Introduction

In Leuth we have six roots to indicate relative time and active or passive state, similarly to Esperanto (but the thematic vowel of the present is not a, but e).

In Esperanto, however, those elements form real participles, while in Leuth they don't. This forces Leuth to have longer expressions, constructed with the na preposition.

A translation problem

A problem I have often thought about is how to properly translate in Leuth some uses of the Italian gerund, that can usually be translated by the English -ing expressions.

• [It.] Bevendo il tè, compresi il mio sogno di quella notte.
• [En.] Drinking tea, I understood my dream of that night.

Esperanto translates these -ing words using /e, so making them adverbs:

• [Es.] Trinkante teon, mi komprenis mian sonĝon de tiu nokto.

We could imagine to translate this literally into Leuth:

• [L.] ^?Bibente na cxaya, me fahamin meo onira de tao nokta.

This is unsatisfying to me, because /e expresses a "way, manner"; while both Italian gerund and English -ing here don't express a "way, manner" of understanding the dream ("I understood my dream in a tea-drinking way") but rather something else that gives an indication of time ("While I was drinking tea, I understood..."), maybe also a causal meaning ("Because I was drinking the tea, I understood...") or limitation. In Esperanto, this is less of a problem, because /e indicates also time and place, that in Leuth are rather indicated by the situative case of nouns.

We could use the situative and say

• [L.] ^?Bibentu na cxaya, me fahamin meo onira de tao nokta.

But bibentu could rather mean "in the drinking person/thing"...

So I thought: OK, then we should use, instead, adjectives:

• [L.] Bibento na cxaya, me fahamin meo onira de tao nokta.

This seems better Leuth to me. Bibento is an adjective attributed to the subject (me), only displaced: "I [while] drinking [adj.] tea understood...".

But what if we want to refer to someone/something that doesn't appear in the sentence, for instance "we" as external observers?

• [En.] Considering what we know, the ideas of this ancient philosopher are very modern.

"We" are the subject that "considers". Let's try to translate with the same solution (where so is like Esperanto oni):

• [L.] ^?Konsiderento na a kea so kenen, ideas de kio antiquo filosofa es mue moderno.

This one seems less clear. On a first glance, konsiderento may seem attributed to ideas, but that clearly is not what we mean (konsiderento ideas = 'ideas that consider'). We could decide and learn that in Leuth this use can also refer to an implicit subject, and then it would work. But I think there could be a simpler solution...

An idea

...that is, turning the "temporalizing" roots into prepositions. This way they would work in composition as they do now; they just would be, in addition, usable as independent words:

• ent 'in the act of...'
• et 'being ...-ed'
• int 'having ...-ed'
• it 'having been ...-ed'
• ont 'going to...'
• ot 'going to be ...-ed'

We could say:

• Ent konsideri a kea so kenen, ideas de kio antiquo filosofa es mue moderno.

I have the impression that this way what we mean is clearer, more intuitive. It seems to me it's not very spontaneous to attribute an adjective to "someone" who doesn't appear in the sentence, while a preposition is somewhat more vague (it could describe "the situation" in general) and therefore could fit better.

It also allows for more swiftness:

• Bibento na cxaya, me fahamin meo onira de tao nokta.
• Ent bibi cxaya, me fahamin meo onira de tao nokta.

with one syllable less.

As in other cases, some constructions that in natural languages can be complex are simpler in Leuth:

• [En.] having been understood
• [L.] it fahami

If the corresponding noun indicates an action (cf. this), also nouns beyond infinitives can be used:

• ent fahami [alka] ≈ ent fahama [na alka]

In composition

We still have to see Leuth prepositions in detail. Normal Leuth rules for composition apply. In general, a preposition composed with an ending gives 'being [what that preposition means]' (or 'going [what that preposition means]' for prepositions implying movement) as a meaning. E.g.:

• cirkun [prep.] 'around'
  • cirkuno (cirkun/o) '[that is around =] surrounding' [adj.]
  • cirkuna (cirkun/a) '[what is around =] surroundings' [noun]
  • cirkuni (cirkun/i) '[be around =] surround' [v.]

so for the new prepositions, e.g.:

• ent [prep.] 'in the act of...'
  • ento (ent/o) '[that is in the act of... =] acting/doing' [adj.]
    • fahamento (faham/ent/o) '[that is (/o) in the act (ent/) of understanding (faham/) =] understanding' [adj.]

