The languages of P in groups

The full list of thirty languages used in the Language P database, classified by geographical and cultural region, then by language family. The “Big Six” languages are underlined.

East Asia: Confucianist, Taoist, Buddhist (Mahayana)

• Sino-Tibetan > Chinese: Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese
• Non-Chinese, influenced by Chinese: Japanese, Korean (both isolate or Altaic), Vietnamese (Austroasiatic)

South Asia: Hindu, Buddhist (Theravada), Jain, Sikh, Islamic

• Indo-European > Indo-Aryan (from Sanskrit): Hindi-Urdu, Bengali, Punjabi, Gujarati, Marathi
• Dravidian: Telugu, Tamil, Kannada
• Sino-Tibetan > Tibeto-Burmese: Burmese
• Tai-Kadai > Tai: Thai
• Austronesian > Malayo-Polynesian: Malay-Indonesian, Javanese, Tagalog (Filipino)

West Asia–North Africa: Islamic (Sunni, Shi’a, Ibadi), Christian, Jewish

• Afro-Asiatic > Semitic: Arabic
• Altaic > Turkic: Turkish
• Indo-European > Iranian: Persian (Farsi)

Europe: Christian (Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant), Jewish

• Indo-European > Slavic: Russian, Polish
• Indo-European > Germanic: English, German
• Indo-European > Romance (from Latin): Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian

Names de dienes i meses

Numbers (ordinal) are normally used for names of days and months, but more traditional names can optionally be used. They should not be capitalized except when beginning sentences and titles.

• dien: day
• ondien (domindien, soldien): Sunday
• duadien (lunadien): Monday
• tridien (mardien): Tuesday
• chardien (merkurdien): Wednesday
• panchedien (yowedien): Thursday
• seisdien (zhuma, venerdien): Friday
• sebadien (sabat, saturnidien): Saturday
• mes: month
• onmes (yanuar): January
• duames (febrar): February
• trimes (marso): March
• charmes (april): April
• panchemes (mai): May
• seismes (yuni): June
• sebames (yuli): July
• ochomes (augusto): August
• nowemes (september): September
• desmes (oktober): October
• desonmes (nowember): November
• desduames (december): December

Instrumentos de orkestra en lengua P / Orchestral Instruments in Language P

• fluta: flute
• korto fluta: piccolo (lit. “short flute”)
• oboe: oboe
• ingli korno¹: cor anglais
• klarinet (en si bemol / la / mi bemol): clarinet (in B flat / A / E flat)
• bas klarinet: bass clarinet
• fagot: bassoon
• kontrafagot: contrabassoon
• saksofon: saxophone
• korno: (French) horn
• trompeta: trumpet
• korneta: cornet
• (tenor/bas) trombon: (tenor/bass) trombone
• tuba: tuba
• timpanos²: timpani (sing. timpano)
• chiko tambor: snare drum (lit. “small drum”)
• bara tambor: bass drum (lit. “large drum”)
• triangol: triangle
• cimbales²: cymbals (sing. cimbal)
• piano: piano
• arpa: harp
• violin: violin
• (alto) viola: viola
• violonchelo: violoncello
• kontrabas: contrabass, double bass

¹ -i: ending for nationalities, languages etc. (from Hindustani, Bengali, Persian, Arabic; also Latin and Russian genitive case): ingli “English”, fransi “French” etc.
² -(e)s: plural ending (from English, Spanish, Portuguese, French)

More on the Dies Irae project: utopia and dystopia

Some more clues about the future Earth in my sci-fi project. Also, Dies Irae is just a tentative title.

Beginning in the mid-21st century, decades of unparalleled worldwide peace and prosperity create a global near-utopia (imagine the Federation in Star Trek, only with a lot less space travel). The world is a united democratic federal republic with a mixed economy, united by a network of high-speed partial-vacuum tube trains and near-space plains and cybernetically-implanted smart phone/computers. The world capital is Istanbul, chosen because it is built on two continents, but each country has subsidiary power and its own national capital. The IAL currently called “Language P” has emerged as a global trade language used alongside natural languages.

