Esperanto by Hindsight: a Smug Redesign
If only Professor Zamenhof had been as enlightened
as we all are in the fabulous
21st century! He would have avoided diacritical marks because computer keyboards were not
going to like them. He would have devised computer-parsable word boundaries.
He would have declared the default gender of nouns to be neuter instead of
masculine (okay, so he caught that one at the big congress later).
The fact is, Esperanto was an amazing creation, as shown by the fact that it has
survived for about a century. There are just a few things about it that bug me. So
I'll correct them here.
Mark word boundaries
To ease learning and machine parsing, every word ends in a vowel pair,
which cannot occur elsewhere in a word. The different pairs mark a word
as noun, verb, etc. Any vowel pairs that can be pronounced as a diphthong,
may be. Vowel triplets never occur in a word; therefore, a spoken vowel
triplet is necessarily a word-ending vowel pair followed by a vowel that
begins a word. Identical vowels spanning a word boundary must be separated
by a glottal stop, which is considered to be part of the pronunciation
of the first word of the pair.
| -oi |
noun |
| -au |
proper noun (name) |
| -iu |
verb |
| -ai |
adjective / adverb |
| -ia |
quantifier |
| -ui |
modifier of modifier |
| -ua |
preposition / particle |
| -ue |
conjunction / punctuation |
| -io |
interjection |
| -ei |
lowercase or numeric glyph |
| -eu |
non-lowercase or non-numeric glyph |
No other word-ending vowel pairs are defined so far. Doubled vowels
are not permitted, so the remaining pairs (not all equally prounounceable)
are: -ae, -ao, -ea, -eo, -ie, -oa, -oe, -ou, -uo.
When pairs are pronounced as diphthongs, those beginning with i-
are pronounced as though they begin with "y"; u-, as "w".
No diacritics; logical letter assignment
Letter assignment is redefined along the lines of Loglan (with the exceptions of glyphs "c", "x", and "h"). See the alphabet chart below. Note that in Esperloja:
- The sound of Esperanto "c" is provided by the glyph cluster "ts".
- The sound of Esperanto "c-circumflex" is provided by the glyph cluster "tx".
- The sound of Esperanto "g-circumflex" is provided by the glyph cluster "dj".
Reduced phoneme set
Note that in Esperloja:
- Glyph "c" has no phonemic value.
- There is no phonemic engwa; the glyph "n" provides either the "n" or "engwa" phoneme as
ease of pronunciation dictates.
- The sound of Esperanto "h-circumflex" is not phonemic; it is merged with "h".
Thorough case marking
Every subject and object is marked with a preceding preposition. The preposition
can be omitted if the meaning is clear without it and the utterance follows
normal subject-verb-object word order. General-purpose prepositions are
provided where grammatical clarity demands it but semantic specificity
is unimportant.
Syllabic emphasis
Emphasis is optional. If used, it is on the syllable that precedes the
vowel-pair ending.
Schwa buffering
Between every two adjacent consonants, an optional unwritten schwa sound
may be pronounced. Doubled consonants that are not separated by schwa buffering
must be pronounced as a doubly-long single consonant.
Gender neutrality
The basic root is gender-neutral. Trailing infixes (just preceding the
word-class suffix) are used to mark something as masculine or feminine,
if necessary.
| -in- |
feminine |
| -un- |
masculine |
Neutral comparitor
The prefix net-, analogous to mal-, marks something as having
an average amount of the measured quantity.
Minimal grammatical forms
Adverbs have the same form as adjectives. Pronouns have
the same form as nouns. Verbs are not conjugated, but take a time modifier
if needed. Nouns are not declined, nor do they have number, but take a
role modifier (preposition) and quantifiers (adjectives, including numbers
and possessive pronouns) if needed. A commonly-used quantifier, for example,
means "more than one". A set of modifier prepositions is provided to mark
a modifier as modifying a preceding modifier.
Spoken punctuation
Loglan's model is followed in pronouncing punctuation.
A pause has no semantic meaning.
Logical modifier placement
Modifiers (adjectives and adverbs) always follow the noun or verb they
modify.
Logical modifier roles
Modifiers describe attributes intrinsic to nouns or verbs; they must be expressible as predicate
modifiers that follow the copula ("...is..."). For example, "wood box" can only mean a box that
is wood; it cannot mean a box for holding wood or a box that happens to be full of wood regardless
of its intended purpose. Extending the example, "green wood box" can only mean a box that is wood
and is green, not a box full of green wood or a green box full of wood or a wood box full of
green! There is a series of little words for expressing the more common complex attribute
relationships ("a box for holding wood", "a society founded by masons").
