Novial/AIL Novial

Novial

In this special part I venture to sketch the new Interlanguage which I have tried to construct on the basis of a lifelong study of various national languages and a study begun in 1903 of the best schemes of artificial languages. I have found the problem an extremely complicated one, and cannot pretend in every detail to have hit upon the best solution. My attitude has been the scientific one of not issuing ukases, but rather of stating arguments wherever I deviate from my predecessors. To these I owe, of course, a great debt, both for showing me practicable roads and negatively for striking paths which to my mind would land us in impasses. I might have contented myself with criticizing previous schemes and throwing out some scattered new proposals, but I have thought it more valuable to show how my ideas fit together as an aggregate whole: I have therefore given a sufficient number of specimens for the reader to form an idea of the looks and sounds of the first interlanguage ever framed by a professional philologist. Among novel features I may mention the perfect agreement in flexion between between substantives and pronouns, the use of the ground-form of verbs even in the perfect and passive, the elimination of c and z, and the e/a/o-words. Some of my suggestions may be accepted singly and worked into other schemes, but others are so intimately knit together that they must be taken or rejected jointly. Though I have tried to work as far as possible on scientific lines, i.e. objectively, it has not been possible totally to exclude individual tastes and preferences; my hope is that thing which at first may look unpleasant will be found less so on closer inspection; that, at any rate, has been my own experience with some of my forms. In regard to some points I have hesitated a good deal before deciding on the form here proposed, and am perfectly willing to accept criticism and new suggestions: though, as I have said in Part I, we are approaching a period of agreement on the principle of language-construction, that period has not yet arrived, and interlinguists must therefore show the widest toleration of each other's systems and provisionally admit alternative forms, which will have to be tested thoroughly in practice before the bad ones are weeded out finally. I shall be happy if it is recognized that I have contributed in some slight measure to bring about the victory of the idea in general and to give its final shape to the International Auxiliary Language of the future. In this part the following abbreviations have been used:

D = German (Deutsch).

E = English.

F = French.

I = Italian.

L = Latin.

P = Portuguese.

Po = Polish.

R = Russian.

S = Spanish.

Sc = Scandinavian.

Esp = Esperanto.

N = Novial.

Occ = Occidental.

Z = Zamenhof, i.e. Esperanto.

adj = adjective.

adv = adverb.

sb = substantive.

vb = verb.