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Novial

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Alphabet and Pronunciation

Both Esperanto and Novial are written using versions of the Latin alphabet. The Esperanto alphabet has 28 letters: 22 without diacritics and 6 with diacritics unique to Esperanto: ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ and ŭ. Novial uses the standard 26 letters of the Latin alphabet with no diacritics. Look up Esperanto in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... Novial [nov-, new + IAL, International Auxiliary Language] is a constructed language devised by Professor Otto Jespersen, a Danish linguist who had previously been involved in the Ido movement. ... The Latin alphabet, also called the Roman alphabet, is the most widely used alphabetic writing system in the world today. ... A diacritical mark or diacritic, sometimes called an accent mark, is a mark added to a letter to alter a words pronunciation or to distinguish between similar words. ...

In Esperanto one letter corresponds to one phoneme and one phoneme to one letter: there are no digraphs. Novial has 3 digraphs: ch, sh and qu; c and q are unique to these digraphs (except in foreign proper nouns) and permit no ambiguity; when s and h are separate phonemes this is indicated by separating with a hyphen: s-h. Novial permits some 2-vowel combinations to be pronounced either as 2 separate vowels or as diphthongs; for example, au, eu and oi may be pronounced as a + w, e + w and o + y, respectively, and ie, io and ia as y + e, y + o and y + a, respectively. In human language, a phoneme is a set of phones (speech sounds or sign elements) that are cognitively equivalent. ... Digraph has several meanings: Directed graph, or digraph Digraph (orthography) Digraph (computing) This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Note: This page contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ... In phonetics, a diphthong (Greek δίφθογγος, diphthongos, literally with two sounds, or with two tones) is a vowel combination in a single syllable involving a quick but smooth movement from one vowel to another, often interpreted by listeners as a single vowel sound or phoneme. ...

In handwriting neither Esperanto nor Novial presents any problem. However, the diacritics of Esperanto require special methods for typing and printing. The original method was a set of digraphs now known as the "h-system", but with the rise of computer word processing a so-called "x-system" has become equally popular. These systems are described in the article Esperanto orthography. However, with the advent of Unicode, the need for such work-arounds has lessened. Esperanto is written in a Latin alphabet of twenty-eight letters, upper and lower case. ... Due to technical limitations, some web browsers may not display some special characters in this article. ...

Personal Pronouns

The personal pronouns of Esperanto all end in i and some may be difficult to distinguish in a noisy environment (especially mi and ni). The personal pronouns of Novial use various vowels making them more distinct, although some differ only in the initial consonant (e.g. nus, vus and lus). A later form of nus – nos, more distinct from vus – has sometimes been used. Novial does not distinguish familiar and polite forms of “you” (e.g. French tu and vous). Novial’s inventor argued that such a distinction has no place in a language intended solely for international use. The distinction is available in Esperanto but is little used in practice. In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun is a word that usually takes the place of a noun or noun phrase that was previously mentioned (such as she, it) or that refers to something or someone (I, me, you). Pronouns are often one of the basic parts of speech of the...

¹ ci and thou, while technically the familiar form of the word "you" in Esperanto and English, respectively, are almost never used. Results on Google have shown that ci is used less than half of one percent of the amount vi is in Esperanto. Zamenhof himself did not include the pronoun in the first book on Esperanto and only later reluctantly; later he recommended against using ci on the grounds that different cultures have conflicting traditions regarding the use of the familiar and formal forms of "you", and that a universal language should avoid the problem by simply using the formal form in all situations. Novial uses only vu as the singular "you".

² tiu, "that person", is usually used in this circumstance, because many people find it unnatural to use "it" referring to humans.

The Novial system displays a systematic correspondence between singular and corresponding plural forms (i.e. vu, vus; lo, los; la, las; lu, lus; le, les). Strictly speaking "we" is not the plural of "I", because "many I’s" is nonsensical. Jespersen suggested that nu, the singular of nus could be used as a "royal we". The optional marking of sex in Novial, especially in the third person plural, permits greater flexibility than in Esperanto. Exactly the same system is applied to other pronouns and to nouns with natural sex differences.

