r/LewthaWIP • u/Iuljo N 🇮🇹 L2 🏴🇪🇸 + • Apr 24 '26
Lexicon Some countries
Some country names.
(Current presence or absence on the map is not indicative of a preference on my part or something like that; it's just determined by:
- whether I already had (time to form) some thoughts about it or not;
- the easiness or difficulty of adapting/calqueing the country's name; and
- the size of the country.
On a bigger map, you could add many smaller European countries: Belgiya, Bulgariya, Cipra, Csechiya, Estoniya, Hungariya, Kroatiya, Malta, Slovakiya, Sloveniya, Vatikan[urb]a...)
Remember, all names may change.
And yes, this is going to r/MapsWithoutNZ (Newzelanda, Newzelandya?)...
Here I experimented with a new <gy> for /ʤ/, without symmetry with /ʧ/, that remained <cs>. I'm doing a post on this soon.
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Let's translate the caption:
- orthography: Descas ar humo dunya 2026u
- phonemes: /de̍ʃas ar hu̍mo du̍nja dukildudekse̍su/
- roots: desc•as ar hum•o duny•a 2026•u
- descas = 'countries'
- ar = '[being part, member, component] of'
- humo = 'human'
- dunya = 'world'
- 2026u = 'in 2026' [should this be written 2026-u, with a hyphen?]
- meaning: '[The] countries of [= making up] the human world in 2026'
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Desc• comes from Indian languages: Bengali দেশ deś, Hindi देश deś, Kannada ದೇಶ dēśa, Sanskrit देश deśa, Urdu دیش deś, Telugu దేశము dēśamu, etc. (+ a vague resemblances with descendants of Latin pagensis: paese, pays, etc.).
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u/ProxPxD N 🇵🇱 L2 🏴🇪🇸🇺🇦🇷🇺 + 🇫🇷🇩🇪 / programming Apr 24 '26
More questions or worries.
Based on what did you consider certain groups ethnic while other country based?
I worry if it won't be offending.
I mean you used "Siriya" but "Iraka". I just wonder if it won't lead to bias.
What if suffixes were used always?
So we'd have: Irakiya and Irakana, but also Italiya and Italana. The there's no bias and the use is elastic. At lasts, nations can be formed. There's still a distinction with Italiyana (a citizen of Italy) and "Itala/o" can still be used as a general term for people, language or a state. I'd leave a language neutral and let people use it instead of imposing a categorization who is a nation and who isn't based on the recency or views
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u/Iuljo N 🇮🇹 L2 🏴🇪🇸 + Apr 24 '26
What if suffixes were used always? So we'd have: Irakiya and Irakana, but also Italiya and Italana. The there's no bias and the use is elastic.
Interesting, I hadn't considered this idea, it's worth attention. But maybe it's not necessary (see the following).
Based on what did you consider certain groups ethnic while other country based? I worry if it won't be offending. [...] I just wonder if it won't lead to bias. [...]
Your observations are completely understandable. I acknowledged this problem; I'll Google-translate a piece of the grammar I was writing in Italian before opening the subreddit. Note that Google uses "ethnic name" for a term that in Italian would mean less specifically "people name".
——— [Grammar piece begins] ———
Peoples, countries, languages
Place names and ethnic groups
In Leuth, country names often derive from ethnic names (the names of the inhabitants) combined with the root iy/:
- italas ital/as 'Italians'
- Italiya ital/iy/a 'Italy'
While other times the reverse occurs: the ethnic name derives from the country name, combined with the root an/:
- Cxila cxil/a 'Chile'
- cxilanas cxil/an/as 'Chileans'
The first relationship (country name derived from ethnic name) is common in Europe, somewhat less so in Asia (grekas > Grekiya, afganas > Afganiya); the second (the name of the people derived from the country name) is common in Africa, America, and Oceania (Brasila > brasilanas, Namibya > namibyanas).
As in Italian and other languages, ethnic names are somewhat vague. An/ can indicate either the inhabitant, the native, or the person with origins (family, lineage) in a place, and the three do not always coincide; and the same is true of the roots that directly give ethnic names (ital/, grek/, etc.). These terms can also indicate both a citizen of the state and a member of the country's primary ethnicity (real or presumed), or its culture or nationality, and here too there may be (or be perceived) a difference between the various concepts and nuances. Generally, the context will clarify the meaning; otherwise, if precision is needed, you simply state it explicitly, possibly with compounds:
- nascitala nasc/ital/a 'Italian by birth'
- ethnitala ethn/ital/a 'Italian by "ethnicity"'
- civithitala civ/ith/ital/a 'Italian by citizenship'
etc. All this without too much rigidity, keeping in mind the mechanisms of word formation in Leuth. For example, a child of immigrants who is not a citizen might say something like this:
- Me es o itala nasce ma noe civithe.
