Re: [glosalist] World Premiere

on 10/3/04 2:05 AM, Robin Gaskell at drought-breaker@… wrote:

*** Sounds very intuitive, and possibly biassed towards signing. But very promising.

While the ideology behind Glosa is more related to “problem-solving” than to the beauty of sound, I’d say from a marketing viewpoint, Niuspi has more publicc appeal than Glosa. And basing our logic on the fact that the world needs a global medium of communication, adoption of any of the top ten Planned Languages would be an exceedingly good thing. If singing achieves this end, then hats off to the language and to the person who conceived it.

Robin,

Thanks very much for such a positive response to Niuspi and to this project.

The real-world problem is the mechanics of creating a lexicon that allows civilised discussion of all of the world’s pressing matters. To decide what must be the minimum number of such lexicon items - preferably with songs being able to be be sung about them, we are limited to a finite range of concepts. The CCVV range of letters can be a physical barrier to vocabulary formation, especially after all of the suitable singable, four-letter combinations have been used. This suggests that Niuspi would need a clear rule for the coining of the technical terminology covering matters beyond those discussed by the man in the street, or, for that matter, which are the the subject of songs.

Those are very valid points which I have given some thought to, and which I would like to explore further with you when I get back.

*** While you are attracted to monosyllabic words, I enjoy the etymological approach whereby the derivation of a concept’s word is found within the parts of that word.

Yes, admittedly in the interests of form and aesthetics Niuspi moves away from this ideal - one of Glosa’s strongest points - so the derivation is sometimes difficult to trace. But as it moves away by the same token it also comes closer to language families further afield. For example I seemed to arrive at ‘mle’ for milk (probably thinking Fr ‘lait’ from ‘lactum’ and northern ‘milk/milch’ and unknowingly ended up closest to Slavonic ‘mleko’. And there are more much stranger instances!

However, I especially liked the ~pa pa~ = [had]. And so, to bed.

Mi spei ke tu pa bo doi.

Will the CD of “U Trau” be available after the performance?

It will certainly be recorded for CD. I’m not sure in what form it will be released but will let you know. Whatever, I will be putting an mp3 and RealMedia file of the performance on my website.

Many thanks for your interest.

I tu sao,

Chris