Novial Novial is a constructed international auxiliary language (IAL) for universal human communication between speakers of different native languages. It was devised by Otto Jespersen, a Danish linguist who had been involved in the Ido movement that ...

was created as an

international auxiliary language An international auxiliary language (sometimes acronymized as IAL or contracted as auxlang) is a language meant for communication between people from all different nations, who do not share a common first language. An auxiliary language is primaril ...

by Danish linguist Otto Jespersen, who introduced it to the world in 1928. Jespersen had previously been a co-author of

Ido Ido () is a constructed language derived from Reformed Esperanto, and similarly designed with the goal of being a universal second language for people of diverse backgrounds. To function as an effective ''international auxiliary language'', I ...

, which started to take form around 1907. Both languages base their vocabularies primarily on prominent Germanic and Romance languages, but differ grammatically in several important respects. Novial is more analytic in its grammar than

, and, in

Jespersen Jespersen is a Danish and Norwegian patronymic surname that may refer to: People * Anna Jespersen (1895–1989), American geologist *Chris Jespersen (born 1983), Norwegian cross-country skier * Eric Jespersen (born 1961), Canadian sailor *Finn Varde ...

's view, more natural. Comparisons among Ido, Novial, and other notable international auxiliary languages have formed an important part of interlinguistic studies. For example, both Ido and Novial were among the languages investigated by the

International Auxiliary Language Association The International Auxiliary Language Association, Inc. (IALA) was an American organisation founded in 1924 to "promote widespread study, discussion and publicity of all questions involved in the establishment of an auxiliary language, together wi ...

(IALA), which developed Interlingua.

Alphabets and pronunciation

Both

and

are written using the modern

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...

(a.k.a. the English alphabet), with no

diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

s. In the Phonetic Novial spelling system (1928, 1930) the main differences between the Novial vocabulary and those of other systems come from the suppression of the letters c and z. The letter ''s'' plays an important part but tends to distort the visual appearance of some words ( = science, = cease, = civil). Chapter IV of "A Planned Auxiliary Language"
by Henry Jacob, 1947.

Personal pronouns

Verbal systems

The grammars of Novial and Ido differ substantially in the way that the various tenses, moods and

voice The human voice consists of sound made by a human being using the vocal tract, including talking, singing, laughing, crying, screaming, shouting, humming or yelling. The human voice frequency is specifically a part of human sound production in ...

s of

verb A verb () is a word (part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descri ...

s are expressed. Both use a combination of auxiliary verbs and verb endings. However, Novial uses many more auxiliary verbs and few endings, while Ido uses only one auxiliary verb and a greater number of verb endings. As with most international auxiliary languages, all verb forms in Ido and Novial are independent of person (1st, 2nd or 3rd persons) and number (singular or plural).

Language sample for comparison

Here is

the Lord's Prayer The Lord's Prayer, also called the Our Father or Pater Noster, is a central Christian prayer which Jesus taught as the way to pray. Two versions of this prayer are recorded in the gospels: a longer form within the Sermon on the Mount in the Gosp ...

in both languages:

References

External links

''Kompleta Gramatiko di la Linguo Internaciona Ido''
(187-page PDF file.)

Otto Jespersen's 1928 book which introduced Novial. Contains discussion of earlier auxiliary languages including Ido.

Chapter of the first book about Novial which discusses Ido (specific criticisms of Ido are mentioned in various chapters of the book).

By Henry Jacob, 1943, Comparative Texts comparing Ido, Novial, Occidental, Latino sine flexione, Esperanto and English.

By Henry Jacob, 1947. A detailed comparative study of interlinguistics with full grammatical details of five systems of demonstrated usefulness, Esperanto, Ido, Occidental, Novial, and Latino sine flexione.

By Friedrich Auerbach, 1930 (in Novial).

* ttps://cals.conlang.org/language/novial+ido/ Comparison between Ido and Novialat

Conlang Atlas of Language Structures A constructed language (sometimes called a conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, and vocabulary, instead of having developed naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devised for a work of fiction. ...

. Ido language Novial International auxiliary languages Comparison of constructed international auxiliary languages {{Constructed languages