Kali-sise auxlang

[Andrew Nowicki]

The main Kali-sise page is at:
http://www.langmaker.com/kalisise.htm

Kali-sise is a new auxlang made by Jeffrey Henning.
Its main goal is easy pronunciation, so it has very
small alphabet: i, u, a, p, t, k, s, l, n.
The obvious implication of the very small alphabet
are very long compound words:
http://www.langmaker.com/kalisiselexicon.htm

Some Kali-sise compound words are ambiguous:
Cat is defined as "dog opposite"
horn is defined as "shell hair"
Elevator is defined as "room vehicle"
Saudi Arabia is defined as "camel nation"
Tail and foot have the same definition: "head opposite"
Cartography is defined as "road science."

Kali-sise is interesting because it is true compound
language (unlike Esperanto and Lojban) having rather large
number if roots: http://www.langmaker.com/kalisiseroots.htm.
Kali-sise has 411 roots. (Ygyde has only 180 roots and
365 other predefined words. The Ygyde roots can be
joined with other predefined words to make clumsy, long
compound words.) Kali-sise roots are intended for small
talk rather than science and technology. For example,
hollow cylinder is defined as "bamboo abstraction," and
pipe is defined as "water road."

Henning told me about his new auxlang some two years
ago and he knew my Ygyde auxlang. I can see some Ygyde
influence in his Kali-sise and I like it. Kali-sise
is the only auxlang that can challenge Ygyde - its
foundations are solid and it is well developed.
Kali-sise compound words are somewhat less ambiguous
than Ygyde compound words. The main advantage of Ygyde
is the fact that it is much more structured language --
you can tell a lot about Ygyde word that you have never
seen before. The long version of Ygyde has only 3 vowels
and 8 consonants. They are actually groups of vowels and
consonants. Kali-sise has 3 vowels and 6 consonants. They
are fixed. Long Ygyde words are as easy to pronounce as
Kali-sise words, but Kali-sise pronunciation is less
ambiguous -- advantage Kali-sise. Standard Ygyde is very
terse while Kali-sise is extremely verbose -- advantage
Ygyde.

[Andrew Nowicki]

Correction: the improved version of Kali-sise has
4 vowels: i, u, a, e.

_____________________________________________________

I have found a critical flaw in Kali-sise: the word
parsing is worse than in any other language. In
other words, when you listen to Kali-sise speech,
you do not know where one word ends and the next
word begins. Standard Ygyde clearly wins because its
word parsing is very good -- when you hear two
consecutive vowels, you know that this is the end of
one word and the beginning of the next word.

The flaw can be fixed by placing a vowel prefix in
front of every word. For example:
- prefix "i" = noun
- prefix "u" = verb
- prefix "a" = adjective
- prefix "e" = proper noun

Another flaw is that some important roots are missing.
For example, it is not clear how to define nouns glue,
density, virus, bacteria, mitochondrion, Buddhism,
creationism, microphone, environment, ring/torus, weld,
absurd, apology, detector, cancer, craftsman, paint,
refraction, focus, fungus, alga, gravel, silt, inertia,
infection, invention, progress, proof (of a claim),
reflection, mirror, scandal, surface, suspicion, sweat,
ability, talent, torture, trowel, vanity, arrogance,
adjectives sticky, trivial, turbulent, wild, happy, sad,
lost, absent, slippery, elastic, simple, complex,
ambiguous, analytic, genetic, conservative, liberal,
private, enough, homosexual, smart, uniform, important,
verbs to rotate, to vibrate, to inhale, to try. Foam is
defined as "ocean dust."

Despite these flaws I am very impressed with Jeffrey
Henning's creation.

[Andrew Nowicki]

Jeffrey Henning is right about the importance of easy pronunciation.
If an auxlang is not easy to pronounce for everyone, it is really
an artlang rather than auxlang. Esperanto is an artlang because it
has letters "r," "f" and "p." Korean language has no "r." Koreans
have great trouble pronouncing and distinguishing the letters "f"
and "p". As a matter of fact only Kali-sise and Ygyde are true
auxlangs because they are easy to pronounce for everyone. All the
other conlangs aspiring to the auxlang status are really artlangs.

