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Interslavic Language

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Re: Interslavic Language

#121

Post by gpvos »

henrikschroder wrote: post #120
gpvos wrote: post #8

Interesting! I have been thinking about a similar "average Germanic" language, but I don't really have enough linguistics background to pull that off yet. Also, I have very roughly compared the Slavic languages to see which one I could learn to be able to communicate with people of most Slavic languages[0] and decided that Slovak was the most "average" language so I am planning to learn that. Too bad there's no Slova…

What would that Germanic language cover? German, Dutch, Flemish? That's it, right? English is out, because that's half French, and the Scandinavian languages have drifted too far from German to be even half-assed mutually intelligible, no?

It would also cover the Scandinavian languages. I'd like it to include English as well, but not use any of the English-only Romance vocabulary; but there's a large chance that that would not result in anything that's useful for interacting with English-speakers. The grammar would be almost entirely based on German and Dutch with maybe one or two Scandinavianisms thrown in to make them feel a bit more at home, but for word choice all languages would take part. Non-Germanic words used in most of those modern languages would be included (like restaurant or station).

About mutual intelligibility with Scandinavian: quite a few basic words are identical in pronunciation between e.g. Swedish and Dutch, and many are similar enough that when speaking slowly you can get reasonably far, I would think, although I haven't tried that much since in practice you fall back on English all the time. When you look into the dialects there's even more you can find that's very similar.

Re: Interslavic Language

#123

Post by azernik »

nine_k wrote: post #103
wolf550e wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hebrew had over a million speakers even when it wasn't anyone's native language. It was known to Jewish men who studied in a cheder as boys (those who did not continue to higher studies/seminary in a yeshiva), the way I think Arabic is known to Muslims who are not native speakers. Hebrew was used for literature and poetry and for communication between Jewish communities that didn't share a native language. It wasn't…

The problem that there were several dialects, each having a significant number of speakers, both in medieval Hebrew and medieval Italian languages, to say nothing of Germanic languages. It took certain development of compromise standards and getting used to them, when a single state appeared which needed a unifying language: Israel, Italy, Germany. All these countries still have a number of dialects spoken casually,…

Because it was used for international communication (e.g. for da Volterra's travel memoir and rabbinical responsa), and so was standardized across a wide geographic area. For example, before the expulsion Ashkenazis would send legal questions to Spain for answers from prestigious rabbis, and the resulting legal rulings would be distributed across the Mediterranean and as far as Iran.

WRT the Italian and German cases, these are not really exceptional; standard French wasn't a common native language in France until a post-revolutionary homogenization campaign, Castilian Spanish still isn't universally a native language in Spain, etc.

Making an existing lingua franca into a more common native tongue is a standard and early step in the formation of a nation-state (in the old-world sense) from Norway to, less successfully, India. None of these phenomena set any useful precedent for the establishment of a conlang as an international language.

Re: Interslavic Language

#124

Post by tom_mellior »

gpvos wrote: post #121
henrikschroder wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What would that Germanic language cover? German, Dutch, Flemish? That's it, right? English is out, because that's half French, and the Scandinavian languages have drifted too far from German to be even half-assed mutually intelligible, no?

It would also cover the Scandinavian languages. I'd like it to include English as well, but not use any of the English-only Romance vocabulary; but there's a large chance that that would not result in anything that's useful for interacting with English-speakers. The grammar would be almost entirely based on German and Dutch with maybe one or two Scandinavianisms thrown in to make them feel a bit more at home, but for…

There are some attempts at Pan-Germanic listed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Germanic_language

Of the two that have their own Wikipedia pages linked from there (Tutonish and Folkspraak) I can just about understand almost all of the examples given, though they are very short and selection bias may be at play. Also I speak English, German, and Norwegian, so I guess I have an advantage over speakers of only one Germanic language.

Especially when learning Norwegian I noticed that many words are obviously cognages with either German or English, but not both. For this reason I'm skeptical about the possibility of one vocabulary that is understandable to speakers from all branches. I don't know any Slavic language but know French and some Italian, and the Pan-Romance languages listed elsewhere in this thread seem much more readable to me than these Pan-Germanic ones because their vocabularies are more similar, I think.

Re: Interslavic Language

#125

Post by tom_mellior »

knolax wrote: post #20

I wonder what's the benefit of this versus learning whatever the common ancestor of the Slavic languages is.

