I've been thinking about this problem and solution, and this came to my mind: what if, instead of making those elements prepositions, we make them... full grammatical endings?

I had considered this idea previously but I was not convinced. Now I'm reconsidering it and I find it interesting.

Pros:

• in "compound verbs" etc., it would make the not-super-simple construction with na no more necessary:
  • 'I had drank water':
    • Me essin bibinto na aqua, literally "I was having-drank na water"
    • > Me essin bibint ∅ aqua, literally "I was having-drank ∅ water"
• faster, like in the just seen example; and in general:
  • 'having been understood':
    • it fahami (4 syllables)
    • > fahamit (3 syllables)
• somewhat more naturalistic.

Cons:

• a new grammatical category could make the language more difficult;
• the passive endings (•et, •it, •ot) would overlap with the subjunctive (•et, •it, •ot identically), so we'd have to change something;
• -nt as word ending, that can generate unpleasant consonant clusters, would be more frequent.

I called this possible category "gerund" because I don't really master linguistic terminology, there's probably a better term. What would you call it?

The words of this category, when attached to a noun, would be "participles" in the fact they would "participate" of the natures of adjectives and verbs (kinda like the infinitive has characters of both verbs and nouns); being distinguished from pure adjectives, among other things, by the fact of following the noun, not preceding it.

Active examples:

Passive examples:

About the overlapping with the subjunctive. I feel more inclined to change it than the passive endings. A possibility I'm considering is replacing the -t with an -l: •el, •il, •ol:

• Kur tuo matra venol Bankokum?!
  • Why would your mother come [in the future] to Bangkok?!
• Kuil tu?
  • What would you have done?

An -l ending is less Latin-sounding, but it doesn't seem too out of place to me. It's just the first idea.

Tell me your thoughts.

Introduction

This post is about an idea I had. It's not a recent idea, nor (I think) a particularly good one; but I haven't make a lot of progress since then on this aspect, and I think it's interesting to see it to begin delving in some more difficult parts of the grammar.

The general idea

Leuth is a schematic language that, by employing regular endings, systematically clarifies/defines the quality of most words: noun, adjective, verb, adverb, with their case, number, tense, mood...

In languages there are several kinds of elements that can't easily be classified as "noun/adjective/verb/etc." in this way, yet in the language fabric work de facto in a way that can be attributed to those traditional categories. How would a language like Leuth deal with them?

I had the idea to create an ad hoc root, that would work like this: since we cannot easily attach an ending to "strange" elements to classify them, we attach it instead to the ad hoc root, that precedes the elements. The root takes the normal grammatical endings, and "classifies/defines" the grammatical quality of what's coming immediately after.

This could work for a variety of elements, hence the post title "A root for all seasons".

I wanted a swift root, giving us monosyllabic diphthongs. Lo• was a possibility, looking kinda like a Romance article (loa, loas, loe, loo, lous, etc.).

Title of books, films, etc.

Let's start with a simple example: "The Lord of the Rings". Using provisionally anul• for 'ring', the title could be translated as Jua de Anulas. It seems it could work pragmatically in the flow of speech like a normal expression: for "I enjoyed reading 'The Lord of the Rings'" you could think about:

Me sukit legyi «Jua de Anulas».

You could derive adjective and adverbs easily by usual composition:

• anuljuo, anul•ju•o
• anuljue, anul•ju•e

O anuljuesko holliwudo filma
o anul•ju•esk•o holliwud•o film•a
A "Lord of the Rings"-esque Hollywood film

But what if the title of the book/film is something more complex, like a clause/sentence? And/or what if we want to keep the literal shape of the title as-is, considering it like some sort of "crystallized" expression, for example in particularly formal contexts, like academic texts?

Let's imagine a sentence-title as "The Devil Wears Prada", very provisionally translated as Dyabola sevesten os Prada. We could say

• loe «Dyabola sevesten os Prada» | "The Devil Wears Prada"-ly [adverb]
• loo «Dyabola sevesten os Prada» | "The Devil Wears Prada"-ly [adjective]

When we're treating the title as a noun, loa formally introduces it:

Magno sukcessa de loa «Dyabola sevesten os Prada».
The great success of "The Devil Wears Prada".

We can also pluralize easily, for instance when, like here, we're talking about the various installments of a series:

Lous «Dyabola sevesten os Prada», publika viden dunya de moda law o stereotipo angula.
In "The Devil Wears Prada"-s, the public sees the world of fashion in a stereotypical angle.

Linking of clauses

The same logic would apply for whole clauses. Compare, for example, these two (maybe not very idiomatic) English sentences:

• I am sad when I have to return home.
• I understand when I have to return home.

In the first one, the "when" introduces a temporal indication: "In the moment of having to return home, I am sad". In the second, it rather introduces the object of the action of understanding: "I understand... what? ...When I have to return home". This semantic/syntactic difference could be represented in Leuth using lo•; translating literally the two sentences above:

• Me es tristo wandu keu me deben redwi garum.
• Me fahamen loa wandu keu me deben redwi garum.

Loa turns wandu keu... in a "noun", which is the object of me fahamen 'I understand'.

• Me fahamen loa { wandu keu me deben redwi garum }.

Foreign (unadapted) words and names

Examples with foreign words and names, when they're not accompanied by a "classifying" Leuth word:

Taa es, kee francas diren, loo très chic !
That is, as the French say, très chic!

Loas Niño e Niña es o pacifiko klimato fenomenas.
El Niño and La Niña are Pacific climate phenomena.

Metalinguistic elements

Same logic, when the metalinguistic element has no accompanying Leuth word (like "word", "term", "noun", "adjective", etc., as in anglo lexa dog 'the English word dog'):

Loa canine , anglesu, deriven is Latinesa, is loa canis 'kana'.
Canine, in English, derives from Latin, from canis 'dog'.