In order to make it easy to pronounce, Kali-sise's
alphabet has only 10 letters: i, u, a, e, p, t, k, s,
l, n. The obvious implication of the very small alphabet
are very long compound words. The long version of Ygyde
has only 11 letters: 3 vowels and 8 consonants. It is
just as easy to pronounce as Kali-sise, but it is very
different, because the vowels and consonants are not
fixed, but they are really groups of vowels and consonants.
For example the first Long Ygyde vowel can be pronounced
either as U in bUs, or as E in bEd. There is a translation
table which translates every vowel and every syllable word of
the Standard Ygyde into the Long Ygyde. (The Standard Ygyde
is very terse, but it has big alphabet: 6 vowels a e y o u
i and 15 consonants b p d t g k w f z s j c m n l). The
translation table is rather small: 6 vowels and 90 syllables.
Any compound word can be pronounced as a mixture of Standard
Ygyde syllables and Long Ygyde syllables. There may be
local dialects of Ygyde that use some Long Ygyde syllables
as "standard" syllables, because nobody can pronounce their
standard Ygyde equivalents. The Long Ygyde is more terse
than Kali-sise. The mixed Short/Long Ygyde words are much
more terse than Kali-sise words.

[Rex F. May]

Post by Andrew Nowicki
Jeffrey Henning is right about the importance of easy pronunciation.
If an auxlang is not easy to pronounce for everyone, it is really
an artlang rather than auxlang. Esperanto is an artlang because it
has letters "r," "f" and "p." Korean language has no "r." Koreans
have great trouble pronouncing and distinguishing the letters "f"
and "p". As a matter of fact only Kali-sise and Ygyde are true
auxlangs because they are easy to pronounce for everyone. All the
other conlangs aspiring to the auxlang status are really artlangs.
In order to make it easy to pronounce, Kali-sise's
alphabet has only 10 letters: i, u, a, e, p, t, k, s,
l, n.

...

Sorry, I'm afraid Kali-sise is just an artlang, too. Hawaiians can't
pronounce t or s. It will have to be Kali-pipe. Come to think of it,
Navajos can't do an l, so we'll have to go with Kapi-pipe to avoid artlang
status.

The only _true_ auxlang is Ekapelanako.

[Andrew Nowicki]

Post by Rex F. May
Sorry, I'm afraid Kali-sise is just an artlang, too. Hawaiians can't
pronounce t or s. It will have to be Kali-pipe. Come to think of it,
Navajos can't do an l, so we'll have to go with Kapi-pipe to avoid artlang
status.

It seems that no matter how small is your alphabet,
someone can always come up with some native language
speakers that cannot pronounce all its phonemes.
The only solution seems to be the Long Ygyde solution.
The pronunciation is not fixed and the phonemes are
divided into groups of equivalent phonemes. For
example, vowel a and vowel e are interchangeable.
Those who cannot pronounce a can pronounce e and
vice versa. Here are the Long Ygyde phoneme groups:

1. a or e,
2. u or o
3. i or y,
4. b or p
5. d or t,
6. g or k,
7. w (=v) or f
8. z, s, or h,
9. j or c (like church)
10. m or n
11. l (Navajos can learn it, I hope.
It is the easiest phoneme that I know.
If not, "h" can be moved into this group.)

[Matthew Barnett]

Post by Andrew Nowicki

Post by Rex F. May
Sorry, I'm afraid Kali-sise is just an artlang, too. Hawaiians can't
pronounce t or s. It will have to be Kali-pipe. Come to think of it,
Navajos can't do an l, so we'll have to go with Kapi-pipe to avoid artlang
status.

