is negligible nowadays, but must be counted with in the future, if our I.A.L. is really to spread according to its idea. The second pronunciation, [ts], is the one given everywhere to c in Esperanto and Ido, in the formerly undoubtedly on account of Zamenhof's Polish extraction; and in both languages c is used extensively with this value not only before e and i, but also before other vowels. This is in many cases a direct consequence of the structure of the language with its frequent grammatical endings o, a, as, os, us; as all substantives end in -o, we must have not only princino princess, but also princo prince, paco peace, further verbs like intencas, intencos, intencus (various tense of the verb for `intend'). In Ido we have the demonstratives ca, co, taken from F ce, but with a pronunciation and endings not found in F, and further a great many verbs like formacar, importacar, where the sound [ts] is taken, curiously enough, from the Latin (F E etc.) ending -ation, which has no place as such in the system. This use or abuse of the letter c is one of the most striking features of this group of constructed languages, but, as already remarked, is somewhat repellant to most people outside the Slavic world. If c is pronounced [ts], and this pronunciation is insisted on everywhere, some international words have to be pronounced with harsh consonant groups, e.g. science (Z has scii for `to know,' with sts), except, etc. Ido alleviates these groups and has such forms as cienco, ecepter, ceno scene, etc. But these forms are not quite natural, as they are found with that pronunciation in none of the national languages, and it would be in better conformity with what exists already if we simplified them into sientie, exept (eksept), sene, etc., as actually done in the received pronunciation in E F Sc and other languages. This means one sound less than Ido has, in the sc-words, and the group [ks] instead of [ts] in xc. But this leads us to the last possibility.

So far as I know, it has not been proposed to use ç instead of c and otherwise keep the Esp spelling; nor would much, if anything, be gained by this clumsy expedient.

(5) Instead of c we write k and s according to circumstances, thus kanon, kultur, obstakle, sirkle, sivil, serebral, sentre, aksept, oksidente, etc. - further sene, septre for scene, sceptre, etc. (and arkeologe, skole). This spelling has the advantage of expressing unmistakably and according to one simple rule that pronunciation of all these words which is best known to the vast majority of speakers (E F P Sc besides Andalusian and American Spanish), and it will offer no difficulty to those accustomed to other pronunciations of the letter c, as k and s are everywhere known with the values here given to them. Those who object to such spellings, which at first blush may seem barbaric, may perhaps be pacified by the following considerations. Here and there we already find c and s alternating both within one and the same language and when two or more languages are compared. In E we thus have side by side licence license, practice practise, prophecy prophesy, pace pass. How many English people know exactly the difference between council and counsel ? E has c, where F has s, in many words: dance, defence (cf. also E defensive, defensible), offence, ace F as, juice F jus, vice F vis the instrument. Cf. also F E race, D rasse (I razza, S raza). Italian has sigaro and Dutch sigaar for cigar. That c is not sacrosanct in words of Latin origin is shown by the official D spelling zivil, zirkel, etc. Compare further E eccentric, I eccentrico, F excentrique, and E ecstacy, F extase.

In favour of the spelling here advocated I may also say that if -o and -a are to be marks of the two sexes, as will be proposed below, we could not keep c in such a word as prince, for then we should have princo prince, princa princess, which are impossible unless we pronounce in the Zamenhofian way. Prinso and prinsa are much better. In the same way Franso a Frenchman, Fransa a Frenchwoman; and with other suffixes, for instance pasal, pasosi, adjectives from pase peace, etc. Everything hangs together in such a language as the one we are here constructing. Very often, where Ido has c, it is best to reintroduce the L ti, e.g. tendentie, silentio, natione, sientie, pretie - with the ordinary pronunciation of t, not with [ts] or [S]. in some of these ti is found in derivatives in some languages, e.g. D pretiosen, Dan pretiosa.

title: Novial/AIL C


text:
Novial/AIL CH, SH

CH, SH
But though we thus kick the letter c ignominiously out of our alphabet as its bête noire, we may be obliged to re-introduce it in the combination ch. There are namely a great many words which we cannot do without and which are spelt with this digraph in F E, sometimes also in other lagnauges, into which they have penetrated: I give some of them here without the grammatical endings which they will have to take, but which will not be discussed till later: chambr, chanj, chans (chance), charj, charlatan, charm, chas, chast, chokolat, machin, march, tuch.

The question of ch must be treated in close connexion with that of another digraph, namely sh, with which everybody all over the world is familiar from such names as Shakespeare, Sheffield, and from words like shrapnel. This sh is found in Ido in a certain number of words, which seem worth of admission into our language on the principle of being known to a greater number of people than other expressions for the same ideas; some of them are common to E D Sc, others are found only in one or two of these languages; I give the most important of them, and quote them as above without any grammatical endings: sham, shark, shel, shild, shirm, shov, shovel, shu, shultr, shutr.

The problem now arises: are we to keep both these digraphs, or can we simplify matters by having only one of them? The latter procedure seems preferable, as no ambiguity seems likely to arise by fusing them into one, and as probably no new words will call for admission which require the distinction. But then the question is to choose between the two spellings, and what pronunciation to give to the uniform digraph--a most intricate question. Ch is pronounced [S] in F, [tS] in S and generally in E, though there are some E words in which ch has the F simple sound: among them champagne, charade, charlatan, chauvinist, chicane, machine. Machine is written maschine in D, thus with the same sound. Cheque (American spelling check) in the meaning 'order to banker' in D has become scheck. This would seem to speak in favour of adopting everywhere the sound [S] without initial [t], the more so as a pronunciation [tS] would be extremely unnatural in such words as E shame, shoe. But then, are we to spell shanj-, shambr-, etc.? Or to introduce the F spelling ch everywhere and write cham-, chu- for shame, shoe, etc.? Neither way out of the difficulty seems satisfactory in every respect, and I am afraid I have in this particular point nothing better to offer than to keep provisionally both spellings and to allow everybody full liberty to pronounce [S] or [tS] just as he likes. It is perhaps fortunate that there are some points in which we can allow each individuality a full scope without any danger for mutual understanding.

