don't discount INDIA. economic projections. hindi.

India projected to join China in surpassing size of the U.S. economy by
2050 - Business - International Herald Tribune
MUMBAI - The Indian economy will join that of China in surpassing the size
of the U.S. economy by 2050 to become a motor of global growth, according to
a new forecast by Goldman Sachs, the investment bank.
The United States is currently the world's largest economy. Goldman
forecasts that the Chinese economy will pass that of the United States
around 2035, while India will do the same about a decade later.
India has moved onto a much faster growth trajectory than the bank had
previously expected, fueled by strong and steady productivity gains in its
legions of new factories, which are producing everything from brassieres to
cars.
The rise of India will lead to increasing global competition for resources
and more pressure on the environment, Goldman said.
Goldman now expects the Indian economy to grow at 8 percent a year through
2020, higher than the 5.7 percent rate it predicted in 2003. Indian trade
has been growing at 25 percent a year since 2003.
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D: Hmm. I was read an article today on how their recovery is at risk of superheating the economy with too much inflation. So they are reining in money supply.
Nice problem to have!

Hmm. It would seem that I must look farther into the future than I have to date.
So I shudder to ask, how would Decimese in its present (in the works) incarnation (precarnation?) fare for the Hindi-Urdu language?

Modern Standard Hindi is the official language of India,[1] while Urdu is the national language of Pakistan as well as a scheduled language in India. The two are often held as separate languages on the bases of higher vocabulary choice (and thus mutual intelligibility) as well as cultural orientation (see Ausbau); however on a linguistic basis they are two standardized registers of a single subdialect, that being the Khari boli dialect of Delhi[2] (a diasystem). In keeping with such a linguistic analysis, Hindi and Urdu occupy a single descriptive phonology page, with attention paid to phonological variations between the two registers, and associated dialects, wherever they arise.

Hindi/Urdu distinctions of quality, or length accompanied by quality (that is, /ɪ ~ iː/ and /ʊ ~ uː/).[4]

Hindi/Urdu natively possesses a symmetrical ten-vowel system.[3] The vowels: [ə], [ɪ], [ʊ] are always short in length, while the vowels: [aː, iː, uː, eː, oː, ɛː, ɔː] are always considered long (but see the details below).

D: OK the bit of vowel gemination will throw off other traditions.

The standard educated Delhi pronunciations [ɛ, ɔ] have common diphthongal realizations,

D: good. Good match to Mandarin and English traditions here.

As in French, there are nasalized vowels in Hindi-Urdu. There is disagreement over the issue of the nature of nasalization...

D: missing in the other traditions.

Consonants

Hindi/Urdu has a core set of 28 consonants inherited from earlier Indo-Aryan. Supplementing these are 2 consonants that are internal developments in specific word-medial contexts,[10] and 7 consonants originally found in loan words, whose expression is dependent on factors such as status (class, education, etc.) and cultural register (Modern Standard Hindi vs Urdu).
Most native consonants may occur geminate (doubled in length; exceptions are /bʱ, ɽ, ɽʱ, ɦ/). Geminate consonants are always medial and preceded by one of the interior vowels (that is, /ə/, /ɪ/, or /ʊ/). They all occur monomorphemically except [ʃː] which occurs only in a few Sanskrit loans where a morpheme boundary could be posited in between (i.e. /nɪʃ + ʃil/ for [nɪʃːil] 'without shame').[7]
For the English speaker, a notable feature of the Hindi/Urdu consonants is that there is a four-way distinction of phonation among plosives, rather than the two-way distinction found in English. The phonations are:
tenuis, as /p/, which is like ‹p› in English spin
voiced, as /b/, which is like ‹b› in English bin
aspirated, as /pʰ/, which is like ‹p› in English pin, and
murmured, as /bʱ/.
The last is commonly called "voiced aspirate"

D: Decent match on consonants. Again, the gemination is lacking in the other traditions.
English voiced/voiceless (AKA voiced/mute), as well as Mandarin aspiration are all used in H-U tradition.
Not quite sure what 'murmered' means.