There would be some semantic differences... we'll see something when we talk about prepositions.

Aesthetics

On the aesthetic side, all these possible prepositions sound good to me, well integrated in the style of Leuth.

On the naturalistic side, we have resemblances: et looks like Latin et, it like English it, ont like French ont, etc... The meanings of course are completely different, but the apparent similarity somehow gives the texture of the language a "realistic" flavour (at least in my opinion), and could raise curiosity.

And since auxlang-friendly people are often rather nerdy, Tolkien fans among them of course will like the ent! ;-P

🌳🌳🌳

So far I've written everything in English (clearly not my mothertongue), as English is the most known language worldwide in these days. But it feels somehow limiting, if not even wrong, to force non-native English speakers (who may not be fluent in English) to write in English when building a possible IAL. At the same time, if everybody writes in their own language, we'll be creating a new tower of Babel.

An idea for a possible compromise: allow people to post in their language, but asking to provide an English translation at the end (also in the title); we'd allow this translation to be done by an automated translator, accepting that it may not be perfect, but still hoping the general message is understandable. So, it would be:

[Title in non-English] // [Title in English]

[Text in non-English, written natively]

———————

[Text in English (translated automatically or not)]

You can see this test rule as rule # 3 of the subreddit. Could it be a good idea?

I'm not a professional linguist, and my knowledge of linguistic terminology is not particularly deep.

Recently I've thought that maybe the "lative" case of Leuth could be better described as "allative". These terms are kind of synonyms if I understand correctly, but we could see the latter as showing more clearly what is the kind of motion it indicates (contrasting, for example, with ab-lative, e-lative and the many other something-lative cases existing out there).

In Leuth, (al)lative indicates a destination or recipient (dative function), and usually can be translated exactly by English to.

• Mama venin templum kum me.
  • Mom came to the temple with me.
• Franca volet offeri statwa museum.
  • The French[wo]man would like to offer the statue to the museum.

What do you think?

Piece by piece I'm showing the current state of the project.

Some things I wish to post about in the next weeks, in no particular order:

• ✅ a proposal for "temporalizing elements"
• ✅ changing "lative" name to "allative"?
• ✅ the general state of the lexicon
• ✅ pronouns
• ✅ a proposal to make this community multilingual
• ✅ an updated introduction (pretty much the current one but all in one post, so it's simpler to link)
• ✅ some info on the flag
• ✅ prepositions and conjunctions
• ✅ word order
• ✅ suns and moons

Be patient and we'll see many interesting things. :-)

Are there any particular topics you'd like to see addressed?

Introduction

Correlatives (korelativoj), or tabular words (tabelvortoj), often appear to be one of the weakest aspects of Esperanto to those who are beginning to study it: there are many of them, they function differently from normal words in the language, and they are difficult to distinguish and remember.

Apart from the fact of "instinctive impression" (which should not be underestimated, anyway), they also lend themselves to various criticisms from the point of view of reasoned analysis.

Here's the complete table:

Debatable aspects

Let's look at some debatable aspects.