Some time in the future it may be possible instead of the digraphs sh and ch to use the phonetic symbol [S].

title: Novial/AIL CH, SH


text:
Novial/AIL Z

The Letter Z
There is one more difficult letter in the alphabet, with which we shall here finally deal, namely z. In phonetic script this is now used everywhere for the voiced sound corresponding to the voiceless [s], and that is the value generally given to the letter in F E, e.g. E zinc, hazy, hazard, though the same sound is much more often written s, as in rose, visit(e). In slavic languages, too, z is used for the same voiced sound. But everywhere else the letter z is used differently, thus D for [ts], I for [ts] in some words, for [dz] in others, S for [phonetic symbol] as E voiceless th, Sc (where it is now used very sparingly) for [s]. There is therefore every inducement to throw out the question: could we not do without this ambiguous letter in Novial? In Esp and especially in Ido z is used extremely often, not only where F E write s between two vowels (rozo, amuzar, akuzar, fiziko), but also where the voiced sound is found only in one of these languages (krizo E crisis, bazo base, words beginning with iso- or ending with -ozo, E -ous), and even where neither language has the voiced sound (karezar caress, mazo mace, F massue, kazo case, F cas with mute s, komizo F commis, E salesman). It is no exaggeration to say that this excessive use of the letter z is one of the features of Ido which are least liked in many countries, except perhaps by the few professional phoneticians. To the many millions speaking D I S it will always be a stumbling-block. Dr. Talmey even goes as far as to propose for adoption a spelling like zaco for `sentence' in the grammatical sense. This is D satz disfigured by writing z for the North-German initial sound and by the Polish-Zamenhofian c before the substantive ending -o, the whole thus a very strong argument for a revision of the entire Esp-Ido system.

As we have seen, Ido is inconsistent; it is so even through writing s where according to its own principles it should undoubtedly have had z: frizo F frise E frieze, fusilo F fusil, gasoza F gazeux E gaseous (generally pronounced with z). The result of this somewhat chaotic distribution of s and z is that in writing Ido one is constantly obliged to look up words in a dictionary, and in speaking it one cannot help hesitating now and then, for no one can remember each word separately. I see no other way out of this difficulty than by doing what we did with c, ie. discarding z and substituting s everywhere.

I suppose no one can doubt that this consistent use of only one letter where Esperanto and Ido have three, c,s, and z, constitutes a very considerable simplification and lessening of the burden on memory. But there may be many interlinguists who will think that this is only possible at the cost of clearness, because as a matter of fact these sounds are often used in Esp and Ido to distiguish words that would otherwise be identical. I may put such anxious minds at ease by stating that it is possible without any great efforts to avoid all serious misunderstandings and ambiguities, and that this result is principally due to the doing away with of the Esp principle of having only one ending for each part of speech; as soon as we admit substantives with other endings than -o, distinctive forms present themselves quite naturally for several words, such as kasu case, Lcasus F cas, kase case, box, F caisse, D kasse; tase cup D F tasse, tasa be silent about, I tacere, with sb. taso; sinke zinc, sinko the act of sinking (vb sinka). The alphabetical list on p. 174 will show how it is possible to get out of all serious difficulties without disfigurements of well-known words, for it can hardly be called a serious defect in Novial that musa means a female mouse as well as a muse! (Ido musino and muzo with unnatural -o.)

I wonder how many Idists would be able to tell offhand which is which of pairs like lanco lanso, senco senso, traco traso, punco punso, baso bazo, deserto dezerto, friso frizo, laso lazo, maso mazo, paso pazo, traco traso. Even the best linguist has nothing to aid his memory in most of these words: everything is purely arbitrary, and some of the z's are found in words which in all national languages have the voiceless sound.

It is a natural consequence of the abolition of z, that Spaniards, Scandinavians need not trouble to learn the new sound z, and that we need no longer insist on the letter s being everywhere pronounced as the voiceless [s]: one is free to pronounce it as the voiced [z], as the French and English and a great many Germans and Italians will naturally feel inclined to do when it occurs between two vowels, as in rose etc. Englishmen may even say the verb usa, exkusa with [z] and the substantives uso, exkuso with [s] in accordance with the speech-habits of their native language. A modern phonetician will express this by saying that the two sounds [s] and [z] are not two phonemes in our international language, exactly as we saw above that the two sounds close and open e, which in F are phonemes (é and è), i.e. may serve to distinguish words, may be used indiscriminately in the I.L. This liberty to use either of two sounds for the same letter is of course a great advantage, and is totally different from the compulsory assignation of different phonetic values for one and the same letter according to its position, as is done in numerous national languages and in Occ with c and g.

The abolition of c and z in our international vocabulary does not, of course, mean that we want to use s instead of these letters everywhere: proper names must keep their spelling unchanged as long as their possessers do not alter them, and we shall therefore go on writing Cincinnati, Cività Vecchia, Scilly, Zwickau, Zulu, Szczebrzezyn, Cecil, Poincaré, Ibañez, etc. In the same way, chemists will probably go on using their international abbreviations for elements, Cu for copper, Cl for chlorine, Zn for zinc, etc., whatever we may do for our purposes with the corresponding vulgar words.

title: Novial/AIL Z


text:
Novial/AIL Stress

Stress
As for stress (the place of the accent of intensity) it is evident that it is quite impossible to give one single rule that would satisfy the individual habits of all nations, for even some of the most international words are in this respect pronounced differently in different countries. E character has stress on the first, D charakter on the second, and F caractère on the third syllable; cf. also Icel. fílosofi, E philósophy, R filosófya, D F philosophíe, etc. Among national languages there are some which have a fixed rule for all words, this Icelandic, Czech, Finnic, Magyar on the first, Polish on the penultimate, F on the last syllable, while many languages have no fixed rule, so that the place of the stress must be learnt separately for each word, and even may vary from one inflexional form of the same word to another, as it does in Russia. If we study the history of languages and the reasons why changes have taken place in this respect, we find that there are three powerful principles, which sometimes work in the same direction, and at other times act counter to one another, namely the principle of value, the principle of unity, and rhythm (see my Lehrbuch der Phonetik, ch. xiv; Mod. Engl. Grammar, vol. i, ch. v.)

According to the first principle that syllable tends to receive the strongest stress which is felt as the most important for the meaning of the whole word: this is specially visible in the case of contrast and emphasis. The principle of unity is shown when a word or a group of words is held together through one strong accent, generally at the end of the group. Rhythm finally is seen to be most powerful in determining the place of a secondary stress, separated from the main stress by one weak syllable, or sometimes by two.