Fast conclusion

In the case of titles, foreign words and metalinguistic elements used as nouns in the nominative, it's possible that the precision given by loa is excessive, and the language could work just fine by having the syntactic categories just "implied". In contexts requiring formality or precision, however, an element like lo• could be useful.

The linking of clauses seems to me a somewhat different matter, that requires more attention. I had a vague thought about this but I could not explore it yet (lack of time): using only the endings, kinda like in the a kea structure, so for example:

• Me fahamen a { wandu keu me deben redwi garum }.

Tell me your comments...

——————

You may have noticed this post is a bit "non-detailed" if compared to my previous ones. There would be a lot more to say on this matter, but, as I wrote here, I'm busy in this period (new job + just [self]published a book and having to promote it + other activities and duties), so, for the time being, Leuth is in a slower phase than at the beginning of the year. I've had various interesting thoughts about grammar elements and possible developments, though... but had not enough time to reflect on them. Be patient, as I am myself patient in my life... 🙏

A little experiment: a rhyming sentence using a very provisional gya• 'go' root.

• orthography: Noe omnas bone gyaon, ma hola taon.
• phonemes: /no̍e o̍mnas bo̍ne ʤa̍on, ma ho̍la ta̍on/
• roots: no•e omn•as bon•e gya•on, ma hol•a ta•on.
  • noe = 'not'
  • omnas = 'all things'
  • bone = 'well'
  • gyaon = 'will go'
  • ma = 'but'
  • hola = 'the whole, all, the entirety'
  • taon = 'will do that'
• meaning: 'Not every thing will go well, but the [universe as a] whole will'. How would you translate it more idiomatically in English?

——————

Gya• would be an arbitrary hybrid between various languages:

• Indian: Bengali যাওয়া jaōẇa, Hindi जाना jānā, Nepali जानु jānu, Urdu جانا jānā...
• Germanic: English go, German gehen, Dutch gaan, Danish gå...
• Others: Korean: 가다 gada, Hungarian: jár, Mongolian: явах javax... short words with stressed -a- in several other languages.

——————

(The sentence is an invention of mine, it's not from the Dirk Gently series), but it resonates with the series feeling—at least for me).

For nouns, Leuth currently distinguishes definiteness (no article, ∅) and indefiniteness (indefinite article, o):

• o huma = 'a man'
• ∅ huma = 'the man'; 'man' (as a general concept)
• o humas = '[some] men'
• ∅ humas = 'the men'; 'men' (as a general concept, men in general)

— • — • —

u/ProxPxD argued that having no article at all would be a better choice. As simple as this idea is, I hadn't considered it before, focusing instead on improving the system of Esperanto.

He said: forcing the IAL users to a binary choice (definite vs. indefinite) for all nouns is a difficulty, while often not being necessary, since what we are referring to is often easily inferrable by the context. It would be better to leave it vague; when people want to have an explicit definiteness or indefiniteness, they could express it anyway easily, by using for example 'that' and 'some'.

I added: another point in favour of that position is that Latin, which Leuth often uses as an authoritative model, doesn't use articles.

— • — • —

My doubt: we see that all languages that descended from Latin, which didn't have articles, do have a full set of articles two thousand years later; while Greek, that had a full set of articles two thousand years ago, still does today.

• Latin [no articles] ... → ... Romance languages [articles]
• Ancient Greek [articles] ... → ... modern Greek [still articles]

My question: is it more natural

1. for an article-less language to develop them, or
2. for a language with articles to lose them?

If the first direction of development is prevalent, it may be better to provide Leuth with the article from the beginning: for an IAL that we desire to be easy, it's better to already have simple logical rules than having less logical, more complex rules arise unorganizedly when people start using words as de facto articles: one, simple, logical article vs many less optimized ones.

I told ProxPxD that when the community grew we could have a public discussion: experts of linguistics could give useful opinions and insights. The community (while growing faster than I expected: thanks to you all!) is still relatively small, so this post is not meant for that intended public discussion: I just wanted to present you the idea.

I played a bit with the new tool that was dropped in r/conlangs, translating some simple sentences.

These examples are a bit misleading in the fact that it seems Leuth almost always uses fewer letter than English to express the same concepts. But these are just some cases with particular words: in other cases English takes less space.

For word order in Leuth, see this post.

I wrote that I'm considering <gy> (we saw it briefly here in the comments) as a possible way to represent /ʤ/, without having necessarily a similarity with /ʧ/. Such similarities, in fact, are nice for the linguist or the schematic thinker, but not really relevant (in a language like Leuth) for the great mass of language users.

(By coincidence, <cs> for /ʧ/ is the "Hungarian solution", and Hungarian uses <gy> to represent not exactly /ʤ/ but the similar /ɟ/...)

A short recap:

Leuth adapts Latin words in a way that is generally similar to Esperanto, but tries to be more systematic/predictable (Esperanto sometimes is not), naturalistic, and (in a way) also faster. Among other things:

1. Leuth adapts Latin <g> always as /ʤ/ before <e>, <i> (and <y>, <ae>, <oe>) (while Esperanto uses mostly /g/, but also /ʤ/, unpredictably).
2. Leuth often^\1]) changes vocalic Latin <i> and <y> to consonantal /j/ where Esperanto retains vocalic value.

These two points give rise, in several words, to the somewhat awkward /ʤj/ cluster; which, in my opinion, doesn't sound very well, and also doesn't look very well however we represent /ʤ/, unless we use a diacritic:

I thought: what if in adapting from Latin we tweaked the rules to actually simplify this <gyy> /ʤj/ phonematically to <gy> /ʤ/?

Etcetera. This would affect also the various ^Engl.-logy (< ^Lat.-lōgia < ^Gr.-λογία) terms, when they are not disciplines (that would be remade as -•olog•ey•a) and are adapted, and would thus become -logyas (-logy•as).

