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Highly Synthetic Languages | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6440 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 9 of 11 06 May 2011 at 1:54am | IP Logged | ||
Yes. Esperanto has a highly productive affix system. Here are a few roots, and words you can build with affixes: root: san. Example word: malsanulejo (mal-san-ul-ej-o, literally 'opposite-healthy-people-place-noun). root: ruĝ. Example words: ruĝigi (cause to become red - including making humans blush, formed of ruĝ-iĝ-i, literally red-cause-infinitive), and ruĝigita (something/someone who has been caused to turn red - for instance, an object painted red, or a girl who someone has caused to blush, formed from ruĝ-ig-it-a, or literally red-cause-past passive participle-adjective). Some other fun examples can be found in a review of Karuseloj. It contains words such as familiariĝintaj, ekesperantistiĝantan, malutopiigado, portugalumintaj, pogutigintajn, nigrperl-okulaj. Explanations: 'familiarized', familiar-iĝ-int-a-j, familiar-become-past active participle-adjective-plural 'becoming something which was formerly associated with Esperanto', eks-esperantist-iĝ-ant-a-n, ex-Esperanto speaker-become-present active participle-adjective-direct object marker (I should also mention that "Esperantist" is composed of the root 'esper' and the affixes -ant and -ist, but it is one of the few words which has acquired a conventional meaning of its own which has very strong nuances which the roots don't entirely hint at, hence translating it as "Esperanto speaker" rather than "Person who is professionally/ideologically hoping"). The exact meaning isn't entirely clear without context; if it's modifying a noun referring to a person, it basically just means "becoming an ex-Esperantist". 'the continual process of causing a dystopia', mal-utopi-ig-ad-o, opposite-utopia-cause-continual-noun 'Previously in the Portuguese style', portugal-um-int-a-j, Portugal-um-past active participle-adjective-plural ('um' is untranslatable to English. It reflects a sense of doing something in a characteristic way. "Retumi" is to browse. "Bierumi" is not just drinking beer, but the whole associated ethos as well. It's a very vague, yet very evocative, suffix, and its meaning is usually most clear in context.) 'Each having caused dripping', po-gut-ig-int-a-j-n, each-drip-cause-past passive participle-adjective-plural-direct object (If I recall correctly, this was used in a description of the light given off by stars; it's quite poetic and evocative in Esperanto, and very difficult to do justice to in English.) "Black-perl eyed", nigr-perl-okul-a-j, black-perl-eye-adjective-plural The system can be used on all roots, and the affixes can be combined freely (though it's possible to come up with rather senseless examples, just as you can make nonsense sentences in English). Esperanto is the easiest synthetic language to learn. However, I didn't want to be the first one to mention it in this thread, for a few reasons: - While it's synthetic, it's not polysynthetic. - It can be used very flexibly. The above page mentions Japanese as 'rather synthetic' and Finnish as 'very synthetic'. While Esperanto can be used as synthetically as Finnish (I've seen a translation from Finnish which mimics it quite closely grammatically), the amount of synthesis in typical use is closer to that of Japanese. - The original poster said "Beyond that, I'm looking for things such as familiarity (the further from English the better, I'm fine with Indo-European but I'd rather it be a fairly distant IE language) and usefulness in dealing with immigrants (as in, something that many immigrants to Canada/US speak) although those are both secondary criteria." Esperanto is not Indo-European, but it uses European (areal) relative clauses, and quite a few of its word roots are shared by English. Most immigrants do not speak it. That said, it's my favourite language for playing with affixes. It provides a freedom that no other language I've ever heard of can, because roots and affixes can be combined almost entirely freely: you can use any root, and the few rules that you need to follow (such as -j coming before -n) are simple and regular. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Kannan Bilingual Diglot Newbie United Kingdom Joined 6149 days ago 13 posts - 25 votes Speaks: English*, Malayalam* Studies: Tamil | Message 10 of 11 07 May 2011 at 12:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Why not try a classical IE language? You could take up Latin or Greek, or if you want
something slightly less familiar, Sanskrit. They are synthetic (fusional, not polysynthetic). The only criterion they don't really fulfil (why is the spell-checker telling me I've spelled "fulfil" wrong?) is the "usefulness in dealing with immigrants" one. Edited by Kannan on 07 May 2011 at 12:15pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6471 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 11 of 11 07 May 2011 at 12:32pm | IP Logged | ||
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Latin suggested as a "highly synthetic" language? Seriously? The only thing looking
synthetic is the verb system, and even that only on a low level - Swahili verbs are awesome by comparison. Nilipokuwa ni-li-po-kuwa I-(past)-at-be when I was Hataifungua h-a-ta-i-fung-ua not-he/she-will-it-close-opposite he will not open it Asiyeonesha a-si-ye-one-sha he-doesn't-which-see-make (make see = to show) , which doesn't show Swahili nouns and adjectives are boring though. It is just kind of awesome that everything has to agree though, even the preposition "of" is different depending on the noun class. Edited by Sprachprofi on 07 May 2011 at 1:01pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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