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Slovio, an international simplified Slavic language

slovio.com

241–250 of 255 posts

Re: Slovio, an international simplified Slavic language

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's break this down piece-by-piece. (1) The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had elected kings and a parliament. It was a republic to the same degree as Rome or some of the more democratic Greek city-states. The only people who could vote were nobles, but nobles were about 10% of the population. That's about on-par with with Athens or the Roman Empire. Even in the US, only white landowners could vote when it was firs…

The problem, ultimately, is that the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was dominated by Poland, and said Polish nobility was not interested in treating religious minorities equally, as GDL did. Republic or not doesn't matter here - republics can quite easily become tyrannies of the majority. There's a reason why there were so many uprisings on the territory that is Ukraine today, back when it was a part of the Commonwea…

It changed with time, but the Polish nobility wasn't the ones persecuting religious minorities for the most part.

For one thing nobles took a lot of Jewish immigrants, used them as middle management (which frustrated the church, who in turn sent angry peasant mobs against Jews, which meant Jews had to work with nobility for their protection).

Also a lot of nobles weren't Catholic, especially in 1500s protestantism was very popular (about 1/3rd of nobles and majority of magnates were protestant). Only in times of Zygmunt 3 Waza who was super Catholic and introduced some discrimination it changed significantly.

In fact nobility forced kings to sign https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Confederation which banned religious persecution.

Majority of nobles from eastern parts of PLC were orthodox at first (later they polonized and switched to Catholicism mostly), and there were some Jewish and Muslim nobles (but it was very rare). They still had all the rights including voting for kings, wars and taxes.

> There's a reason why there were so many uprisings on the territory that is Ukraine today, back when it was a part of the Commonwealth

Mostly economic, but yes, there has been some religious persecution there. Especially after the attempts to create orthodox-style pope-sanctioned religion in Ukraine.

Re: Slovio, an international simplified Slavic language

#242
post #213
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> An English with French influence replaced with pre-existing Germanic-sourced English words https://anglish.fandom.com/wiki/What_is_Anglish%3F

Interesting, but really odd and seemingly with very different goals than what I had in mind.

As a native Norwegian speaker, on one hand there are lots of words used there which are easier for me to understand than they would be for a native English speaker, but at the same time many are unnecessary reversions towards Old English or pointless changes where modern Germanic languages are closer to modern English.

It seems like a reversion without any thought to how these terms have kept evolving in the rest of the Germanic sphere.

E.g. "riche" on one hand sounds closer to "rike" or "Reich", but "state" has close cognates in most Germanic languages (stat, staat etc.) and stat/staat and rike/Reich have different connotations - we'd tend to use rike/Reich in contexts relating to monarchy or evoking history or tradition. E.g. kongerike/Königreich for kingdom (but also kongedømme), but stat/staat when talking about a modern state.

And e.g. "Hof" as in "Speaker of the Hof", while it has close cognates, is an unnecessary leap given "house" has close cognates too (hus, Haus) which are used in the same context, and the "problem" there isn't the word "house" but the whole construction.

Translating United States to Oned Riches also takes it further away from modern Germanic languages rather than moving closer to them (e.g. Forenede Stater, Vereinigten Staaten).

Similarly, the month names in most Germanic languages are close to modern English. Meadowmonth for July is far harder for me to understand than July - in Norwegian it is juli.

And "lawmoot" for Congress is harder too. Compare kongress, Kongress... At least if they wanted to go that way, e.g. landthing would be far more understandable for speakers of other Germanic languages as a reference to a parliamentary house (moot works fine for meeting, compare e.g. møte, but feels no simpler to me than meeting)

Similarly "landtung" for "language" is weird. In e.g. Norwegian we have "tunge" for "tongue" and it can sort of be used that way, but "tale" is more understandable if you want to go that way, but "speak" as in "to speak" is a closer cognate to the words used for language in other Germanic languages (e.g. språk, Sprache) without sounding archaic.

And "narrowing" for "strait" while in e.g. Norwegian it is "stred", or "landstretch" for "landmass" vs. "landmasse" in Norwegian.

As an "alternate history English" it kinda works. As a "modern Germanic English" it's tiresome to try to read...

Re: Slovio, an international simplified Slavic language

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Something like this? http://www.i18nguy.com/twain.html

That only changes the orthography, which while annoying is a lot less of an issue for mutual intelligibility than the vocabulary of English...

Re: Slovio, an international simplified Slavic language

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though Russian does drop the "to be" in present tense for all pronouns, other Slavic languages do feature it either as a separate word or together. For example this is how you say "I am Russian" and "You are Russian" in: Slovenian: Jaz sem Rus Ti si Rus Croatian: Ja sam Rus Ti si Rus Slovak: Som Rus Ty si Rus Whereas in Polish is a joint word (but the to be is still merged in there): Jestem z Rosji Jesteś Rosjan…

Thanks for all the info. I definitely underestimated the number of languages that don't use Cyrillic. I also had it in my head that dropping "to be" in the present tense was more common. Do you know anything about the history of that as far as where, linguistically, it started being dropped? Like which Slavic language groups drop the verb and which don't? I don't know if that makes sense.

I truly have no idea. My knowledge in Russian is very limited. Maybe someone else can chip in

Re: Slovio, an international simplified Slavic language

#245
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though Russian does drop the "to be" in present tense for all pronouns, other Slavic languages do feature it either as a separate word or together. For example this is how you say "I am Russian" and "You are Russian" in: Slovenian: Jaz sem Rus Ti si Rus Croatian: Ja sam Rus Ti si Rus Slovak: Som Rus Ty si Rus Whereas in Polish is a joint word (but the to be is still merged in there): Jestem z Rosji Jesteś Rosjan…

In Czech it's "jsem Rus" and "jsi Rus", the latter can have a "ty" but it's not necessary and I think Slovak is the same.

