Sunday, December 18, 2011

Names of auxiliary languages

1. Esperanto (speranska)
Like the language itself, the name esperanto is almost unassailably international and I would be surprised if any linguist, however purist he may be, would have meade attempts to adapt it to the phonology of their language, let alone translate it completely. I used voneska or vonarmál in my ultrapurist High Icelandic model, but these solutions are surely too far a leap of radicalism for the more moderated Icelandic crowd. Still an in between solution, a succesful addaptation of the word without exaggerated corruption that would violate its interational character, could be palatable for most Icelandic neologists.

a) I thought of omitting the initial e- as is seen in many borrowings from Romance languages in Germanic languages:

espagnol (sp.) - spanska (isl.)
espacia (sp.) - espace (fr.) - spássía, spesíudalur (isl.)
espiritu (sp.) - esprit (fr.) -sprítt (isl.)
epinanca (sp.) - épinards (fr.) - spínat (isl.)

b) Secondly, I would let the word end in -anska, as in danska, franska, spanska, which works as a designator of a language.
The ending -anska is completely relevant because but you might as well regard the meaning of Esperanto it as 'the language of hope' (cherished by Zammenhof, to unite people of different languages)
Even though "speranska" is a loan-word, no language in the world has made even the slightest alterations to this word, so 'speranska', even though we're still dealing with a foreignism, is already very hyperpuristic an adaptation.

Ido (í(ð)ska: the name of a simplified form of esperanto, which was derived from the Esperanto word ido meaning 'offspring'. It actually has the same origin as the suffix -íð (eng. -ide) in klóríð (eng. chloride), so if we make use of -ska as in speranska we get: íðska, which, on omission of the 'eth' becomes íska (íðneska would be inappropriate because it gives rise to an unconvenient connotation with -iðn). Many languages end in -íska, and this speaks in favour of using this suffix on its own as the name of an interantional language.

The method of using the suffix -ska to coin names for auxiliary languages has the property to reduce word-lenght significantly: henska (hand + -ska = henska (táknmál, fingramál (sign language)), lenska (drunkard's language, from landi (kind of moonshine)), blenska (blanda + enska, Pidgin English, contracted form of blendingsmál), frenska (franglais), einska (ideolect)

1 comment:

Brian Barker said...

Lest anyone think Esperanto is something dead or historical, you might be interested to know of Esperanto’s current popularity which is 125 years young in 2012.
Their new online course http://www.lernu.net has 125 000 hits per day and Esperanto Wikipedia enjoys 400 000 hits per day. That can't be bad :)