Talk:Románico

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Contents 1 The Legitimacy of Románico 2 The Claims of Románico 3 Text Example 4 Orthography

[edit] The Legitimacy of Románico

This appears to be a hobby project by the anonymous author of the Blueprints for Babel website, without any user community or practical use. As such it is doesn't appear to warrant a Wikipedia article at this time.--Chris 21:35, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

If it's a hobby project, it's one that's been around for quite a long time now: The Babel site's been on the net at least since the mid- to late 90s, and the language itself is allegedly even older. It may or may not be the webmaster's own invention (he or she doesn't say it is), but there's at least one other site devoted to it, the Aprensar-Románico site. There are also references to it in other artificial language sites ... and for what it's worth, I once met a guy in an AOL chat room talking about fonts (back in the early days of the net before AOL chat rooms became overrun by tweens) who claimed to have written a few poems in the language.

I'm pretty sure that the Babel webmaster is behind both Romanico and the other site. His (let's face it, it's unlikely to be a woman) evasive is one of things that annoys me about him. Though I suppose that's not strictly relevant.

I don't know if it has any sort of user community out in the real world — certainly I've never met anyone who's heard of the language offline. But then, I've never met anyone offline who's heard of Interlingua, either. ;)

In any case, whether or not anyone still speaks a language hardly means that it's no longer of use or interest to anyone; after all, Adjuvilo and Latino Sine Flexione were both somebody's hobby projects, both are now effectively dead (or close to it), and yet both have entries in Wikipedia. So far there are no complaints about either one of them being there. — Morfran 05:46, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Historically, LsF was pretty significant. Peano published some of his work in it, and there was a fair sized user group. Adjuvilo is obviously more obscure, but I suspect it was a more clearly worked out system.--Chris 18:04, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] The Claims of Románico

Románico is an international auxiliary language created in 1991 and heavily influenced by Esperanto, Ido, and Interlingua. The chief differences between Románico and these languages are:

   * [1] It has a lexicon rigorously based on late Vulgar Latin;
   * [2] It has a simpler, creole-like grammar;
   * [3] It has a special definite article (il) used to refer to a noun's entire class, as in servar il hómino "to serve humankind";
   * [4] It has a gender-neutral pronoun used only to refer to human beings;
   * [5] It has a verb system that can be rendered both synthetically and analytically.

How many of these claims are tenable?

• Number 1. Not really. First, the lexicon is not based rigorously based on V.L., when it includes words like snoba and the whole Greco-Latin technical lexicon. You might argue that some forms are reminiscent of V.L., but that's arguably also true of Interlingua, which has a strong Proto-Romance, if not V.L. component.

• Number 2. Not at all. The grammar doesn't strike me as the least bit creole-like. Compare these identifying features from the linked article on creoles:

1. Movement rules: Subject Verb Object word order, with similar mechanisms for using word order to apply focus to one of these constituents.
2. Articles: definite article applied to specific and identified noun phrase, indefinite article applied to specific and newly-asserted noun phrase, and zero for nonspecific noun phrase.
3. TMA (Tense-Modality-Aspect) verb systems.
4. distinction of realized and unrealized complements
5. relativization and subject-copying

It doesn't have any of these features. The verbal paradigm is as uncreolish as you can get. Nope, it's pure Euroclone, pure Standard Average Europe plus idiosyncrasies.

• Number 3. Presumbly true.

• Number 4. Arguably true. Sounds like Esperanto ri, but that not official of course. Is Ido lu not for animates only? Is incorrect to use this Romanico pronoun for animals, or extraterrestrials, or spirits?

• Number 5. No, if I undestand the claim. Interlingua also has parallel synthetic/analytical verbal paradigms, at least for the simple tenses.

I'll make a few edits based on this critiques. Let me know how valid they are.--Chris 21:41, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I notice that the creole claim is a recent addition. Still, I'm deleting the point, 'cos it's certainly debatable whether the grammar is really simpler than the other languages mentioned. The verbal paradigm, for example, seems quite complicated.--Chris 21:56, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

It looks like most of the errors in the intro are due to informational decay (that is, someone edited down the original description to the point that it was no longer true). --Chris 22:31, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

Yup, not only is the language not "rigorously" based on Vulgar Latin, it doesn't seem to be based on Vulgar Latin at all per se. While it does claim to observe a more or less rigorous formula for including words into its lexicon, It's own home page describes its lexicon as being "distilled from the source forms of modern Romance words", which, obviously, is not always VL.

I agree that the grammar seems mostly Euroclone. However, the language does seem to have some traits in common with creoles, at least according to the description of pidgins in Wikipedia:

• Subject-Verb-Object: According to the article, that's the language's preferred word order. Of course, other, non-creoles are SVO as well; perhaps that's not what was meant as an example of its "creoleness".

• Separate words that indicate tense: On the one hand, Románico has the usual Esperanto-like synthetic verb conjugations, but it also has a system of using particles instead. I'm guessing that's what was being referred to as "creole-like". Still, a bold claim as written.

As to whether or not this contributes to a "simpler" grammar, I suppose that if it only had the analytic system, then the claim might be true; having both systems might be confusing.

The epicene pronoun does certainly sound like Esperanto's ri, although I don't think ri has a plural form. Also, Ido's lu, as the singular form of its all-inclusive word for "they", is similarly all-inclusive, and refers to inanimate as well as animate things. To that extent, then, claim #4 seems true.