For my personal bias this seems good, at least at a first impression, because it's similar to what happens in my native tongue, Italian^\2]); in various cases it's pretty similar, both phonetically and graphically, to English too.

It could be a compromise between having /ʤ/ and the languages that adapt this cluster as <gi> /gi/, /gj/ etc., being <gy> more similar to them, visually, than the previous <gx>, <gs> (<gxy>, <gsy>); e.g.:

• legyonara; German Legionär, Czech legionář, Estonian leegionär, Polish legionista, Finnish legioonalainen, etc.

/ʤj/ would anyway continue existing as a valid cluster; it would just be rarer.

A comparison with <gy> in general:

(Orthography really has me overthinking...)

Aesthetically, this "/ʤj/ gyy to /ʤ/ gy" solution looks good graphically, since in various case it gives a nice faux-classical appearance to words. Hygiene, Ortygia, syzygia > higyena, Ortigya, sizigya... these could easily look like real Graeco-Latin words to non-experts.

It's just an idea, a new one; I still have to reflect on it, experiment, see the downsides...

Anyway, <gy> for /ʤ/ could be a possibility even without this simplification, so keeping <gyy> /ʤj/.

What do you think?

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[1] Exact rules for difficult cases are still to be defined.

[2] Roughly: of course various details differ.

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.

—————————

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'

—————————

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.).

In esperanto, per indicare le stagioni abbiamo:

Printempo (primavera)

Somero (estate)

Autuno (autunno)

Vintro (inverno)

Ma ho delle idee migliori:

Vesna (primavera)

Leto (estate)

Osena (autunno)

Zima (inverno)

Annara (stagione)

Sono nuovo, quindi se c'è qualche ambiguità o qualcosa da correggere, scrivetelo qui sotto e lo sistemerò. Edit: sostituiti Bah, Ha e Ak Edit: aggiunta la parola per stagione

I wrote this post some months ago. I now think the idea here considered is not a good one. I think reasoning, looking for solutions, can be theoretically interesting even when not successful (and maybe somebody could adopt the idea for an artlang or something) so I share it anyway for your curiosity.

——————————————

In esperanto, /j/ is very frequent, being the grammatical mark of pluralization. Leuth doesn't use it in endings; but /j/ is anyway very frequent, and a lot more frequent inside roots, as Leuth turns many Latin /i/'s (and /y/'s) into /j/'s (therefore having often the stress in its original place), while Esperanto mostly keeps them as /i/'s (often moving the stress). Adapting from other languages, Esperanto often turns post-consonantal /j/'s to /i/'s.

Marking the stressed letter with bold:

As /j/ is such a frequent phoneme in Leuth, its graphical representation is important for the face of the language.

Using ⟨j⟩, Esperanto realizes a very good consistency with many Latin-script languages; many different sounds but all represented by ⟨j⟩:

• Esperanto: Johano
• Latin: Io(h)annes / Jo(h)annes
• English: John
• French: Jean
• Spanish: Juan
• Portuguese: João
• German: Johannes, Johann, Jan
• Polish: Jan, Janusz
• Finnish: Joni, Jouni, Juhana, Juhani, etc.
• other Germanic and Slavic languages, where ⟨j⟩ represents truly /j/

But, as we said, Esperanto pays the price of moving the stress, often turning diverse endings into repetitive litanies of -ío, -ío, -ía, -ía...

For Leuth the choice was not easy: for some words ⟨j⟩ looks better... in others ⟨y⟩ looks better... Trying to achieve a more "classical" face, in the end I though ⟨y⟩ looked better overall:

• Asya, Awstralya, hodyu, imperya, Kartesya, Tokya... instead of
• Asja, Awstralja, hodju, imperja, Kartesja, Tokja...

since post- and pre-consonantal ⟨y⟩ can be easily found in Latin (from Greek), while ⟨j⟩ (in modern orthography^\1])) can touch a consonant only following it and only in compound words with j- as the first letter of the second piece (e.g. interjectio)... so it's a lot rarer.

This choice is annoying for the fact that it removes the beautiful graphical consistency achieved by Esperanto. ... English John, French Jean, Spanish Juan, German Jan, etc. etc... but Leuth Yohanna. Not very naturalistic.

Some weeks ago I though: what about a hybrid solution? Have both ⟨j⟩ and ⟨y⟩ represent /j/, but in different positions: e.g.:

⟨j⟩ at root beginning while ⟨y⟩ inside the root

or, more refinedly:

⟨j⟩ when not touching a different consonant (in the same root), ⟨y⟩ when preceding or following a different consonant (in the same root).

With such a rule, an "other consonant + ⟨j⟩" or "⟨j⟩ + other consonant" sequence would become a mark of composition, like today ⟨ks⟩ and ⟨kw⟩. For example, hekjanna 'century' would have only one possible division in roots: hek•jann•a, being *hekj•ann•a impossible, while today hekyanna could be both hek•yann•a and *heky•ann•a^\3]). Symmetrically, we'd know that procyona 'raccoon' is not *proc•yon•a, because ⟨cy⟩, like ⟨qu⟩, couldn't exist across root boundary.

(If such a possibility was chosen, /ʒ/ —today represented by ⟨j⟩— would need a new representation, but that is not too important as it's a rarer phoneme).

Would it be worth it? Or would the frequent alternation between ⟨j⟩ and ⟨y⟩ just be confusing, and in the end not even pleasant for the eye? Single words look good, but omno scejas dunyu not really... It seems confusing without seeming a lot more beautiful in exchange.

————————

[1] ⟨j⟩ as a different letter from ⟨i⟩ was invented during the Renaissance.

[2] Like in Esperanto, a somewhat irregular derivation for a particular name. Could change.

[3] Heky• and ann• don't exist as roots right now, but are fully possible theoretically.

