just English irregular plural nouns

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_plural#Almost-regular_plurals

ox oxen (particularly when referring to a team of draft animals, sometimes oxes in nonstandard American English)
child children (actually earlier plural "cildra/cildru" plus -en suffix, forming a double plural)
brother brethren (archaic plural of brother; earlier "brether" plus -en suffix, forming a double plural; now used in fraternal order)
cow kine (archaic/regional; actually earlier plural "kye" [cf. Scots "kye" - "cows"] plus -en suffix, forming a double plural)

D: variants of -en.

No plural difference:

deer
moose
sheep
bison
salmon
pike
trout
fish
swine

Ablaut plurals

The plural is sometimes formed by simply changing the vowel sound of the singular, in a process called ablaut (these are sometimes called mutated plurals):
foot feet
goose geese
louse lice
man men
mouse mice
tooth teeth
woman women

Greek and Latin derived:

* Final a becomes -ae (also -æ), or just adds -s:

alumna alumnae

* Final ex or ix becomes -ices (pronounced /ɨsiːz/), or just adds -es:

index indices /ˈɪndɨsiːz/ or indexes

* Final is becomes es (pronounced /iːz/):

axis axes /ˈæksiːz/

* Final ies remains unchanged:

series series

* Final on becomes -a:

automaton automata

* Final um becomes -a, or just adds -s:

addendum addenda

* Final us becomes -i (second declension, [aɪ]) or -era or -ora (third declension), or just adds -es (especially in fourth declension, where it would otherwise be the same as the singular):

alumnus alumni

* Final as in one case of a noun of Greek origin changes to -antes:

Atlas Atlantes (statues of the hero); but

* Some nouns of French origin add an -x, which may be silent or pronounced /z/:

beau beaux

* Nouns of Hebrew origin add -im or -ot (generally m/f) according to native rules, or just -s:

cherub cherubim/cherubs

Words better known in the plural

Some words of foreign origin are much better known in the plural; usage of the original singular may be considered pedantic or actually incorrect or worse[18] by some speakers. In common usage, the original plural is considered the singular form. In many cases, back-formation has produced a regularized plural.
Original singular Original plural/
common singular Common plural
agendum agenda9 agendas
alga algae algae
biscotto biscotti biscotti
candelabrum candelabra candelabras
datum10 data data (mass noun)
graffito graffiti graffiti (mass noun)
insigne insignia insignias
opus opera operas
panino panini paninis (currently gaining use)
paparazzo paparazzi paparazzi
spaghetto spaghetti spaghetti

D - having fun yet?

Chinese 'xie' for plural (some) seems nice.
But then they have special words for plurals of many many singular words.

In English, herd of cattle et al.

letter font and material recall

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-11573666

Researchers at Princeton University employed volunteers to learn made-up information about different types of aliens - and found that those reading harder fonts recalled more when tested 15 minutes later.

They argue that schools could boost results by simply changing the font used in their basic teaching materials.

12 is the loveliest number. # naming conventions.

Twelves appears in many places and many guises.
It flies in the face of our modern sensibilities.
We just assume that a 1-size-fits-all 10-base system is the way to go.

I will make my case for the need to name #s simply right up to 12.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_length

In physics, the Planck length, denoted ℓP, is a unit of length, equal to 1.616252(81)×10−35 meters. It is a base unit in the system of Planck units.

D - metric-style prefixes to a power-multiple of 3x12 is desirable to easily encapsulate the Planck length. So instead of yocto at 10 -24, we could have something else at 10 -36- Planck length territory.

The imperial system is still widely used. I worked in construction, and can tell you we still do everything with the Imperial measuring system.
We all know inch-feet-yards-miles.
There are a few more but those are the important ones.
Once we reach lengths smaller than inches, we typically use a fraction-2-power system.
I.e. 1/2 ,1/4, 1/8, 1/16ths...
Here we see the importance of a to-the-power # naming convention.
That is also true of the metric-style prefix names, as well as the #s 1,10, and 100.
Really, 10 and 1000 with various powers are the basis for our modern decimal/metric system.

