Atlas: new auxlang

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Rodiniye
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Re: Atlas: new auxlang

Post by Rodiniye »

To be honest Rodineye, even though I don't see myself ever learning your language, I hope you manage to get some traction with this project of yours. You've obviously put a lot of effort into it and I respect that.
Thanks!! [:)]
If I were a criminal, stealing stuff could well be what I would normally normally do in shops. But anyway, why would we even need separate prepositions for shoppers and shoplifters? Why do you feel such a strong desire to let your prepositions encode not only location, but at also what people are doing at that location. Not even English (maybe the most prepositions-heavy language in the world...) does that.
English does it too, with "at"/"in" in sentences like I am in/at school. Many other languages do it in other ways.

The complement of event/situation exists, so does it seem logical to you to just forget about it?

What are the next verb complements to you?

I am in a hurry
I am in trouble

even:

I am under arrest
The law is under scrutiny

or:

The project is under development

...

To me, they are complements of event/situation. You can see how English uses different prepositions, with "in" or "under" being quite common. So this complement exists. Apart from these obvious examples, it is used as well when you want to specify that you are doing an activity in a location, related to that location.

It is logical and easy to use. Everyone knows what a situation is! And no, stealing things is not a usual thing to do in a shop, or it should not be.

Verb complements help the speaker to organize the information they have and they want to express, which I think is essential in order to create and in order to understand. That is why I pay a lot of attention to well defined and logical verb complements, because they are essential.

All the bullshit has been taken off. No prepositional verbs, not needed. Prepositions can introduce different verb complements. But there is a reality there about situations/events that need an answer. Same with the "o" preposition marking complements of quantity. It is funny how we understand the use of "o" because we can see its existance when using interrogative questions, but some people struggle to see that the situation complement exists too!

Anyway, preposition "i", as I said, is the unmarked version, so people not willing to use "e" or having difficulties will have no problem in using "i". They will probably want to use it later on.
Rodiniye
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Re: Atlas: new auxlang

Post by Rodiniye »

So new entry:

http://atlas-language.blogspot.com.es/

I explain the latest changes (some already discussed in here), have included an updated pop-up dictionary and included the News section! starting with Froome winning the Tour de France. News will be short texts updated regularly.

Lots of work coming up! all explained in there.

As always, any support, feedback or advice is hugely appreciated. If anyone wants to get involved, drop me an e-mail (atlasbahase@gmail.com), PM me or just write it here.

Atlas is one month old today and I think we have been able to make it simpler and better. The blog is receiving visits consantly with many people coming back, which I think is extremely good news.

Thanks! :)
Rodiniye
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Re: Atlas: new auxlang

Post by Rodiniye »

New post with phraseology added to the grammar!

http://atlas-language.blogspot.fr/

Here some examples:



Hia! – dine bei!
Hello! – good day!

Sahe/bikele/sere/noce bei
good morning/afternoon/evening/night

Di esas w ven?
How are you?

Wi esas bei, danke!
I am good, thank you!

Di zaias i ven?
Where are you?

Di varas? Nai/Hai Are you waiting? No/Yes

Al-name de di esis vene?
What is your name?

Di esis ot ven?
Where are you from?

Di diamis i te?
Do you live here?

Di etis o ven?
How old are you?

Wi etis 36, ta di?
I am 36, and you?


Di dizes ez w Atlas w ven?
How do you say it in Atlas?

Di qedizes te dahi (qing)?
Say that again please?

Ez esis o ven?
How much is it?

Di piacis he-brunmaiu?
Do you like coffee?

Vece bei!
Good night
Squall
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Re: Atlas: new auxlang

Post by Squall »

I hadn't noticed that this topic is long and I read only the half of the first page. [xP]
Reyzadren wrote:Well, I really don't care if natural languages or constructed languages are chosen as international languages. However, I don't agree with that statement because there is a flaw: There will be a country that chooses that constructed language as their official language, then they will have the advantage, and hence you are back to the same problem. If your true goal is to remove unfair advantages for international communication, then unfortunately those advantages will soon re-appear :/
Have any countries that don't speak English changed their official language into English?
The change is only possible in a dictatorship.
Furthermore, an auxlang would be standardized by an international organization. A country that adopts the auxlang would have a dialect that would change in the future. The rest of the world would continue using the standard form.
Rodiniye wrote:There is some freedom for phonological variation, which would be developed by speakers. Initially only /s/ is present, but I suppose that /z/ will be found or used by some speakers and it is perfectly normal. So the initial rules are in the grammar book, but you might expect some variation from that by some speakers.

Strong and weak vowels concept is used by some languages, as mine (Spanish).

"q" and "v" instead of "j" and "f" is purely for esthetical reasons. A language needs to have its own personality. Apart from that, I consider "v" to be much easier to write than "f".
Auxlangs are designed to be stable and have few changes during the time. Instability can break it in many branches quickly.