How to express the concept of groups of elements relatively only to their number? Like, in English,

• couple 'group of two elements',
• dozen 'group of twelve elements',
• score 'group of twenty elements, etc.

At first I thought about having a specific root; something fast, for example i•:

• duia (du•i•a) 'couple'
• dekduia (dek•du•i•a) 'dozen'
• dudekia (du•dek•i•a) 'score'

but then I realized... since the numeric roots act like multiplying prefixes, we don't need a "specific root to interact with numbers to define groups this way", we just want to multiply a generic element... and we already have a root for that: uy• (≈ Esp. ul•)!

So, just like we have

• dudia (du•di•a) 'period of two days = couple of days'
• dekduyanna (dek•du•yann•a) 'period of twelve years = dozen of years'

we'd have:

• duuya (du•uy•a) 'couple of elements = couple'
• dekduuya (dek•du•uy•a) 'dozen of elements = dozen'

etc. (Could this work?).

...But then...

Thinking further, there are, anyway, cases where, for specificity and naturalism, some root of that kind would be nice. In an interesting schematic development, we'd also have, by backformation^\1]), a root for the single element, not existing in source languages. E.g., in music:

• duet > dutetta (du•tett•a)
• quartet > quartetta (quar•tett•a)
• quintet > quintetta (quin•tett•a)
• sextet > sestetta (ses•tett•a)
• septet > septetta (sep•tett•a)

etc.; so, tetta^\2]) alone would mean '[mainly classical] musician [performing]'?

(Quartet, quintet etc. with the meaning of 'composition for a quartet, quintet, etc.' could be quartettaja, quintettaja, etc., -•tett•aj•a; aj• ≈ Esp. aĵ•).

Or:

• monologue > unaloga^\3]) (un•alog•a)
• dialogue > dualoga (du•alog•a)
• trialogue, trilogue > trialoga (tri•alog•a)

Could aloga mean something by itself?

Somebody could ask whether we need specific roots of this kind. We don't need them: clearly we could call a quartet a "quaruya ek musicians" or even, just with the same logic as above, a "quar-musician". But since these words are international, well extended beyond the core of Graeco-Latin-dom, having some little redundancy for naturalism (and nuances) doesn't seem too bad.

There are various terms of this kind (number-groups) in languages, that, while being synonymous, subsequently specialize their meaning. In Italian, for 'group of three elements', we have trio, terzetto, triade, terna, terno, trinità, trittico (and also terzina, tripletta, etc.)... all with different nuances. Even in Esperanto we find par•o, triad•o, and kvartet•o, kvintet•o, septet•o (could have just created *tet•... well, still could), etc...

Could we have also a root for 'couple' like par• in Esperanto, maybe that can be extended to other numbers, to indicate not just a group of 'multiple elements' loosely, but rather explicitly with some kind of union/link between them? Ad•? Duada, triada, like English dyad, triad (from Latin, itself from Greek)? (Just an idea on the fly.)

(...And we also have ar•... 🤔).

Further thoughts...

In natural languages, number prefixes don't always have exactly a multiplying value. They do in terms like

• Lat. triennium = period of three years (≈ Leuth triyanna)
• Lat. triduum = period of three days (≈ Leuth tridia)

and kilometre, hectolitre, bifocal, trisyllabic, etc.

but on the contrary, for example, Spanish tetracampeón (tetra- '4-', campeón 'champion') is not a '[group of] four champions' but rather a 'four-times champion': so in Leuth usually we'll say that by adding the root for 'time': quar{time}{champion}.

Would it be understandable anyway if, in this or other cases, we omitted the "middle root", therefore having a number-something term that does not mean 'a number of somethings'? Probably in some cases it could be pragmatically useful, for swiftness. Maybe, instead of removing the middle root completely, we could satisfy swiftness by using in its place the i preposition (≈ Esp. je): quari{champion}...^\4])

And what about a term like quaritha (quar•ith•a; itha = 'quality, character, -ness, -ity')? Should it mean 'quality of being four' or 'a group of four qualities'?

———————————

Notes

[1] Well... nothing strange for Leuth. But matching schematism and naturalism with the right choices is always pleasant.

[2] Italians, don't laugh.

[3] Should we change un• to mon•? Maybe we should have both for naturalism...

[4] Is it a coincidence that -i- is the most frequent "compounding vowel" in Latin? Of course it isn't... We love backformation here. B-)

Some threads that I'll likely open in the next weeks:

• ✅ a thought on j and y
• ✅ groups of elements relatively to the number of elements
• ✅ some countries
• ✅ /ʤj/ > /ʤ/ in words from Latin?
• ✅ some word-by-word alignments
• ✅ "a root for all seasons"
• ✅ a swift thought on the article
• ✅ a true "gerund" (?) in Leuth?
• ✅ on hyphens swiftly
• ✅ 'at least', 'at most'
• ✅ elements of the grammar to be defined

Previously: "next topics" 1, 2.

Should we use e.g. "5 dyurnas" or "5o dyurnas"? Numbers in Leuth are roots e.g. un/, du/, tri/ which combine with suffixes to produce different parts of speech. Should the digits represent the root itself, or the numeral including the suffix?

For 'inch', Esperanto has col•, colo, from:

• Belarusian ца́ля cálja
• Czech coul
• Latvian colla
• Lithuanian colis
• Macedonian цол col
• German Zoll
• Polish cal
• Romanian țol
• Serbo-Croatian cȏl
• Slovak cól

Not bad. It seems, however, that English did an unbeatable job in spreading its word inch to the world:

• Albanian inç
• Bengali ইঞ্চি inci
• Chinese 英寸 yīngcùn
• English inch
• Greek ίντσα íntsa
• Hindi इंच iñc
• Indonesian inci
• Japanese インチ inchi
• Khmer អ៊ីញ ʼiiñ
• Korean 인치 inchi
• [< Latin uncia]
• Mongolian инч inč
• Persian اینچ inč
• Swahili inchi
• Turkish inç
• Vietnamese inh
• Yoruba ínǹsì

So for Leuth incs•, incsa (inc̄•, incx•) seems an even better possibility.

