Lengua Universal
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(Redirected from La Lengua Universal)
| Conlang | Lengua Universal |
| Author | Bonifacio Sotos Ochando |
| Year Began | 1851 |
| Language Type | philosophical language |
| Lexicon Size | N/A |
| Etymologies | No |
| Grammar | No |
| Sample Texts | No |
| Primer | No |
Lengua Universal, a philosophical language, was developed by Bonifacio Sotos Ochando in 1851.
Jorge Luis Borges wrote in "El idioma analítico de John Wilkins" (translated from Spanish to English by Lilia Graciela Vázquez):
- In the language of Bonifacio Sotos Ochando (1845) imaba means building; imaca, harem; imafe, hospital; imafo, pesthouse; imari, house; imaru, country house; imedo, column; imede, pillar; imego, floor; imela, ceiling; imogo, window; bire, bookbinder; birer, bookbinding. (This last list belongs to a book printed in Buenos Aires in 1886, the 'Curso de Lengua Universal', by Dr. Pedro Mata.)
The numbers 1 through 5 are siba, sibe, sibi, sibo, sibu. The letter A signifies material things: aba, "element"; ababa, "oxygen"; ababe, "hydrogen".
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Overall characteristics
This section is a translation (by User:Zompist) of the summary offered by Manuel Sanz Ledesma in the first link below. I think the rest of Sanz Ledesma’s grammatical sketch can be followed fairly easily even by non-Spanish speakers.
The structure of LU [Lengua universal] is based on the following:
- All the elements of LU are ordered by the sequence of the alphabet, vowels and consonants; e.g. abati, abato, abatu, abaca, abace, abaci are names of chemical elements; ca, ce, ci, co, cu are all prepositions, etc.
- It is always possible to add a new element to a list, principally by adding vowels to an existing element. To use the preceding examples, abatua, abatue... could be new chemical elements; one could even create new prepositions cea, cee, cei.... If I’m not mistaken, the vocabulary of LU is like the set of rational numbers: ordered but uncountable.
- LU uses its phonemes in a mechanical way. Rather like numbers, in which the change of a digit changes the value radically, concepts are distinguished one from another without redundancy. The same principle is used in Esperanto, Volapük and many other conlangs, but only in morphology: e.g., the Esperanto present amas, past amis, future amos, conditional amus.
- Another surprising aspect of LU is the option to insert not only transitional sounds (such as [h] between vowels), but also meaningless syllables for euphony.
Even given its internal logic, there are aspects of LU which are difficult to justify:
- In general, Dr. Sotos gives LU all the morphemes that occur to him, whether necessary or not. Thus, about gender, he says, “Gender is even less necessary than the articles... The feminine can be formed by adding e to nouns denoting things with sex... We have designated words for the genders, so that this resource present in other languages is available." Thus there are affixes, presumably optional, to distinguish masculine, feminine, and common gender, as well as one “for nouns with a neuter ending.”
- As seen in the previous point, often the morphological categories are not homogenous, and they are not explained clearly (there are two ways of forming feminines).
- The author permits many exceptions.
- It seems that LU was not thoroughly proofed. There are redundancies, and also cases of ambiguity difficult to swallow in an instrument for communication. Among other features, one can note that declination is accomplished either with suffixes or with prefixes, different for nouns and adjectives.
- The book I read is devoted more to a defense of the project than to a description of the language, and has few usage examples and no extended text. In general, the syntax is not established, though the author claims that it is “rational”. The word order in the examples is generally that of Spanish (SVO), but it can be freely changed.
...The initial letter of the word determines its semantic category:
| a | Non-living material things | b | Education and liberal arts |
| am | Astronomy | c | Mechanical arts and tools |
| ar | Mineral kingdom | d | Civil society |
| at | Liquids and gases | f | Justice |
| e | Living bodies | g | Military |
| ec | Vegetable kingdom | j | Navigation |
| em | Animal kingom | ji, jo, ju | Trade, contracts, transport |
| i | The human body | l | Private relationships |
| ic | Food | m | Amusements, games |
| ig | Clothing | n | Religion: General, Christian, hierarchy, administration |
| ip | Health and sickness | p | Religion: exterior part |
| o | Relating to sound | pl | Religious systems, heresies, etc. |
| on | Grammar | r | Most general section |
| or | Poetry | s | Pronouns |
| ot | Science | si | Numbers |
| u | Relating to will (virtues, vices, etc.) | so | Time |
| t | Relations between things |
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External links
| Site | Broken Link | Author | Site Languages |
| http://www.geocities.com/msanzledesma/sotos.htm | No | Manuel Sanz Ledesma | Spanish |
| http://www.alamut.com/subj/artiface/language/johnWilkins.html | No | Jorge Luis Borges | English |
| http://www.invisiblelighthouse.com/langlab/bibliography.html | No | Rick Harrison | English |
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Bibliography
- Sotos Ochando, Bonifacio. Proyecto y ensayo de una lengua universal y filosofica. Madrid: 1851, 2nd edn. 1852; 112 p.
- Sotos Ochando, Bonifacio. Projet d'une langue universel. Paris: Lecoffre, 1855; 270+ p.
- Sotos Ochando, Bonifacio. Diccionario de lengua universal. Madrid: 1862; 166+ p.
- Sotos Ochando, Bonifacio. Nomenclatura del reino vegetal, acomodada al proyecto de lengua universal. Madrid: 1862; 16 p.
- Selbor, L. Estudio filologico sobre lengua universal. Madrid: 1888; 84 p. PM 8504.
