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Slovio, an international simplified Slavic language

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Re: Slovio, an international simplified Slavic language

#101

Post by vidarh »

ochrist wrote: post #73
vidarh wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now i wonder if something like this exists for germanic languages. Dutch. Only half joking. Dutch would at least make a great starting point in terms of written language. As a native speaker with English as a second language and German as my third, I can read a whole lot of Dutch because it's closer in spelling to Scandinavian languages than German is, but has kept many words that are still used in German but archa…

I would have said English, but you are probably right - as long as we are talking about written language. As a Scandinavian I understand the other Scandinavian languages as well as English, German, French and a few other languages. But Dutch is hard to understand due to a lot of guttural sounds.

In terms of shared second language English would probably just remove the need for trying to find a middle ground. But as a middle ground understandable without knowing a second language, it loses out because so much of its vocabulary comes from French. E.g. chair vs. stol, stoel, Shtul, a word that even has close cognates in Slavic languages (but the Germanic is hanging on in English in "stool"). An English with French influence replaced with pre-existing Germanic-sourced English words with Dutch as fallback might be a fun experiment.

Regarding spoken Dutch, I agree, it's painful to listen to. And I just got a horrible thought: A mix of Danish and Dutch pronunciation... I imagine it'd sound somewhat like death metal ;-)

Re: Slovio, an international simplified Slavic language

#103

Post by singularity2001 »

ajuc wrote: post #26
zagrebian wrote: post #16

Why cx, sx, zx instead of č, š, ž? That’s a step backwards. Slavic languages have perfectly fine letters for those phonemes.

The goal was to use only basic latin letters. But even then - many Slavic languages use or used z for this purpose, none uses x. So why make it arfitically less understandeable? It's not Cxechia it's Czechia.

why not sh, ch and zh then?

Re: Slovio, an international simplified Slavic language

#104

Post by hdjjhhvvhga »

Let me be devil's advocate here. I understand there are many negative feelings not just towards Putin but also, unfortunately, to Russians as people - in spite of the fact that they long lost any ability to influence the events at the top. However, the international community should go in exactly the opposite direction.

Russia will be there after Putin. They have a very rich culture with excellent poets, some of the best mathematicians in the world etc. All this is trod upon by a merciless clique - and even though they have managed to brainwash a part of the population, and even though the sanctions we impose hurt ordinary citizens, it is crucial not to forget it is not and it will never be a war against Russian people. Otherwise we risk becoming just like those beasts we're fighting against.

(This is only tangential to the topic - Slovio is a good idea but, just like all artificial languages, will have problems becoming more popular.)

Re: Slovio, an international simplified Slavic language

#105

Post by zozbot234 »

vidarh wrote: post #101
ochrist wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have said English, but you are probably right - as long as we are talking about written language. As a Scandinavian I understand the other Scandinavian languages as well as English, German, French and a few other languages. But Dutch is hard to understand due to a lot of guttural sounds.

In terms of shared second language English would probably just remove the need for trying to find a middle ground. But as a middle ground understandable without knowing a second language, it loses out because so much of its vocabulary comes from French. E.g. chair vs. stol, stoel, Shtul, a word that even has close cognates in Slavic languages (but the Germanic is hanging on in English in "stool"). An English with Fre…

A Germanicized English would probably work well enough given that English has such a pidgin-like grammar anyway. You wouldn't have to deal with the whole part of simplifying the language, there's already a widely used standard for that.

Re: Slovio, an international simplified Slavic language

#106

Post by medo-bear »

ivoras wrote: post #21
zone411 wrote: post #4

Interslavic is another similar project. They don't like Slovio too much: http://steen.free.fr/interslavic/index.html http://steen.free.fr/interslavic/faq.html#slovio

As a speaker of Croatian (southern Slavic) and Ukrainian (western Slavic), both Slavio and InterSlavic are bad from the Croatian POW, but InterSlavic is definitely a better choice in either case. Many word forms in InterSlavic just seem like strangely archaic versions of Croatian, but might pass as "just strange" for Ukrainian.

its certainly strange but im not sure if "bad" is fair here. what i can say is that i understood what was being said on very first reading for both. i imagine if travelling to poland or russia and seeing instructions written in slovio/inter-slavic would be quite easy to follow

Re: Slovio, an international simplified Slavic language

#107

Post by isodev »

zone411 wrote: post #4

Interslavic is another similar project. They don't like Slovio too much: http://steen.free.fr/interslavic/index.html http://steen.free.fr/interslavic/faq.html#slovio

Wow, what a great idea! I'm originally from Bulgaria and I've enjoyed this kind of "universal understanding" to some level with almost all nearby Slavic countries (e.g. Macedonia, Serbia, Ukraine).

I really like the approach of Slovio, it was instantly clear and understandable. I think with some practice it won't be a challenge to adopt it in writing (e.g. plurals with "-s" for some words is a bit strange at first).

Re: Slovio, an international simplified Slavic language

#108

Post by medo-bear »

wheelerof4te wrote: post #57
ivoras wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a speaker of Croatian (southern Slavic) and Ukrainian (western Slavic), both Slavio and InterSlavic are bad from the Croatian POW, but InterSlavic is definitely a better choice in either case. Many word forms in InterSlavic just seem like strangely archaic versions of Croatian, but might pass as "just strange" for Ukrainian.

Interslavic seems just as understandable to me. Sometimes I wish all slavic people had one country, one language. Let's call it Slavia.

draw a possible map of Slavia and see it from a perspective of neighbouring non-Slavic countries. would you find such a political structure threatening? this is the reason i think it would be a bad idea. what would be nice in my opinion is a larger inter-slavic cultural exchange: in academic research, text books, litterature, music, film, etc

Re: Slovio, an international simplified Slavic language

#109

Post by zozbot234 »

kuboble wrote: post #97
jarek-foksa wrote: post #79

Given the current circumstances, why is this the top story on HN? Panslavism is basically Russian imperialism in disguise.

I don't think so. Purely anecdotally but being from Poland when I hear pan-slavic I imagine a North-south belt starting with Baltic states all the way to Croatia that somehow borders Russia which is a separate entity.

Yes, a unified political and cultural counterweight to Russian authoritarianism (with the inherent advantage of having massive links to highly developed and democratic Western Europe) would be very helpful indeed. A Pan-Slavic interlanguage can usefully contribute to that goal. It's not a "bad" effort at all.

Re: Slovio, an international simplified Slavic language

#110

Post by tpoacher »

Choice of 'x' for softness is very weird.

I get that in the cyrillic alphabet, 'x' is the 'h' character, but once you transliterate to a latin alphabet, it makes no sense to use it in that way...

Especially when the role of 'h' in latin alphabets has been hard-to-soft conversion specifically in most languages (and transliterations) using it.

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