The real reason that Glosa failed was because they abandoned the original principles of Interglossa. The primary debate towards the end of Glosa’s original run was “how to do word formation”. For Interglossa, the very question is preposterous! We want Justice for Hogben.
A literary zonal auxlang for Indians and the Indian diaspora, to engage in intellectual writing / discourse / podcasts using native vocabulary without having to deal with the extreme inflectional learning curve that applied to India’s traditional literary / technical lingua franca (Sanskrit).
Use Sanskrit vocabulary but with a regularized and simplified grammar structure based on modern day Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages. In this way, we build a lingua franca that resembles modern day Sanskritized literary registers of most Indian languages while remaining neutral and easy to acquire for anyone familiar with Sanskritized vocabulary.
The Christian Lord’s Prayer as an example:
Svarga madhye asma sya pitā
Tva sya nāma sadā pavitra astu
Tva sya rājya āgamana kartu
Yathā svarga madhye tathā pṛthvī upari tva sya icchā pūrṇa bhutu
Adya asma artha dina sya bhojana dāna kartu
Yathā vayam asma sya śatru jana kṣamā karti tathā asma sya duṣṭa kārya kṣamā kartu
Vayām andhakāra madhye gamana kāraṇa na kartu, evam duṣṭa taḥ vayām rakṣā kartu
Tathāstu
IAST is used in this document. However, Navabhāṣā need not have a preferred writing script and should be written in any script that can fully represent Sanskrit phonemes, such as Devanāgarī, IAST, Tamil+Grantha. etc. Webpages and apps are encouraged to use an auto-transliteration feature such as Aksharamukha to allow users to view it in their preferred script, while printed materials should be made available in regionally legible scripts.
Spelling should be based on the Sanskrit etymology, but pronunciation need not follow Sanskrit prescription. Allowable regional pronunciation practices include omitting word-final schwa in some or all contexts or pronouncing it as a short open vowel, merging ṣ into ś, and pronouncing r̩ as ri or ru.
Modern Indian languages have converged on a surprisingly consistent word order, and we use the same.
The basic word order SOV.
More precisely including adverbs and and postpositional phrases the order is: Subject + Time + Place + Manner + Indirect Object + Direct Object + Verb
Noun phrase order is Possessive/Demonstrative + Number/Quantifier + Adjective + Noun + Plural
Genitive: sya
Dative: artha
Sociative: saha
Thematic (About/Via/Without): viṣaye / mārga / vinā
Instrumental: dvārā
Ablative (Origin vs. Comp.) taḥ / apekṣā
Temporal (Before/After) pūrva / anantara
Directional / Boundary prati / paryanta
Locative (In/On) madhye / upari
Spatial (Inside/Outside) antara / bāhya
Spatial (Above/Below) ūrdhva / tala
Spatial (Behind/Front) pṛṣṭhe / sammukhe
Spatial (Near/Far/Around) samīpa / dūra / parita
Not declined for gender
Person number: Nominal / Accusative / Stem for postposition
1st Sing: Aham / Mām / Ma
1st Plural: Vayam / Asmām / Asma
2nd Sing: Tvam / Tvām / Tva
2nd Plural: Yūyam / Yuṣmām / Yuṣma
3rd Sing: Tat / Tām / Ta
3rd Plural: Te / Tem / Te
3rd Reflexive: Sva / Svām / Sva
3rd Demonstrative: Idam / Idām / Ida
Not declined except for optional plural marker (-jana for animate, -caya for inanimate)
When borrowing verbs from Sanskrit (or from other languages like English), modern Indian languages exclusively borrow them as verbal nouns and pair them with auxiliary verbs. We universalize this practice to all verbs, except for a small set of auxiliary verbs.
Roots: Kar- (Active), As- (Static), Bhu- (Dynamic), Kāra- (Causative), Sthā- (Continuous). Suffixes: -ti (Present), -īt (Past), -iṣya
(Future), -tu (Imperative), -tva (Completive).
Correlatives and interrogatives have parallel “as” / “so” / “?” words, and inflect like the pronouns (-m added for accusative, with Katham becoming Kathām and Kim staying the same, and the rest being inflected by postpositions).
Person / entity: Ya / Tat / Ka (animate) / Kim (inanimate)
Time: Yadā / Tadā / Kadā
Place: Yatra / Tatra / Kutra
Manner: Yathā / Tathā / Katham
Quantity: Yati / Tati / Kati
If / then / yes vs. no: Yadi / Tarhi / Kim (at end of question)
Clausal links:
And: Evam
Or: Athavā
But: Kintu
Because: Kāraṇa
Therefore: Ataḥ
Also: Api (at the end of the additional clause)
I.e.: Arthāt
Otherwise: Anyathā
Finally: Antataḥ
Regularized using 1-9 numbers times the ten power. Ten power is defined using the “lakh crore” terminology rather than ancient names, to maximize recognizability and avoid ambiguity since different languages use different values for the same names.