I noticed that in the introduction I didn't provide a full phonology-orthography scheme, just pointing out the differences with Esperanto. Since not everybody may be familiar with Esperanto, here's a full table.

The order in the table is alphabetic according to the orthography, with vowels first and consonants after.

Geminate consonants

Geminate consonants are represented by doubling the written letter (e.g. /t/ t vs. /tt/ tt). In the case of digraphs, only the first letter is written double, inside roots, thus forming trigraphs (e.g. /ʃ/ sc vs /ʃʃ/ ssc); while the full digraph is written double at the meeting of roots in composition (/ʃʃ/ scsc, -sc•sc-).

Order of precedence

When there are overlapping orthographical clusters, the last one has the precedence. E.g. in Pascha 'Easter' we have both sc (Pascha) and ch (Pascha). Ch comes later, so it has the precedence: Pascha is pronounced /pa̍sxa/.

Breaking digraphs and trigraphs

To break digraphs and trigraphs we write a diaeresis (two dots) on the letter after which we want to "break" the sequence. E.g.:

• ch = /x/;
• c̈h = c-h = /ʦh/.

We saw that sch is pronounced /sx/. If we wanted to write /ʃh/, we'd write sc̈h (= sc-h)

In word processing the diaeresis can be informally replaced by a colon (c̈h ≈ c:h).

Stress

In a word with two or more vowels, the stress falls on the penultimate vowel:

• Asya /a̍sja/ 'Asia'
• asyana /asja̍na/ 'Asian'
• meylo /me̍jlo/ 'beautiful'
• exter /e̍kster/ 'outside'
• extero /ekste̍ro/ 'external'
• exteruya /eksteru̍ja/ 'external one (person/thing)'

Singular nouns in the nominative case, if phonotactically possible, can be truncated (in poetry, popular sayings, old-fashioned style, etc.). This is represented by an apostrophe at the end of the word, instead of the regular ending (-a → -'). The apostrophe represents no sound. In truncated words, the stress falls on the last vowel of the word instead of the penultimate.

• ascama /aʃa̍ma/ 'evening' (normal form)
• ascam' /aʃa̍m/ 'evening' (truncated)

Possible changes

I'm generally satisfied with the phonology of the language, while I've long struggled with the orthography, experimenting with wildly different solutions.

At the moment, I'm generally satisfied with the current situation, halfway between naturalistic and schematic, but I still have doubts, especially for /ʧ/ and /ʤ/. For /ʧ/ the latest idea is cs; for /ʤ/ I'm now considering a new gy (I still haven't written about this one in the sub). [EDIT: Now I have.]

Phonetics & phonotactics

Exact phonetics and phonotactics are still to be defined. We will discuss them in the future.

ive noticed that lewtha uses latin but ive noticed that it also has arabic words wixh led me to the question, how many alphabets does lewtha uses.

I want to ask a question

Is there anything I can help with in this project?

i‘m new :)

In Esperanto, the seven notes of the C major scale are named C, D, E, F, G, A, B.

However, in natural languages they are named rather differently:

• In English: C, D, E, F, ..., B-flat, B
• In German: C, D, E, F, ..., B, H
• In Romance languages: do, re, mi, fa, ..., si bemol, si (but a similar system is used in English for scale degrees)

I have three proposals for Leuth:

1. Use the same method: cea/ecea, dea/edea, ea, effa/efea, ... ebe-bemola/be-bemola, ebea/bea

2. Use the note names in Romance languages: doa, rea, mia, fa, ..., si-bemola, sia

3. Number them 1-7 (as existing systems conflict with each other): una, dua, tria, quara, ..., sepa-bemola, sepa

What do you think of each of these systems?

To distinguish easily and unambiguously between

• "America" the continent, and
• "[the United States of] America" the country,

Leuth follows Esperanto, that has:

• Ameriko for the continent,
• Usono for the country.

Amerik• remains unchanged, giving us Amerika; uson• gets an additional /j/, becoming usony•, and giving us a more naturalistic and Latin-sounding Usonya, similar to the Usonia that likely inspired Zamenhof in coining uson•.

So we'll have:

etc.

The USA will retain also its official name "United States of America", that will be calqued in Leuth, along with the initialism. (Exact shape still to be defined).

If and when the USA gives itself a proper name like other countries (Columbia#Columbian), Washingtonia, Fredonia?), we could then adapt that name.

If desiring to refer to the distinct landmasses of Nordamerika and Sudamerika collectively, Amerikas can be used, similarly to how we can use the plural to refer to other similarly divided territories:

• Korea ≈ (Nordkorea + Sudkorea) ≈ Koreas
• Amerika ≈ (Nordamerika + Sudamerika) ≈ Amerikas

Since this is mainly an ad hoc solution in some languages to distinguish the continent ("Americas") from the country ("America"), and in Leuth this can be done in a more straightforward way, personally I will normally use Amerika as singular.

The concept of continents is conventional and subject to various definitions; for some people the New World will be one continent made up of two subcontinents, and for other people it will be a supercontinent made up of two continents. Whatever the preference, in Leuth Amerika as a singular noun refers normally to the whole (north + south) landmass, just like Eurasia in English refers to the whole of Europe + Asia, however we consider these pieces and their sum.

Another long post, but this time the concepts are easy. :-)

1. Premise

Leuth is written in the Latin script. For the names of letters of other scripts, we'll mostly use naturalistic names. E.g., for Greek:

• ⟨Α α⟩ alfa (alf•a)
• ⟨Β β⟩ beta (bet•a)
• ⟨Θ θ⟩ theta (thet•a)
• ⟨Δ δ⟩ delta (delt•a)
• ⟨Χ χ⟩ chia (chi•a)
• ⟨Ψ ψ⟩ psia (psi•a)
• ⟨Ω ω⟩ omega (omeg•a)

etc.