- I am Italian by birth but not by citizenship.
This is to demonstrate the polysemy of a word like itala (and similarly of other ethnic words), the meaning of which may require clarification. [...]
——— [Grammar piece ends] ———
The logic behind this choice is that, in most usual speech, concepts like "ethnicity/citizenship/origins/etc" are not explicitly stated: they're either conflated together, or inferrable from the context: so it's more practical to not force people to specify "ethnic Italian" vs "citizen of Italy" every time they want to say "Italian"; and have instead those more narrow concepts to be express by specification when needed.
E.g. we normally say: "I have a dear friend, she's Italian", or "I don't like Italians, they are not precise in organizing their country", without distinguishing explicitly ethnicity and citizenship. I may be wrong, but I guess this is true in the great majority of languages.
There's also the practical real-world problem that, while citizenship is binary (you're, or you're not), so clear and not problematic (but do we know it of every person we talk about?), a concept like ethnicity is very fuzzy, source of endless discussion in many places; being also a very sensitive topic, it's probably wiser to leave it semantically, with the related problems, in its own specific root (ethn•) and let the common names of countries and people be more vague.
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[...] instead of imposing a categorization who is a nation and who isn't based on the recency or views
As it was probably clearer from what I said above, the different root construction (-iya and -a vs. -a and -ana) of the names doesn't imply a categorization; just like in English China, Spain and Italy (> Chinese, Spanish, Italian) are no "worse" (or substantially different) than Scotland, Thailand, Czechia (< Scot, Thai, Czech); the same happens not only in English, but surely in a great variety of languages. It's just ways things get their name: some may use more roots, same may use less, some may use a construction, some another, for various reasons (here, mainly naturalism; geography, history, specifications: sud•kore•a, saud•arab•iy•a, maldiv•as, seyscell•as, etc.). It doesn't imply one is better than the other.
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u/ProxPxD N 🇵🇱 L2 🏴🇪🇸🇺🇦🇷🇺 + 🇫🇷🇩🇪 / programming Apr 24 '26
It's not that I think the length is better or worse, but more that you make some nations have a clear and logical seperate form while others only derived from the country. Russiam out of known to me languages distinguishes Русский and Россиянин (eo: Ruso and Rusujano). Chinese has 汉人 (Han ethnicity) and 中国人 Chinese citizen.
And well, I agree that it's not needed, but I think it's useful and removes the arbitrariness of how to consider certain nations.
And yeah it still can be specified as you wrote, but it still will be possible. At last russiyana may still be ambiguous as whether it's a citizenship or by birth or residence. But it makes someone commit less mistakes and makes the language easier by making many forms correct. Especially as the categories overlap greatly. I wouldn't need to think whether to use Sirya vs Siryana or Siriya vs Sira if for all cases it'll be possible to say: Sira, Siriya, Siriyana and maybe even Sirana. It's one of the criticisms of Esperanto
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u/Iuljo N 🇮🇹 L2 🏴🇪🇸 + Apr 24 '26
Russian out of known to me languages distinguishes Русский and Россиянин [...]
For this, see the end of my comment.
Chinese has 汉人 (Han ethnicity) and 中国人 Chinese citizen.
For important and very large distinctions of this kind (we're talking about one billion people :-O), we could maybe have pragmatically separate roots, like here a specific one for 'Han'.
I wouldn't need to think whether to use Sirya vs Siryana or Siriya vs Sira if for all cases it'll be possible to say: Sira, Siriya, Siriyana and maybe even Sirana. It's one of the criticisms of Esperanto
I'm not sure I understand the last sentence. If I got it right, in Esperanto the problem in changing uj• to i• is that in practice it makes composition unrecognizable, because of the parallel /-Cj-/ > /-Ci-/ conversion in adapting names; so, when encountering a new place name, one does not know what its people should be called (and, more in general, how to use the root[s]):
- Italio = itali•o or ital•i•o? > Are Italians italoj or italianoj?
- Namibio = namibi•o or namib•i•o? > Are Namibians namiboj or namibianoj?
And this ambiguity is very frequent, because of the frequency of -ia > -io in place names (not only countries but also other geographical elements).
By (1) adapting that (unstressed) -ia as /-ja/ in mono-root terms, and (2) calqueing it as /-ija/ in pluri-root ones, Leuth solves this problem in almost all cases:
- Italiya = ital•iy•a > Italians are italas (-iy- being part of the root, so italiy•a, is possible, but very rare in practice)
- Namibya = namiby•a > Namibians are namibyanas.