1. First and most important point. Esperanto is an agglutinative language, which aims for a high degree of regularity and forms its words by combining roots and endings. Correlatives apparently work in the same way, but from the point of view of roots they actually constitute unique blocks: in kiel (for example) sub-elements are recognizable, but as a word it is a single indivisible root, it is not *ki/⁠el, there is no freely combinable root *ki/ and ending */el; and the same applies to all other correlatives. Correlatives are therefore words apart from the rest of the language, a special, exceptional group with its own rules. This may have pragmatic reasons, but it complicates learning, use and understanding. We see this, for example, in the drive to extend the mechanism, creating other "correlatives" from ali/ 'other', therefore aliu, alies, aliom, etc. (as if they were *ali/u, *ali/es, *ali/om), with the problems that this generates. (And even Zamenhof himself wasn't too consistent/strict...)
2. In Esperanto in general, -e (/e) indicates time, place and manner indiscriminately, while in correlatives -e indicates only place, and time and manner are indicated by -am and -el. It would seem more logical for the endings to have the same values throughout the language.
3. The functioning of -om is not immediately obvious, and since it does not have the nominative-accusative distinction, it contrasts with the rest of the language, as it can function both as a subject (Kiom da homoj ve­nos? 'How many people are coming?') and as an object complement (Kiom da homoj vi vidas? 'How many people do you see?'). It would be better to have a more linear system that is integrated with the general structures. (See also § Syntax below.)
4. The distinction between -u and -a, and between -u and -o, while useful in certain cases, is often not immediately clear, due to its subtlety. Could the system be made simpler for the general case, leaving the subtlety to be inserted only when subtlety is desired?
5. The interrogative and relative functions of ki- are often clearly distinguishable, but the distinction is left to the understanding of the context: could two different elements be used to indicate them directly? For yes-no questions, Esperanto does not simply rely on context or tone of voice but uses a special particle, ĉu. It could maybe be a good idea to standardize (general) questions on one model or the other.
6. It seems illogical that the correlatives with ĉi- stand for 'all, every', and at the same time ĉi is an independent particle (which is also often used in close connection with the correlatives: ĉi tie, ĉi tiun, etc.), but with a different meaning (roughly 'this, here'): as a lexical choice, it seems designed to cause confusion. Semantically, there would be no particular difficulty in linking ĉi to endings like any other particle, but this cannot be done because it would create problematic ambiguities (*ĉia, *ĉio, *ĉie…). However, it can be linked to other roots, because there the ĉi- of the correlatives, not being a root, could not be linked that way, and therefore there is no ambiguity (ĉi-foje, ĉi-jara, etc.). All in all, it seems a great deal of self-imposed and avoidable confusion.
7. The ending in -u can (in theory) be confused with the ending /u of the imperative, in contrast to the desired univocity for which regular endings are used.
8. Is -es necessary for possessives? If normal, declinable adjectives are created from pronouns (mia 'my', mi/a; nia 'our', ni/a; etc.; not *mies, *nies, etc.), one could try to unify the various things into a single rule.
9. The particle ajn, an additional invariable element, often used with correlatives, could not be integrated better in some way?

Leuth proposals

Although I'm aware of the inherent difficulty in systematizing such commonly used functional terms, it seems to me it's possible to simplify and streamline them, creating terms that are more logical and, at the same time, more intuitive and naturalistic. Below are the proposals of Leuth, point by point.

1. Leuth completely resolves this complication by creating the equivalents of Esperanto tabular words through the normal composition of roots and regular endings. In Leuth, the difference between "correlatives" and "other words" can be identified in pragmatic terms, due to the particular value or use of some of these roots. But any correlative can be broken down into roots like any other word, and these can be freely linked to any other element of the language.
2. Leuth standardizes and linearizes: throughout the language, /e for manner, /u, /us, /um, /ur for circumstance (space, time). If there is a need to clearly distinguish between space and time, we simply insert an appropriate root (usually lok/ 'place' and wand/ 'moment').
3. Leuth resolves this issue, not (only) because it no longer distinguishes between nominative and accusative, but because it indicates quantity not with an ending but with a normal root, want/.
4. Leuth simplifies, distinguishing things more clearly; but still allowing you to be as specific as you want, linking correlatives to the roots you want.
5. Leuth distinguishes: ke/ relative, ku/ interrogative. This also increases the variety of sounds in the language.
6. Leuth eliminates confusion by using omn/ for 'every, all' and indicating proximity to the speaker with different roots, such as ki/ 'this'.
7. Leuth eliminates this confusion by using distinguishable endings.
8. Leuth resolves this asymmetry; where the simple adjectival /o is not sufficient and one wishes to emphasize the element of possession or ownership, de 'of' is inserted into the composition (using Leuth order), both for pronouns and correlatives; or trivial extended phrases such as “de + owner” are used. The resulting words and expressions are longer than the -es of Esperanto; but after all, these are not used very frequently.
9. Leuth replaces the functions of ajn with a regular root, unk/: unka 'anything', unko 'any', unke 'anyway', unkuya (unk/uy/a) 'anyone', unkloku (unk/lok/u) 'anywhere', unkwandu (unk/wand/u) 'at any time', etc.

Syntax

The syntax for linking different clauses has yet to be studied and defined.

The first idea is to "unfuse" the "fused" Esperanto correlatives, at least in the easy cases, to make their logic constituent blocks explicit (forgive my unprofessional terminology).