Twelve also appears in time, and has resisted every effort to displace it.

Behind this use of 12 is the backdrop of the sexagesimal system - 60 base.
Sexagesimal (base 60) is a numeral system with sixty as its base. It originated with the ancient Sumerians in the 3rd millennium BC, it was passed down to the ancient Babylonians, and it is still used — in a modified form — for measuring time, angles, and the geographic coordinates that are angles.

The number 60, a highly composite number, has twelve factors, namely { 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, 30, 60 } of which two, three, and five are prime numbers. With so many factors, many fractions involving sexagesimal numbers are simplified. For example, one hour can be divided evenly into sections of 30 minutes, 20 minutes, 15 minutes, 12 minutes, 10 minutes, six minutes, five minutes, etc. Sixty is the smallest number that is divisible by every number from one to six. This is because 60 = 2 × 2 × 3 × 5 = 4 × 3 × 5.

D: take a circle with 360 degrees. Dividing progressively in half, we get 360,180,90, 45 .... 22.5.
Whereas a 100-base system would divide to 100, 50, 25, .... 12.5.
To avoid decimals/fractions for one more division, we'd hafta go up to a 1000 base system.

The importance of the 12-base system is apparent in our English # naming conventions.
We have eleven, twelve and only then the 13-19 "teen" ending.

Finally, we have our 360 (plus a bit) days of the year. Our calendar has 12 months.

Very few aux-langs think to make # names simple beyond 10.
We see above that there are many benefits to a # naming convention that is compact to 12 for brevity of speech.

As always, take Espo for example. ( I dare not utter utter this demonic language's true name - it attracts spammers! <:)
16 Dek ses (one ten and six)
Lojban, et al typically also fall into this trap.
Lojban cycles through the aeiou vowel set twice to reach names to 10.

One last thought. In time, we have the following naming conventions.
Second-minute-hour-day-week-month-year. Only day and year have any natural-world meaning.
We see a similar progression of names for Imperial distances.
The option of a measuring-unit system with a 1-7 or so scale for names, much like #s, may be desirable.
Alternatively, a day-less-1-scale (hour) system could be attractive.
Possibly, a naming convention that uses very brief terms for common multiples could work. E.g. Second is day /24 hours/ 60 minutes/ 60 seconds.

I vaguely entertained a notion to use a time unit convention for the day that reflects geometry. I.e. 360 degrees vs 12 hours. That is 30 degrees per hour. Each degree would be 2 minutes. From there, arc minutes and arc seconds.
It'd be interesting to show time on an old hand-based clock for the year.
The best argument I've heard for why our time-unit second is a second is the rate that the human heart beats at.

Cheers.

how many root words is enough?

http://geography.about.com/od/culturalgeography/a/esperanto.htm

From the base of 15,000 to 20,000 root words - once can combine roots and suffixes to form over 150,000 words in Esperanto.

There is an extensive set of suffixes that can be added to word roots to allow various shades of meaning or newly derived forms; compound words are also used. (Source: "Esperanto," Britannica.com)

----
Lojban's 1300 root words can be easily combined to form a vocabulary of millions of words.

----
Finally, a look at an 'extreme language' - Toki Pona, with very few roots.
I suspect 'simple' translates to 'extremely limited', 'ambiguous' or 'extremely wordy for clarification'. But to capture Tao thought, that's fine.

The entire language has only 123 words

http://en.tokipona.org/wiki/What_is_Toki_Pona%3F

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OK - regarding Esperanto, in what world is 'only 15,000 roots to make 150,000 words' a boast?
Honestly, I sometimes wonder what Esperantists are smoking.
I oversimplify, since a compound word will contain multiple roots/stems/words, but that means that a root is used on average to make only 10 words.
I suppose one can claim that this results in precision - the disambiguation claim of Lojban, ironically enough, though Lobjan has only 1/10 the the roots to work with.

