Friday, January 7, 2011

Balapuk: a simple conlang

EN: Some languages are complicated: Latin, Russian, Chinese and English among them. Even some conlangs (constructed languages, artificial languages) are complicated. That is what many folk say about Volapük.

One might question- how simple can a conlang be and still get the job done. There is Toki Pona which has a very small vocabulary, and Basic English.... I have decided to experiment on the creation of a simple conlang, using mostly roots from Volapük. I call it Balapuk--- 'bal' from 'balik', meaning basic, and 'puk' meaning language.



While the roots are from Volapuk, I also won't forget that Volapuk used English as a model and a source for words. It is also one of the more accessible languages. So for example in the orthography I will eliminate vowel sounds which don't occur in English. My theory is that most people, if they don't already know English, can find out how a letter is pronounced in English.

Fictional Background of Balapuk:
Balapuk was created in the year 1892. It is used to communicate with aliens who have limited language-learning abilities. The creator of Balapuk was a Japanese linguist who spoke Volapük.

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