The world’s largest city would have a population of over a billion: a massive urban conglomerate, or “gigapolis”, centered on Delhi. Similar complexes exist in East Asia (Tokyo-Seoul-Beijing), Europe (the “Blue Banana”, etc.), North America (BosWash, Great Lakes, Texas Triangle, SanSan) and South America (São Paulo-Rio de Janeiro). The total world population is in the 10-12 billion range, or as high as 15 billion.

Towards the end of the century, everything falls apart. Crime, corruption and massive inequality of wealth turn the utopia into a Metropolis-like dystopia. The military and law enforcement has little success quelling riots and protecting peace. People start demanding order, even if it means being subjected to a more authoritarian system. This eventually results in the rise of a Novum Imperium Romanum.

A religious cult, based in Dallas, answers the call. It establishes its own political party (far-right agenda, far-left tactics), begins to take over North America first, then the world. Though it spreads by the use of technology, propaganda and brute force, there are rumors of the inner circle attempting to use arcane magic to extend its rule—and create a new, advanced race of Übermenschen.

(There will be a lot of philosophy in this work, including that of Nietzsche, but also Dostoyevsky and Kafka and such.)

Basic vocabulary of Language P

This list is under construction:  The goal is to establish a limited but sufficient vocabulary, using Chinese-based compounding morphology whenever reasonable (e.g. des-dua “twelve” is literally “ten-two”, from 十二). The target is the 2600+ word wordlist of Simple English Wikipedia.

• bara big, large
• bon good, well 
• char four (4)
• chiko small, little 
• des ten (10)
• dua two (2)
• el the
• en in
• i and
• insan man (human being)
• kitab book
• lengua language, tongue 
• luna moon
• man man (adult male) 
• mes month
• mulier woman
• nam name
• nowe nine (9)
• on one (1) 
• ocho eight (8) 
• panche five (5)
• seba seven (7)
• seis six (6) 
• sol sun
• tri three (3)

It’s back on.

I think I’m getting some of my mental clarity back. The ideas for the sci-fi/fantasy/horror novel, screenplay, or idea for an action RPG, that I’ve been wanting to write are coming together, at least the beginning of it. The title of the epic, at least for now: Dies Irae. It’s the story that Symphony No. 1 is being based on.

It takes place in the future, beginning in the year 2110. A global federal republic, which once enjoyed peace and prosperity never enjoyed before, had fallen into chaos. Technology once used for the betterment of mankind was once again being used to kill one another. The old order would be succeeded by a world empire to rule with an iron hand.

The survivors of a long-lost civilization of “elves”, which was destroyed in 9600 BC by its own hubris and embrace of dark magic, would emerge from isolated villages in the Caucasus to warn the world not to make the same mistakes. It had been believed that the élites who came to rule the world were dabbling in the same arcane arts, even seeking the power to raise the dead. A mutant race of “orcs” (to use another Tolkienian term) had already been developed as supersoldiers, until they rebelled against their masters, many being imprisoned in Antarctica.

There are seven main protagonists so far (likely more, eventually), with the first to appear being a Marine commando named Joe Cohen, sent on a mission to the “Ultramax” prison in Antarctica to quell a riot. (The piece «Un jour dans l’enfer» is the background music for this scene.)

I also need to develop at least two constructed languages for this story: a language for the “elves” called T’aq (or Tech), and an international auxiliary language or “global pidgin”, currently codenamed “Language P”. Both of these I have been working on for many years, but not continuously.

More on this later, as it all continues to be developed in my brain. So far, I have most of the basic outline of the first volume of the trilogy, the increasing number of heroes’ trek from Antarctica to Australia and China, through India and Russia, to Istanbul, the future world capital.

Language P, lengua/idioma P, язык П, اللغة پ

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):

1. Chinese (Mandarin) 1026
2. English 760
3. Hindi-Urdu 484
4. Spanish 466
5. Arabic 354
6. Russian 272
7. Bengali 250
8. Portuguese 217
9. Malay-Indonesian 163
10. Japanese 123
11. French 119
12. 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.

Related references:

• Ethnologue: Summary by language size (L1 only)