New auxlang: Atlas

[Rodiniye]

What do you consider your language level to be for writing Atlas? (on the scale A1 --> C2)

Difficult to say. Any language with a bit of knowledge can be translated quite well. A1-C2 is more used to evaluate your language skills in terms of speaking/understanding. On that I would say I would be close to B2. It is amazing how quickly you can learn. I know more Atlas than I knew Rodinian. For translations I just think I am fairly good, but obviously there might be some mistakes (but as any other translation).

How do you do the translation? With or without a bilingual dictionary?

Grammar and dictionary open. That's it.

If someone else with the same Atlas proficiency did the same translation, how similar would it be?

Similar, but again, every translation is different. I am a translator myself as I said and went we were in uni we translated that text from English into Spanish too. Every one of us had different possibilities for each sentence pretty much.

If you had a similar text written by someone else, on a different topic, how would you go about reading it?

I would try reading it without any help, but that is because I know most of the roots and the grammar. If your level is not that high yet, knowing a few roots and word endings (in order to organize the information) would give you a good idea I think too. Anyway, I would try reading it first without help, then use the dictionary in order to translate what the text.

When I created Rodinian, I had a summary of grammar in 2 A4 papers. For Rodinian I do not have anything at the moment as I know most of the basic stuff, but producing something similar in 1 A4 paper would be handy. Just with some word endings, maybe modal verb particles, conjunctions, "de" particle functions, ... and not much more.

I think the prepositions are more complex than they need to be.

I will think about it tomorrow and try to produce something taking into account your suggestions. At the end of the day, you are not the first one saying this.

I cannot understand the Grammar explanation of Change of Position prepositions.

Basically, in Atlas you expect to see Subject+V+Verbcomplements(DO, for instance)

If you see the subject after the verb for any reason, then "ga" is used:

Et al-baitu axtet ga wi - A house I bought - The subject is "wi", but as it is placed after the verb (not usual location), it is marked with "ga". Same for the DO: it is usually seen after the verb, but in this case it is before, so "et" is added in order to mark this.

Maybe "ga" could be used for both situations? Or none? Or only for the subject? I think it is good to have a marker in order to avoid confussion, but maybe "ga" and "et" could be merged into one, or only "ga" used to mark that the subject is not in its usual place.

What do you think?

So I think the approach of Atlas to use all these matching noun morphemes is destroying much of the purported simplicity of this constructed language.

You might be right on this. I will change that too tomorrow.

So changes tomorrow:
- simplified form of correlatives and demonstratives.
- simplified prepositions.

And looking forward to see your work and the translator!!

As always, big thanks for your suggestions.

Any other suggestions are obviously welcome from everyone.

[crush]

In the grammar PDF:
p4: "Voluntartily, a dual number might be expressed by de addition of the suffix –k:"
- Do you mean "the" addition? Also, do you mean that it's optional? You can optionally add the -k suffix?
p4: "Vegetables take ending –o: direbo (tree)"
-Does "vegetables" encompass all plants? I wouldn't call a tree a vegetable, for example. If that's the case, i'd say "plants" would be a better wordchoice here.
p5: "Teu eses zadi bi (de ceu) – this is more expensive (than that)."
"Osama eses viti dago (de Vladimir) – Osama is as fast (as Vladimir)."
"Sheila esis akili men – Sheila is less intelligent (not specified in respect to who)."
"Lugha esis alzi gehi de di – Lugha is more or less/similarly as tall as you."
- "e' marks a completed aspect, "i" is habitual, but i can't see the difference between these two sets of sentences. What would some situations where you'd use esas/eses/esis be?
p11: "Wi zaias li al-albaitu"
- Why are there two "al"s? I thought house was "baitu"?
p16: "la ze wekommes, wi weavveses– if he came, I would go away."
- Does this really refer to the present tense? I would've situated this in the future. And what about something like "He told me he would come" where you have a future-past form. Ah, just saw this sample sentence: "Hineka dizet e wi, ke al-bazzu bevermez – somebody said to me, that the factory will be closed."
p19: "She how in many cases, there is a difference in meaning:"
- I think that should be "See".

