Ro is an

a priori ("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current ...

constructed language 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 ...

created by Rev. Edward Powell Foster beginning in 1904.

Creator

Rev. Edward Powell Foster lived from 1853 through 1937; in

Marietta, Ohio Marietta is a city in, and the county seat of, Washington County, Ohio, United States. It is located in southeastern Ohio at the confluence of the Muskingum and Ohio Rivers, northeast of Parkersburg, West Virginia. As of the 2020 census, Ma ...

. He was buried along with his wife in Riverview Cemetery in Parkersburg, West Virginia.

Characteristics

In Ro, words are constructed using a category system. For example, all words starting with "bofo-" signify colors; the word for ''red'' is "bofoc", and ''yellow'' is "bofof". Foster did not simply try to design a better language in general, but to optimize his language for one design criterion: recognizability of unknown words. Foster wrote about Ro: After working on the language for about two years, Foster published the first booklet about Ro in 1906. The publication of Ro periodicals was supported by several American sponsors, especially from the

area, including Melvil Dewey, inventor of the

Dewey Decimal Classification The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), colloquially known as the Dewey Decimal System, is a proprietary library classification system which allows new books to be added to a library in their appropriate location based on subject. Section 4.1 ...

(another attempt to categorize human knowledge), Vice President

Charles G. Dawes Charles Gates Dawes (August 27, 1865 – April 23, 1951) was an American banker, general, diplomat, composer, and Republican politician who was the 30th vice president of the United States from 1925 to 1929 under Calvin Coolidge. He was a co-reci ...

George White George White may refer to: Politicians * George White (died 1584) (c. 1530–1584), MP for Liverpool * George White (Liberal politician) (1840–1912), British Liberal member of parliament, 1900–1912 * George E. White (politician) (1848–1935), ...

, who mentioned Ro in the Congressional Record, and

Alice Vanderbilt Morris Alice Vanderbilt Shepard Morris (December 7, 1874 – August 15, 1950) was a member of the Vanderbilt family. She co-founded the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). Early life Alice was born on December 7, 1874 in New York. S ...

of IALA. Several more books about Ro by Foster and his wife appeared over the years, as late as 1932. A common criticism of Ro is that it can be difficult to hear the difference between two words; usually one consonant makes the word different in meaning, but still similar enough that the intended meaning often cannot be guessed from context. This characteristic is common among philosophical languages, which are characterized by vocabulary developed taxonomically, independently of natural languages. ''A posteriori'' languages, such as Esperanto and

Interlingua Interlingua (; ISO 639 language codes ia, ina) is an international auxiliary language (IAL) developed between 1937 and 1951 by the American International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). It ranks among the most widely used IALs and is t ...

, are more popular than the ''a priori'' type, perhaps partly because their familiar vocabulary makes them easy to learn and recognize. Conversely, a priori languages are seen as being more neutral because there are so many languages and root words used in different languages may be completely different. Solresol was an earlier classificatory language that by using a smaller symbol set achieved easier distinctness. There have been a few more recent attempts to design a language along similar lines, such as Ygyde and the Japanese-made Babm, but most subsequent constructed language makers have avoided this taxonomic or hierarchic design for the reasons mentioned above.

Alphabet and pronunciation

Ro is written with the

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 th ...

. The letters C, J, Q and X are pronounced as: /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /ŋ/ and /χ/ respectively. The vowels ( A, E, I, O and U) are pronounced as in the

Spanish language Spanish ( or , Castilian) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from colloquial Latin spoken on the Iberian peninsula. Today, it is a global language with more than 500 million native speakers, mainly in th ...

Sample text

The following sample is from
Esperanto, Elvish, and Beyond: The World of Constructed Languages
'. It is the last stanza of

William Cullen Bryant William Cullen Bryant (November 3, 1794 – June 12, 1878) was an American romantic poet, journalist, and long-time editor of the ''New York Evening Post''. Born in Massachusetts, he started his career as a lawyer but showed an interest in poetry ...

's " Thanatopsis" translated into Ro by Foster himself:

Encoding

Ro has been assigned the codes and in the

ConLang Code Registry 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. ...

References

External links

Ro forum
on Yahoo Groups
Dictionary of Ro
on sorabji.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Ro (Artificial Language) Engineered languages Constructed languages introduced in the 1900s 1904 introductions Constructed languages