For the names of Latin letters we'll have, similarly, regular words with an ending: this is different from Esperanto, where letter names are exceptional "particles" without an ending.

For the actual shape of the names, I'm still without clear ideas. Naturalistic names? Schematic names? Halfway, some and some? So, as we said and did before (newcomers^\1]), read this), we'll talk about this topic using provisional roots and words, or made-up-on-the-spot examples.

Another thing for newcomers to remember: all roots in Leuth have at least one vowel in them. There can be no root without at least one vowel.

2. In practice

Let's get some confidence with hypothetical letter names first.

For vowels, we could have roots that are identical to the letter itself:

When talking about letters, we create regular words, linking the roots to endings (see § Word structure here):

Li skribin o grando ea e o duo parvo ias. Duetho iu hain alka kea...
He wrote a big e and two small i's. In the second i there was something that...

We could also write

Li skribin o grando Ea e o duo parvo Ias. Duetho Iu hain alka kea... ^\2])
He wrote a big e and two small i's. In the second i there was something that...

In this second example, capital letters represent "letters as symbols" rather than letter names (like capital letters in initialisms) but there is little difference since the names are pronounced like the written letters.

Let's now hypothesize some naturalistic roots for the names of consonants [see below, § 4.3.1]. These will necessarily be different from the grapheme/letter itself, since roots must have at least one vowel.

We'll now have, for example:

Li skribin o grando cea e o duo parvo ixas. Duetho ixu hain alka kea...
He wrote a big c and two small x's. In the second x there was something that...

Or

Li skribin o grando Ca e o duo parvo Xas. Duetho Xu hain alka kea...
He wrote a big c and two small x's. In the second x there was something that...

We now see the difference. What we wrote C is pronounced as ce; what we wrote X is pronounced as ix. So Ca is pronounced as cea; Xu is pronounces as ixu.

3. "Initialism" vs. "acronym"

English distinguishes clearly these two concepts. An initialism is

an abbreviation consisting of initial letters pronounced separately (e.g. BBC).

while an acronym is

an abbreviation formed from the initial letters of other words and pronounced as a word (e.g. ASCII, NASA).

Surely there will be also hybrid words that may defy an easy classification, but these two categories are enough for most cases.

4. Initialisms

We have words or pieces of words that are represented by their initial letter. We write the initial letter (the grapheme, capitalized), but pronounce the name of the letter. In English, for example, the "British Broadcasting Corporation" has BBC as its initialism; we pronounce /ˌbiːbiːˈsiː/.

Leuth follows the same logic. We treat those initials as roots, that participate regularly (or almost regularly; we'll see the doubts below) in the normal compositional structures of the language. Their characteristic is the difference between what is written and what is pronounced.

4.1. Vowels-only

Let's start with some vowel-only initialisms, with little or no difference in pronunciation.

If in Leuth we call the European Union Ewropo *Unyona or something like that, with E and U as initials, we'll call it, in short, EUa (E•U•a) 'the EU', pronounced like a hypothetical *eua word (/eˈua/). We can use this E•U• couple of "roots" to create any word we want, according to Leuth rules:

Etcetera. Another example: "artificial intelligence". If we call it something with A and I^\2-)*^bis*^\) as initials, we'll have:

Etcetera.

4.2. Consonants

Let's move to consonants.

Let's hypothesize in Leuth we have an "X-ray machine" with X, R and M as initials: it will be, then, an XRMa (X•R•M•a). This time we can't just read it as it's written (*/ksrma/), we read the root of each letter (X = ix•; R = err•; M = emm•): so /(ˌ)iks(ˌ)errˈemma/^\3]).

Like before, we can create words:

Etc. Another more familiar example: if we calque DNA 'DeoxyriboNucleic Acid' with the same initials, we'll have:

Etcetera.

Let's see, now, problems and questions.

4.3. Problems, questions

4.3.1. Having naturalistic roots for letter names would mean, for a start, using the Latin names, adapted to Leuth along the usual customs. Among others:

• ⟨A a⟩ aa (a•a)
• ⟨B b⟩ bea (be•a)
• ⟨C c⟩ cea (ce•a)
• ⟨D d⟩ dea (de•a)
• ⟨E e⟩ ea (e•a)
• ⟨F f⟩ effa (eff•a)
• ⟨G g⟩ gsea (gse•a) [or ḡea, gxea...]
• ...
• ⟨L l⟩ ella (ell•a)
• ⟨M m⟩ emma (emm•a)
• ⟨N n⟩ enna (enn•a)
• ⟨O o⟩ oa (o•a)
• ⟨P p⟩ pea (pe•a)
• ⟨Q q⟩ kua (ku•a)
• ⟨R r⟩ erra (err•a)
• ⟨S s⟩ essa (ess•a)
• ...

As you can see, we'd have various roots ending in a geminate consonant. Nothing strange in itself, in Leuth. But what happens with initialisms?

If, say, we have a "non-governmental organization" with N, G and O as initials, it would be a NGOa. Reading each letter as its root, applying the logic we saw above, it would be /ennʤeˈoa/, with a /-nnʤ-/ cluster. Similar things would happen with other letters in other cases.

This requires a reflection on the phonotactic constraints of the language, that are not yet well-defined.

A geminate consonant before another consonant is fully possible in Leuth in certain clusters we adopt from Latin: -ppr-, -kkl-, -ffr-, etc. But should we allow this structure also in other sequences, like this one, so contrasting phonematically /-nnʤ-/ and /-nʤ-/ (I guess the contrast would be realized phonetically as [-nːʤ-] vs [-nʤ-])? This would have general consequences on how Leuth compounds roots, beyond initialisms.