Auxlangs should be as easy as possible for native speakers of most languages.

Some featuresin your conlang are difficult to be suitable for an auxlang.
- It is weird to distinguish /ʒ ʃ/, but not distinguish /f v/ and /s z/.
- Distinction of different nasal consonants in coda
- Voiced plosive consonants in coda
- The sequence -mt- is unstable and becomes -mpt- or -nt-.

Some roots are difficult:

arzte - this is a complex consonant cluster.
spere - the "impure S" is not easy.
mettes - gemination is not easy.
letze - is tz a gemination (/ddz/)?
piatdas - a consonant cluster with different voicing is unpronounceable and doesn't occur in real languages.
atsi - why do you have z for /dz/ and nothing for /ts/?

wien /wɪen/ is also unpronounceable. When /ɪe/ becomes a diphthong, it is almost the same as /je/.
People would pronounce /wɪen/ as /u'jen/ or /wi'en/
Furthermore, /w/ is /u/ when it becomes a diphthong.

As for the prepositions w (manner) and z (company), syllable without vowel is also bizarre.


As for the grammar, I think it is good. It has good verb system and a set of accurate prepositions and connectors. You didn't remove fundamental features that keeps its expressivity.


I used to inform the plural in nouns, but I noticed a problem of agreement ("three cats" instead of "three cat"), in which the -s s redundant. So I removed the plural suffix and transferred it to articles.
By the way, it seems that your general article (he-) requires the noun in plural.
English is not my native language. Sorry for any mistakes or lack of knowledge when I discuss this language.
:bra: :mrgreen: | :uk: [:D] | :esp: [:)] | :epo: [:|] | :lat: [:S] | :jpn: [:'(]
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GamerGeek
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Re: Atlas: new auxlang

Post by GamerGeek »

Squall wrote:Some featuresin your conlang are difficult to be suitable for an auxlang.
- It is weird to distinguish /ʒ ʃ/, but not distinguish /f v/ and /s z/.
- Distinction of different nasal consonants in coda
- Voiced plosive consonants in coda
- The sequence -mt- is unstable and becomes -mpt- or -nt-.
Certaintly.
Some roots are difficult:

mettes - gemination is not easy.
letze - is tz a gemination (/ddz/)?
It is possible they are simply in seperate syllables.
As for the grammar, I think it is good. It has good verb system and a set of accurate prepositions and connectors. You didn't remove fundamental features that keeps its expressivity.
It is still arguably complex.
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lsd
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Re: Atlas: new auxlang

Post by lsd »

GamerGeek wrote:
Squall wrote:Some featuresin your conlang are difficult to be suitable for an auxlang.
- It is weird to distinguish /ʒ ʃ/, but not distinguish /f v/ and /s z/.
- Distinction of different nasal consonants in coda
- Voiced plosive consonants in coda
- The sequence -mt- is unstable and becomes -mpt- or -nt-.
Certaintly.
Some roots are difficult:
mettes - gemination is not easy.
letze - is tz a gemination (/ddz/)?
It is possible they are simply in seperate syllables.
No phonology is a priori easy for everyone at once ...
The question is more in the tolerance of inescapable variants of pronunciation without alteration of understanding ...
If you take English as an example of an international language, you notice the immense variability of pronunciations without limitation of understanding ...
Rodiniye
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Re: Atlas: new auxlang

Post by Rodiniye »

No phonology is a priori easy for everyone at once ...
The question is more in the tolerance of inescapable variants of pronunciation without alteration of understanding ...
If you take English as an example of an international language, you notice the immense variability of pronunciations without limitation of understanding ...
And this is a very good answer. Atlas can offer rules, but you cannot have rules for everything and everyone. English is a good example. The variations in phonology between a native speaker and a Spanish-Chinese-Hausa speakers are HUGE, and even then, providing they have an acceptable level of knowledge, they can understand each other perfectly. Having said that, I insist, Atlas has got strong rules, same as English, which is why even if there is variation, people can still understand each other.
It is still arguably complex.
I honestly do not think grammar can get any easier. Two or three features that could be taken away, but they give so much meaning and are extremely easy to learn. Otherwise.. if you only take a look at particle "de" and all its uses, you will see the extreme simplicity in Atlas.
Some featuresin your conlang are difficult to be suitable for an auxlang.
Again, I think we are making the assumption that people are naive and they can't speak.

Many languages have much more difficult sounds than Atlas. The Atlas sounds have been taken from the most spoken languages in the world and they are very simplified.

Languages like English have double the sounds, and much more complex. Esperanto, the same. And they both are "auxlangs" (one natural, one not). So I do not want to make the assumptions that people cannot speak, because as long as it is not too difficult (certain sounds certianly not appearing in Atlas, nasal vowels, tones, difficult vowels...) people can adapt and learn these sounds. And it becomes good too. I have not seen anyone excited by the fact that a language has only 8 sounds, or worried about learning a language because "It has got a sound that my language does not have". It is a new language so it will have something different to what you know or expect.