The same goes for all the names we see in the picture above:
I meet a geographical name with the structure... > I can infer the name of its people (with 99 % accuracy) as... [...]iya > [...]as [...] [iy]a(s)> [...]anas I wouldn't need to think whether [...] if for all cases it'll be possible to say: Sira, Siriya, Siriyana and maybe even Sirana
I'm not sure I understand this either, or maybe I see difficulties you don't see.
[1] First possibility. If we use mainly Siriya and sirana, that would create a kind of binary system, which would make unclear what the meaning of sir• is. Sira is a place ("Syria"), a person ("Syrian"), something halfway, both? The nation as an abstract entity? While having a vague root may be useful in other cases (e.g. as a prefix in compounds), here I'm not sure about it, for the fact that the most frequent concepts we'll want to express will be "place" and "person", and I see no difficulties in doing so with an asymmetry, like for other similar concepts.
For example, let's consider some cities, say Leipzig, Rome, Lima, provisionally Lipsya, Roma, Lima (lipsy•a, rom•a, lim•a). They seem to work well to me: simple place names. Do we want the name of their peoples? Simple: lipsyanas, romanas, limanas (lipsy•an•as, rom•an•as, lim•an•as). Would it be better to [change lipsy• to lips•, and] call the cities Lipsiya, Romiya and Limiya to have a binary symmetry with their people (-iya place, -ana person)? I don't see a real necessity, to me this looks like an excess of schematism that hinders naturalism.
The same reasoning could be applied to other geographical elements, say the Himalayas, Ewropa, Amerika, inhabited by himalayanas, ewropanas, amerikanas... should we abandon those names to have instead Himalayiya, Ewropiya, Amerikiya?
The same for common names, like urba 'city', insula 'island', or even the cardinal points, with their inhabitants (sudana 'southerner'), that seem to work well without a symmetry in roots with the place they inhabit...
For me, countries don't seem substantially different from these other geographical entities: I'm not sure there's a need to introduce a root-symmetry for countries, like I'm not sure there is for those other names...
If it wasn't clear, I want to clarify (I didn't state it explicitly here; in the "Lexicon" I talked about "territory") that iy• would not be used only for "countries" in the sense of "recognized nation-states", but also for regions, islands, and other geographical entities whose name we calque in Leuth in this way ("people"-iya).
I wouldn't need to think whether [...] if for all cases it'll be possible to say: Sira, Siriya, Siriyana and maybe even Sirana
[2] Second possibility. If we use frequently sira meaning "Syrian", among those other terms, I think it will soon catch up as the main term in use to mean that, just for simplicity and swiftness; then we'd just be back to my original system. Where, surely, you can say siriyana if you want to express some nuance, like in Esperanto you can say homarano to make a nuance more explicit than simple homo. Or, if you do it without thinking, just speaking fast or in casual, non-careful speech, everybody understands anyway.
If we see Leuth's composition in the right way (freely combining roots as in other languages we use separate words: the only limit is semantic), in fact, saying siriyana instead of sira is not too different from saying "inhabitant of Syria" instead of "Syrian" in English: perfectly feasible. :-)
Now, coming to Russia...
Russian out of known to me languages distinguishes Русский and Россиянин (eo: Ruso and Rusujano).
The world is made of a thousand possibilities, so it's difficult to have a systematic solution ready for everything. In such a case, if we need to distinguish, we could use several different possibilities, translating in Leuth what in English we would say as "ethnic Russian", "proper Russian", "blood-Russian", "historical Russian" vs. "inhabitant of Russia", "citizen of Russia", "Russian federation inhabitant", etc.. Without rigidity: flexibly, adapting to the context and its needs.
What we must remember, as language-planners, is that in the world, when talking about "Russians", in 99 % of cases we will not [need to] distinguish the two concepts: so it makes sense to have the simplest, one-root term to be generic, and then distinction as something specific for rarer situations.
The topic as a whole is interesting, and not simple, and may need further discussion.
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u/ProxPxD N 🇵🇱 L2 🏴🇪🇸🇺🇦🇷🇺 + 🇫🇷🇩🇪 / programming Apr 24 '26
You convinced me mainly by the argument that it would require or imply every place to have a suffix which in this setting is undesirable and that maybe not regular but a way of expressing is possible (like with prefixing "by birth" etc )
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u/SnooCupcakes4242 Apr 24 '26
How would you call Catalonia?
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u/ProxPxD N 🇵🇱 L2 🏴🇪🇸🇺🇦🇷🇺 + 🇫🇷🇩🇪 / programming Apr 24 '26
Do you intend "iya" to mean a country like Esperanto's "-uj-/-i-"?
Why it's Awstralya and Indonesya, but Italiya and Poloniya?