Talk:Novial

someone forgot to add a sample text..

Novial '98 webpage has apparently not been updated since 1998 and contains at least two dead links.J S Ayer 00:45, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Suffixes to change word uses

A section explaining the way to change the use of a word using suffixes (eg. mali "bad" into maleso "evil") needs to be added. The 'adverbs' section seems like a start in this but it must be expanded on. Ciraric 15:16, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

ISO 639-3

wrong info : http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Novial_language&diff=prev&oldid=28166338

nov is NOT ISO 639-3

Tobias Conradi (Talk) 09:19, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Is the information at SIL incorrect, then?

http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id=nov

reinserted iso3=nov. template now uses http://www.sil.org/iso639-3/documentation.asp?id= and not the ethnologue URL which said nov is not a language code used in the Ethnologue, 15th edition. Other constructed languages where mentioned with their code, so I thought nov is not valid 639-3. Tobias Conradi 13:27, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Sources of Novial

To what extent can it be claimed that Esperanto is a source of Novial (as stated in the info box)? I am aware of only one word (absent from any ethnic language) definitely borrowed from Esperanto: the indefinite preposition "ye".

All else is based on ethnic languages, although somewhat influenced by the author's work on Ido. Novial differs radically from both Ido and Esperanto in grammar. Nov_ialiste (Talk)

It seems more similar to Occidental than any of the others.Cameron Nedland 15:14, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Especially the verbal system. Nov ialiste 14:47, 9 October 2006 (UTC)

Lu

I am deleting this part: "However, animate objects like dogs should probably be referred to using 'LE' or a gender-specific pronoun".

Reasons: 1) "should probably" is vague and does not help the reader.

2) The statement would need to be backed up by an authoritative reference (I am aware of none). Nov ialiste 17:01, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Non-copyright picture of Otto Jespersen

Does anybody know of a non-copyright picture of Otto Jespersen? It would be nice to include and could go on the Otto Jespersen page also. Nov ialiste 18:51, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Not displacing native languages

"Novial ... is ... intended to facilitate international communication and friendship, without displacing anyone's native language."

but

"Its vocabulary is based largely on the Germanic and Romance languages and its grammar is influenced by English."

This is confusing. What does "without displacing anyone's naitve language" mean -- what is the significance of that part of the sentence? What danger does an IAL pose to native languages that Novial's design removes, especially for native languages that are not Germanic or Romance, such as Slavic, Baltic and Celtic languages, Mandarin, Hindi, Arabic, Farsi, and the numerous African, Amerindian and Indian languages, that are spoken natively? -Pgan002 08:41, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

It's due to the fact that just about all IALs are based on the theory that people should be able to use their native language when they want, and use an IAL when conversing with someone from another linguistic background. That's in order to remove the situation where one person from a linguistic background might want his or her children to learn a more widespread language in place of theirs for their economic benefit, and in doing so cause their own language to lose more and more native speakers. With an easy IAL, in theory, a person with a mother tongue of only 1000 people should be on the same footing as a person from an English background, because when using an IAL they both use it as a second language. Mithridates 14:57, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

So if (as you say) all IALs are intended this way, then Novial is not special in this regard, and it does not need to be mentioned in the Novial article. Or, if it is special, what features of Novial make it better suited to "facilitate communication ... without displacing anyone's native language"? How does it cater to people who speak (say) only Mandarin, better than other IALs do? -Pgan002 19:10, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

It might need to be changed to state that this is the purpose of an IAL, not specifically Novial. I remember when I nominated the Ido article to be a FA there were a few comments on how the article was good but didn't state what its purpose was, assuming somewhat that the reader already knows. IOW, instead of cutting that part out, more detail is what's needed. Mithridates 00:24, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Religious Sample Text

Shouldn't we make this more secular? Religious sensitivity?

DarkestMoonlight (talk) 14:48, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I totally agree, why do they always use the lord's prayer? what' up with that? 74.56.51.203 (talk) 04:45, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

Reason: 1. Ethnologue 2. SIL International. ... said: Rursus (bork²) 20:33, 6 March 2009 (UTC)

LOL, I just want to ask about this too, why always using religious text for comparison, why not using other much more universally secular and modern sample text such as news/biz headlines, ICT/gadget news, social/political news, etc - by which real strongly related to our current era and practical use rather than the archaic relic-ious sectarian-oriented text currently used. Are most techies using binary lingo already, and just forgetting/ditching all of this universal lingo issue since it's too sectarianly-designed? Well, I getting up too late again... I actually think Novial can be my primary language replacing English for modern-era usages, specifically for technical use, since most technically-minded person like me never like the idea of diacritics/glyphs that make fast-typing text even harder and slower, not mentioning to vocalize and to understand it properly between diacritics tha may be overlooked by those poorsighted/poorhearing persons. Just need the plain text w/o any fancy appendages around the letters and biases in speaking the letters (e.g: "c" is differently spoken when paired/suffixed with "i"/"e" [sounds like "s"] vs "a"/"o"/"u"/consonants [sounds like "k"/"q"]) - shorter word to use to express an idea is better (e.g: "impos" is better than "impossible", or "rande" is better than "rendezvous", which English word is rooted from the impractical excessively-made-longer-intentionally Frenchie words). Any IAL fits this requirement can be my primary language replacing 'biased-impractical-gendered' English ([impractical?] why can't I use "it" as short genderless word replacememt for "he/she" for mentioning both genders? [gendered?] why a ship has to be "she/her" instead of a genderless object? [comparable to Spanish "la" and German "der" for English "the" with female gender, it's really weird for making dead things gendered as if they can reproduce offsprings by themselves without mating with the same opposite sex class - "Is there really any male ship exist/available for mating with the female ship in their mating season?"]).