The murmured consonants are quite a faithful preservation of these sounds right from Proto-Indo-European, a distinction which was lost in all branches of Indo-European family except Indo-Aryan. In the IPA, the five murmured consonants can also be transcribed as /b̤/, /d̪̤/, /ɖ̈/, /dʒ̈/ and /ɡ̈/ respectively.

Oh. OK, won't be using that.

The fricative /h/ in Hindi-Urdu is typically voiced (as [ɦ]), especially when surrounded by vowels, but there is no phonemic difference between this voiceless fricative and its voiced counterpart (Hindi-Urdu's ancestor Sanskrit has such a phonemic distinction).

D: like English. And Decimese.
I.e. word-initial consonant is voiceless.
Word-mid consonant is voiced, like the surrounding vowels.
This is not really phonemic. It is just a convention.
Since there is no distinction between, for example, F/V or S/Z.

Hindi-Urdu has a stress accent, but it is not so important as in English. To predict stress placement, the concept of syllable weight is needed:
A light syllable (one mora) ends in short vowel /ə, ɪ, ʊ/: V
A heavy syllable (two moras) ends in a long vowel /aː, iː, uː, eː, ɛː, oː, ɔː/ or in a short vowel and a consonant: VV, VC
An extra-heavy syllable (three moras) ends in a long vowel and a consonant, or a short vowel and two consonants: VVC, VCC
Stress is on the heaviest syllable of the word, and in the event of a tie, on the last such syllable. However, the final mora of the word is ignored when making this assignment (Hussein 1997) [or, equivalently, the final syllable is stressed either if it is extra-heavy, and there is no other extra-heavy syllable in the word or if it is heavy, and there is no other heavy or extra-heavy syllable in the word]. For example, with the ignored mora in parentheses (Hayes 1995:276ff):

D: OK not sure yet, but penultimate-stress systems usually imply heavy infixing. Let's see if I'm right.

Content words in Hindustani normally begin on a low pitch, followed by a rise in pitch.[19][20] Strictly speaking, Hindi-Urdu, like most other Indian languages, is rather a syllable-timed language. The schwa /ə/ has a strong tendency to vanish into nothing (syncopated) if its syllable is unaccented.

D: OK the pitch-rising of content words is not present in English. I assume a Mandarin speaker would find it somewhat easier.
English speakers do use TWO rising/falling tricks in the interrogative form.
1) question entire statement - last word pitch rising.
2) question just first topicalized entry in sentence - pitch lowers.

Syllable timing

In a syllable-timed language, every syllable is perceived as taking up roughly the same amount of time, though the absolute length of time depends on the prosody. Syllable-timed languages tend to give syllables approximately equal stress, and do not generally have reduced vowels.

D: odd. H-U does reduce schwa to nothing in unstressed syllables, just like English.
But it also has a French-style syllable stress timing system.

In many cases, the meaning of a verb in Hindi/Urdu is broader than the meaning of a translation equivalent. While inherent verbal aspect is determined not just by verb meaning, but also by the properties of the object, aspect in Hindi/Urdu is somewhat less specified by the main verb. The sentence aspect/tense affixes as well as verbal compounds define the interpretation as state, achievement, activity or accomplishment, in combination with some core verb meaning.

D: Hmm. Sounds complicated.

A quick skim read of some sample words suggests that consonant clusters are a no-no for H-U.

So a brief summary is as follows:
Decimese...
1) vowels. fine.
2) diphthongs. likely fine.
3) triphthongs... probably not. That is OK - they are optional in a very advanced version.
4) consonants - fine.
5) syllable structure-fine
6) advanced consonant clusters- likely NOT OK. That's OK - they're optional.

I am still not sure how to express stress. A somewhat taxonomic language, is it prefixing or suffixing? Dunno.
The last syllable may be easiest.
Might be good to add optional diphthongs primarily to this last one, to use H-U instincts to stress a diphthong (or somewhat geminated vowel) more.

---
In conclusion, so long as we stick to the basic Decimese version, a speaker from India should be fine.
They'll try to overanalyze for sentence cues about what the verb means. But Decimese is simpler.
Their tendency to look for verb post-positions favours an adverb-after-verb arrangement.
However, Decimese in its basic form uses rigid word order, and the particles PRECEDE the verb.
Or are embedded within it.

