Novial

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Novial
Spoken in: various countries
Timeline/Universe: international auxiliary language
Total speakers: ca. 1000
Genealogical classification: a posteriori
primarily Romance-based
Basic word order: SVO
Morphological type: agglutinating > isolating
Morphosyntactic alignment: accusative
Created by:
Otto Jespersen 1928

Novial is an international auxiliary language designed by the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen, published in 1928. Novial is thus the only major auxlang designed by an academic linguist. It is a moderately naturalistic a posteriori language based on the major languages of Europe, mainly the Romance languages.

Novial never had a large speaker base, but a small international community exists.

Phonology

Consonants

Labial Alveolar Postalveolar Velar Glottal
Stops p b t d tʃ~ʃ dʒ~ʒ k g
Fricatives f v s~z h
Nasals m n
Liquids and Semivowel l r j

Vowels

Front Central Back
High i u
Mid e o
Low a

Morphology

The grammar of Novial largely follows Standard Average European patterns. Nouns are inflected only for plural (suffix -s, -es after consonant) and genitive (–(e)n). Nouns denoting males end in -o, nouns denoting females end in -a, nouns denoting beings of either sex end in -e.

Adjectives end in –i, adverbs in –im.

The definite article is an indeclinable li. The personal pronouns are:

Singular Plural
1st person me nus
2nd person vu vus
3rd person, masculine lo los
3rd person, feminine la las
3rd person, common le les
3rd person, neuter lu lus
Impersonal on

Like nouns, pronouns take genitive –(e)n.

Verbs form tenses with auxiliary verbs:

Tense Auxiliary
Past did
Future sal
Conditional vud
Perfect ha

The past tense can also be expressed by a suffix -(e)d.

There are two passives. The "become" passive is formed by the auxiliary bli and the uninflected verb. The "be" passive is formed by the auxiliary es and the past participle (suffix -(e)t.

Pronouns, demonstratives, correlatives

The morphology of pronouns, demonstratives and correlatives is consistent with that of nouns, adjectives and adverbs, and therefore is extensible. For example:

demonstrative te ‘that one’ (animate) ta ‘that female’ to ‘that male’ tanti ‘so much’ tali ‘that kind’ talim ‘in that way’
interrogative que ‘who’ qua ‘what female’ quo ‘what male’ quanti ‘how much’ quali ‘what kind of’ qualim ‘how’
relative ke ‘[the one] who’ ka ‘[the female] who’ ko ‘[the male] who’ kanti ‘[the amount] which’ kali ‘[the kind] which’ kalim ‘as’
indefinite irge ‘anyone’ irga ‘any female’ irgo ‘any male’ irganti ‘any amount’  irgali ‘any kind’ irgalim ‘in any way’
other … altre ‘someone else’  altra ‘another female’ altro ‘another male’  altranti ‘a different amount’ altrali ‘a different kind’ altralim ‘otherwise’

External link

This article is part of a series on International Auxiliary Languages.

Romance-based Auxlangs: Aercant * Atlango * Interlingua * Latin Nov * Novial * Occidental (Interlingue) * Panroman * Romanal
Germanic-based Auxlangs: Folksprak * Nordien
Slavic Auxlangs: Novoslovnica
Turkic Auxlangs: Jalpi Turkic
African Auxlangs: Afrihili
Mixed-Origin Auxlangs: Esperanto * Adjuvilo * Ido * Ayola * Medial Europan * Bolak * Kotava * North American * Pantos-dimou-glossa * Pasetok * Sasxsek * Universalglot * Volapük
A priori auxlangs: -