1: Eka, 2: Dvi, 3: Tri, 4: Catur, 5: Pañca, 6: Ṣaṣ, 7: Sapta, 8: Aṣṭa, 9: Nava, 10: Daśa
100: Śata, 1000: Sahasra, 10k: Das Sahasra, 100k: Lakṣa, 1m: Das Lakṣa, 10m: Kōṭi, 100m: Das Kōṭi, 1b: Śata Kōṭi, 10b: Sahasra Kōṭi, 100b: Das Sahasra Kōṭi, 1t: Lakṣa Kōṭi, 10t: Das Lakṣa Kōṭi, 100t: Kōṭi Kōṭi
Measurement units use their international names to avoid ambiguity. The exception is units of time which use their Sanskrit names from year down to day, as well as “Vādana” for “hour”.
Sidenote: If you're just gonna say something like "well the answer is to just not make an IAL!!!!" and not contribute anything, please don't leave a comment
So I have seen a lot of IALs in the past 3 years, but one thing has always bugged me, their syllable structures are very lax, and I've tried to make an IAL called Kandanbasa with more restricted phonotactics to try and stop this, but all that did was create more issues. Kandanbasa's phonotactics are (C)(G)V(G/n) where C is any consonant, G is a glide (j and w), V is a vowel, and n is just [n]. This is almost identical to that of the second most spoken language on earth, Mandarin Chinese, the only difference being that [ɥ] can't be a glide because... well that's not a suitable phoneme for an IAL, and final [ɻ].
However, I've ran into a lot of problems with this design choice, Kandanbasa is a posteriori IAL, but its vocabulary isn't actually that recognizable, like "furuna", "setara" and "borosa" don't sound very much like "furnace", "star" and "brush". furna, stara, and brosa would be better. But I don't really want to make this change because Mandarin is spoken by a LOT of people, and this would be putting off a huge part of the population.
However, I have since had a breakthrough that might help this. Mandarin speakers can use [sɨ] for [s] and [ɕi] for [si], and just remember that [sɨ] isn't a separate syllable in this language, Japanese speakers can do the same thing with [sɯ̥] vs [sɯː] So technically, "stara" could work, but what about [r]? I'm still trying to figure this out, I'm planning on adding word final [p] [t] [k] as well, and also [l] and [r] in word initial Cl or Cr clusters, so if you have any ideas on how speakers of languages like Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, Cantonese, Vietnamese can "approximate" these sounds please let me know
There are many pan-Romance and pan-Germanic and pan-Slavic projects. How about pan-Polynesian? Such a language might be welcomed as an alternative to imperial languages (English, French) and their pidgins.
Last month I posted a new thread to the r/conlangs reddit page re the official admission of Toki Pona to Wikipedia as its 10^(th) conlang. The Toki Pona Incubator wiki version has been in existence since 2004, so almost as long as the existence of the language itself. During the discussion in the thread u/SaintUlvemann made what I thought was a somewhat valid point. To quote them:
>I think the purpose of Wikipedia is very clearly to document and disseminate accurate information about the real world.
>As a result, I think that the only languages that make sense to do that in, are languages used regularly by a community of people to access new information.
>So all natlangs are that, and then a "naturalized conlang" like Esperanto, one which may have originated as a conlang but is now used as a home language, I think can very reasonably be included. Wiki's inclusion of the other IALs is perhaps less justified by this standard, but not entirely baseless.
This got me thinking about how useful any of the conlang projects actually are. I found the following page on Wikipedia, without completely understanding all of the metrics or knowing whether it was still up-to-date:
Wikipedia:List of constructed languages with Wikipedias - Wikipedia
Subsequently, I decided to conduct an experiment to try to determine how much information each of these constructed language projects contained so as to assess how ‘useful’ each of these are. For the record, I speak Esperanto, and to a limited degree I can understand Ido, Interlingua, Interlingue, LFN and Novial. I understand next to nothing in Kotava, Lojban, Toki Pona or Volapuk. My assessment was based on quantity rather than quality, but in my view, so far as the conlang Wikipedia’s are concerned, these two parameters are more-or-less equivalent. Many Wikipedia’s didn’t feature the searched subject at all or gave just one or two sentences (often not more than a paragraph) to cover an important person, event, substance or idea. So, the ‘quality’ could to a large extent be judged by the quantity alone.
The Experiment
* 35 search terms covering important historical events, people and concepts across all 10 languages. The search terms belonged to one of 4 categories: History and Politics, Science and Technology, The Arts, and finally Philosophy and Religion. I omitted Entertainment, Popular Culture and Sport. I ensured that at least some of the search terms related to current events.