In a constructed language the rule or rules for the place of the accent should be as simple as possible, but we should also to some extent take into consideration the three principles just mentioned, especially where they lead to an accentuation which agrees with what seems natural according to the stress found in that or those languages from which the words themselves are taken.

It would obviously be a mistake, in a language constructed like ours, to apply strictly and solely the principle of unity, stressing everywhere the last syllable, for this very often contains subordinate elements, chiefly of a purely grammatical character, and we should thus in most cases neglect the principle of value. On the other hand, it would be equally impossible everywhere to apply the principle of value, for which syllable is the real valuable bearer of the meaning in such words as character or charlatan? In many words, however, there can be no doubt as to the importance of some syllable, for instance the first in senda send, blindi blind, sembla seem, turna, etc., the second of atrakto attraction, reforme, etc.

The fact that the majority of our words are taken from Romanic language makes it natural that the stress should lie near the end of the word, and by giving as our main rule that the penultimate (the last syllable but one) is stressed, we get what would seem to most people the natural pronunciation of a very great many words, e.g. exemple, kusino, parente, krokodilo, elefante, simbole, honore, exakti, triumfa, etc. etc., though it must be confessed that English has changed the stress of not a few such words.

There are, however, a certain number of cases in which the rule if formulated in this way would lead us into difficulties, because it is not always easy to say what constitutes a syllable. Take such words as filio son, folio, kordie heart, statue, kontribuo. Here it is possible to pronounce the combinations of i and u with a following vowel either as one syllable (in which case the stress would fall on the preceding syllable) or else as two, with i or u stressed: the former is the system of Ido, the latter that of Esperanto. To avoid such doubts it seems best to state the rule as in Idiom Neutral: stress the vowel preceding the last consonant.

But this rule will have to be supplemented by the rule that the addition of the ordinary consonantal endings does not change the stress of the main word, thus we have stress on the first syllable of patros, patron, nulum, nulim, amad and on the second of families, privatim, amused - all in accordance with the principle of value. (Cf. below on adverbs.)

There are certain words in which the stress demanded by our rule may seem unnatural to those familiar with the language from which they have been taken, but it should be remembered that formúle, konsúle, gondóle, fasíli, kritíko, tekníke, Afríka, Ameríka, splendídi, etc., stressed in the way here indicated are not more strange that the corresponding accentuations in French, and that amfíbie, inséndie, júnie, fúrie, komédie, Itália, Fránsia, etc., would be less natural if i before the final vowel had been stressed. Then we must take galérie, enérgie, etc., with the same stress. It should also be remarked that many derived words have a secondary rhythmic stress on the very syllable which some people would like to have seen stressed: fàsiléso, fòrmulísa, kònsulàl, amèrikáno, krìtikál, etc. Filosófia, filológia, seremónia, litúrgia is the Latin stress, which was changed in France, whence the stress on i has spread to other countries.

In words like duo, boa the first vowel naturally gets the stress. But in ídee, héroo, and a few other words the stress on the vowel before the last consonant seems a little strange; idea, however, may be heard pretty frequently in English, at any rate in America.

The rules given here are simpler than those of Occ; and then we have nothing corresponding to those exceptions in Occ, which must be marked with an accent-mark over the vowel - which is always inconvenient to write, to telegraph and to print, not to mention the difficulty of remembering these special cases, for we cannot, of course, take it for granted that all learners and users of an I.A.L. know Italian and Latin well enough to know beforehand the stress of these exceptional words.

title: Novial/AIL Stress


text:
Novial/AIL Euphony

Euphony
There is one very important point which remains to be discussed in regard to the phonetics of an international language. While all nations find it easy to pronounce series of sounds in which vowels alternate with single consonants, and while almost all nations accept certain groups of consonants that are easily combined (tr, sp, bl, etc., before vowels), there are other and heavier groups which a great many nations find it extremely difficult to pronounce, especially at the end of words. The French usually lighten the more complicated groups by the insertion of an unwritten vowel (e.g. in Félix(e) Faure); Italians speaking English often do the same for such groups as kstr (Greek Street) or ksp (sixpence). And there are other nations whose phonetic habits allow of even fewer consecutive consonants than Italian. If we want to make things as easy as possible for everybody, we must therefore avoid the mistake of Idiom Neutral (and to a less extent of Occ) with its heavy groups of final consonants in many words, but must rather imitate Esperanto and Ido, which are made sonorous and pleasant to the ear by their numerous vocalic endings like Italian or Spanish. This, however, does not mean a wholesale adoption of the purely artificial grammatical system of these languages with their strict enforcement of the rule that every substantive must end in o, every adjective in a, etc., for as we have seen and shall have frequent occasion to see later on, this system is a great hindrance in many ways if we want the greatest facility and the greatest grammatical efficiency for our language. We do not allow a word to end in groups like gl, gr, mpl, ks, nj, etc. Every substantive in the singular must end in a vowel, but need not end in the same vowel, thus we have, e.g. regle rule, negro, negra negress, temple, sexu, chanjo. Every full verb also ends in a vowel: regla, mari, distribu. Every adjective that would otherwise end in more than one consonant is provided with the ending i: simpli, exakti, fixi, kapabli, etc., and the same i may be added to any adjective ending in a single consonant, if this is found convenient for the combination with a following word, thus by the side of bon good, and national we have boni and nationali, e.g. in boni kause, nationali state. inflexional endings added to substantives, verbs, and adjectives are s, n, m, d, t, and thus contain no consonant groups; the only exception is the participle in -nt, but to that we may always add -i if we like, as it belongs to the adjectival class. Apart from these inflexions the only words ending in consonants are some prepositions, auxiliary verbs, adverbs, etc.: in, kun, por, vud, kam, kel, nur, on, etc. These are generally unstressed according to the principle of value stressing, but all the important words in a given context end either in a vowel or one of the grammatical single-consonant endings mentioned. The result may be judged from the texts printed at the end of this book, and it is hoped that when read aloud they will produce not too disagreeable an impression on the ear and present no serious difficulties for the organs of speech. Questions of euphony are very important when the new language is to be broadcasted and used over the telephone.

title: Novial/AIL Euphony


text:
Novial/AIL Number

Number
To form the plural of substantives, adjectives and pronouns, Zamenhof took the letter -j, pronounced like E y, and thus created the often criticized forms chiuj tiuj bravaj homaj agoj, `all those brave human acts,' etc., in the accusative chiujn tiujn bravajn homajn agojn. The device is not taken from any living language, though it has a kind of prototype in ancient Greek. If we want to go to living languages to find a plural ending, we may leave aside -r, which is used to some extent in Sc, -e, which is found in D Sc, -en or -n, which is pretty frequent in D and Dutch (though in the latter language generally mute); and the choice thus is restricted to -i and -s. The ending -i is frequent in I R, whence it is known in E in a few loan-words: banditti, bolsheviki. This ending was selected in Ido (with omission of the substantival ending of the singular, thus homi from homo man), the reason being twofold: a vocalic ending was wanted in order to make the addition of the (Esp) accusative -n possible, and on the other hand the s-endings were used as in Esp for the verb. But any one whose choice is not determined by these two reasons is sure to prefer the ending -s, as it is much more international, being the regular mark of the plural in such important languages as E S P (F spelling), besides being used in an increasing number of words in D (kerls, autos, jungens) and Dutch.

