How close is Ido to Modern Indo-European?
Sunday, April 13, 2008
I wrote something in a similar vein here, about how much closer Ido is to Latin than English: Ido turns out to be about 50% more Latin-y than English.
I just remembered that at dnghu.org they now have some basic Modern Indo-European phrases, and thought I'd check to see which language is closer to that. Modern Indo-European is a language revival project to bring back Indo-European as close to the original as possible, but with a modern vocabulary as well so that it can be used in the present, so pretty much the same as the revival of Hebrew. This means that there's not really much attention paid to being as easy as possible, but rather to being as authentic as possible, which they expect to be more successful since the only successful revived language wasn't made to be as easy as possible and yet some 7 million or so people speak it now in spite of that.
That also means that the people in charge of the project aren't interested in IALs, which is fine. Their point of view is that IALs don't appeal to the average person, are too artificial, don't have a cultural background, and just won't work. I wish them success of course and hope that they succeed.
So back to the subject, since Ido is made from six Indo-European languages, shouldn't it be at least a little bit closer to MIE than English? Let's check.
I'll put Ido in parenthesis on the right. If Ido is similar to MIE and English isn't, then it gets a 'MIE point', if vice versa then Ido drops one point, and if neither are similar then nothing happens.
| hello | alā / gheuse (saluto) -1 |
| welcome | crātos / sucṃtos tū (bonveno) |
| good (sunny) day | latom āsum (bona jorno) |
| good morning | wēsrom āsum (bona matino) |
| good afternoon / evening | wesprom āsum (bona vespero) +1 |
| good night | noqtim āsum (bona nokto) +1 |
| how are you? | qotā walēiesi? (quale vu standas?) |
| I am fine | walēiō sū (me standas bone) |
| what is your name? [how are you heard?] | qotā kluwēiesi? (quale vu nomesas?) |
| what is your name? | qid esti tebhei nōmn? (quo esas tua nomo?) +1 |
| my name is Peter [I am heard Peter] | kluwēiō Petros (me nomesas Peter) |
| my name is Peter | meghei Petros nōmn (mea nomo esas Peter) |
| pleased to meet you | gaudhēiō tewe gnōtim (me esas felica renkontrar vu) |
| please [I ask you] | chedhō (voluntez) |
| thanks | meitimoms / moitmom (danko) |
| thanks (I give you) | prijēsna / prosēdiom (tebhei agō) (danko) |
| I thank you | prijēiō tewom (me dankas vu) |
| you are welcome, sir | esti sū, potei (ne dankinda) |
| excuse me | ṇgnōdhi (pardonez me) |
| sorry/pardon me | parke |
| I am sorry | kesdō |
| don't worry | mē koisāie (ne suciez) |
| good bye, darling | sḷwēj, prijotṃā (til rivido, mea amoro) |
| yes | dā / jai / ne-(ghi) (yes) |
| indeed | nem-pe / ita tod (vere) |
| no | nē / nei (no) |
| alright | tagteī (es bona) |
| attention | probhoudhos (atencez) |
Total score: Ido +2 out of all these 28. But then again, greetings aren't really a good reference for this sort of thing. Basics like colours, objects and so on are better. And numbers. Let's check them.
| 1 | m. oinos, f. oinā, n. oinom (un) | 11 | oindekṃ |
| 2 | m. dwo, f. dwā, n. dwoi (du) | 12 | dwodekṃ |
| 3 | m. trejes, f. tresṛes / trisores, n. trī (tri) | 13 | tridekṃ |
| 4 | qetwor (quar) +1 | 14 | qetwṛdekṃ |
| 5 | penqe (kin) | 15 | penqedekṃ |
| 6 | seks / sweks (ses) | 16 | seksdekṃ |
| 7 | septṃ (sep) +1 | 17 | septṃdekṃ |
| 8 | oktō (ok) +1 | 18 | oktōdekṃ |
| 9 | newṇ (non) | 19 | newṇdekṃ |
| 10 | dekṃ (dek) +1 | 20 | wīkṃtī |
The ones on the right I won't do since they're pretty much the same as on the left. Looks like with numbers Ido is a bit more MIE-ish. It scores +4 out of the first ten.
Finally, let's look at a few simple family members.
| father | patēr (patro) +1 |
| mother | mātēr (matro) |
| parent | gentōr (genitoro) +1 |
| sibling | sṃopatōr (frato) |
| brother | bhrātēr (fratulo) -1 |
| sister | swesōr (fratino) -1 |
| son | sūnus (filiulo) -1 |
| daughter | dhugtēr (filiino) -1 |
| child | putlos / pūpos (puero) |
Uh-oh, family really threw Ido off. It has -2 for these nine words. Time for a hasty conclusion.
Conclusion: Ido seems to be only about 2-5% more MIE than English. Certainly not enough to appeal to MIE revivalists.
I'm sure they wouldn't mind if we wrote some MIE texts in Ido though.
3 comments:
The following excerpt called my attention:
Modern Indo-European is a language revival project to bring back Indo-European as close to the original as possible, but with a modern vocabulary as well so that it can be used in the present, so pretty much the same as the revival of Hebrew. This means that there's not really much attention paid to being as easy as possible, but rather to being as authentic as possible, which they expect to be more successful since the only successful revived language wasn't made to be as easy as possible and yet some 7 million or so people speak it now in spite of that.
I think the design of Interlingua made by Gode et al. also values "authenticity" over "ease of learning".
There are of course elements that were inserted to contribute to ease of learning (if compared to Romance natlangs): regularization of verb conjugations across different grammatical persons, uniformity of roots inside derivational series, etc. (*)
But the method of extraction of derivational series in Interlingua also follows the principle that the words that legitimately belong to Interlingua are the ones that are authentically "international" (i.e. translingual) across its source languages.
This idea of "authenticity" is why Gode does not accept criticisms on Interlingua about its relatively lower learnability (=ease of learning) and regularity if compared to some previous conauxlangs such as Esperanto, Ido and Occidental.
(*) Some people criticize that such elements, among others, make Interlingua not to be "Romance enough" (aka not "natural"). See debates about "es X son", "litera X letera", "celo X cielo", etc.
Yes, and the other interesting thing about Interlingua is that there is a tendency for people with romance languages as a first language to want to shift it towards the language they use (word order for example), which wouldn't occur in MIE since there are none of those people alive anymore. I'm not sure if Gode anticipated that, though he probably did.
The following excerpt called my attention:
Modern Indo-European is a language revival project to bring back Indo-European as close to the original as possible, but with a modern vocabulary as well so that it can be used in the present, so pretty much the same as the revival of Hebrew. This means that there's not really much attention paid to being as easy as possible, but rather to being as authentic as possible, which they expect to be more successful since the only successful revived language wasn't made to be as easy as possible and yet some 7 million or so people speak it now in spite of that.
I think the design of Interlingua made by Gode et al. also values "authenticity" over "ease of learning".
There are of course elements that were inserted to contribute to ease of learning (if compared to Romance natlangs): regularization of verb conjugations across different grammatical persons, uniformity of roots inside derivational series, etc. (*)
But the method of extraction of derivational series in Interlingua also follows the principle that the words that legitimately belong to Interlingua are the ones that are authentically "international" (i.e. translingual) across its source languages.
This idea of "authenticity" is why Gode does not accept criticisms on Interlingua about its relatively lower learnability (=ease of learning) and regularity if compared to some previous conauxlangs such as Esperanto, Ido and Occidental.
(*) Some people criticize that such elements, among others, make Interlingua not to be "Romance enough" (aka not "natural"). See debates about "es X son", "litera X letera", "celo X cielo", etc.
Post a Comment