* Points were tallied and awarded on a scale of 1-10, with 1 representing the lowest scores and 10 the highest. An overall score of 8 was rated as a ‘clear’ pass and 7, a ‘marginal’ (borderline) pass. A score of less than 7 indicated to me that the language Wikipedia in question was not a particularly useful resource in disseminating information about the world in general.
A Point on Methodology
Understandably, people are always concerned about methodology but I make no claims about my findings being scientific. You can take or leave my results as you wish. A study like this is not hard to do, so I if you want results which you can absolutely trust, do your own study and publish your results rather than trashing mine! I will make one point though, and that is that after searching the first 5 or 6 terms, a visible pattern emerged which stayed fairly constant up until the end. In my opinion, a carefully selected sample of 35 terms across disciplines and subject areas is sufficient to conduct such an experiment and should present an overall accurate picture of the reality.
Example
One of the 35 search terms was ‘Water’ a crucial universal substance necessary for the sustenance of life. The word tally for each project was as follows:
Esperanto – 5200
Toki Pona – 701
LFN – 563
Ido – 102
Interlingua – 72
Lojban – 56
Volapuk – 53
Interlingue – 33
Kotava – No entry
Novial – No entry
Final Result ( /10) (rounded)
* Esperanto – 10
* Interlingua – 6
* Ido – 6
* LFN – 5
* Toki Pona – 4
* Interlingue – 2
* Volapuk – 2
* Lojban – 1
* Novial – 1
* Kotava – 1
Lojban, Novial and Kotava attained the lowest overall score (of 1) although it was clear that Kotava performed worst of all, so on the basis of the results it places last. Esperanto met and exceeded my minimum standard across all 35 search terms. The remaining languages only occasionally met the minimum standard, if at all. In summary, 9 out of 10 failed the test according to my design. This doesn’t and shouldn’t go to the worth of the conlangs in question, overall. This result only pertains to the Wikipedia’s of these languages, which makes for only one small criterion of the many criteria one can use for measuring the efficacy of any particular language.
So, that’s the final tally – make of it what you will!
As I mentioned a few weeks ago in this post (Bablo in North America), years ago I was involved with something called Bablo. In short, it was the idea that people would get together for conversation and friendship in their favorite Auxlang. Generally people used the various Euroclones and Esperantidoj, because they are mostly mutually intelligible.
I have just opened a subreddit called r/BabloLinguo . "Linguo" was chosen from Ido - a language I don't actively use. This was meant, in small part, to reflect the Spirit of Bablo, which is that even if we each have our preferred projects, we can put that aside and still understand each other.
Nothing is off topic in Bablo (as long as they are in line with the Spirit of Bablo), but you must use an auxlang. Literally any auxlang or auxlang proposal is allowed but keep in mind, the goal is mutual compatibility. If you're posting in Volapük, be sure to include enough glosses that people can follow along with what you're saying.
NO ENGLISH. There are plenty of spaces to discuss auxlangs or other topics in English. The whole point is that Bablo is a place where we can use the languages we're interested in. With this in mind, I agree that it's a little weird that I'm writing this post in English. This may be my last one of this type. One possible exception might be Ogden's Basic English. We've yet to have anybody show up claiming to advocate for that project, but at this point I figure if you're going to take the time to learn it, we can try to understand you.
The Whitelist. In chatting about Bablo with people, it came up that maybe there would need to be a "whitelist" of languages that are specifically allowed. Very broadly, you can use Esperanto or an established Esperantido, you can use basically any established Euroclone. Personal Esperantidos and Euroclones would probably be fine. Projects based on a single language would generally not be allowed, unless explicitly whitelisted. I don't know if anybody advocates for LSF, but that's on our (still hypothetical) whitelist - as is Anglo-Franca, just to make sure.
But mostly people showed up and spoke Esperanto, Ido, and Interlingua. Bablo was started over 20 years ago by an Idist in Australia (I believe). When he suddenly vanished and the original list stopped working, I created a new group on Google Groups which has been inactive for 10 years, but apparently still works. There was also a Facebook group. (It has more recent activity, but it's been pretty quiet too).
If you need me, I'll be in r/BabloLinguo trying to get some conversations started. Come introduce yourself or just leave a coment.
43-eaf otuk ke Kotavusa Virda tir rodadin. 82 bu koe bat otuk ! Banliz kosmac. Va beliranya !
Banliz : https://www.calameo.com/books/008145027f6afd3cd013c
I’ve been wanting to post hare to get a conlanger’s perspective on all this. Maybe in a week or so, I could post a detailed overview of the project. For now, I’d like to offer some quick reflections and ask for your feedback.
