What is Atlas?
What is Atlas?
Atlas is a new auxiliary language intended to be used as an international language.
Its vocabulary is taken following these two rules:
- 10 most spoken languages (L1+L2) in the World: English, Chinese, Spanish, French, Russian, Hindi, Bengali, Indonesian-Malayan, Portuguese and Arabic.
- Apart
from these ones, the 2 most spoken languages in each continent,
provided that they are spoken by at least 1% of the population: German
and Italian for Europe, Iranian* and Japanese for Asia, Swahili and
Hausa for Africa. Languages from other continents did not meet the 1%
(basically because the top 10 languages are widely spoken).
*Iranian languages is a family of languaes widely spoken in Western Asia, including Kurdish, Farsi and Pashto. Chosen as a group because it is believed to have around 200 milion speakers, and because it represents another part of Asia. Other languages have more speakers than Kurdish alone for instance, but they are spoken where other languages are already largely spoken. India for instance has got many languages with many speakers, but the region is already well represented by Hindi and Bengali.
Atlas is formed by roots, and we add morphemes to these roots in order to form words. So for instance we have the root "dek", from which we form "deke" (thought), "dekes" (think), etc.
Only over 500 roots are found in Atlas, so its vocabulary is extremely simple. All other words are derived from them. For instance, taking the root wis ("show"), we can form:
artwise (exposition), axtwisu (showcase), anawise (publication), verwise (prove, confirmation), vinwise (advertisement), voiwise (symptom), latwise (sponsorship)...
These 500 roots are more or less equally distributed amongst languages, each one taking around 30 roots (some a bit more, some a bit less).
Phonetics are extremely easy too. Only 5 vowels with their IPA sounds (a,e,i,o,u) and 18 consonantic sounds, using the roman alphabet, without letters "f", "j" and "y". All sounds included are designed to be easy to learn or already included in many languages. Some of them have not an exact equivalent amongst languages, although very similar sounds are found and some degree of freedom in usage for Atlas is accepted (for instance, sounds /ɕ/ and /ʃ/ are similar, and even /ʒ/).
Grammar is very easy too, main highlights:
- no exceptions
- no declensions
- 3+1 grammar persons (3 traditional + 1 meaning "one").
- no agreement between nouns and adjectives or verbs.
- gender neutral, although possibility of specifying gender.
- no infinitive, no participle, no gerund.
- easy verbs, no complex forms. 3 tenses only as morphemes, no moods. No variation for person or gender.
- complex sentences made easy by usage of particles "de/ke/ne".
- each word category with one specific ending, so they are easy recognizable.
- logical prepositions with one meaning only for each.
- translated news or texts.
- videos, in order to see how it sounds.
- grammar updates or explanations.
I like what I see. It is so very much simplified in comparison to Rodinian. I am looking forward to learning some of the vocabulary and getting a better feel for the language. I suspect, due to its ultra-simplicity, that it will be difficult to form very precise and complex meanings. But, as a result of this simplicity, it could become a language of "basic communications" amongst people with no other language in common. If that were to happen, then it would be a remarkable achievement.
ReplyDeleteHopefully you will be able to see that the language is able to express everything. Even if it is not in the dictionary yet, you can easily combine roots and form new concepts, so it has pretty much an unlimited vocabulary potential. You will notice that roots like "diz" (say) are already highly used to form new words by combination.
DeleteObviously a few roots might have to be added at some point, but apart from that, grammar still gives you the essential information. Atlas is born taking out all the "garbage" that is not needed: difficult relative pronouns, non-finite verbal forms, quantifiers, noun-adjective agreement, complex verbal forms... that don't add too much to the meaning of what you are saying anyway. But the essentials are still there: Atlas can express wheter you have done something voluntarily or not for instance easily, while other languages with much more complex grammars don't.
Even where, a priori, Atlas could struggle with complexity, it still gives you tools to solve that. For instance, take the word "anvaze" (creation) [at the same time, formed by "an" - activate + "vaz" - to make]. Two possible adjectives could come to mind: creative or created (the second one does not exist a priori in Atlas, because it is a participle).
However, if you wanted to specify the meaning, you could easily form:
anvaz + du (do) + i = anvazdui = creative
anvaz + reux (situation, state) + i = anvazreuxi = created
So as you can see, if you really wanted to specify, Atlas gives you the possibility to do it, and it is up to the speaker how to do it.