However, I admit some very specific combinations might appear difficult. There are only very few of them. So let's see how the language evolves. All languages have evolved according to people usage, so let's see. But a priori, sounds in Atlas are common and very easy to learn (beginning with vowels, for instance, or the fact that one letter is always one sound, etc)
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Xing
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Re: Atlas: new auxlang

Post by Xing »

Squall wrote: Have any countries that don't speak English changed their official language into English?
The change is only possible in a dictatorship.
I think the most plausible scenario would be that some of the countries in Africa, Asia, etc. that today uses English as an official language due to a colonial heritage would switch to the Atlas (or Esperanto, or Interlingua, or...) *if* that language would eventually be adopted 'officially' as an international auxiliary language.


However, I think your questions need to be clarified a bit. Does 'countries that don't speak English' include countries with English-speaking minorities? Or where English is used as a lingua franca in business etc.? And what does it mean to 'change their official language into English' mean? Does it include countries that previously did not have an official language adopting English as their official language? Does it include countries that adopts English as one of many official languages? Or countries that previously had one or more official languages apart from English adopts English as their only official language?

But the big practical issue remains of course: that no auxlang proponents, that I know about, have so far presented to us a realistic plan how their auxlang(s) could ever be adopted in any larger scale.
Rodiniye
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Re: Atlas: new auxlang

Post by Rodiniye »

Now looking for candidates in order to participate in the final dictionary creation and word creation too. It will initially be together with 2 members from another forum.

So anyone who wants to participate, very welcome! [:D] PM me
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Xing
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Re: Atlas: new auxlang

Post by Xing »

Rodiniye wrote: I honestly do not think grammar can get any easier. Two or three features that could be taken away, but they give so much meaning and are extremely easy to learn. Otherwise.. if you only take a look at particle "de" and all its uses, you will see the extreme simplicity in Atlas.
You could make nouns simpler by scrapping number and definiteness. You could make verbs simpler by scrapping tense, aspect, and voice.

Btw are there any reasons why you decided to include certain inflectional categories in Atlas, but not others? Such as having verbs inflecting for tense, but not for evidentiality? Or having a passive voice, but no applicatives? Or having an article indicating the definiteness – rather than, say, the specificity or referentiality – of a noun?
Rodiniye
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Re: Atlas: new auxlang

Post by Rodiniye »

An auxlang must be effective in terms of communication. You could remove everything from a language and revert to a sign language or something, but that is not what Atlas is looking for.

Number and definiteness are extremely widely known and their concept is easy. Definiteness is also easier in Atlas because all nouns are considered non-definite, so definitine nouns are marked.

Aspect, Tense, Voice... even languages that do not inflect verbs with them know them. A perfect example is Chinese, with particles "le" or "zai" to indicate aspect, or the passive voice constructions. I do not consider Chinese to be easier than language in this. Let's remember everything in atlas is covered with 9 endings, 3 infixes and 3 suffixes, it is not like there is a complete verb conjugation.

Inflecting for evidentiality is very interesting. I would have loved to do that, but where is it in the compromise of easiness-effectiveness? Many languages do not distinguish evidentiality in a clear way. Spanish does not for instance, English... with some modal verbs. Atlas has preffix "we-" which can be used to mark evidentiality. However, "aspect" gives so much more information and it is widely known*

It is difficult to choose the grammar features you want to use in an auxlang. Again, it is always that compromise between easiness and efectiveness. I have cut many things from my initial project, even if it was against my will or intention, but I think know people involved agree that what Atlas uses is the bare minimum for effective communication. Remember Atlas wants to be an auxlang for communication in all situations. We could obviously have a system for very simple communications between people with pretty much no features, but that is not what Atlas is designed for. When I have translated into Atlas, I sometimes feel that the language could have more features in order to make the language less ambiguous, but I can accept that at some level if easiness is greatly increased. Anything below the current level would cause problems with complex situations and texts.

Regards

*Widely known at least in the languages considered in Atlas.
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Re: Atlas: new auxlang

Post by Lambuzhao »

An auxlang must be effective in terms of communication.
Cannot wait to see Atlas' effectiveness in communication over at the Conlang Conversation Thread.

There's talking about it, and then there's using it.

