So, where do Atlas roots come from?

Where do roots come from?

Atlas takes its roots from 16 languages in the World. As featured in this website, the 10 most spoken languages in the World where chosen first (English, Chinese, Spanish, Russian, Indonesian-Malayan, French, Arabic, Portuguese, Hindi, Bengali). Apart from these, the 2 most spoken languages in the each continent, provided that they were spoken by at least 1% of the World population. Here we can find Hausa and Swahili for Africa, German and Italian for Europe, and Japanese and the Iranian languages for Asia.

Oh wait! Are Iranian Languages a language? not really, I admit. The Iranian langauges are a group of languages lead by Kurdish, Pashto and Farsi/Persian, believed to be spoken by around 200 milion people in the purple area that you can see in the map. The most spoken single language in Asia apart from the ones already included would have been Punjabi. So why not Punjabi? Basically because India and its surroundings have already a good representation in Atlas with Hindi, Bengali and even English, so choosing the Iranian languages instead allows us to cover another (close by) part of the world. The Iranian languages are very closely related to each other too, and they have almost double the number of speakers of Punjabi.

So, any examples?


Arabic: bait (house - بيت), kitab (book - كتاب )
Bengali: dar (catch - ধরা), nirman (build - নির্মাণ)
Chinese: ci (eat - 吃), wan (finish - 完)
English: du (do), vrend (friend)
French: aid (help - aider), o (water - eau)
German: denk (think - denken), vrag (question - Frage)
Hausa: duts (stone - dutse),  zunz (bird - tsuntsu)
Hindi: pei (drink - पेय), tang (leg - टांग)
Indonesian: bes (big - besar), duduk (seat - duduk)
Iranian: dai (uncle - دایی), sah (morning - saqhaar)
Italian: kan (dog - cane),  vior (flower - fiore)
Japanese: henk (change - 変更),  neko (cat - ネコ)
Portuguese: idei (idea - ideia), dorm (sleep - dormir)
Russian: direb (tree - дерево), vex (object - вещь)
Spanish: es (to be - ser),  skrib (write - escribir)
Swahili: song (move - songa), wek (establish - kuweka)


All languages in Atlas have a similar representation, ranging from 27 to 35 roots each.

¿Why one root and not the other? 

Roots are chosen when:
  • the resulting word is easy to pronounce
  • it is short (when possible, only one syllable, maximum two)
  • it is not identical to another root.
  • it ressembles other roots
  • the language where it comes from has not too many roots compared to other languages.
Will there be more roots in the future?

Possibly a few more will have to be added, but the idea is to remain below 550. The rest of the words are formed as explained in this same blog.


----

What next?

The idea was to make a 10-15 day video with the most important news. However, that will be changed for the time being because of technical issues.

So what can you expect to see in the near future?
- another 1 or 2 translated texts. This time probably longer texts that the ones in the blog.
- a new page called NEWS, where most important World news will be added as they come.

Remember! click on the VIDEO page in order to see how Atlas sounds!













Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Aspect in Atlas: permanent or non-permanent?

Welcome!

Work, work, work!