Translation exercise

It seems like a rite of passage for conlangers to translate the Babel verses of Genesis. But I'd like to start experimenting with a translation of verse 30:22 of the Qur'an.

Et ex signos Ei sunt genese de caelos et gea cae variatione de glossas et colores vestri - ecce, in eceino sunt signos ad scientes.

And among His signs are the creation of the heavens and the earth and the variation of your languages and colors. Surely in that are signs for those who know. (Q30:22)

There are probably a few mistakes I'd have to hammer out. But it's a start.

Various indicative verb forms

As Vulgare currently stands, verbs have been simplified to express aspect and not tense. The imperfect form expresses an event that is continuing, which may be in the present time, sometime in the past, or sometime in the future. In order to express different concepts, Vulgare would use the sentence context or various helper verbs and participles. In order to choose these forms, I believe it beneficial to see the evolution of verbs in Latin's offspring languages like Spanish and French, as well as Classical Greek's modern offspring. In this post, I'll go through the indicative tenses one by one.

Active Tenses:

Present Tense

The present tense expresses an action which is continuing and is thus imperfect. This is the most basic verb form. Now if someone wants to stress the fact that the action is present progressive, one can use the verb esse (to be) + the active participle.

I am hearing - audio or sum audiente

Past Imperfect

The past imperfect tense expresses an action progressing in the past but not necessarily completed. The sentence "I was loving" would be expressed in Latin as amabam and in greek as ephiloun. Now this could be expressed in Vulgare using the perfect form of esse + the active participle. It could also be expressed by incorporating the Greek prefix e- which expresses past events.

I was hearing - e-audio or fui audiente

Future

In romance languages, the future tense of Latin was dropped and a new construction developed using the infinitive + habere (to hold, have). Thus you have the French future verai from ver (to see) + ai (I have) = I hold to seeing, I will see. Also, modern languages often use the helping verb ire (to go) + the infinitive. Either forms would work, but if contracting, I would suggest using an apostrophe to better represent the origin of the construct.

I will hear - io/habeo audire or audir'eo where audir'eo = audire + habeo

I'm dropping the Latin active future participle for the following:

auditurus (L.) --> iente/habente audire or audir'ente

Present Perfect

This tense shows that a verb has been currently completed, and although the perfective form is sufficient to express this, one may also want a simpler way to express this concept that corresponds to the developments in modern Romance languages and modern Greek. Over time, the Latin perfect participle transitioned into a passive participle, but it still retained part of its original role when complexed with the verb habere (to have). In French, for instance, saying "J'ai vu la fille" literally meant "I hold the girl seen." I believe modern Greek also has this development using have - echo. This can be easily incorporated into Vulgare.

I have heard - audavi or habeo/echo audito

The perfect participle can be formed as the following structure:

habente/echente audito

Pluperfect

This can be formed in a couple of ways paralleling forms above:

I had heard - e-audavi or habui audito

Future Perfect

You may get the drift. There are more options than the one below:

I will have heard - haber'eo audito

Passive:

Present

We have a conjugation for passive verbs, but one can also use the passive participle.

I am heard - audior or sum audito

Past Imperfect

I was heard - e-audior or fui audito

Future

I will be heard - io/habeo esse audito or ess'eo audito

Perfect

For the perfect forms, we may need a perfect participle of the verb esse (to be), maybe something as simple as eta/o. Thus one comes upon the following.

I have been heard - habeo/echo eto audito

Since the Latin perfect participle transitioned into a present passive participle, as we have in Vulgare, the new perfect participle would be made similar to the formation above. 

auditus (L.) --> habente/echente eto audito

Pluperfect

I had been heard - habui eto audito

Future Perfect

I will have been heard - haber'eo eto audito

There may be a few kinks in the schema above. Nothing's final.

Keeping the Greek Aorist

So I've been thinking about the verb situation a bit and got some advice from the conlang list too. As I mentioned before, the goal of Vulgare is to simplify Latin grammar to make it accessible, while maintaining enough complexity such that users may be able to "get by" if they were to read an actual Latin text. The same consideration exists for Greek vocabulary.