Also, it seems some words/roots have doubled consonants (pass, avves, komm, etc.). Is there any particular reason for that (other than to make the words look closer to the language they were taken from)? Does it affect the pronunciation at all?

[tommus]

So changes tomorrow

OK, it will be very interesting to see those changes. I will hold off on any more work on the translator because your changes will make quite a bit of what I've done recently obsolete. But I welcome that, if it is in the interest of increasing simplicity.

I'll just make one further observation at the moment, which I think will illustrate an important point:

The last sentence in Section 3. Nouns in the Grammar says:

"Lastly, roots ending in –u (as dibu), when adding another –u, transform that last –u in –c, so from
root dibu, we get dibuc (drawing)."

There are 4 last letters that can be added to the root of a noun (a, o, u, e). With all the possible roots in many of the major languages of the world that are available, I think it is very desirable to have no roots ending in "u", (or a, o, e for that matter). Therefore, you avoid the exception and the artificial patch of having -uu become -uc. That causes a lot of problems in parsing (both human and computer).

The main point is that there should be no "one-way algorithms" or so called "trap-door algorithms". Such algorithms are used in cryptography where it is easy to encrypt (example: product of two huge prime numbers), but virtually impossible to decrypt (to factor that huge product to find the original two prime numbers). So in this case, it is easy to turn "every "-uu" into "-uc" but potentially very difficult to figure out if every ""uc" comes from a "uu" situation and to then determine that the root is just "-u". In general, in Atlas (or any constructed language) that uses roots, morphemes, suffixes, prefixes, infixes, and other "encryption" to easily build words, expressions and sentences, it has to be equally easy to "decrypt" or "deconstruct" the built words, expressions and sentences to see and figure out the roots, morphemes, suffixes, prefixes, infixes, etc. It needs to be equally easy in both directions. One way (which Atlas is already doing for long, multiple-parts constructed words and numbers, is to use hyphens ("-") between the parts. That may not be so visually appealing, but it sure improves the visibility, the understanding, the "parsibility", and the ability to learn and use.

So again, it needs to be equally easy in both directions.

[Rodiniye]

In the grammar PDF:
p4: "Voluntartily, a dual number might be expressed by de addition of the suffix –k:"
- Do you mean "the" addition? Also, do you mean that it's optional? You can optionally add the -k suffix?
p4: "Vegetables take ending –o: direbo (tree)"
-Does "vegetables" encompass all plants? I wouldn't call a tree a vegetable, for example. If that's the case, i'd say "plants" would be a better wordchoice here.
p5: "Teu eses zadi bi (de ceu) – this is more expensive (than that)."
"Osama eses viti dago (de Vladimir) – Osama is as fast (as Vladimir)."
"Sheila esis akili men – Sheila is less intelligent (not specified in respect to who)."
"Lugha esis alzi gehi de di – Lugha is more or less/similarly as tall as you."
- "e' marks a completed aspect, "i" is habitual, but i can't see the difference between these two sets of sentences. What would some situations where you'd use esas/eses/esis be?
p11: "Wi zaias li al-albaitu"
- Why are there two "al"s? I thought house was "baitu"?
p16: "la ze wekommes, wi weavveses– if he came, I would go away."
- Does this really refer to the present tense? I would've situated this in the future. And what about something like "He told me he would come" where you have a future-past form. Ah, just saw this sample sentence: "Hineka dizet e wi, ke al-bazzu bevermez – somebody said to me, that the factory will be closed."
p19: "She how in many cases, there is a difference in meaning:"
- I think that should be "See".

Also, it seems some words/roots have doubled consonants (pass, avves, komm, etc.). Is there any particular reason for that (other than to make the words look closer to the language they were taken from)? Does it affect the pronunciation at all?