Esperanto- suffixes to allow various shades of meaning.

D: ok, why suffixes? Let's look at English as the de facto world standard. The power on the throne. The folks you need to suck up to...

Well English uses both prefixes and suffixes. Given that suffixes have a certain ordering, one can argue infixes in the middle also.
In English, the prefixes vary the word meaning in nuance, but do not change the grammatical category. For example, view, review, preview.
Whereas suffixes often change the part of grammar. For example, heavy, heaviness.
So the unexamined assumption by Espo that suffixes are the only way to go is mistaken.

For compounded nouns and whatnot, I figure a middle infix is the way to go. Something derived from a simple preposition system.
Again, my example: spaceman.
Do we mean an astronaut? (Literally, a sailor of the stars, or thereabouts.)
Or... do we man an alien extraterrestial.
A man to space. From space?
Here we see the rich potential for using middle-position infixes for compounded lexical items.
How about a human being designed to be suited to orbital existence? A man FOR space.


"Thus the acquirement of this rich, mellifluous, universally-comprehensible language, is not a matter of years of laborious study, but the mere light amusement of a few days. " (Zamenhof)

D; Oh, the bitter tears as I laugh at that! I grind to a halt mid-intro-book after months of study. Like I said, a language by a linguist, for linguists.
That is a variant of a joke about the RPG Rolemaster - a game by an accountant, for accountants...

----
So far, Espo requires:
1) a linguistic background that does not have a rigid word order and
2) is heavily infixing - but particularly with suffixes.
So we are talking about a narrow margin of language speakers.
Leaving... polyglot linguists as the only likely consumers of this language.
Exactly what we see in the comment section.
This is a language doomed to be stillborn.

BTW, Barker, talking about a 'thriving online community' is a polite way of saying an Esperantist is unlikely to find any other speakers in their physical region.
That is NOT a pitch for Espo being widely adopted.
It is a condemnation for the poor early adopters.
But they've had the problem of being early adopters for... a frickin' CENTURY.

D: back to the (low-balled) ONLY 15,000 root word boast - boast? That's a boast?!

I'll reread the most common 1000 English words. And I'll point out which concepts are re-used constantly. THESE are the words that should be emphasized in any initial small group of root words to learn.
This initial step would have addressed some issues of Z's for Espo.

I reiterate my test. The same # of basic-literacy speakers as Espo in 20 years, or bust.
How? 1/10th the interested parties. But 10x easier to learn.

The year is 2010. In 20 years, it'll be 2030. Growing up with an aux-lang for kids to be native speakers means the children will be around 15 for 2045.
The UN's 100th anniversary.
So I have ten years to nail down the basic design with beta tests and open source help.
And then 10 years to recruit learners for the finished product.
NOT beta-testers.
NOT the Espo approach of treating the entire first generation of early adopters as beta-testers!

D: update. Still chipping away at SPE by Chomsky. Gawd so hard...
I should have found a Cole's notes version.
My head hurts.

better than metric. planck measuring system

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_scale

The nature of reality at the Planck scale is the subject of much debate in the world of physics, as it relates to a surprisingly broad range of topics. It may, in fact, be a fundamental aspect of the universe. In terms of size, the Planck scale is unimaginably small (many orders of magnitude smaller than a proton). In terms of energy, it is unimaginably 'hot' and energetic. The wavelength of a photon (and therefore its size) decreases as its frequency or energy increases. The fundamental limit for a photon's energy is the Planck energy, for the reasons cited above

------

D: I speak facetiously, but this'd be our best bet for a unit system compatible with advanced aliens.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_units

Planck units are often semi-humorously referred to by physicists as God's units. They eliminate anthropocentric arbitrariness from the system of units: some physicists argue that communication with extraterrestrial intelligence would have to use such a system of units to make common reference to scale. Unlike the meter and second, which exist as fundamental units in the SI system for historical reasons (in human history), the Planck length and Planck time are conceptually linked at a fundamental physical level.


