I’ve written about this before, but I have been developing an Esperanto-type international auxiliary language (IAL) for a fictional
novel (or something). I’ve used all sorts of tentative names, but I’ll
settle on “Language P” for now. The letter ‘P’ is short for pidgin, as
this language is intended to be a kind of “global pidgin” (or “global jargon”), with a
diverse vocabulary and simple, regular and familiar grammar and syntax.
The grammar is to be mostly isolating and non-inflecting, like Chinese and, to a lesser degree, English, with agglutinative features. Word order, by default, is subject-verb-object (SVO), with adjectives, numbers and demonstratives preceding nouns.
Words would be chosen according to which would be recognized by the most people, especially when a word of, say, Latin, Arabic or Sanskrit origin is a loanword in many languages. The diverse sources of vocabulary will be the “Big Twelve” languages, listed below, sorted and weighted by total number of speakers (L1 + L2 speakers in millions, according to Ethnologue 2009):
- Chinese (Mandarin) 1026
- English 760
- Hindi-Urdu 484
- Spanish 466
- Arabic 354
- Russian 272
- Bengali 250
- Portuguese 217
- Malay-Indonesian 163
- Japanese 123
- French 119
- German 112
Though probably unlikely, it may be necessary to use additional languages for some words.
The
language is written in a Latin alphabet, modeled after the pinyin
romanization used for Mandarin, with at least approximate English
equivalents:
- a far
- b be
- c its (never as in cat)
- ch chair
- d do
- e cafe or met
- f far
- g go (never as in gym)
- h hat or German acht
- i machine
- k kill
- l light sound, not dark as in English or Russian
- m may
- n no
- ng sing (end of words or syllables only)
- o no or hot (British pronunciation)
- p pay
- r trilled, as in Spanish
- s say
- sh she
- t tall
- u rule
- w way
- y yes (never a vowel)
- z zoo or adze
- zh vision or jump
Coming soon: some basic vocabulary, starting with the 207-word Swadesh list. The word for “language” in LP is lengua. Last edit: 8 December 2013 at 09:03.
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