1) yes, "the" addition, will be corrected.
2) I like "plants" too!
3) "esis" means "habitual", so that person is normally like that. "eses" is in a completed event, so possibly Osama has been as fast as Vladimir in a recent event. "esas" would be used in an ungoing event: Osama esas viti bi de Vladimir - Osama is being faster than Vladimir.
4) Correct, mistake about al-baitu, sorry!
5) about the sentence in p16, it could be placed both in the present of in the future, depending on context. Atlas always uses real tense, so depending when the action is really happen. Does this help?
6) p19, you are right, what was I thinking about?

Sorry about a rushed reply, just been called out to work (I was off initially!)

[Rodiniye]

Ok, changes:

Grammar book has been updated but I still need to update it and that will be done tomorrow. As I said in previous post, have just been called out!

Anyway, these are the new prepositions (see below).

Any comments?

How would you say, for instance, across? or along? these two are the only ones of importance that I have missing. Any other prepositions or ideas?

As you can see, the number of prepositions has been hugely reduced (from 52 to 25), and Atlas now accepts prepositions with more than one meaning, and has a (optional) way in order to correct ambiguity too (which I think, could be useful for translation purposes, am I wrong?).

------------------------------------------------

In Atlas, every verb complement (except for the subject and the direct object) takes a preposition. The subject is always placed in front of the verb, and the DO is placed behind. Therefore there is no need for a preposition in order to mark their function within the sentence. Main prepositions are:
• i [location, place]:
Wi zaias i al-xekbaxu – I am at school
Dien zaias i Sidni? – are you in Sidney?

• u [time]:
Wi beanxiet u 1967 – I was born in 1967.
Al-zeleben eset u ekmese – The celebration were in January.
Wi visez di u sandine – I will see you on Wednesday.
Ze kommet u letzi wike – He-she came last week.

• o [quantity]
Ze axtet o 8kg – She-he bought 8kg.

• e [situation, event, activity]
Ze zaiat i Milano e drolzaite – She-he was in Milan in a party
Ze zaias e al-gerbaxu – She-he was in hospital

Pay attention to the first sentence. In other languages, we would have two complements of location. However, they are not. The first one is expressing the location, but the second one is expressing an event or situation, happening at that location (a party).
In the second sentence, “e” is used instead of “i”. The use of “i” (location) would not have further connotations other than expressing that someone is there, but without saying doing what. Using “e” (activity) means that the subject is doing something in there. In this case, “Ze” (subject) is under treatment, whereas with “i” he/she could be visiting. Same, for instance, would happen if the subject was in school. The use of “e” would emphasize that the subject is a student in there, whereas “i” would probably mean he/she is passing by or visiting only.

• w [manner, way, role, profession]
Qing, di zedues ez w wi dizet – Please, do it as I said.
Al-baitu esas w nirmane – the house is under construction.
Ze kaqis w oxa – she-he works as a teacher [rol, profession]

The majority of the rest of prepositions can have multiple meanings depending on their context.
In order to avoid ambiguity, when/if needed (only), one of the five prepositions above can be added in front of it separated by a (-) sign, in order to specify the meaning:

zeen kommet hou ze – They came after him-her [after in time? were they behind?]
zeen kommet i-hou ze – They came after him-her [location, behind]
zeen kommet u-hou ze – They came after him-her [time]

• vo [in front, before]
Ze lasset al-veturu vo al-direbo – He left the car in front of the tree.
qing, di zekommez vo 7 dian – please, come before 7 o’clock.

• hou [behind, after]
nai, wi haiek kommez hou 8 dian dax – No, I can only come after 8.
robba zaiet hou al-baitu – a thief was behind the house.

• sei [on, on top, above, reference]
al-vliegu vliegat sei al-zitu – the aircraft was flying above the city
Sei al-tatize… - in reference to the problem…

• qu [below]
wien passat qu al-abpassu – we were passing under the bridge

When all the previous 4 prepositions have implicit in their meaning that the object is touching a surface, then an “-n” is added to the preposition:

Al-vliegu vliegat sei al-zitu – The aircraft was flying above the city.
Al-vliegu vitat sein al-vliegdruku – The aircraft was speeding up on the runway.