Examples with various vowels before -s: home homes, homo homos, homa homas, temple temples, kasu kasus, alkali alkalis.

The same rule applies to adjectives as primaries (substantivized): bones, bonos, bonas (good ones, good men, good women), and also to pronouns treated in the same way: omnes omnos omnas, altres altros altras; tes those, with tos m., tas f., etc.

Thus even with personal pronouns, which are more or less irregular in other constructed languages, but are here beautifully regular: vu you (speaking to one person), pl. vus; les they, with the two-sex forms los and las. The only irregularity is found in the first person, where it is justified by the fact that "we" does not mean several "I's," but "I + someone else or several others," therefore me I, nus we. (If a king should ever speak in Novial, he might say nu as the singular of nus, a "pluralis majestatis in singulari.")

Secondary words (predicate verbs and adjuncts) never require any plural mark: li altri femas esed oldi the other women were old.

NOTE.- Z quite properly gave to his definite article the same ending as to his adjectives: la bona, but he also felt that it would be unsupportable to inflect it like adjectives (lajn bonajn homojn etc.) and therefore made la invariable: Ido was more consistent and made adjectives invariable too (la bona homi). But then Ido had difficulties with "substantivized adjectives" (adjectives as primaries), and there invented the unlucky device of inflecting the article, plural le bona, neuter lo bona.

Indefinite number.- A Japanese Idist once told me that his countrymen (and the Chinese as well) missed in the proposed international languages a form which was neither singular nor plural, and thus left the number indefinite. Now it is easy in N to make such forms by simply leaving out the final vowel, thus hom would mean "man or woman or men or women"; this would be particularly useful in the generic sense (i.e. when speaking of the whole species), e.g. leon es kruel, where we say indifferently `the lion is cruel' (or `a lion is cruel') or `lions are cruel.' Note further the following sentences in which we might use the indefinite number: Hir vort manka, a word, or some words, wanting here. Me non pove ama hom kel non estima me, I cannot love a man, or men, who does not (do not) esteem me. Les vadad a hem, they went home, i.e. each to his or her own home, or all to their common home. Yet I suspect that Europeans and Americans will make a very sparing use of this indefinite form. With the reflexive pronoun se (D sich) sex and number are always shown by the subject of the sentence and therefore require no formal indication: lo admira se he admires himself; la admira se she admires herself; les (los, las) admira se they admire themselves.

The uninflected article and adjuncts may be mentioned also as examples of the indefinite number.

title: Novial/AIL Number


text:
Novial/AIL Sex

Sex
Grammatical gender as in F or D, where the word for `chair' is feminine in one and masculine in the other language (la chaise, der stuhl), can of course have no place in an international language. But all constructed languages do have, and must have, expressions for the natural sex-differences, in a few cases in separate words (as when words for father and mother have different roots), but generally by means of grammatical endings, and in some of these languages this latter expedient is even extended to the expressions for father and mother, man and woman, e.g. Esp patro father, patrino mother. Further, these languages have different forms for some pronouns at any rate according as they are used of one and the other sex, corresponding to E he, she, in spite of the fact that many languages do not recognize the necessity of this distinction, thus Finn. hän means he and she indifferently.

It was an important step in advance, when Ido after having had for some years the Esp system established common-sex substantives, e.g. spozo husband or wife, patro parent, with derivative endings for both sexes: spozulo husband, spozino wife, patrulo father, patrino mother (though it yielded to sentimental reasons, which some look upon as prejudices, by also allowing the use of matro for `mother'). Ido also created a common-sex pronoun for the third person, lu by the side of masc. il (ilu) and feminine el (elu). This has been felt by all Idists as a great advantage, as it does away with the clumsy use of "he or she" as well as with what many feel to be illogical, the use of the plural they in combinations like E "Nobody prevents you, do they?" or "Everybody took their hats," or "No one means what they say when they pay compliments," etc.

But while the principle is sound, the way in which it is carried out in Ido does not deserve praise in every respect. It would have been better if it had been possible to denote the same modifications by means of the same process in pronouns and substantives. The feminine ending -in-, inherited from Esp, is one of the rare cases in which the derivative endings of that language are not framed a priori, but are taken from actual languages: -in is known from D königin queen, Dan lærerinde female teacher, E tsarina, landgravine, etc., and the only objection that may be made refers to the application of the substantive ending -o to it, as this is felt to be a masculine ending rather than one common to both sexes. But -ulo is entirely a priori, and the sound of it is not particularly pleasant.

It should be noted, also, that some words had to be changed, because the -in- found in national languages might be mistaken for the feminine suffix, thus Esp has rabeno instead of rabino, and Ido mandareno instead of mandarino (though -in- has been admitted in mandarino `mandarin orange'). As Ido has diciplino for `discipline,' it could not at the same time have diciplo for 'disciple,' and therefore took dicipulo for `disciple' or `pupil' of either sex, which makes dicipulino for a female and dicipululo (!) for a male pupil. Even stranger than this is the treatment of the word for `cousin'; Esp has kuzo for a male and kuzino for a female cousin, consequently Ido has kuzo as a common-sex word, and kuzulo, kuzino for the two separate sexes. This is but one step less ridiculous than Zamenhof's treatment of another word: he adopts D fräulein `miss' in the form fraulino, and then subtracts the ending -ino to get a masculine fraulo, which is his word for a non-married man or bachelor, with total disregard of the fact that in D fräulein the sex is indicated by frau and that -lein is simply a diminutive ending as in männlein `little man.' The history of international languages is not totally devoid of humorous elements.