Planck length Length (L) l_\text{P} = \sqrt{\frac{\hbar G}{c^3}} 1.616 252(81) × 10−35 m
Planck mass Mass (M) m_\text{P} = \sqrt{\frac{\hbar c}{G}} 2.176 44(11) × 10−8 kg
Planck time Time (T) t_\text{P} = \frac{l_\text{P}}{c} = \frac{\hbar}{m_\text{P}c^2} = \sqrt{\frac{\hbar G}{c^5}} 5.391 24(27) × 10−44 s
Planck charge Electric charge (Q) q_\text{P} = \sqrt{4 \pi \varepsilon_0 \hbar c} 1.875 545 870(47) × 10−18 C
Planck temperature Temperature (Θ) T_\text{P} = \frac{m_\text{P} c^2}{k_B} = \sqrt{\frac{\hbar c^5}{G k_B^2}} 1.416 785(71) × 1032 K

----

This would be as provocative as switching to a decimal-based time system from our present sexagesimal one.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time

Decimal time was introduced as part of the French Republican Calendar, which, in addition to decimally dividing the day, divided the month into three décades of 10 days each; this calendar was abolished at the end of 1805. The start of each year was determined according to which day the autumnal equinox occurred, in relation to true or apparent solar time at the Paris Observatory. Decimal time would also have been reckoned according to apparent solar time, depending on the location it was observed, as was already the practice generally for the setting of clocks.

The French made another attempt at the decimalization of time in 1897, when the Commission de décimalisation du temps was created by the Bureau des Longitudes, with the mathematician Henri Poincaré as secretary. The commission proposed a compromise of retaining the 24-hour day, but dividing each hour into 100 decimal minutes, and each minute into 100 seconds. The plan did not gain acceptance and was abandoned in 1900.

D: it failed for the simple reason that folks got one day of rest per 10 not 7 days!

However, switching to a perpetual 3 day weekend today would mitigate this.

Conversions

There are exactly 86,400 standard seconds (see SI for the current definition of the standard second) in a standard day, but in the French decimal time system there are 100,000 decimal seconds in the day, so the decimal second is shorter than its counterpart.
Decimal unit Seconds Minutes Hours h:mm:ss
Decimal second 0.864 0.0144 0.00024 0:00:00.9
Decimal minute 86.4 1.44 0.024 0:01:26.4
Decimal hour 8,640 144 2.4 2:24:00.0

D: Joseph Campbell, my spiritual guru, pointed out the mystical significance of the old time system #s.

In Joseph Campbell's, The Inner Reaches Of Outer Space, he writes about the similarity between the Babylonian and Genesis flood stories. In the Babylonian or Sumerian story, there were ten kings who lived very long lives from creation to the time of the flood. This is given as a total of 432,000 years.

In the Biblical account, there were ten patriarchs between Adam and Noah, who also lived long lives. Noah was 600 years old at the time of the landing of the Ark on the mountains of Ararat (in present day Turkey). The total years add up to 1,656.

In 1,656 years, there are 86,400 weeks, and half that number is 43,200. There are myths about cycles in time, and out of time, so this doubling/halving is not uncommon. He believed that someone carefully gave the age of Noah to secretly hide the time cycle number.

He points out a number of other strange things about the numbers. Viking eddas were found in Iceland that told the story of the Day of Ragnorook, the Doomsday of the Gods. At that time, 800 Divine Warriors will come out of each of the 540 Doors of Valhalla (800 x 540 = 432,000).

The number can be found in an internal clock in the body, as well as in the Cosmos. A trained athlete's heart beats one time each second. In a 24 hour day, that is 86,400 beats.

The earth's axis wobble that causes the precession of the equinoxes is given as 25,920 years. Divided by the ancient number called "soss," 60, which was used in calculations, results in 432.

A manufacturer of golf balls once did a test to find the ideal number of dimples to put on golf balls. It turned out that balls with 432 dimples went farther than the rest.