My knowledge here is limited, but I have noticed that some language families tend to get simplified over time versus their common ancestor. For example, Italian and French (and all other Romance languages, I believe) have lost Latin's case system and all the memorization that entails. Italian is much easier to learn than Latin in my experience. So if the same is true for the common ancestor of the Slavic languages, you would be learning a much more complicated language than any of the current Slavic ones.

Re: Interslavic Language

#126

Post by sharperguy »

strenholme wrote: post #30

As someone who has followed the constructed language and international auxiliary language community for a couple of decades, and as someone with an undergraduate degree in linguistics, I do not see a constructed language catching on with the mainstream public any time soon. A constructed language is a language that someone sits down and creates; this is different from a natural language which just forms as people com…

It is not our purpose to build a community of Interslavic speakers and we do not ask anybody to actually learn it; we merely offer suggestions that will enable people to make themselves understandable to (other) Slavs in a language that is essentially their own. Given the character of the Slavic language family, it should be possible to speak or write in such way that ca. 90% of it will be readily understandable for virtually every Slavic speaker. [1]

[1] http://steen.free.fr/interslavic/introduction.html#purpose

Re: Interslavic Language

#127

Post by zajio1am »

villedepommes wrote: post #105
tasogare wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm living in a foreign country and speak fluently 3 languages, and known a few things in a forth one. Deciding which language to use with which person is a taxing effort in itself, especially in a group setting. There is no such thing as "asshole-y thing" to use English because each communication setting is different. Sometime the most important thing is to be understood quickly, then using English if there is any f…

> There is no such thing as "asshole-y thing" to use English because each communication setting is different Exactly because each communication setting is different , in a number of them, switching to English unconditionally, which is what the parent was suggesting, is indeed an "asshole-y" thing to do. > Sometime the most important thing is to be understood quickly Isn't this exactly what I said, "Unless it's a lite…

> The goal is to just be a decent human-being who is at least sometimes considerate of others' wants.

Why would consideration of other person wants trump the consideration of the first preson wants? If is a symmetric situation, then preferences of both sides has equal value.

Also, this is not a thing people need to agree on. There is no problem if each side of dialog uses a different language, if each side comes to a different conclusion about optimal language.

Re: Interslavic Language

#128

Post by poloniculmov »

andolanra wrote: post #57
ijzeren_jan wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a critical difference between Esperanto and Interslavic. Esperanto is meant for communication between Esperanto speakers. Interslavic, on the other hand, is meant to be understandable for Slavs who haven't actually learned it. In other words, the success of Interslavic cannot only be judged by the number of people who learnt it. Basically, one speaker is enough to serve an entire audience, one translator is…

The thing Interslavic is doing has also been tried before, but the illustrative example isn't Esperanto (which is an ad-hoc mixture of words taken arbitrarily from existing languages and put into a synthetic grammar) but rather Interlingua, which is a kind of streamlined Romance language. It too is more-or-less comprehensible by people who speak any Romance language, and was intended to be used in much the same way.…

As a romanian, I only had issues with the last 3 words, though I did have a hunch that judicate is something about judgements.

Re: Interslavic Language

#129

Post by cechmaster »

3flp wrote: post #108
yeellow wrote: post #5

Very interesting. I've tried to read some texts and I could easily understand them (as a native Polish speaker). I wonder if it is as easy for other Slavic nationalities. If so, it could be a nice intermediary language, if only for written texts. Unfortunately I guess almost nobody would learn to write or speak it but it is still funny to have a passive ability to read and understand and I guess all Slavic languages…

Another native Czech here; I find the text at least 80% to 90% understandable without any training.

Same. I noticed some words use the letter "g" in place of "h" like in the word "another" -> "drugy" -> in Czech "druhý", otherwise it is very similar to Czech.

Re: Interslavic Language

#130

Post by gpvos »

viach wrote: post #22
orbital-decay wrote: post #7

There's also another language designed to be understandable by most Slavic speakers [0]. For some reason, the authors of both seem to hate each other. [1] [0] http://www.slovio.com/ [1] http://steen.free.fr/interslavic/introduction.html#disclaime...

> For some reason, the authors of both seem to hate each other. Not surprising if they visit each others web pages too often.

So to reduce hate we should stop people visiting websites? It might actually work. (Yes, I'll get my coat.)
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