If we want to base our international grammar as far as possible on what is known from national languages, the best endings are those which Idiom Neutral, Occ, and some other languages have taken from I P S, -o for masculine and -a for the feminine (cf. such names as Antonio, Antonia), which then of course are extended to cases in which the Romanic languages have -e, e.g. patro for I S padre; if then we take -e for indefinite sex, we see the advantage of liberating ourselves from the Esp strait-jacket of having -o in all substantives (even primadonna being made into primadono), and we get the following natural sets of words:

artiste artist, artisto male a., artista female a. instruktiste teacher, instruktisto male t., instruktista female t. filie child (in relation to parents), filio son, filia daughter. infante child, baby, infanto, infanta. kusine cousin (either sex), kusino, kusina. fratre brother or sister, fratro, fratra. home human being, homo man, homa woman. kavale horse, kavalo stallion, kavala mare. kate cat, kato, kata, etc.

Note especially the plural forms in -es: me have six fratres, du fratros e quar fratras; men patres es in London, my parents are in London.

Onkles uncles and aunts, onklos uncles, onklas aunts. Here Italian, which has zio uncle, zia aunt, says zii for uncles and aunts.

By the side of some of these forms it may be practical to have separate words, thus matra by the side of and synonymous with patra; viro and fema by the side of homo and homa for (grown-up) man and woman.

Esp and Ido have the prefix ge- for both sexes combined: gepatri parents, gesiori ladies and gentlemen. This is totally superfluous and is contrary to most people's speech instinct, the more so as Zamenhof took this prefix from the solitary word D geschwister `brothers and sisters,' where it no more has relation to sex than the same (collective) prefix has in gepäck luggage, gewitter storm, gespräch conversation, etc.

When at the meetings of the Delegation Committee in Paris, 1907, I proposed -a as a feminine ending as in Idiom Neutral instead of Esp -ino, I was met with the objection that it would be difficult to form new derivatives from these words in -a (homaala by the side of homoala and homala would not do), and as I had no answer ready to that objection, I agreed with a shrug of the shoulder to the adoption of -ino. But in my present scheme I have a way out, for it is possible to insert the genitive-mark -n before -al, etc., fratronal brotherly, fratranal sisterly (fratral brother-or-sisterly); homonaro a crowd of men, homanaro of women.

Now, no previous constructor of international languages seems to have thought of applying the same system to pronouns, thus le he or she, lo he, la she; les they mf., los F eux, ils, las F elles.

(Occ here has nom. il, illa, acc. le, la, pl. nom. il(l)i, acc. les, thus irregular formations in which neither the number nor the sex nor the case is always indicated by the same means.)

Further: nule no one, nulo no man, nula no woman. omne everybody, omno every man, omna every woman. irge anybody, irgo any man, irga any woman. altre some one else, altra some other woman. kelke somebody, kelko, -a. te that man or woman, to that man, ta that woman (te kel he or she who). dise this man or woman, diso, disa.

Thus of course also with "substantivized adjectives" (adjectives as primaries), e.g. olde old man or woman, oldo old man, olda old woman, oldes old people.

A few examples of the common-sex forms: si omne veni kand le deve, nule besona varta if everybody comes when he should, no one has to wait. La nultem refusa helpo a povre si le fa omnum por helpa se self she never refuses help to a poor man (man or woman) if he or she does everything to help himself or herself. Que ha deklara ke le non besona labora? Who has declared that he (or she) need not work?

There are some pronouns which do not require any sex distinction, thus me `I' (one can easily see which is the sex of the speaker, without having expressly to say it); thus also the pronoun for the second person vu, and similarly the reflexive se: lo admira se, etc. With the interrogative pronoun, the distinction may be made: quo what man, qua what woman; but generally the common-sex form que will be used: que dikted tum? `Who said that?' - as the speaker could not know beforehand whether it was a man or a woman. The old Romans sometimes asked: Quis quæve dixit illud?

title: Novial/AIL Sex


text:
Novial/AIL Neuter

Neuter
For conceptional or national neuter (my Philos. of Grammar, pp. 241 ff.), which is generally rendered in English by means of 'thing' or a circumscription with 'what is', there is no ending in national languages which is sufficiently international to be used for our purposes, and we may therefore go to L -um, which is known from such words as memorandum, ultimatum, magnum, decorum, maximum, minimum, compositum, all of them used in various living languages.

Thus we get verum 'truth', i.e. a true thing (different from the 'abstract' truth vereso, e.g. in 'I doubt the truth of his assertion'), li bonum de ti situatione es ke. . . which is good in that situation is that. . . Vakuum (vakui empty); fortum a fort, stronghold (forti strong); kontributum contribution; falsum.

This neuter may also be used for the names of languages: lo tradukte libres fro germanum en anglum, he translates books from German into English; latinum es tro desfasil por helpelingue.

The chief use of this neuter ending is seen in pronouns: lum it, tum that (that thing), disum this (thing), quum what, quantum how much (as primary), nulum nothing, omnum all, everything, kelkum something, irgum anything, altrum something else, omnum altri = omni altrum everything else.

Note that our languages very often use 'it' (es, il, etc.), where no pronoun is necessary: it rains pluva, it is necessary to start now es nesesari tu starta nun, etc.

It is possible to form inflected forms of -um-words: verumes true things; but as the endings -umes, -umen are clumsy, it is better to use -us, -un: verus, fortus, fabrikatus manufactured things; li fabrikatun boneso. Instead of lumen, lumes 'its they', we may say lun, lus, or better with the common-sex form len, les, which cannot produce any ambiguity: hir es kelki flores: prenda les si vu voli here are some flowers: take them if you like. Me esed in li banke por vida len chefe I was in the bank in order to see its manager.

title: Novial/AIL Neuter


text:
Novial/AIL Adjectives

Adjectives
The chief use of adjectives is to serve as "secondary" words, i.e. either as adjuncts (epithets, attributive) or as predicatives. As number and sex are always indicated with sufficient clearness in the "primaries", it is superfluous to indicate them in secondaries. This rule is carried through in E and must be ours in N (as Ido, but different from Esp): natural formes; ti forme es natural; ti formes es natural, etc.