Today marks day 30 of a 30 day challenge to learn the historic auxiliary language project Anglo-Franca by P. Hoinix - published in 1889. Nobody ever took Anglo-Franca seriously, but it’s mentioned in many anthologies of constructed languages because it’s a notable example of a blend of two modified national languages: English and French.
The first reaction upon seeing it is to ask “so - it’s just a random jumble of English and French?” While it’s hard not to say that it’s a jumble, it’s certainly not a random jumble. There’s a structure to it all.
I’ve written about Anglo-Franca in the following reddit threads:
P. Hoinix is the pseudonym of George Henderson who was actively churning out auxlang projects before and after releasing Anglo-Franca. Part of me thinks that even he didn’t take the project all that seriously. All the same, after a month of submitting myself to learn the project as the author laid out, I’ve come to see it with different eyes.
A good chunk of my time was spent trying to figure out the pronunciation. My thought was that if I knew how to pronounce the words consistently, then it wouldn’t feel so jarring to see alternating English and French words in a text. I still haven’t figure out the pronunciation, but working with it daily, it no longer feels so much like a “jumble.”
The general concept is that Anglo-Franca is a combination of “simplified English” and “simplified French.” The grammar is essentially English, and there is a list of 130 function words taken straight from English. “The remaining words are French”.
This last detail isn’t 100% true. The system of numbers is arbitrary, and he admits a list of 12 international words (or expressions) that are mostly from Latin. Let’s call it close enough.
Well, except, I don’t really know how he counts the 130 English words. There’s a list of 130 words with 128 entries on it. I did find three words that he used that weren’t on this list - and with one of them was clearly an error, so we’re back to 130 words.
The only thing is that some of the entries are more than one word, and many words are repeated in more than one entry. Looking at it this way, I could not get the numbers to add up to 130.
In the intro to the section of the book with the sample texts, it says that the texts were written with 120 English words. As I write this, I decided to actually count the words (since I previously generated a list of all the words used in that part of the document.) In the process, I found yet another word that clearly was meant to be part of Anglo-Franca, and yet wasn’t on the list of 130 words.
And as it turned out, I counted 89 unique English words used in the section that supposedly used 120 English words. I guess I just don’t know.
The last few paragraphs are kind of typical of my experience trying to use this language. Part of me was amazed that someone could sketch out a few principles, and the result would be a full language - with rules, vocabulary, and a dictionary that contains 100 000 words including everything you’d need for modern discussions.
But the other part of me kept running into little frustrations. The author went to great lengths to make it possible for somebody with little or no French knowledge to write using his scheme. After a while however I started running into things that he never explains.
According to the author, the pronunciation is “simplified French”. As a side note, the descriptions and how to pronounce things are so gloriously 19th century and quite funny if you have the right sense of humor about such things. But nowhere does he explain how to pronounce the letter H or the combination OI. It seems to me those are pretty big questions left unanswered.
Verbs come from French but the grammar is English so you can form a participle by adding -ed. Adjectives also come from French. No guidance was given about what to do if a participle was listed in the dictionary as an adjective. So is it agé or aged? Trouvé or trouved? Fabriqué or fabriqued? His usage suggests the latter, but apparently “agé” is not a participle in French - so how would a non-French speaker know this? There’s no discussion.
I documented my progress and thoughts in a Google doc which is linked in some of the threads that I linked above. If you want more detail, that would be a good place to look. I would like to come back and post a more detailed overview here in a week or two.
When I started this learning project, I wasn’t sure how long I wanted to stick with it - so I committed to 30 days - April 1, 2026 to April 30, 2026. The timing made some people think it was an April Fools Day prank - and that was part of the fun. Now that I have completed the first 30 days I feel like I've started some things that I want to finish, so most likely I'll be continuing for another 31 days.
I saw a similar post in the Auxlangs FB group and wondered what would be involved in doing the same for Anglo-Franca.
My next thought was that it would be as simple as just searching for this kind of thing in French, since basically all content words in Anglo-Franca come directly from the French dictionary.
What I hadn’t considered was that the French diagrams would have function words on them. It was fairly simple to erase them - along with the unwanted English translations.
It took me longer to notice that the French word for “eyes” is irregular, so I had to erase that too. Anglo-Franca doesn’t have irregular plurals, so I’d have to edit the photo to say “The oeils”.
All in all, pretty easy work. This demonstrates one of the advantages of using “réel materiel” in a language like Anglo-Franca. There's no shortage of learning material.
I played a bit with the new tool that was dropped in r/conlangs, translating some simple sentences.
These examples are a bit misleading in the fact that it seems Leuth almost always uses fewer letter than English to express the same concepts. But these are just some cases with particular words: in other cases English takes less space.
For word order in Leuth, see this post.