Vocabulary
Wherever possible, Esperanto roots remain unchanged, as do Esperanto word-building
prefixes and suffixes. As a rule, the second vowel of any vowel pair in
Esperanto is dropped. An exception to this is vowel pairs in which the
first vowel is a glide (Esperanto j is the only example); in this
case the glide is dropped.
Compound words are formed by adjoining the roots of the constituent
words, adding the grammatical suffix only at the very end of the compound.
Doubled consonants may be formed by this process.
For clarity in understanding spoken numbers, the number words are changed
more significantly. Compound numbers are constructed following the Loglan
model.
Proper nouns (names) have their own grammatical marker (-au);
a name whose root ends in a vowel has s added between the root and
the marker.
"Little" words -- conjunctions, prepositions, pronouns, and so on --
are also significantly changed, to follow a more rigourous logic.
Sample vocabulary
| nio |
no |
| esio |
yes |
| txio |
<leading question mark> |
| moi |
I, me |
| mai |
my, mine |
| toi |
thou, thee |
| loi |
it |
| lunoi |
he |
| linoi |
she |
| loloi |
they (it and it) |
| motoi |
we (I and thou -- inclusive) |
| moloi |
we (I and it -- exclusive) |
| motoloi |
we (I and thou and it) |
| mololoi |
we (I and they) |
| mototoi |
we (I and you) |
| totoi |
you (thou and thou) |
| toloi |
you (thou and it) |
| dua |
of (possessive) |
| pue |
and |
| txarue |
because |
| kue |
that (dependent clause marker) |
| fue |
<opening quote> |
| gue |
<closing quote> |
| tue |
<left grammatical grouping parenthesis> |
| sue |
<right grammatical grouping parenthesis> |
| kai |
which (interrogative) |
| dai |
that (definitive) |
| sai |
some (indefinite) |
| xai |
every |
| nai |
none |
| lokoi kai |
where |
| lokoi dai |
there |
| lokoi sai |
somewhere |
| zei |
'z' |
| tirei |
three (glyph) |
| tiria |
three (of something) |
| tirai |
third (ordinal) |
| tiroi |
trio, threesome (collective) |
| plia |
several |
| pletia |
few |
| plegia |
many |
| domoi |
house |
| paliu |
speak |
| paliu pai |
spoke |
| paliu fai |
will speak |
| paliu dai |
speak now |
| paliu papai |
had spoken |
| paliu fapai |
will have spoken |
| paliu dapai |
has spoken |
| paliu pafai |
had been about to speak |
| paliu fafai |
will be about to speak |
| paliu padai |
was speaking |
| paliu fadai |
will be speaking |
| paliu rai |
speak repeatedly |
| paliu bai |
speak continuously |
Glyph and compound number names and pronunciation
Alphabet
| afei |
father |
| bei |
bet |
| dei |
dent |
| epei |
set |
| fei |
fat |
| gei |
get |
| hei |
hit |
| isei |
feet |
| jei |
pleasure |
| kei |
kit |
| lei |
lot |
| mei |
mat |
| nei |
not |
| omei |
cone |
| pei |
pet |
| rei |
run |
| sei |
sat |
| tei |
top |
| ulei |
boot |
| vei |
vest |
| xei |
shoe |
| zei |
zip |
Foreign letters
| gaxgei |
h |
| kutei |
q |
| dulvei |
w |
| eksei |
x |
| igrekei |
y |
Numbers
| zipei |
0 |
| monei |
1 |
| dubei |
2 |
| tirei |
3 |
| forei |
4 |
| petei |
5 |
| xesei |
6 |
| jatei |
7 |
| bokei |
8 |
| venei |
9 |
| monzipei |
10 |
| monmonei |
11 |
| mondubei |
12 |
| dubzipei |
20 |
| dubmonei |
21 |
| tirzipei |
30 |
| tirbokei |
38 |
| monzipzipei |
100 |
| monkegei |
100 |
| gosei |
000 |
| gosgosei |
000000 |
| gekei |
000000000 |
Other glyphs
| pluseu |
plus sign |
| minseu |
minus sign |
| multeu |
multiplication sign |
| diveu |
division sign |
