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Concept
Novial
Summary
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 evolved from Esperanto at the beginning of the 20th century, and participated later in the development of Interlingua. The name means 'new' + 'international auxiliary language'.
Its vocabulary is based largely on the Germanic and Romance languages while its grammar is influenced by English.
Novial was introduced in Jespersen's book An International Language in 1928. It was updated in his dictionary Novial Lexike in 1930, and further modifications were proposed in the 1930s, but the language became dormant with Jespersen's death in 1943. In the 1990s, with the revival of interest in constructed languages brought on by the Internet, some people rediscovered Novial.
The basic rule is: stress the vowel before the last consonant. However, consonantal flexional endings (ie. -d, -m, -n, -s) do not count for this (eg. bóni but bónim, not boním; apérta but apértad, not apertád) so perhaps it is better to say that the vowel before the final consonant of the stem takes the stress.
The digraphs ch and sh represent t͡ʃ or ʃ, depending on the speaker. For example, chokolate would be pronounced either /t͡ʃokoˈlate/ or /ʃokoˈlate/.
Like many constructed IALs, Novial has a simple and regular grammar. The main word order is SVO, which removes the need for marking the object of a sentence with accusative case (since the position normally tells what word is the object). There is however a way to mark accusative. There is no grammatical gender (but the sex or gender of referrents can be marked). Verbs are conjugated without agreement (according to person or number), and have a regular conjugation.
Nouns mainly end in e, a, o, u or um in singular. There is definite forms of nouns marked with an article, and singular and plural forms, where plural is marked with the suffix -s after vowels or -es after consonants.
Official source
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