D: neat!

D: about that heart rate thing... not really.
Lance Armstrong rests at 32 beats per minute.
Mine was so low after 2 cups of coffee that my partner in CPR class thought there was something wrong with me. 60-80 is normal and mine was 50 at that point!
I joke we need 'decimal seconds' to reflect our heart beats on our coffee.

G&M fail. A tove honey loves - return to Jabberwocky

D: its not it's! Bloody hell....
S'ok - HIOXian punctuation can overtly denote which subset a punctuation is expressing. Should be clear.
Still nailing down which figure-shape denotes what aspect of language. Syllable stress and pitch are getting tacked on the left/right half of the HIOX figure presently. Likely. Paired punctuation like brackets and Spanish-style sentence-initial cues imply I should reserve the left/right HIOX for those punctuation symbols. That would leave the 3 tiers (top, mid, low) for stress/pitch.

----

Jabberwocky.

To review:

http://a-new-world-language.blogspot.com/2010/01/through-looking-glass-lightly.html

`Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

That poem is now famously known as “Jabberwocky.” It is often hailed the most important nonsense poem in the English language. But if a reader looks closely, there is a method to the speaker’s madness in this poem. As Humpty Dumpty explains the poem to Alice, he demonstrates that the poet actually created an important, intelligent poem that is not entirely nonsense.
D: English has grammatical indicators. They are a closed class of function words. The list hardly ever changes historically. I think the last addition was from old English, "will".
These function words, infixes and word order all effectively create distinct meaning in English.

Infix cues in English include:
1) plural - s
2) possessive - 's
3) 3rd person singular - s
4) past tense - typically -ed
5) present participle -ing
6) past participle - (have plus) -ed typically
7) comparative and superlative -er and -est.

Word order is SVO - subject verb object. Noun verb noun.
With some details, like Subject: Article, adjective, noun...
Subject and object pronouns provide additional detail.
Subject: I. BUT object: me.
Twas -, and the -y -s
Did - and - in the -:
All -y were the -s,
And the - -s out-.

D: If we used existing standard vocabulary, the first line could easily be as follows.

'Twas pithy, and the funny puns

But even without these known words, the nonsense verse somehow FEELS sensible as our grammar brain organ parses it according to cues.

-----

"A tove honey loves."

By using Yoda style SVO reordering, we have completely spoofed the grammatical cues to denote sentence structure.

Slithy toves - adjective noun(plural).

Honey loves - noun verb.

Both -y -es.

i can only imagine how difficult such variations must be to ESL students.

I keep reading newspaper articles saying immigrants are not being taught enough English.
Well, how about inverting that to English is too hard for most immigrants?
Then the logical conclusion becomes we need a simple interlang for typical adult second-languagers.
An aux-lang - auxiliary language. An artificial designed human language.
Lacking the complex stress contours of English.
(Making headway on Chomsky's SPE. NOT an easy read at all. Finishing up chapter on phonology so I can complete HIOXian. I get the PC that can handle the font design software this afternoon.)

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D: Other English quirks - the illusion of apparent syllable/word abundance with generous syllable design rules.

Take, for example, the apparent simple indefinite article / singular plus adder.
An adder.
Well, it was originally a ... NADDER!
Examples of the reverse can also be found.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/opinions/dont-be-so-quick-to-repudiate-sarah-palins-refudiate/article1664537/

The word “nickname” was originally rendered as an “ekename,” because “eke” is an obsolete word that means “additional.” Similarly, the original word for a “newt” was “ewte,” and one can easily see how “an ewte” became “a newt.” The process often worked in reverse with words that started with “n”: “An adder” was “a nadder,” “an apron” “a napron” and an auger” “a nauger.” Also, “an umpire” was at first a “noumpere,” a word that derived from the Old French nonper, “not equal” and thus qualified to settle disputes.