It has already been remarked that the bare stem-form of many adjectives would not be euphonious enough, and that it is therefore often convenient to have a vowel added to it: i is the best for that purpose, and we therefore have such N adjectives as simpli, nigri black, posibli, stranji, singli, propri own, etc. Even where the adjective ends in only one consonant, the same -i may optionally be appended to it for euphony, especially before words beginning with consonant groups; thus we have alternative forms like bon boni good, kruel krueli, matur maturi, sam sami, publik publiki, etc.

The choice of i for this purpose is justified (besides by the fact that a, e, o are otherwise occupied) by many derivatives like simpli-fika = fika simpli (below, p. 137), modernisa.

In some adjectives -i corresponds to E -ic (-ical): elektri, identi, kosmopoliti, fanati, etc.

When adjectives are made into primaries, we have the endings already considered, for persons -e, -o, -a, and for neuter -um. If the adjective is used by itself with reference to a substantive just mentioned ("anaphorically") the ending -i is retained, and a plural may be formed in -is: hir es du roses, li blanki es plu bel kam li redi the white one ... the red one. Hir es multi roses: ob vu prefera li blankis o li redis? Inter lon libres es multis in anglum e kelkis in latinum, ma lo lekte nur li anglis. Similarly: li maxim oldis ek lon libres the oldest ones among his books.

The definite article is a secondary and therefore uninflected in number or gender; its proper form should be the single sound l, but this is impracticable except in close connexion with some of the prepositions: al, del, dal (prol, pril are not so good); in all other cases we add -i, so that the usual form of the article is li (= Occ).

title: Novial/AIL Adjectives


text:
Novial/AIL Case

Case
Among the numerous cases found in primitive Aryan (Indo-European) and so well preserved in Sanskrit and ancient Greek, the one that has best resisted the corrosive tendencies found in all languages is undoubtedly the genitive. The preservation in E Sc may be partly due to the sound by which it was most often expressed (s), but probably even more to the fact, that the meaning of this case was better defined than that of such cases as the dative or accusative, and that there seems to be a natural desire to have a convenient way of expressing relation between two notions of the kind indicated by the genitive (`belonging to' in the widest sense, as in Shelley's clothes, wife, father, poems, death etc.). Therefore we find also, even in languages which have a prepositional group corresponding to the English genitive, a set of pronouns to express the same relation, the so-called possessive pronouns (my clothes, etc.).

Nearly all constructed languages use a preposition instead of a genitive ending, generally de or di, taken from the Romanic languages, whence the greater part of their vocabulary is also taken. But corresponding to the personal pronouns they all have possessive pronouns, generally modelled on the Romanic forms, and often embodying some of the irregularities of these, or creating new irregularities of their own. Occ has the following forms, those in parenthesis being the corresponding personal pronouns: mu (mi), tu (tu), su (il, illa, it, se), nor (noi), vor (vo), lor (illi) - thus without any real system. Z simply added his adjective ending -a to the personal pronouns: mia, via, lia, etc., which is systematic enough; and Ido took over the same system, adding -a to its personal pronouns, which are somewhat different from the Esperanto ones. But Z also imagined a kind of genitive in -s, to be used only in his table of "correlatives", namely ies anyone's, kies whose, ties of such, chies everyone's, and nenies no one's. These were not imitated by Ido.

In Novial we naturally have prepositional combinations, e.g. li tragedies de Shakespeare. But it has been possible by the side of this to devise a perfectly regular means of forming genitives of substantives and pronouns, not only the personal ones, and the basis of all these formations is not invented a priori, but taken from national languages. This is done by the addition of -n: from me `I' we have men, which reminds one of E mine, D mein, same way sen, cp. D sein, Sc sin, F son. This is analogically extended to all other forms, e.g. li sinioron, where we may also compare the German inflexion des herrn, des bären, etc. In Finnish all genitives end in n. This form is particularly useful in cases like these: men patron kontore, kel vu vidad yer my father's office which you saw yesterday. Li doktoron filio, kel es tre richi. Li filio del doktoro, kel es tre richi.

The formation of these genitives is easy enough with words in the singular, as -n here always comes after a vowel; in the plural we must add -en after the plural mark s: li homosen laboro the men's work. This leads to regular forms like nusen, etc. I subjoin a list of some pronomial forms: men	vun	lon 	lan	len sen	nulon nulan nulen 	quon quan quen my	your	his	her	his or her no one's	whose (interr.) nusen vusen losen lasen lesen	li altresen	omnesen our	your (you people's) their the others'	all's. Other forms are easy enough to form from all kinds of pronouns; thus from the relative kel: li profesoro kelen libres nule lekte whose books no one reads.

A friend writes: "Nusen, vusen, lesen are impossible: why not take nor, vor, lor as Occ?" My reply is that I myself at first felt nusen, etc., as rather unpleasant, but have come to like them better: they have at any rate the advantage of being regularly built up without any new element and of admitting the differentiation lesen, losen, lasen; besides, nusen, vusen resemble S nuestro, vuestro and P nosso, vosso more than the Occ forms nor, vor do. Lor is from I loro, F leur, but nor, vor are arbitrary modifications of the Romanic forms. This is one of the points where individual tastes come into consideration.

As in other constructed languages a combination with the preposition a takes the place of a dative case: lo donad a me e a men fratres chokolate e kukes he gave (to) me and my brothers and sisters chocolate and cakes.

Is a separate accusative form necessary? Occ has acc. forms in the personal pronouns: me (I place the nom. in prenthesis: mi), te (tu), le (il), la (illa), les (illi), further quem (qui, who), thus without any attempt at systematization; the other pronouns have no acc., and the same is true of adjectives and substantives. Z forms an acc. everywhere, in adjectives and substantives as well as in pronouns (but not in the article), by the addition of -n: la bonan homon, la bonajn homajn, min, lin, etc. The use of the acc. is required whenever a word is the object of a verb (but not after prepositions). This, at any rate, is much more consistent than the rule of Occ, but it cannot be denied that Zamenhof by his strict rule has created a great difficulty for his followers, who at any moment have to have the grammatical analysis of each sentence at the tip of their tongues. Esp in this respect is more particular than even such highly inflected languages as Latin, German or Russian, for in these cases there are a great many forms which do not distinguish the accusative from the nominative, thus always in the neuter, often in the plural, etc. (L templum, montes, D das gesicht, die berge, eine frau), and I do not see that any great inconveniences arise from this, any more than from the fact that in E F I P S Sc and other languages neither substantives nor articles nor adjectives have separate acc. forms. Esp in this respect is like the man who always carries an umbrella (and even insists on putting it up), no matter how fine the weather is.