• v [opposition, confrontation]:
Wi quget v qugzue de di – I played against your team

• zu [direction, benefactor, indirect object]
Wi datzes al-kitabu zu Peter – I give the book to Peter.
Wien vesas zu Moskoba – We are going to Moscow.

• ot [origin]
Mchumba kommas ot al-vindu – Mchumba is coming from the shop.
Al-kitabu ot Markus – The book given by Markus.

• der [close, near, around]
al-vragzuen esez der 4 – the interviews will be around 4.
Ze axtet bai 8kg – She-he bought more or less 8kg.

• vai [far, far away]
Al-vligbaxu zaiis vai al-zitu – The airport is far from the city.

• s [around]
Tao widas s al-binu – Tao is driving around the building

• tra [between, amongst, cooperation]
al-serpa zaiet tra di ta wi – The snake was between you and me.

• li [inside, inclusion, during, while]
Wi zaias li al-baitu – I am inside the house
Wi kaqat li di dormat – I was working while you were sleeping.
Wien vesez i ce, li di – We will go there, including you.

• wei [outside, exclusion]
Aisha varat wei al-vindu – Aisha was waiting outside the shop.
Dien vesez i ce wei zeer – You will go there except for him.

• em [company, addition]:
Di kommez em wi? – Will you come with me?

• z [without]:
Wi nai vules de vese z di – I don’t want to go without you

• ki [cause, because]
Wi duet ez ki di – I did it because of you.

• cin [consequence, in order to]
Ze duet ez cin tike skuse – He-she did it in order to apologize

• ei [result]
Ze bedaket ei more – she-he was hit until death/he-she died [showing result]

• an [on, activate]
Dukar al-luzun esas an – All lights are on.

• za [off, deactivate]
al-anwidu eset za – The engine was off.

Prepositions with single letters are pronounced as the letter itself. For instance, “s” is pronounced /se/.

[tommus]

Ok, changes:

I look forward to having a good look at these changes. Very interesting. Unfortunately, I won't have any time for the next four days.

[Rodiniye]

Ok, changes:

I look forward to having a good look at these changes. Very interesting. Unfortunately, I won't have any time for the next four days.

No worries!

I have also changed the "c" ending and basically eliminated it. I am going to accept now double vowels as "uu" at the end of a word, so the root "dibu" will become "dibuu" when concrete (which would be /'di.bu.u/, same rules apply). Somebody else suggested this approach to the "problem" which I think is easy enough.

So I will try to update the whole grammar by tomorrow!

Hopefully no more changes needed, you will see changes on demonstratives and correlatives too.

[crush]

Are there any instances where z and wei would be different? To me it seems like they could probably be combined, eg. Wi nai vules de vese wei di - I don't want to go excluding/without you.

And 'w oxa' would be pronounced 'we oxa'?

[Rodiniye]

Are there any instances where z and wei would be different? To me it seems like they could probably be combined, eg. Wi nai vules de vese wei di - I don't want to go excluding/without you.

And 'w oxa' would be pronounced 'we oxa'?

Yes, for instance...

Wi nai vules de zaie wei di - I do not want to be far from you
Wi nai vules de zaie z di - I do not want to be without you.

So I think this distinction is necessary if you agree.

"w oxa" would be "we oxa", yes

Any ideas? Would you combine "across" or "along" with one of the ones already established? Or should I include separate prepositions for them? Same for "through".

[crush]

Wi nai vules de zaie wei di - I do not want to be far from you
Wi nai vules de zaie z di - I do not want to be without you.

I would've thought "vai" was more appropriate to mean "far from"?

Any ideas? Would you combine "across" or "along" with one of the ones already established? Or should I include separate prepositions for them? Same for "through".

For through, you could maybe use "tra" or "li": wi tra-veset al-direbzue - we among-went the forest

And the preposition "zu" and the word root "zu" (group) are the same. i/u and li also seem similar, though i guess you could use i-li and u-li to clarify which meaning you want. And is there a difference between say "Walk inside the house" and "Walk into the house"?