Which makes sense. The verb has already been declined and gives away which person it's addressing. Same in Spanish: Yo soy (you can drop the yo because soy only applies for yo). Same for other pronouns.

Re: Slovio, an international simplified Slavic language

#246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, Croatian/Serbian have a phonemic orthography. Quite easy to write given that sounds map directly to a letter.

the maxim is to "speak as you write and write as you speak". however there are variations to adoptions of the rule. croatians will tend write foreign words as written in that language, while in serbia you always follow this rule. so for example in serbia it is Majkl Džordan while in croatia its just Michael Jordan

I always found this funny. In Russian "second hand" is spelled секонд хэнд, which I find hilarious.

Re: Slovio, an international simplified Slavic language

#247
post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though Russian does drop the "to be" in present tense for all pronouns, other Slavic languages do feature it either as a separate word or together. For example this is how you say "I am Russian" and "You are Russian" in: Slovenian: Jaz sem Rus Ti si Rus Croatian: Ja sam Rus Ti si Rus Slovak: Som Rus Ty si Rus Whereas in Polish is a joint word (but the to be is still merged in there): Jestem z Rosji Jesteś Rosjan…

On the other hand we commonly omit the "I"/"Jaz" in Slovenian - there's more than enough info in the conjugated verb.

Same in Spanish

Re: Slovio, an international simplified Slavic language

#248
post #242
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An English with French influence replaced with pre-existing Germanic-sourced English words https://anglish.fandom.com/wiki/What_is_Anglish%3F

Interesting, but really odd and seemingly with very different goals than what I had in mind. As a native Norwegian speaker, on one hand there are lots of words used there which are easier for me to understand than they would be for a native English speaker, but at the same time many are unnecessary reversions towards Old English or pointless changes where modern Germanic languages are closer to modern English. It see…

> pointless changes where modern Germanic languages are closer to modern English.

I agree that there's a lot of these, but arguably English still seems to have way more Latinate/Romance borrowings than your average Germanic language. So the direction they're going for seems correct, they're just overdoing it (which after all is the whole point of that project!) and, more worryingly, sometimes missing the most appropriate Germanic word for their desired concept, like "Thing" for a democratic assembly.

Re: Slovio, an international simplified Slavic language

#249
post #242
post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> An English with French influence replaced with pre-existing Germanic-sourced English words https://anglish.fandom.com/wiki/What_is_Anglish%3F

Interesting, but really odd and seemingly with very different goals than what I had in mind. As a native Norwegian speaker, on one hand there are lots of words used there which are easier for me to understand than they would be for a native English speaker, but at the same time many are unnecessary reversions towards Old English or pointless changes where modern Germanic languages are closer to modern English. It see…

"State", "July", "congress", "strait" are disqualified because they come from Latin, "mass" comes from Greek. Do you accept Anglish's design goal to only include words derived (through various mechanisms) from Germanic languages?

I agree that "tung" could as well be a modernised form of Old English "sprǣc". I have no explanation for "Hof". I am not qualified to objectively discern whether "thing" is a better conceptual fit than "moot".

Anyone can contribute to Anglish and improve on its imperfections.

Re: Slovio, an international simplified Slavic language

#250
post #249
post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, but really odd and seemingly with very different goals than what I had in mind. As a native Norwegian speaker, on one hand there are lots of words used there which are easier for me to understand than they would be for a native English speaker, but at the same time many are unnecessary reversions towards Old English or pointless changes where modern Germanic languages are closer to modern English. It see…

"State", "July", "congress", "strait" are disqualified because they come from Latin, "mass" comes from Greek. Do you accept Anglish's design goal to only include words derived (through various mechanisms) from Germanic languages? I agree that "tung" could as well be a modernised form of Old English "sprǣc". I have no explanation for "Hof". I am not qualified to objectively discern whether "thing" is a better conceptu…

> Do you accept Anglish's design goal to only include words derived (through various mechanisms) from Germanic languages?

No, I don't. That is exactly my point. Or rather, I don't agree with what they're actually doing, which is to only include words derived from old Germanic languages. E.g. modern Germanic languages have had words like Congress/kongress/Kongress for centuries. I'd be happy with a language trying to stick to words closer to the consensus of modern Germanic languages.

If you want a mid-point between modern Germanic languages, stripping the language of imports does not work, as then you're creating friction for speakers of other Germanic languages which have also imported those words, not reducing it. I don't see any value in that.

It's fine that this is not Anglish' goal - they can do what they want -, but it makes it unsuitable as an attempt at a shared Germanic language. Their translation of names in particular is outright obnoxious and goes in the opposite direction of a trend to reduce the use of translated names in a lot of languages and reduces understanding rather than increasing it. That's their choice, but it's a very different one.

If I were to try to create a mid-point out of English, I'd narrow the focus massively to deprecate words that have decent Germanic replacements in common use in the other languages, and aim to shift meanings to accommodate it, such as e.g. giving "stool" the same broad meaning as a replacement for "chair" as its cognates have in other Germanic languages. And I'd leave words that have close cognates in other Germanic languages entirely alone, irrespective of the source, such as congress, because they're more likely to be understood by other Germanic speakers than many of the Anglish replacements.

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