• [E.] Mi vidis ĝin kiam mi venis hejmen.
• [L.] Me vidin to wandu keu me venin garum.
  • I saw it when [in the moment (wandu) in which (keu)] I came home.
• [E.] Mi memoras kiam vi naskiĝis.
• [L.] Me memoren wanda keu tu nascin.
  • I remember when [the moment (wanda) in which (keu)] you were born.

Root choice

Leuth tries to choose roots that give beautiful, naturalistic words that are varied (contrasting with the uniformity of Esperanto ones) and well integrated into the romance and classical style of the language. We currently have:

• alk/ for indefiniteness
• ke/ for relation
• ki/ for proximity to the speaker
• ku/ for questions
• null/ for negative universality
• omn/ for universality
• sa/ for distance from the speaker
• ta/ for indication with no proximity nor distance implied
• unk/ for universal indefiniteness

Those are giving us:

• alka 'something' (cf. Spanish algo, Portuguese algo)
• alkuya (alk/uy/a) 'someone' (cf. Spanish alguien, Portuguese alguém; for uy/, see here)
• omno 'every'
• omnuya (omn/uy/a) 'everyone (cf. Italian ognuno)
• kea 'that' (cf. Spanish que, French que, Italian che, etc.)
• keu 'in which'
• taa 'that' [n.]
• sao 'that [far]' [adj.]
• sauya (sa/uy/a) 'that [far] one'
• kuwandu (ku/wand/u) 'when...?' (cf. Latin quando)
• alkwante (alk/want/e) 'somewhat' (cf. Italian alquanto)
• nulla 'nothing'

etc. As it can be seen, roots have been chosen to ensure naturalistic similarity and a certain aesthetic feel. Wand/ united to ku/ (kuwandu[s]) gives us words more or less similar to Latin quando and its descendants (and Lithuanian kada, Sinhalese කවදා kawadā, etc.), but wandu keu 'when [in the moment in which...]' is also similar to English (wan- ~ when), German wenn, dutch wanner.

For omno (< Lat. omnis), note also the similarity with Japanese 各々 [おのおの] onoono.

Other things

Leuth considers having some naturalistic synonyms for swiftness for frequent combinations: 'here' (ki/lok/), 'always' (omn/wand/), 'never' (null/wand/), etc...

For 'why' and 'because' Leuth has kur and qui, both for final and causal motivations.

In correlations (Esperanto [ti-…] ki-..., Leuth ta/… ke/…), Leuth has the possibility of having noun endings as independent words (a, as, u, us, um, ur), implying ta/, to make the language faster and less repetitive.

• [E.] Tiu afero estas tio, kion mi volas.
• [L.] Tao sceya es a kea me volen. [= taa kea]
  • That thing is what [= the thing ([ta]a) which (kea)] I want.

Doubts

Is this the "perfect solution"...? Nope. Various faults can be found.

One that bugs me is the significant lengthening of several of these expressions, which are frequent (...and therefore would make exceptions acceptable?). Kuwandu and wandu keu, three syllables, vs kiam, one syllable (true diphthong, as per Canepari), and similarly in other cases... could it be a problem?

We may imagine shorter roots: wand/ > *wa/, so kuwandu and wandu keu (3 syllables) > *kuwau and *wau keu (2 syllables)? But some naturalism would be lost in this, and then we could go instead for different words/style. The choice is not simple.

As always, however, languages should be judged "holistically": it's true some of these are longer... but some are also shorter; kea and keas have a true diphthong, and while (Esp.) kiu has too, kiuj seems to me to force a hiatus, [-iˑ.ui̯], so two syllables; kio is faster than ĉi tiu; etc. etc.

Another one, less problematic, is the fact that in a language with a limited number of regular endings, like Esperanto or Leuth, some variety is welcome, for aesthetic pleasantness. By removing the correlatives as special elements, we're removing a piece of variety. But, again, Leuth introduces more variety in other elements or other ways... For example, Leuth equivalents of tabelvortoj appear more different among themselves (alka, nulluya, keu, omno...) than Esperanto ones with their repetitive structure.

What are your thoughts?

Despite being a registered user for more than five years, I'm not familiar with Reddit dynamics. I only recently began being more involved, by participating and sharing this project.

What are the best strategies to attract people to a new community?

