Re: Stephan, Xavier

Gary wrote: “I would argue that there is no characteristic vowel in the ori= ginal Latin. Latin speakers themselves added the E to make pronunciation ea= sy. This E is often unstressed in the original Latin, is missing in such fo= rms as ESSE and FERRE and FAC and DIC. I agree that adding the E in man-mad= e language plans is a good idea.”

Dear Gary, I don’t know well the origina= l Latin, but classical Latin is what matters to Peano’s Interlingua: the cl= assical 3rd declension has E as its characteristic vowel. The 3rd declensio= n has most of the nouns (38%, while 2nd has 32%, and 1st has 23%), and it i= s the only “pan-gender” declension, which is an invaluable advantage. When = they say “cave canem” they don’t worry about the gender of the dog. But at = “homo homini lupus”, people may reply (and they continually do): why the ma= sculine (“lupus”) must represent both males and females?

I’m happy you agr= ee that adding the E in conlangs is a good idea. Indeed I don’t know any co= nlang having all words with the same final vowel, but I’m trying so. If kee= ping a reduced set of basic words about 1000 (and lots of compound words), = and keeping a set of grammatical particles clearly indicated, then such a c= onlang might work. Interglossa was partially trying this. It intended to be= an isolated language with no suffixes at all, but its several final vowels= (-a, -i / -o / -e) might be seen as actual suffixes.

Greetings.