Would IAL be devised for internationally understandable intelligible language not just for current time but for future uses? not just for archaic-artistical grandies but also for the futuristic-technotronix neos trying to search some unused space in their brain for computational matrices space that currently allocated and hogged by mumbo-jumbo inefficient world lingos that they don't need? (this critique is a sharpie one, I know. But I need for that universal lingo that matched perfectly my needs of very efficient/effective technically-friendly language as my primary one, or I might resort to binary language that actually truly universal for digital binary-based machines world and need no xlator between them to understand each other messages, unless the humans design them to do the otherwise with human-made new numerous 'human' protocols that limit their ability to understand universally binary codes they knew already).

The text sample used (religious, which is a prehistoric relic) just show that those IALs are made not for general/universal use, but for relic-ious (read: religious) use only (comparable to paleontologists lingo when trying to speak with archeologists and anthropologists/culturologists lingos - they actually can speak with technical lingo by the common standard of their technical studies backgrounds but the lingo sample used by anthropologist is too ethnicalistic/culturalistic (instead of too technicalistic) for the paleontologist to understand what it means). In short: "Use technical/modern-era compatible text content sample too, please..." - we are not all made into artistical/religious persons only, mind you. ---[Ois1974 @ 2014-03-29 Sat]-- — Preceding unsigned comment added by 27.111.51.92 (talk) 07:19, 29 March 2014 (UTC)

Whether one is religious or not, a sample text like the Lord's Prayer will probably be familiar to many. This facilitates comparisons, since contextual or other clues will be available to almost all readers; i.e., everyone understands that this is language found in the Bible, directed towards a deity, etc. While it will not necessarily represent every context in which language may be (and is) found, it does represent a context that most people will be at least somewhat familiar with, irrespective of their religious background. 108.246.206.139 (talk) 05:54, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

How are adjectives compared?

At present, the article reads thus:

All adjectives end in -i, but this may be dropped if it is easy enough to pronounce and no confusion will be caused. Adjectives precede the noun qualified. Adjectives do not agree with the noun but may be given noun endings if there is no noun present to receive them.

In English, adjectives are inflected to show comparison (usually preceded by more or suffixed with -er) or a superlative relationship (usually preceded by most or suffixed with -est). How are these shown in Novial? 108.246.206.139 (talk) 05:59, 8 June 2015 (UTC)

According to Jespersen's An International Language, ". . . degrees of comparison are indicated by means of special words, not by means of endings" (87). These 'special words' are plu, tam, and min. Likewise, the superlative is indicated with a similar set of particles, maxim and minim. Some examples:

Plu boni - Better

Min boni - Less good

Maxim boni - Best

I will go ahead and make the edit to the page.

--Nathanthomsen (talk) 08:17, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Latin which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 00:44, 8 July 2015 (UTC)

Interlingua de IALA

At the time of "Novial", there were TWO "Interlinguas" (and still are).

Vanderbilt's/Gode's Interlingua de IALA - IA is about dead. It has no sizable corpus and is a "constructed language" (conlang) - albeit naturalistic.

Interlingua de Academia pro Interlingua (ApI), abbreviated IL, is a controlled version of Latin: "Latino sine flexione, Lingua Auxiliare Internationale". Corpus: ab out 3,000 pages of scientific papers, including >400pp of Giuseppe Peano's "Formulario Mathematico", 5þ edition.

As a /controlled language/, ALL you need to write in it is a Latin dictionary (giving the Ablative case out of the Genitive), and Peano's 1915 rules (which were reformed democratically in the Discussiones de la ApI, so "IL de Peano" is a misnomer in fact).

Petersen never was in favour of IL de ApI, but dabbled in ConLanging in the IALA. Therefore, it is important to distinguish WHICH "Interlingua" is meant.

ClueBot NG has been notified: http://tools.wmflabs.org/cluebotng/?page=View&id=3097529

--217.224.141.21 (talk) 19:43, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Accusative ambiguity due to -u, -um, -m, -em

In the grammar section we learn that concrete nouns can be formed using the suffix -u and abstract nouns using -um. We learn later, in the pronouns section, that "an optional accusative ending, -m (-em after a consonant), is available". This implies that the accusative ending for a concrete noun is -um -- which is identical to the (nominative) abstract noun ending!! It can be presumed that in actuality, the accusative ending for concrete nouns is -uem and similarly, for abstract nouns, it is -umem. Is it worth raising this issue in the article, or are we happy for Novial users to fall into the trap of using -um ambiguously? Custardslice7 (talk) 20:13, 12 December 2020 (UTC)