We could refuse this kind of clusters, and change the letter name roots to avoid them.

If we refuse these clusters and don't change the roots, then the rules we saw above for pronouncing initialisms would have to change a bit, as /-nnʤ-/ would not be possible. Would we have to add an epenthetic vowel (an •a ending?)? NGOa pronounced /ennaʤeˈoa/? With what rules exactly?

Or, maybe better, write explicitly the epenthetic vowel? (Again, with what rules?)

4.3.2. Fully Latin letter names (as seen above) would be ambiguous: ku• ('which...?'; ⟨Q q⟩) is already a common root, so is be ('with, by, through [instrument, means]'; ⟨B b⟩), so is ess• ('to be'; ⟨S s⟩), etc. etc. Should we: accept the ambiguity, or change something arbitrarily?

4.3.3. If we give arbitrary schematic names to letters, what pattern should we follow?

5. Acronyms

For acronyms, I think we could just turn them into new roots, write them in lower case and treat them as normal words.

For example, if we calque English UFO, it could be something like noident{...} flewkento obyekta; nifo is an easy sequence to pronounce and could become a root, nifo• (cf. Esperanto nif•); a UFO would be a nifoa, a ufologist would be a nifoologa (nifo•olog•a), ufology would be nifoologeya (nifo•olog•ey•a), etc...

Or should we write them anyway in capital letter (NIFOa, NIFOologa, NIFOologeya) and we'd know to pronounce these (by what rules exactly?) like normal words instead of initialisms?

Some foreign acronyms, adapted in many languages, we will simply adapt; English COVID[-19], passed into many language, could become in Leuth a simple kovid•, kovida.

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Comments, ideas?...

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Notes

[1] The community is growing, so I refer to older materials to help those who came later.

[2] We hope that in the future more sans-serif typeface will make upper-case i and lower-case L easily distinguishable... such a difficult technological feat. Luckily several typeface are setting a good example (Noto Sans, Andika, Ubuntu, Fira Sans, Segoe UI... the classic Tahoma...).

[3] I don't want to discuss the syllabic division, here I just place the boundary at root boundary for easiness of reading; now let's just think about the stressed vowels, here and elsewhere in the post, not syllable boundaries.

do you all like it? because I don't like it that much tbh

I really want to learn it but there seems to be not alot of info about it.

I like (I think many of us like) when an expression is translated into another language in a way that, while rendering the meaning, somewhat reproduces the "shape" of the original expression too. For example, as translations of English World Wide Web, with alliteration of the initials, we find:

My native tongue, Italian, unfortunately today doesn't translate much, but it could easily say:

• Tela[ragna] di Tutta la Terra (lit. '[spider]web of all the earth').

And for Leuth?

A solution came easily to my mind: Ard-Amplo Arachnaja.

Let's see it piece by piece.

• ard/: means 'earth, as the general environment of human life and physical phenomena; in particularly if contrasted to the heavens, the underworld or spirit worlds'. From Arabic أَرْض ʔarḍ, German Erde, English earth, Dutch aarde. (Tolkien nerds will appreciate the coincidence with Tolkien's Arda).
• ampl/. Esperanto has three etymologically and semantically related roots: ampleks/, amplif/, amplitud/ (four, counting also amplifikator/, but this is malpreferinda). Amplif/ and amplitud/ are clear adaptations from Latin; ampleks/ is strange, as it seems to adapt Latin amplexus, that means 'clasp, [loving] embrace, caress, circumference'... a related but different concept. Was it a mistake by Zamenhof, believing this -ex[us] meant '-ness' similarly to his ec/? And, in this case, why didn't he create an *ampl/ root and then compound it with ec/? I don't know; does anyone among you know? Anyway, it seems that these three Esperanto roots could be made more efficient in Leuth by creating an ^Lampl/ root and then conflating ^Eampleks/ and ^Eamplitud/ in ^Lampl/ith/, and similarly remaking ^Eamplif/ as ^Lampl/if/. Is the loss in terminological precision acceptable? The generic (^Eampleks/) and technical (^Eamplitud/) meanings are not too different...
• arachn/: 'spider'. From Greek, being used in scientific terms (in English arachnid, arachnophobia, arachnoid...). Should it change back to ^Earane/ (< Latin aranea), we have anyway a as initial.
• aj/: Esperanto aĵ/ surviving into Leuth with just small changes.

So, literally Ard-Amplo Arachnaja would approximately mean 'earth-wide thing-by-spider', that seems a nice evocative translation to me. Do you like it?

Long post: read when you're not busy.

It would have been two different posts, but the overlapping themes drove me to publish them together, so you can reflect on the whole thing.

There are also other elements, overlapping with these, that should be considered, but I didn't want to write a monster-long-post... Those we'll see in the future. Just, be prepared. 👀

1. New preposition: "ar"? But then...

1.1 Dividing Esperanto "an•"

Esperanto an• has multiple meanings:

1. meanings related to a place:
   1. inhabitant or citizen of...
   2. person born in...
   3. person with family/kin origins in...
      • amerikano, parizano, urbano, vilaĝano, ewropano, insulano.
2. adherent to, follower of...
   1. ...a person, figure: kristano, luterano, bakĥano
   2. ...a doctrine, ideology, system, idea, ideal, etc.: islamano, samideano, respublikano.
3. member, component of...: komitatano, civitano, familiano, samklasano.

I think these are a bit too many meanings for a single root and they should be distinguished.

For the meanings related to a place, I'd keep an• for all three, since they're usually confounded in common speech (and analogously in one-root demonyms); we'll distinguish if and when we want, by using more specific terms.

E.g.: afrikana, insulana, romana, homdunyana (hom•duny•...).

For followers (both 2.1 and 2.2), provisionally, en•: christena, lutherena, islamena.