Vulgare thus maintains verb number and person, concepts inherent to Latin and Greek. I also kept a distinction between the imperfect and the perfect so that users will know the difference various Latin verb forms. Now, Greek verbs have a third root that I'd also like to maintain - the aorist, which is technically neither imperfect or perfect. Even modern Greek maintains the aorist root form, so I feel it's a concept that users should be familiar with. But how can it be incorporated into the language with Latin-based verbs that don't have an aorist? I don't really feel like creating a new aorist form for those verbs, so maybe users would just have to learn that some verbs have aorist forms and some verbs don't, which I don't believe would be a problem because the aorist form would probably not be used so much overall. Here's what I'm currently thinking:

For the (Latin-derived) verb amare - to love

Imperfect: amo, amas, amat, amamus, amatis, amant

Perfect: amavi, amavis, amavit, amavimus, amavitis, amavent

No Aorist

Imperative: ama

Active Participle: amante

Passive Participle: amata/o

Full principle parts (amo, amare, amavi, amata)

For the (Greek-derived) verb philere - to love

Imperfect: philo, philes, philet, philemus, philetis, philent

Perfect: pephileci, pephilecis, pephilecit, pephilecimus, pephilecitis, pephilecent

Aorist: philesa (or ephilesa), philesas, philesat, philesamus, philesatis, philesant

Imperative: phile (which will be homographic with the word for friend)

Active Participle: philente

Passive Participle: philomena/o

Full principle parts (philo, philere, pephileci/philesa, philomena)

So users would be just required to learn the principle parts of any verb with the addition of the aorist form if it's a Greek-derived verb. I'm not sure if the aorist form should have the initial e- attached to it. I was thinking of possibly having that initial e- as a generalized tense marker to indicate past tense (and I seem to remember that Peano suggested the same idea in his Latino Sine Flexione).

No it's all fine and good to have specified aspects (imperfect, perfect, and aorist), but there are more tenses than that (the future, for instance). I'll deal with that in my next post.

u/v and i/j

My intention is that there would be no difference between the letters v and u and i and j. I'm only using one or the other out of convention and visual harmony, but in Vulgare (or possibly Uulgare if one pleases), there would be no difference. The sounds would be pronounced according to the classical method, as vowels or vowel approximates.

Prepositions

We haven't discussed prepositions as of yet. They're not too difficult, since they are not declined and thus can be taken directly. Yet certain prepositions in Latin and Greek can have different meanings based on the case of the nouns they govern, and I'm not sure how to maintain that distinction. I'll deal with that later.

ab - from

ad - to

amphi - around, about, concerning

ana - up, throughout

ante - before

anti - instead of, in the place of

apo - from, away from

apud - by, before

cata - down from, against, according to, throughout

circa - about

circum - around

cis - this side of

clam - unknown to

coram - in the presence of

contra - against

cum - with

de - down from, from, of

dia - through, by means of, on account of, because of

eis - into

erga - towards (of relation)

ex - out of, from

extra - outside

epi - upon, on, onto, in the time of

hyper - beyond, above, on behalf of

hypo - under, subject to, by

in, en - into, in, at

infra - below

inter - between

intra - within

iuxta - close to

meta - with, after

ob - in front of

palam - in the presence of

para - beside, beyond, contrary to

penes - in the power of

per - through

peri - around, about, concerning

pone - behind

post - behind, after

prae - in front of

praeter - past, beyond

pro - before, in front of, rather than

procul - far from

prope - near

propter - near, because of

pros - to, towards, near

secundum - following on

simul - together with

sine - without

sub - under

subter - under

super - over, above

supra - over

syn - in the company of

tenus - as far as

trans - across

versus - towards

ultra - beyond

usque - right up to

More Greek-based verbs: past participle

Now I mentioned a way to add Greek verbs into the mix a few posts ago. Now, the verbs derived from Latin have four principle parts that I intend users will memorize: the imperfect, the infinitive, the perfect, and the passive participle. I've only mentioned my thoughts concerning the indicative and the perfect forms (which are by no means set), but I wanted to mention also the passive participle which can be derived directly from the Greek present perfect participle.

Compare the four principle parts of:

the Greek-origin verb "to stop:" pavo, pavere, epausi (or pepauci), and pavomena/o

the Latin-origin verb "to love:" amo, amare, amavi, and amata/o

Long time, no post

Got caught up in med school for the past few months. Hopefully I can start up something again.