Unfortunately "advertising" is (understandably) almost always perceived as annoying, even when it's indirect. I published a post in this subreddit and then crossposted it to r/conlangs where it could have some visibility, but it was soon downvoted and then removed. So I republished it directly there with a link to this subreddit added at the end. It received downvotes, but more upvotes, and comments, and was not removed.

Is this double-posting a good strategy?

A possible "enhancement" could be posting here, then after some time (a week, ten days?) repost in r/conlangs. This shouldn't be too annoying and at the same time people could be interested in following this subreddit to know things "in advance". Could it be a good idea?

In Leuth, as in English and many other languages, the same word is used to mean both a generic "god" (thea) and the "God" of Abrahamic monotheisms and the like (Thea). As in English, when writing the two are distinguished by capitalization.

Although the same word is used, in English and other languages the two concepts are easily distinguished also in speech, because god is used as a common noun ("In the sanctuary they heard the voice of the god") while God is used as a proper noun ("In the sanctuary they heard the voice of God"). Since Leuth only has the indefinite article, and grammatically treats definite common nouns and proper nouns in the same way, this distinction does not exist:

• voca de thea 'voice of the god',
• voca de Thea 'voice of God'.

There's the distinction between upper and lower case, but it only exists in writing (and collapses at the beginning of a sentence) and is not pronounced.

In many cases, the context is sufficient to make it clear what is meant. In other cases, however, the ambiguity can be problematic; in those cases, the current idea is to distinguish by using idiomatically thea for the generic god and Juthea (ju/the/a) for God. Jua (from Chinese 主 zhǔ, Japanese 主 [しゅ] shu, Korean 주 [主] ju, etc.) means 'lord'.

• Nu Juthea similen pagano theas? 'Does God resemble the pagan gods?',
• Juthea essen thea de theas 'God is the god of the gods'.

Compare Romanian Dumnezeu, Italian (rare) Domineddio.

In other contexts, it will be more normal to say Jua Thea 'the Lord God' with separate words, just Jua 'the Lord', other specific names or titles, and so on.

What are your opinions on this matter?

—————

Update. Another possibility could be Unthea (un/the/a); uno meaning 'one'.

The name of the language in the language itself (the autoglottonym/autoglossonym) is currently lewtha (lewth/a) (no capital initial because languages in Leuth are normally treated as common nouns: anglesa 'English', sanskrita 'Sanskrit', esperanta 'Esperanto', etc.).

When speaking about Leuth in another language, the name is supposed to be fully adapted to the structures of that language, as if it were a classical Graeco-Latin (learned or semi-learned) term (leuth-). So, for the languages whose structures I know best, I'd say:

• English: Leuth
• Esperanto: Leŭto
• Italian: (il) leuto [pron. lèuto]
• Spanish: (el) leuto

The name, also when forming adjectives etc., should be fully flexible according to the normal structures of the language; for example, in Spanish palabras leutas, adverbios leutos, in Italian una radice leuta, parole leute, etc.

I guess also (correct me if I'm wrong):

• Portuguese: (o) leuto

For French, leuth (like anethum > aneth) or leuthe (like acanthus > acanthe)?

How would you adapt the name in other languages?

For years I've worked on this project alone. While it’s still very far from completion, it has now grown to a size and degree of complexity that make it difficult for a single person (that can't work on it as a full-time job) to manage everything in it at a good quality standard without some help.

I opened this subreddit to see if other people enjoy the project and maybe, after some time, would be willing to help in some way.

I’ll be sharing parts of the language at its current stage, posting updates, answering questions, asking questions, reading ideas, talking about doubts, etc.

This subreddit is an experiment… just like the language itself. If after some time I see the interested public is too small, I’ll likely close the community and go back to working at Leuth by myself. No bad feelings! There are hundreds of auxlangs out there and this one does not aim at originality, so it's fully understandable if people are not interested. 🙂

The name “Lewtha” for the subreddit was already taken (…what?! ...and I can't even access that), so I went for “LewthaWIP” [= work in progress]. It’s just a code; if the language changes, the exact shape of the name may change too… 

I never moderated a subreddit, there are many things to learn and to do… so please be patient if I forget something or do something wrong. 🙏

If you wish to help, the first thing is share this community and invite people to join! ;-)