It seems that no matter how small is your alphabet,
someone can always come up with some native language
speakers that cannot pronounce all its phonemes.
The only solution seems to be the Long Ygyde solution.
The pronunciation is not fixed and the phonemes are
divided into groups of equivalent phonemes. For
example, vowel a and vowel e are interchangeable.
Those who cannot pronounce a can pronounce e and
1. a or e,
2. u or o
3. i or y,
4. b or p
5. d or t,
6. g or k,
7. w (=v) or f
8. z, s, or h,
9. j or c (like church)
10. m or n
11. l (Navajos can learn it, I hope.
It is the easiest phoneme that I know.
If not, "h" can be moved into this group.)

...

Japanese doesn't have 'l', but does have 'r'; you could treat them as
alternatives.

[Andrew Nowicki]

Post by Matthew Barnett
Japanese doesn't have 'l', but does have 'r'; you could treat them as
alternatives.

Good idea!

[Dana Nutter]

[Andrew Nowicki] pis ra ...

Post by Andrew Nowicki
11. l (Navajos can learn it, I hope.
It is the easiest phoneme that I know.
If not, "h" can be moved into this group.)

It's not easy for Japanese.

"H"? It's missing from most Romance languages.

------------------------------
Dana Nutter \ dejnx nxtxr
***@nutter.net

RI SASXSEK LATIS.
http://www.nutter.net/sasxsek

[Dana Nutter]

[Rex F. May] pis ra ...

Post by Rex F. May

Post by Andrew Nowicki
Jeffrey Henning is right about the importance of easy pronunciation.
If an auxlang is not easy to pronounce for everyone, it is really
an artlang rather than auxlang. Esperanto is an artlang because it
has letters "r," "f" and "p." Korean language has no "r." Koreans
have great trouble pronouncing and distinguishing the letters "f"
and "p". As a matter of fact only Kali-sise and Ygyde are true
auxlangs because they are easy to pronounce for everyone. All the
other conlangs aspiring to the auxlang status are really artlangs.
In order to make it easy to pronounce, Kali-sise's
alphabet has only 10 letters: i, u, a, e, p, t, k, s,
l, n.

Sorry, I'm afraid Kali-sise is just an artlang, too. Hawaiians can't
pronounce t or s. It will have to be Kali-pipe. Come to think of it,
Navajos can't do an l, so we'll have to go with Kapi-pipe to avoid artlang

...

Hawaiians are bilingual in English (Pidjin)and can pronounce /s/
and /t/. At this point there are probably few, if any,
monolinguals in these communities.

http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=haw

http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=nav



------------------------------
Dana Nutter \ dejnx nxtxr
***@nutter.net

RI SASXSEK LATIS.
http://www.nutter.net/sasxsek

[Rex F. May]

Post by Dana Nutter
[Rex F. May] pis ra ...

Post by Rex F. May

Post by Andrew Nowicki
Jeffrey Henning is right about the importance of easy pronunciation.
If an auxlang is not easy to pronounce for everyone, it is really
an artlang rather than auxlang. Esperanto is an artlang because it
has letters "r," "f" and "p." Korean language has no "r." Koreans
have great trouble pronouncing and distinguishing the letters "f"
and "p". As a matter of fact only Kali-sise and Ygyde are true
auxlangs because they are easy to pronounce for everyone. All the
other conlangs aspiring to the auxlang status are really artlangs.
In order to make it easy to pronounce, Kali-sise's
alphabet has only 10 letters: i, u, a, e, p, t, k, s,
l, n.

Sorry, I'm afraid Kali-sise is just an artlang, too. Hawaiians can't
pronounce t or s. It will have to be Kali-pipe. Come to think of it,
Navajos can't do an l, so we'll have to go with Kapi-pipe to avoid artlang

Hawaiians are bilingual in English (Pidjin)and can pronounce /s/
and /t/. At this point there are probably few, if any,
monolinguals in these communities.
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=haw
http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=nav

...

Lelunu la linukuonu Ekapelanako!