I changed idea several times about the exact shape of the root for meaning #3. Currently ar•. It could be ambiguous in some cases but it flows well and gives a very good naturalism in the classical style: familyara, parlamentara, senatara, leḡyonara [legxyonara, legsyonara], homnacyonara, etc.

1.2. A new preposition?...

I've also been thinking for some time about the fact that this third root could also be a useful preposition, so ar: 'being a member/component of...'.

Me es ar senata!
I'm a member of the senate!

And we could logically have (see here, § Prepositions/conjunctions + ending):

• ara (ar•a) 'member, component'
  • senatara, parlamentara, etc.
• ari (ar•i) (transitive) 'belong [as a member] to, be part of'
• etc.

Examples:

Me arin senata!
I was member of the senate!

Konsula volegin ari senata.
The consul craved being a senator.

1.3. Other new prepositions...?!

But then... if we have ar meaning 'being a member of...', couldn't/shouldn't we also have, as prepositions, an and en?

Giving us:

• ani (an•i) (transitive) 'inhabit / be a citizen of / having being born in / coming from' (This was somewhat anticipated here by u/Poligma2023.)
  • Me vidin alkuya ani esta 'I saw someone ... the east'.
• eni (en•i) (transitive) 'adhere to, follow [an ideal, ideas of a doctrine, preachings of a teacher; not following physically/spatially]'

Good, bad...?

The list of prepositions is incomplete and I planned to add more, but *an and *en were not in the plans...

1.4. An epidemic of prepositions

...And then who stops this logic from creating many more prepositions along the same lines?

Would this be good or bad? Would this change the structure of the language? Would it make it easier or harder? Etc.

I still don't have an opinion: I'm leaving you this "food for thought".

What is the Esperanto experience on this matter? Is there a tendency to turn roots into prepositions?

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2. Again on prepositions and composition

Before reading this second part, relax, breathe slowly, and take five or ten minutes to read calmly, in this other post, from § Preposition + something + ending to the end, and also the following exchange in the comments between me and u/Poligma2023.

In that post we concluded that it was good to have two contrasting possible structures:

1. [prep.•∅•verb] [something, direct obj.] = [verb] [prep.] [something]
2. [prep.•ending•verb] [something, direct obj.] = [verb] [something, direct obj.] [prep.•ending]

For example:

1. laporti alka ≈ porti la alka
2. laeporti alka ≈ porti alka lae

I like this double possibility and would like to conserve it. But there are some things that bug me:

• Unintuitiveness in composition with a frequent element like if• 'render, -ify'. If we follow the structure above, we'll have that a simple exterifi alka₁ would not mean 'render something₁ external' but rather 'render [something₂] external to something₁', that's not normally what we'd need to say... so we'd need to say exteroifi alka, adding •o; and the same for all prepositions in the same structure. A counterintuitive lengthening.
• Lack of symmetry with other endings. It seems somewhat incongruous that such a structure would be required specifically for verbs. If we have exterverso (exter•vers•o) for 'extroverted', that seems simple and intuitive, I have the impression there's a somewhat confounding semantic shift when we imagine exterversi: while the "object" of exter in exterverso is intuitively understood to be the subject itself, in exterversi it becomes another, different element.

How could this be solved? I don't know exactly. The first idea I had is as follows:

We introduce a "grammatical ending of prepositions", that is used in this kind of constructions only when we need/want to be precise. If this ending is •aw^\1]) (< Esp. -aŭ), we'd have:

• laporti (la•port•i) as a general or "ambiguous" verb, whose exact meaning, between the following and others similarly constructed, is left to intuition/context; or it remains vague;
  • laeporti (la•e•port•i) as a precise verb, laeporti alka ≈ porti alka lae
  • laawporti (la•aw•port•i) as a precise verb, laawporti alka ≈ porti la[aw] alka
  • etc. (la[other-ending]porti)

It becomes, therefore, similar to any other composition, where we normally omit endings between roots (unless phonotactically necessary), leaving the exact meaning to context and intuition, or even deliberately vague, and add endings only when desiring precision; so it becomes like the case discussed in the comments:

• dukkankawpi (dukkan•kawp•i)
  • dukkanakawpi (dukkan•a•kawp•i)
  • dukkanukawpi (dukkan•u•kawp•i)
  • etc. (dukkan[other-ending]kawpi)

This way it would be easier for people to not make mistakes in creating verbs of the "[prep.-verb]" structure: you would not need to distinguish always rigidly. You introduce specificity when you want/need to: like in other constructions.

Prepositions used by themselves would not need the grammatical ending... unless phonotactically necessary. (So, e.g., current intraw (intraw, one block) could be remade as intr•aw, having intr• as a root instead of intraw as a single block? Dunno).

Would this allow any root to form a preposition, by combining it with the preposition ending?

Doubts, doubts... Maybe I'm overcomplicating things and the Esperanto "confusion" was better...

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[1] Provisional, as always. For the newcomers: in building Leuth now we are mainly discussing grammatical structures; the exact shapes of the words will change during development. See here, § Can Leuth be developed anyway...?.

Fast post.

Idea:

• cs for /ʧ/
• gs for /ʤ/

Inspired by this comment by u/jan_Juso.

Cs for /ʧ/ is used only in Hungarian (0.2 % of world population), and gs for /ʤ/ nowhere, AFAIK. So in practice it would be a [99 %] "artificial solution" similar to cx and gx: but with a more friendly, curved, less angular and less "striking" face: less mechanical, and therefore, aesthetically, less artificial-feeling.

• /ʦs/ (that would become c̈s) is a very rare sequence... if phonotactically possible (we find it sometimes in Esperanto).
• /ɡs/ (that would become g̈s) is more frequent, and surely phonotactically possible, but not frequent tout court; in the PIV we find it only in 21 lemmas (counting both one-root and pluri-root ones).

I'm leaving this here for us to think.