[;)]
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Re: Atlas: new auxlang

Post by Salmoneus »

Rodiniye wrote:An auxlang must be effective in terms of communication.
It's just it looks like a rather suspicious coincidence that what you consider "effective in terms of communication" is almost exactly the same as "what my native language family does"...
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Re: Atlas: new auxlang

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Rodiniye wrote:An auxlang must be effective in terms of communication. You could remove everything from a language and revert to a sign language or something, but that is not what Atlas is looking for.
Languages can be 'effective in terms of communication' even if they lack inflection for tense, aspect, voice, number, mood etc. There's surely nothing wrong with languages having such inflections. But neither is there anything wrong with languages not having them. (And of course, the fact that a language doesn't have feature X as an inflectional category, doesn't mean there aren't ways to express feature X; instead of using the morphological channel, you must make use of the syntactic or lexical channel.)
Number and definiteness are extremely widely known and their concept is easy. Definiteness is also easier in Atlas because all nouns are considered non-definite, so definitine nouns are marked.

Aspect, Tense, Voice... even languages that do not inflect verbs with them know them. A perfect example is Chinese, with particles "le" or "zai" to indicate aspect, or the passive voice constructions. I do not consider Chinese to be easier than language in this. Let's remember everything in atlas is covered with 9 endings, 3 infixes and 3 suffixes, it is not like there is a complete verb conjugation.
As a native Swedish speaker, it took me some time to grasp the concept of aspect. And some of my Asian friends struggle with such things as tense, number, definiteness etc. (When they say things like 'I liked kid', it's not always sure wether they mean 'I like kids', 'I like the kid', 'I liked the kids' etc.) Of course many of them come to eventually master these things. Just like I might eventually master – say – evidentiality, if I were to learn a language with such an inflectional category.
Inflecting for evidentiality is very interesting. I would have loved to do that, but where is it in the compromise of easiness-effectiveness?
I'd suppose it's not more difficult than, say, the middle voice.
It is difficult to choose the grammar features you want to use in an auxlang. Again, it is always that compromise between easiness and efectiveness.
The point is that *all* languages – whether they function as auxiliary languages of not – make tradeoffs between easiness and effectiveness. It's nothing unique to Atlas. However, if you're claiming that you have found *the* optimal tradeoff with the particular mix of features Atlas happens to have, this is surely a very drastic claim that needs serious investigation.



And now question-time about Atlas:

How do you express secondary predication? (Expressions like 'I shot the man dead' or 'She left him confused.')
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Re: Atlas: new auxlang

Post by alynnidalar »

Rodiniye wrote:An auxlang must be effective in terms of communication. You could remove everything from a language and revert to a sign language or something, but that is not what Atlas is looking for.
Sign languages are languages too, full stop. They're just languages that are expressed through visible, physical movements, rather than audible sounds. Sign languages certainly can have tense, mood, number, etc. as any other language.
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Re: Atlas: new auxlang

Post by Axiem »

That raises a very good question: is there a sign language analogue to go with Atlas, to accommodate deaf and hard-of-hearing people? Or are they relegated to their native sign languages, doomed to never communicate with each other?
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Re: Atlas: new auxlang

Post by elemtilas »

Xing wrote:
Rodiniye wrote:An auxlang must be effective in terms of communication. You could remove everything from a language and revert to a sign language or something, but that is not what Atlas is looking for.
Languages can be 'effective in terms of communication' even if they lack inflection for tense, aspect, voice, number, mood etc. There's surely nothing wrong with languages having such inflections. But neither is there anything wrong with languages not having them. (And of course, the fact that a language doesn't have feature X as an inflectional category, doesn't mean there aren't ways to express feature X; instead of using the morphological channel, you must make use of the syntactic or lexical channel.)
Right. I think the notion that there are languages that are somehow "more effective" (e.g., an invented auxlang) than others is a canard. The fact that a language exists and is in use by human beings for their everyday communication needs is proof positive that the language in question is effective in terms of communication.

All that's being done here (with Atlas or any other auxlang, or indeed any kind of invented language at all) is artful rearrangement of the furniture.
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Re: Atlas: new auxlang

Post by lsd »

Axiem wrote:That raises a very good question: is there a sign language analogue to go with Atlas, to accommodate deaf and hard-of-hearing people? Or are they relegated to their native sign languages, doomed to never communicate with each other?
Is there a necessary link between national sign language and national natural language...
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Re: Atlas: new auxlang

Post by elemtilas »

lsd wrote:
Axiem wrote:That raises a very good question: is there a sign language analogue to go with Atlas, to accommodate deaf and hard-of-hearing people? Or are they relegated to their native sign languages, doomed to never communicate with each other?
Is there a necessary link between national sign language and national natural language...
I don't think there's necessarily any particular link between a given country's spoken & signed languages. As I understand it, the grammar of ASL is quite different from SAE. I would imagine the same goes for other nation's sign languages.

I do second the query: is there a plan to create an invented auxiliary sign language to work in tandem with the spoken Atlas?
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Re: Atlas: new auxlang

Post by lsd »

I agree with the disconnection... So any sign language would do the trick...
Is there any auxiliary sign language ever constructed...
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