Finally, near as I can figure, Interlingua only offers analytical verb forms in the compound tenses: io ha create, io es create, io ha essite create. The simple tenses are strictly synthetic ... and variable (ex. crea, vole, habeva). In Románico one can apparently use the same verb form (root + -en) in combination with a particle to indicate all moods and tenses. So claim #5 is probably true. — Morfran 9 January 2006

No, Interlingua's got 2 future tenses (scribera vs va scriber), 2 pasts (scribeva vs ha scribite), and theoretically 2 conditionals (scriberea vs velle scriber). A lot of users seem to treat the compound and simple pasts as in English (wrote vs have written), but if I read the grammar correctly, they're supposed to be more like French or German -- that is, more or less synonomous.--Chris 01:04, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Ah, yes, I forgot about va + -r, although my own Gode grammar (simply called "Interlingua", 1954) makes no reference to the passato being the same in meaning as the perfecto. If they are indeed the same, then I suppose my criticism of Románico would have to be extended to Interlingua, too: two ways to conjugate the same verb and produce the same meaning is probably one way too many.

I've wondered about that too, seeing that English doesn't have a synthetic future or conditional. I think they decided on the double system to cover complex tenses. If you don't have analytic forms, you'll need synthetic forms for the past perfect, future conditional, and you really don't want to go there in an IAL. On the other hand, without the synthetic forms, sentences like "My book would be published the following April" become really awkward:

Mi libro ha vadite esser publicate le aprilo sequente.

as opposed to

Mi libro vadeva esser publicate...

The four-unit verb gives me brain freeze.

I Googled some creole languages to get a closer look than what's offered in Wikipedia right now, mainly to see how, say, the Haitian creole verb system compares with Románico's claim. Here's a sample:

• Mwen te pale "I (had) talked"
• M ap pale "I am talking"
• Mwen t ap pale "I was talking"
• Mwen konn pale "I talk (regularly)"
• Mwen va pale "I will talk"
• Mwen t a pale "I would have talked"

As versus:

• Mi has parlen "I (had) talked"
• Mi (nun) parlen "I am talking"
• Mi has ta parlen "I was talking"
• Mi fa parlen "I talk (regularly)"
• Mi van parlen "I will talk"
• Mi volde has parlen "I would have talked"

Doesn't seem all that different in kind, really. Or complicated, unless one regards the Haitian paradigm as complicated, too.

I agree that this is pretty creolish, or would be without the -en on parlen. But the whole verbal paradigm is not.

In any case, it might be better to change the claim to one of offering a more thorough-going analytic system rather than delete it outright, unless Interlingua also has an analytic imperative and one of Interlingua's perfective conditional tenses is synonymous with the simple conditional. ;)

Well, in a sense: Labora! is analysable as either synthetic (with a zero affix) or analytic (with a zero particle). :-)

Oh, and one other thing: according to the Románico home page, it looks like its epicene pronoun is indeed for humans and humans alone; animals, extraterrestrials, and spirits are all "it". (Perhaps the spirits of humans warrant the epicene pronoun; I guess that's up to the speaker.) — Morfran 03:32, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

Interlineal comments by me--Chris 18:20, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Text Example

Can someone find a better text example than that weird Russian language propaganda? 81.232.72.53 00:06, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

I added a variation of the sample used on the Interlingua page. 66.27.183.171 21:04, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

Why not use a straight translation of the Interlingua version, so people can compare them?--Chris 22:31, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

The sample text was altered to make it more appropriate to this discussion page. The changes are minor and obvious, so the comparison is still there. 66.27.183.171 22:59, 16 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Orthography

If we're going to keep this article, someone should provide some info on the earlier orthography, which I recall being quite interesting and well-thought-out, better than the esperantoid mess we have now.--Chris 18:45, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I remember that it used to have a "one sound, one letter" approach like Esperanto, and that it said something about not being picky regarding what diacritic marks it used (although I don't recall it ever using ŋt or some of the other alternate characters/sounds listed in the article's latest update), but apart from the circumflex over the "g", what esperantoid mess are you referring to? Morfran 03:59, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh, wait — by the "mess we have now" I thought you were referring to the orthography shown in the article here until very recently. My bad. The alphabet now posted is definitely a mess. Perhaps the person who made the changes can indicate his or her source, since the current Wiki article alphabet differs from the one shown on the two external Románico sites. Morfran 05:33, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I haven't looked closely at the external sites lately. Maybe it's unfair to call the present setup "esperantoid": while the ĝ strikes me as poor choice, the ħ etc. are utterly dreckful. What I liked about the old orthography, if I remember it correctly, was the use of grave accents to mark vowels that sometimes carried a non-standard stress (a cancelled acute accent, so to speak). So, if woman is fémina, then feminism would be fèminismo or something. I don't know if it's really useful, but I though it was kind of elegant, unlike the foolishness we have now.--Chris 05:54, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Ah, yes, I dimly recall there being grave accent or circumflex or something to mark where non-standard stress would normally fall on a root changed by suffixes. Nowadays, I think, "feminism" is just feminismo. I don't mind the ĝ so much, but maybe j would have been a better way to go. I guess it's really a matter of one's sense of aesthetics. Morfran 07:10, 1 February 2006 (UTC)