French - Mondial dictionary now complete!

At long last, each entry in the French - Mondial dictionary has been entered and the spreadsheet stands at 7031 entries. Now that this task is done, I'll switch the order from French - Mondial to Mondial - French, and then it will be ready to add entries in other languages too. English will certainly be the first, but I am considering just adding English words for terms that are not obvious in order to save time. That means that words like vote and vulgari (vulgar) will be skipped while apena (barely) will see English terms added.

Of course, since this is a Google Docs document anyone else is free to work on it too. Let me know if you want permission to edit it as well.

Thoughts so far on Mondial:

-- Throughout the dictionary it has turned out to be the language I expected it to be: much like Interlingua in appearance, but without doubled consonants and with a bit more predictability. Interlingua will sometimes go back in time a bit to find a common ancestor of its source languages, giving terms like septimana for week where Mondial will use semana instead. The single -ar ending for verbs is also a nice touch. Mondial feels a lot like a cross between Interlingua and Lingua Franca Nova.

-- A strict adherence to orthography results in a difference in spelling between male and female or different types of words sometimes. For example: the word exchange is echange but to exchange is echanjar. There are a very few cases where we end up with a word that might grate on a native Romance speaker, though I'm not certain given that I am not one. One example: subgecte for subject (not subjecte).

-- The dictionary will need a few thousand more words in order to be completely useful, though 7000 words is certainly enough for now. The Mondial grammar never really gets into derivation so we are forced to make educated guesses at times from the dictionary. Mondial follows the pronunciation of words in source languages more than spelling, which resembles LFN somewhat. For example -tion words become -cion (relation = relacion), but not if they are preceded by an s (question = question).

-- Am I happy with Mondial? Most definitely. Whenever I look at a prospective auxlang I consider two questions: 1) can this be promoted to speakers of the source languages, and 2) can this be promoted to others, particularly those from completely different linguistic backgrounds (i.e. Asia)? For #1 a language mostly has to simply not be repulsive (the so-called uncanny valley), and for #2 a language has to be both attractive as well as measurably easier than English (and perhaps Spanish), and obviously so. I was not able to promote Interlingua in Korea for just that reason, while Mondial is a much easier sell.


What's next? In the near future perhaps a summary and rewrite of the grammar, along with the odd post in Mondial here from time to time. Wikipedia pages on Mondial are also in dreadful condition given the lack of information on the language until now.