Marking Sex

The system of sex marking for Esperanto nouns is frequently criticised for being asymmetric and male biased. In contrast Novial has one symmetric, unbiased system for both nouns and pronouns which marks either male, female, epicene or inanimate. The word base of Esperanto was originally defined by Lingvo internacia, published by Zamenhof in 1887. ...

Verbal Systems

The grammars of Novial and Esperanto differ greatly in the way that the various tenses, moods and voices of verbs are expressed. Both use a combination of auxiliary verbs and verb endings. However, Novial uses many more auxiliary verbs and few endings, while Esperanto uses only one auxuliary verb and a greater number of verb endings. Grammatical tense is a way languages express the time at which an event described by a sentence occurs. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... In grammar, voice is the relationship between the action or state expressed by a verb, and its arguments (subject, object, etc. ... A verb is a part of speech that usually denotes action (bring, read), occurrence (decompose, glitter), or a state of being (exist, stand). Depending on the language, a verb may vary in form according to many factors, possibly including its tense, aspect, mood and voice. ... In linguistics, an auxiliary or helping verb is a verb whose function it is to give further semantic information about the main or full verb which follows it. ...

In Novial all verb forms are independent of person (1st, 2nd or 3rd persons) and number (singular or plural). In Esperanto verb forms are independent of the person but compound tenses, with participles, require the participle (which is an adjective) to agree with the subject of the verb in number (singular or plural). In linguistics, a participle is a verbal adjective. ...

The continuous tenses are less common in both Esperanto and Novial than in English. The progressive or continuous tenses of a verb are those denoting an incomplete action in progress at a specific time. ...

In the following table endings are separated from stems by hyphens. Alternative forms with the same meaning are in brackets. In the Esperanto forms (j) indicates agreement when the subject of the verb is plural.

In grammar, the infinitive is the form of a verb that has no inflection to indicate person, number, mood or tense. ... The present tense is the tense (form of a verb) that is often used to express: Action at the present time A state of being A habitual action An occurrence in the near future An action that occurred in the past and continues up to the present There are two... It has been suggested that Future perfect tense be merged into this article or section. ... The past tense is a verb tense expressing action, activity, state or being in the past. ... The perfect tenses are verb tenses showing actions completed at or before a specific time. ... The pluperfect tense exists in most Indo-European languages, including English. ... It has been suggested that Future perfect tense be merged into this article or section. ... The perfect tenses are verb tenses showing actions completed at or before a specific time. ... It has been suggested that Future perfect tense be merged into this article or section. ... The conditional mood (sometimes described as the conditional tense) is a verb form in many languages (not in English). ... The conditional mood (sometimes described as the conditional tense) is a verb form in many languages (not in English). ... The perfect tenses are verb tenses showing actions completed at or before a specific time. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... The present tense is the tense (form of a verb) that is often used to express: Action at the present time A state of being A habitual action An occurrence in the near future An action that occurred in the past and continues up to the present There are two... The progressive or continuous tenses of a verb are those denoting an incomplete action in progress at a specific time. ... It has been suggested that Future perfect tense be merged into this article or section. ... The progressive or continuous tenses of a verb are those denoting an incomplete action in progress at a specific time. ... The past tense is a verb tense expressing action, activity, state or being in the past. ... The progressive or continuous tenses of a verb are those denoting an incomplete action in progress at a specific time. ...

Language sample for comparison

Here is the Lord's Prayer in both languages: The Lords Prayer (sometimes known by its first two Latin words as the Pater Noster, in Greek as the , or the English equivalent Our Father) is probably the best-known prayer in Christianity. ...

See also

• Esperanto and Ido compared
• Esperanto and Interlingua compared