Planmál
Útdráttur‘Planned languages’Keywords: planned languages, international languages, grammat- ical categories. A planned language has been defined as a language made according to a plan where the complicated and random rules of the ethnic languages are avoided or simplified. The ultimate aim af such a language is to become of universal use as an auxiliary language for people of all nations. The history of ideas and experiments in the making of planned languages is a long one. Some philosophers of the 17th and 18th century thought about it, others drew up outlines of a language based on logic and philosophical concepts. These experiments were all a priori, i.e. not based on languages already in existence. The most famous a priori-language of the 19th century is Solresol which is based on the seven notes of the sol-fa musical scale. Early in the 19th century Rasmus Christian Rask wrote down his ideas how a planned language of the a posteriori kind should be constructed, i.e. on the basis of the natural languages. He proposed that a planned language should fundamentally be based on Latin and Greek words with addition of the most common words in the new languages, all roots of words should be unchangeable and inflectional forms should be as few and simple as possible. Although his manuscript was not published until much later all planned languages since then have more or less been in accordance with his ideas. The first planned language to be used as a spoken language and to develop a formal organisation was Volapük by Johann Schleyer, and the description was published in 1878. The language is a mixed one with a posteriori and a priori elements. Its vocabulary is derived from English but words are usually shortened, often to unrecognizability, because of Schleyer’s preference for monosyllables. There are intricate schemes of declension and conjugation but these are completely regular and free of exceptions. In spite of considerable support during the first decade after its publication it rapidly declined, mostly because of the author’s refusal to accept proposals of changes in the language. Many volapükists then went over to a new planned language, Esperanto, which appeared on the scene in 1887. Esperanto was created by Dr. L.L. Zamenhof, a Pole of Jewish origin. The vocabulary is derived mostly from Latin and the Romance languages, the writing is completely phonetic and grammatical rules are few and simple and without exceptions. Compound words are very common, as are words formed from a root by the use of prefixes and suffixes. Each word-class has a special ending: nouns (singular) end in -o, adjectives in -a, verbs (infinitives) in -i, and so on. A special feature of the language is the independence of every morpheme which makes it theoretically possible to form any kind of words from any kind of morphemes, e.g. from the noun martelo ‘hammer’we form the adj. martela ‘to do with hammers (hammerlike, hammering)’, the verb marteli ‘to hammer’, and so on. Even morphemes that serve as prefixes and suffixes can be used to form nouns, adjectives, etc. Thus from mal-, which can figure as a prefix meaning ‘directly opposite, negative’ we can form the noun malo, ajd. mal/a, verb mali, and so on. Esperanto is an a posteriori language but it has many schematic features that give it a special place among planned languages described, which are more naturalistic in imitation of the ethnic languages. It was the idea of Zamenhof that free schematic formation of words from independent morphemes would make the language easier to learn for those with no knowledge of other languages. The use of affixes with clear meanings that save a lot of word-roots has the same purpose. Typologically, esperanto stands close to both agglutinative and isolating languages. Other planned languages described in the article imitate naturalistic features of the chief European languages more closely than esperanto. They are therefore “international” in a limited (or a Western- European) sense. Ido, recommended by the Délégation pour l´adoption d´une langue auxiliaire Internationale 1907, is in fact esperanto with considerable changes towards naturalistic forms and stricter rules of word-formation. Occidental designed by Edgar de Wahl (1922) goes much further than Ido in imitating naturalistic forms, according to the author a planned language should be comprehensible at first sight and without previous instruction to all civilized Europeans. Novial, invented by Otto Jespersen (1928), a former idist, is much influenced by English and Occidental. Interlingua, initiated by The International Auxiliary Language Association 1951 is naturalistic to the extreme in imitation of Latin and the Romance languages. All these languages make use of a simplified grammar without inflections and declinations. Their grammatical systems are described in detail in the article. Three of the those seven planned languages have been able to develop supporting formal organizations: Volapük, Esperanto and Ido. Only Esperanto has been able to form and to maintain a mass movement on an international scale. It has now a wide and varied literature, classics have been translated into it and scientific works of repute have appeared in the language. | ||||