D: we get no farther ahead if we try removing that particular indefinite article.
Some or any other word preceding it poses the same problem.
Nouns and other grammatical elements lack a distinguishing and unique syllable structure, or choice of phonemes.
Decimese will solve this. <:

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back-formation

Many words came into English by this route: Pease was once a mass noun but was reinterpreted as a plural, leading to the back-formation pea. The noun statistic was likewise a back-formation from the field of study statistics. In Britain the verb burgle came into use in the 19th century as a back-formation from burglar (which can be compared to the North America verb burglarize formed by suffixation).
Other examples are:
adj. "couth" from "uncouth"
Verb "edit" from "editor"
Singular "syrinx", plural "syringes" (from Greek): new singular "syringe" formed
Singular "sastruga", plural "sastrugi" (from Russian): new Latin-type singular "sastrugus" has been used sometimes
"euthanase" or "euthanize" (verb) from the noun "euthanasia".

D: Examples of other 'make-work' English vocabulary items abound.
Notice that the very cues we needed to make sense of Jabberwocky have become the enemy when word boundaries and lexical parsing is considered.
... we've painted ourselves into a corner! Natural languages are like that.
Only a designed language is not.

Note: I'm porting HIOXian and Decimese to LiveJournal blogs. This blog will focus solely on new language news and research. D.

tolkien. the 1 ring. the black speech of Sauron

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Speech

The Ring Inscription
The only example given of "pure" Black Speech is the inscription upon the One Ring:
Ash nazg durbatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul,
ash nazg thrakatulûk, agh burzum-ishi krimpatul.

When translated into English, these words form the lines:
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.
Parallels to natural languages

Russian historian Alexander Nemirovski identified an ergative suffix (-uk in "durbatuluk" is the verb suffix meaning "them all" and is related to object and not to subject, verb forms related to object are specific to ergative languages), and claimed a "strong lexical similarity" to Hurrian (also an ergative language).[1]
Hurrian was a recently deciphered language at the time of the writing of The Lord of the Rings, E. A. Speiser's Introduction to Hurrian appearing in 1941.[2]

http://folk.uib.no/hnohf/blackspeech.htm

D: nice analysis of the Black Speech.

The black speech has a CVC syllable structure.

We will assume for the moment that gh is one sound, rather than a g sound followed by an h sound (which would be unpronounceable finally).

The following consonants are attested: sh, d, r, b, th, k, m, p, t, l, k, gh, z, g, n, h, s.

We know that the l and r are pronounced at the back of the mouth (similar to English but without exception) - this is a sound which the Elves find extremely unpleasant.

Some consonant clusters occur; these are thr, kr, gl, sk initially, and zg, mb, mp, rz, nk finally. Medial consonant clusters usually result from compounding or affixing.
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D: now I have some fun.
http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Otherkin

D: I have had the ill fortune in my life to meet self-identified Otherkin.
I ran into them in gaming circles, being into RPGs myself.

Otherkin think they are various mythical creatures. "I'm an ELF!" Yeah, sure you are....
It is a strange fringe sect. By that I mean a religion that never got popular.
It can be best summarized, as by my roomie, who made a university presentation about this group, as if all the kids playing Shadowrun scifi/fantasy RPG about awakened modern supernaturals in the 1980s in their mom's basement managed to later network over the internet. LOL. Yeah, pretty much.
I played DnD 'n Shadowrun and whatnot. At no point did I think I was my character, or anything but human.
I don't mind some of them, but know too many unsavoury types in their circle to ever trust the group.

So here is where it gets funny.
They suggest maybe Tolkien was an otherkin.
Then they whip up subcultural idiom, all based on English phonotactics.
Well... if Tolkien's elves really hate the L/R sound, then that sinks that theory.
Leave poor Tolkien alone. He'd be rolling over in his grave if he knew!

As an aside, Tolkien learned Esperanto as a teen. At first he liked it.
Later, he lamented the lack of literature and a mythology/culture associated with this.
I took this to heart. I hope to breathe life into my language projects via sci-fi fiction.

Cheers.