And yet Z necessarily has cases in which the object as such is not marked, thus in the numerals and in the curious use of the adverbial form which he recommends with the special purpose of getting rid of the constraint of the acc.: mi konas multe da homoj instead of multajn homojn, I know many people. In 1894 Zamenhof for a short time advocated the total abolishment of the accusative.

Ido keeps the acc. ending -n, but does not make its use compulsory and specially recommends it in the case of inversion: ilun me konocas, ne ilua spozino, him I know, but not his wife; mea amiko quan vu vidis my friend whom you have seen - thus very often with interrogative and relative pronouns. But it may be doubtful whether a separate case sign is really required even in such sentences, if we insist on the word-order that comes most natural to all West-Europeans as well as to the Chinese, namely with the subject before the verb, and as close to it as circumstances allow. There is no ambiguity possible in the English sentences I quote in Language, p.344, thus, among others: "Talent, Mr. Micawber has; capital, Mr. Micawber has not." "Even Royalty has not quite their glow and glitter; Royalty you might see any day, driving, bowing, smiling. The Queen had a smile for every one; but the Duchess no one, not even Lizzie, ever saw."

Therefore I have no hesitation in recommending the use of the unchanged form even in inverted sentences like these: lo me konosa, ma non lon marita; men amiko kel vu ha vida; similarly in questions: Qui fema lo admira? What woman does he admire? Qui fema admira lo? What woman admires him?

Still, many people would prefer a mark of the accusative to be used in those rare cases in which ambiguity might be feared, and the best ending seems to be -m, which is an ordinary Latin ending and is found in E him, them, Dan ham, dem (where it is true that it was originally a dative, but is now an "accusative" as well): lon me konosa plu bonim kam vum, different from kam vu. But it should be noted that this school example shares the defect of many constructed examples: it is not quite natural, for if the contrast is between two subjects it is not natural to put him first (I know him better than you, i.e. than you do), and if the object is placed first, the contrast will be between two objects: "Him I know better than you" will be understood as meaning "better than I do you, i.e. than you do), and no ambiguity is caused by you being in the common case. Cp. also the use with a proper name: "Smith you know better than Mill." In all such cases those who are afraid of ambiguity will do well to repeat the verb or use other turns.

NOTE. - In one of his numerous schemes of slightly modified Esp Mr. R. de Saussure (Antido) has imagined the use of a proposed e instead of an ending for the acc. The idea is not at all bad, but e was not very well chosen, and em would be better as having some connexion with national languages. Such a preposition would be convenient with proper names, where the addition of an ending is not always possible; it might even be used when the object is a whole clause (which Antido does not mention): Em quand lo sal veni me non sava Just when he is to come I don't know. But though this device appeals to me in some moods, I dare not recommend it to my fellow interlinguists.

Idists have imagined one case in which the use of the acc. would be convenient in what is generally looked upon as a predicative: Quo divenas aquo per varmigo? Glacio. Quon divenas aquo per varmigo? Vaporo. (What becomes water through heating? Ice. What does water become through heating? Steam.) It would perhaps be simpler and clearer in such cases to use the preposition en [E into (JC)] (cp. D zu etwas werden): Aque deveni en vapore per varmiso, etc. Similarly on fa butre fro milke. In both cases the transition from one state to another is indicated by means of prepositions that primarily express movement in space.

title: Novial/AIL Case


text:
Novial/AIL Pronouns

Pronouns
Most of the pronouns and pronominal words have already been mentioned, as their inflexions are the same as those of other words. This will be the place to enumerate them and arrange them according to the ordinary grammatical classification.

Personal: 1 me, nus. 2 vu, vus. In the singular there will be no need to distinguish two degrees of familiarity, as in F tu, vous, D du, Sie; the forms tu, te, which might have been chosen for the familiar address, are otherwise employed; and an international language should be democratic or polite enough to treat everybody alike. 3 le (lo, la), les (los, las); lum, les.

Reflexive: se, used where there is identity of subject and object: la odia se she hates herself; las odia se they hate themselves. Not used (as Slavs would be inclined to do) in the first and second person: me non odia me (self). The genitive sen must like se be used for both numbers: los renkontrad sen patro they met their father.

Reciprocal: It is, of course, possible to use such combinations as les odia un altre or les odia li un li altre they hate each other; but these combinations are not very convenient, and one may hesitate whether to use or omit the article; further there is a difficulty when we speak of more than two persons: should one say li tri fratres odia li un li altres, or li unes li altres? Further there is some difficulty with the position of a preposition: les promena (li) un kun (li) altres, or kun un-altres. There seems to be a general tendency to let such pronouns coalesce: instead of the earlier expressions "they walk each with other, one with another" we now say "with each other, with one another", and the coalescence is complete in D mit einander, Dan med hinanden, med hverandre, Dutch met elkander, met mekaar; cp. also Greek allélous, Magyar egymas (Philos. of Grammar, p. 224). We get out of all difficulties if from the international mutual we derive the uninflected pronoun mutu: li tri fratres odia mutu the three brothers (sisters) hate one another; li amantes promena kun mutu. The genitive of course is mutun: les envia mutun feliseso e omnitem parla pri mutun fortune they envy each other's happiness and are always talking of each other's good luck. Los konkorda kun mutu = los konkorda mutualim.

Demonstrative: Ti (te, to, tes, tum, etc.) that; disi (dise, disum, etc.) this.

Tali (-e, etc.) such; tanti (-es, -um) so much, so manu. Sami same; self, invariable: les ha self dikte lum they have said it themselves. Selfadmiro; selftuo suicide.

Interrogative: Qui (adjunct: qui home, qui kose) with the natural inflected forms que (quo, qua), quum. Pro quum why? The other interrogative words, too, begin with qu: quand when, quali what kind of, qualim how, quanti how much, how many (quanti pane how much bread, quanti panes how many loaves), quantum how much (standing by itself).