I was thinking about the idea of showing the semantic deep structure in the phonemic shallow structure.
But optionally. Agreement is also optional. This would basically amount to emphasis.
I.e. Explicitly showing a verb to be stative, or transitive. Showing a subject - actor- to be animated, even human. This cues us to watch for 'action verbs'. Showing the by/to aspect in the verb of a subject-with-object.
Basically, a very rudimentary set of brief grammatical particles can serve as
1) a lexicon to discuss grammar formally, for teaching, and
2) also a 'dummy version' or 'training wheels' that can be overtly indicated as required, for clarity.
H-Urdu speakers might like my idea for use of fairly general verbs in the construction of more complex ones.
I.e. to make/ be made/become. Showing adjective-like states with 'be', action verbs with 'do'. Showing verbals.

--------
I was thinking about whether I'd want "M" to be word-initial. It does not form consonant clusters very well. Much like LRWY and H. Nor does it appear as second consonant in a cluster.
It really does serve well as the word-final 'end cap'.
The 3 nasal consonants do a good job of showing grammatical part combined with rigid word order.
Things get hazy in a hurry with only 2 nasal consonant finals.
I would need to start showing more details explicitly in a mandatory fashion.
Brevity would be lost.
I think the nasal-final consonant is inspired by Esp-o. Yes, I said that!
Vir- man. Base. Bound base, since it MUST take an ending. Except possibly as the 1st 1/2 of a compound noun?
"Thing" -o. So man vir-o. Viro.
Object? Gotta show it. But we've already added a syllable for thing. So now we just add stuff to that mandatory extra syllable.
Object -n. So vir-o-n. Viron.
Plural? -y- in there. Vir-o-y-n. Viroyn.
On one hand, Esp-o will never be brief with this theme of mandatory extra vowel syllable suffixes.
But beyond that, additional detail does not detract from brevity.
Decimese, through careful syllable planning during the design stage- and shameless appeasing of the Chinese - tries to benefit from the good latter part, but not the former part.
-M, -N, -NG. -N nouN. -NG verb (-iNG). -M adverb/adjective (Modifies Meaning).

Hmm. Trouble is, if I use not 5 but 6 or 7 voiced/voiceless pairs, we run out of single-letter Roman alphabet options.
After all, only X (KS) and Q (KW) are available. Capitalizing would slow down typing. H can be heavily used, since it is often conveniently dropped when inside a word as part of an optional complex word formation.
It follows either a vowel or a nasal consonant as a word particle. Even without spaces in typing, this will clearly indicate word boundaries. I.e. ...-VNHAPADAM...
Word...ending -Vowel plus Nasal Consonant. HA. PADAM. The PB and TD pairs make this explicit.
We even know that word-N and ... word-M can ONLY mean noun and ... adverb.
We EVEN know this can only occur in the first 1/2 of the sentence, since SVO word order ensures this.
SVO. noun-verb-noun. Adjectives AND adverbs precede the related noun and verb. So if we have noun then adverb, it can only happen at the S-V junction.
-----
Possible distant future extension of Decimese.

The English words STRENGTHS intrigues me. CCCVCCC phonemically.
S-T-R. And the complex final consonant cluster.
IF. And I say if! If we plan from the very beginning to have particular S/Z then T/D pairs which 'play well' with a R+vowel particle, THEN - and only then! - could we in some future scenario compact it easily to such a complex form.
Ditto SH-plus following consonants.
Nominally, we'd say s-d-r, or at least de-emphasize the T aspect until it approaches D.

But that is another story for another time. Ditto possible gemination. Ditto possible tones. Possibly the TH/TH pair for some
special duty. Dunno what yet. Possibly in lieu of some unworkable word particle + consonant pair for a particular meaning.

I do believe I am planning my own Lang53/SpeedTalk hybrid!

But first things first. An aux-lang...
1) easy for English
2) easy for Mandarin
3) and then easy for Hindi-Urdu speakers.

My weekend assignment involves reviewing the 1st 1000 most common English words.
And formally describing them via all this semantic stuff I read.
Good thing I'm not dating right now... kinda. <: