Frater/Grammar

From Langmaker

Further details about the Frater language.

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Phonology 3 Twelve Rules of Frater 4 Lexical Strategies 5 Commentary

Introduction

Paul Bartlett writes:

Most international auxiliary language projects seems to originate in western Europe and the Americas. Today I had the opportunity to examine one from what was to me an unexpected venue: Vietnam. And the author being Vietnamese in the 1950s, I would have expected the discussion of it to be in French. On the contrary, it was in good English.

Pham Xuan Thai

FRATER (LINGUA SISTEMFRATER): The Simplest International Language Ever Constructed

Saigon: TU-HAI Publishing House

1957

no ISBN

275 pp.

decent printing job, some corrections made by hand

paper bound (originally)

Although the vocabulary is largely, though not totally, Greco-Latin in origin (with some roots modified to fit the phonology), Frater is not just another Euroclone, for its word building and syntax are rather un-European.

Phonology

Frater has only five vowels and thirteen consonants (b-d-f-g-j-k-l-m-n-p-r-s-t) but permits more consonant clusters than might be expected given Chinese and Japanese phonotactics.

Paul Bartlett writes:

Frater's phonology is fairly simple: there are five vowels and thirteen consonants, written with eighteen letters of the Roman alphabet, CHQVWXYZ not being used. There is little actual description of the sounds, but the vowels AEIOU seem to have more or less the so-called continental pronunciation. Consonants are about as one would expect, except that J is pronounced /z/.

This simple phonology means that some words, especially proper names, undergo some modification, such as V -> B, as Venezuela -> Benesuela. Also, there seems to be some adaptation to the phonetic habits of non-Europeans: ABRIKO (apricot); ABSOB (absorb).

Nevertheless, more consonant clusters persisted than I might have expected in a language designed by an Asian. (I am not especially familiar with Vietnamese, and maybe they don't have as much problem with consonant clusters as some other east Asians.) However, if a largely Greco-Latin vocabulary is to be at least marginally recognizable, the roots cannot undergo too much mangling.

Twelve Rules of Frater

Rule 1. In Frater, there is neither article nor flexion, nor elision, nor affix, nor concord of tense, of mood, of gender, of number.

Rule 2. The noun, the adjective, the verb and the adverb have the same root.

Rule 3. The adjective is always placed after the noun with the exception of cardinal numbers.

The comparative of equality is translated with je: as... as.

The comparative of superiority with plus: more... than.

The comparative of inferiority with plusne: less... than.

The superlative of superiority is translated with plasuni: the most.

The superlative of inferiority with plasunine: the least.

The absolute superlative is translated with tele: very.

Rule 4. The cardinal numbers are:

Uni: 1; bi: 2; tri: 3; kuadri: 4; kuinti: 5; ses: 6; sep: 7; okta:

8; nona: 9; deka: 10; senti: 100; mil: 1000; milion: 1.000.000; miliar: 1.000.000.000.

The cardinal numbers once placed after the nouns become ordinal numbers.

The multiplicative numbers are formed by adding the word tem ("time") to the cardinal numbers.

The fractional numbers are formed by adding the word unisur ("one above") to the cardinal numbers.

The collective numbers are formed by adding per ("by") to the cardinal numbers.

Rule 5. The personal pronouns are:

Mi: "I; me" Mis: "we; us"

Ni: "you (singular)" Nis: "you (plural)"

Ili: "he; him; she; her; it" Ilis: "they; them"

Antrop: "one, they";

The possessive pronouns are formed by adding the word ot ("of") to the personal pronouns.

Rule 6. The verb is absolutely invariant in person and in number.

Pas ("past") denotes the past tense;

Futur ("future") denotes the future tense;

Intem ("in time") denotes the gerund;

Probable ("probably") denotes the conditional tense;

The passive voice is formed by adding the auxiliary verb es ("to be") to the infinitive.

Rule 7. There is no inverting in the following word-order of Frater, except in poetry: Subject-Verb-Object.

Rule 8. Each word is pronounced absolutely as it is written: each letter has always the same sound.

Rule 9. The stress is placed on the last syllable of the word.

Rule 10. Compounds are obtained by the mere combination of the elements that form them, the fundamental one being always placed at the beginning.

Rule 11. If there is in the sentence another word having a negative meaning, the adverb ne ("not") is omitted.

Rule 12. Foreign words, namely international words, if they are formed by the roots existing in Frater, change according to Rule 10. In case their roots do not exist in Frater, they do not change. They only take the spelling of the language.

Lexical Strategies

Paul Bartlett writes:

There are several distinctive features of the language which I noted. Roots can serve indifferently as nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs with no modification. (There are no part of speech markers, not even something like Glosa's u/plu.) Except for cardinal numbers, all modifiers come after the word they modify. (A following number is an ordinal.) Mensa mi is "my table." Unlike most west European languages, Frater does not have separate gender forms for the third person pronoun, even in the singular.

In compounds, the lexically most significant element comes first, with qualificative roots coming after — this is just the exact opposite of English usage. Frater has no particular system of lexical affixes, in the manner of Esperanto, Ido, Novial, or even Interlingua, but it makes very heavy use of compounding, even in what I call "grammatical stickum" words: temkia ("when": tem = "time" + kia = "what"). Also, sometimes a compound is used in place of an existing Greco-Latin form: asurau ("alphabet": A + sura/"till" + U).

Commentary

Paul Bartlett writes:

There are 18 pages of forward, largely given over to a brief survey of the IAL movement... In the foreward, Thai acknowledges the influence of Bodmer's The Loom of Language.

Following [the twelve] rules are thirteen pages which largely elaborate on them and also deal with interrogatives, which the Rules do not discuss. Note: later discussion indicates that some interrogatives are formed by inverting subject and verb [in contrast to Rule 7].

There are also lists of primary adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions. Here can can see some non-Greco-Latin elements, such as bsera ("yesterday") and saftra ("tomorrow"): but compare postesaftra ("day after tomorrow").

Following the didactic matter, there are 112 pages of parallel texts in Frater and English, including the entire 1945 Charter of the United Nations. Then come 51 pages of the English-Frater lexicon and 71 pages of the Frater-English lexicon.

I might note here that I could not make a good estimate at first glance how many primary roots there are because of the extensive number of compound entries in the vocabularies.

I put the book on reserve at the Library of Congress in case I can get back to it in the next three days, but my preliminary impression is that Frater is a workable language which might be more acceptable to east Asians than many of the Euroclones. With its non-west-European compounding and syntax, the learning difficulty is spread out a little more. However, I am not aware that it ever "went anywhere," like so many IAL projects...

Apart from the UN charter, most of the texts have to do with ethics, religion, and peace.