Wikipedia:Novialides

Novial is one of many constructed languages, a handful of which are currently in use. The most famous of these is Esperanto. Novial resembles Esperanto in some respects. The advantage of Esperanto is that it is well known throughout the world. The advantage of Novial is that it is more logical and more versatile than Esperanto.

All but dead since the 1940s, Novial has been seeing some revival in fits and starts since the early 1990s. Some minor modifications have been introduced by some, but all the forms in use now are very similar and very much inter-comprehensible.

One example of such modifications is the word "UNANTI" meaning 'ten'. Traditional Novial uses the word "DEK" which is also used in Esperanto. Jespersen criticized Esperanto because of the potential confusion between pairs like 13 (DEK-TRI) and 30 (TRI-DEK). In Jespersen's Novial, one would use DEK-TRI for 13 but TRIANTI for 30. But, for those with familiarity with Esperanto, this still leaves the door open to potential confusion. So some today advocate UNANTI as a replacement for DEK which definitively removes any trace of possible ambiguity and which has the added benefit of increasing the regularity of Novial.

Another example of a change being sought by some is the move from "SINK" for Novial 'five' (5), which some claim lacks visual recognizability, to "QUINT" or "PENT".

Here are the numbers from zero to a million in a nutshell:

ones:                                         tens:
UN (when standing alone or stressed: UNI)     DEK or UNANTI
DU                                            DUANTI
TRI                                           TRIANTI
QUAR                                          QUARANTI
SINK (QUINT, PENT)                            SINKANTI (QUINTANTI, PENTANTI)
SIX                                           SIXANTI
SET (older form: SEP)                         SETANTI (SEPANTI)
OT (older form: OK)                           OTANTI (OKANTI)
NIN                                           NINANTI
DEK (alternate regular form: UNANTI)          SENT (100, cp. French 'cent')

MIL (1000, cp. French 'mille')                MILION (1,000,000)

Add to the mix 'SERO'/'ZERO' (depending on whether or not you accept the addition of the letter 'Z' to Novial, a letter which did not exist in Jespersen's original) and you can create any number between zero and several million:

DUANTI-SET (27), TRI-SENT QUARANTI-SIX (346), SINKANTI MIL (50,000), DU-MILION SINK-SENT MIL (2,500,000)

The addition of the suffix "-ESMI" makes it possible to create ordinal numbers (first, second, twelfth, three-hundredth, etc.)

LI UNESMI FOY (the first time); LI QUARANTI-QUARESMI PRESIDENTE (the 44th president); LI SIX-MILIONESMI YAR (the six-millionth year)

Add spice to your Novial by combining suffixes with full words to create new meanings:

PLURI = several; MULTI = many

PLURANTI URBUS = several tens of cities; MULTI-SENT HOMES = many hundreds of people

Created by Novialist 23:04, 15 February 2006 (UTC)