Relative: In most constructed languages the same forms are used for relative and interrogative words, and it is true that this rule finds some support in many national languages. But there is no intrinsic necessity for this identity, and even where in national languages the same roots are used, there is often some distinction, as in L quis, quid interrogative, qui, quod relative, F quoi int. (ce) qui rel. (though this distinction is not carried through), D wann int., wenn rel.; in E the distinction between which and what is not the same in the two classes; moreover many languages have relative pronouns that are not used interrogatively: D der, Dan som, der. Some examples in the following paragraphs will show the desirability of having separate forms for interrogative and relative words: the function of the latter is to connect clauses, and a better term would therefore be connective words (pronouns, etc.). Connective words begin with k. Corresponding to interr. que the systematic form would be ke, but that form is naturally put in requisition for the most general connective word, the "conjunction" that (me kreda ke lo sal veni pro ke lo promised lum I think he will come, because he promised it). Therefore we take as the ordinary relative pronoun kel, generally without any ending: li libre kel lo lekted the book that he was reading; li libre pri kel nus parlad, that we were talking about, etc.

Genitive kelen: li profesoro, kelen libres nule lekte.

In the plural no ending is generally required: li profesoro skripte libres kel (or keles) nule lekte. Indication of sex and number may sometimes make it perfectly clear what word the relative refers to: li marita del direktero, kela esed vestat in nigrum (who, viz. the wife, was dressed in black =li direkteron marita, kel). Multes audid li kanto, keles pasad li hause many heard the singing, who passed the house.

In adjunct position keli: me deskovrad dar li servista, li gardenisto e lon marita, omni keli persones had varta me non-patientim. Such constructions are never elegant. La restad du hores sur li lite, durant keli tempe nule darfed parla. In keli kasu in which case (shorter kelikas).

Indefinite: Under the name of indefinite pronouns most grammarians comprise various pronominal words that do not fit into the other classes. I shall mention them here in the personal form in -e; the other forms have already been mentioned and are easily formed: nule, omne, irge (any one, a convenient form taken from D irgend), kelke some, sertene a certain (whom we do not choose to mention), chake each, altre. Genitive: lo voli audi nulen opinione he will hear no one's opinion.

Irge (irgi hom) pove vida tum anyone can see that, irge kel ha vida lo, estima lo anybody who has seen him esteems him. Irgum kel lo dikte es stupidi.

title: Novial/AIL Pronouns


text:
Novial/AIL Comparison

Comparison
The degrees of comparison are indicated by means of special words, not by means of endings. This is in accordance with the prevailing tendency in most languages. Examples: plu bon(i) kam better than. tam bon(i) kam as good as. min bon(i) kam less good than.

The use of the same word kam in these comparisons makes it possible to say, e.g., lo es tam brav o plu brav kam lon fratro he is as brave as, or braver than his brother.

Cf. under Particles on tam, kam, quam.

The superlative is indicated by maxim or minim: lo es li maxim bravi (li minim bravi) inter li fratres (or ek li fratres).

The rules here given for the comparative and superlative are, of course, applicable to those adverbs as well that admit of comparison: plu bald sooner; min utilim in a less useful way.

title: Novial/AIL Comparison


text:
Novial/AIL Verbs

Verbs
The construction of a verbal system which is fairly regular and at the same time based on existing languages is a most difficult task, because in no other domain of the grammar do languages retain a greater number of ancient irregularities and differ more fundamentally from one another. Still an attempt will be made here to conciliate the two points of view and to bring about something which resembles the simple Chinese grammar without, however, losing its European character or the power of expressing nuances to which we are accustomed in our own languages.

One thing is common to all those schemes of constructed languages which have any importance, namely that endings to indicate person or number are nowhere found: person and number are shown by the subject, and the verb as such has logically nothing to do with them. This consideration helps us to get rid of a great many complications found in most of our European languages.

In the verbal forms Z sacrificed internationality to systematic a priori construction except in so far as he took the elements -nt- and -t- for his participles from national languages. Otherwise everything is built up a priori: infinitive in -i, imperative in -u, finite tenses ending in -s. The three chief tenses are distinguished by means of the vowels a, i, o, both in the finite forms (amas love, amis loved, amos will love) and in the participles (active amanta loving now, aminta having loved, amonta loving in the future, and correspondingly in the passive amata, amita, amota), to which comes a conditional amus would love (or `loved' in a clause beginning with if, etc.); it would have been possible to frame corresponding particles corresponding to this, amunta, amuta, but these find no place in Zamenhof's system. This play of vowels is not an original idea of Zamenhof's: -as, -is, -os are found for the three tenses of the infinitive in Faiguet's system of 1765; -a, -i, -o without a consonant are used like Z's -as, -is, -os by Rudelle (1858); Courtonne in 1885 had -am, -im, -om in the same values, and the similarity with Esperanto is here even more perfect than in the other projects, as -um corresponds to Z's -us.

In Ido this play of vowels was extended to the infinitive amar to love, amir to have loved, amor to love in future, to be going to love.

The chief objection to the whole system is that it is totally artificial without any connexion with our natural linguistic habits. Further it requires a distinct pronunciation in weakly stressed closed syllables, which is against the speech-habits of many nations (e.g. Englishmen, Russians). The six participles may be helpful in some instances to express nuances which ordinary languages do not distinguish; but they often also constitute a real embarras de richesse, especially in the passive, where one may often hesitate whether to say agitata or agitita, ornata or ornita (chambro orn. per flori), komplikata or -kita afero, restriktata or -tita, etc. Several teachers of Esp and Ido say expressly that these six participles constitute one of the greatest difficulties for their pupils (cf. also estus estinta `would have been').

title: Novial/AIL Verbs


text:
Novial/AIL Participles

Participles
It seems really better to have only one active and one passive participle, and then the endings are offered quite naturally by the existing languages, namely -nt and -t. The former is known from all the Romanic languages, from which a certain number are taken over into English: fluent, different, latent, defendant, etc. Compare also D -end (pronounced -ent): sehend, etc., and Sc -nde: seende, kallande, etc. The passive participle in -t is found in I S, in E in verbs like kept, in Sc regularly: set, kallat, in D in the weak verbs: gesegnet, gebracht, in R in some verbs.

Thus from the verbal stems ama love, protekte protect, mari marry, konstitu constitute, es be, we form the participles amant amat, protektent protektet, marient marit, konstituent konstitut, esent (no passive). It will be seen that while -nt can be added immediately after a, and -t after any vowel, the vowel -e- is put in between -i, -u or a consonant on the one hand, and -nt on the other. To these forms the endings -i, -e, -o, -a can of course be added: amanti fema, amanto lover, men amata by beloved one; marito husband, etc. Stress amánt(i), amát(i), etc.

title: Novial/AIL Participles