Novbasa

Novbasa (formerly known as Ardlang) is a constructed worldlang created by Elia Ansaloni in 2013. Its main features are a regular phonetic inventory, a strict Subject-Verb-Object sentence order and a vocabulary that aims to defy Eurocentrism without renouncing to widely known translations. While its main inspiration is Lingwa de Planeta, Novbasa has some traits in common with Sambahsa, like the use of proto-languages and a rather wide vocabulary base.

The main linguistic influences of Novbasa are Indo-European languages, Chinese (from which most of the isolating grammar is derived) and Arabic, but its a posteriori vocabulary is built considering many other languages, including Austronesian languages, Altaic languages, Swahili, Basque and Nahuatl. This approach is remarked by Novbasa's motto Ab hol dunya, pro hol dunya (From the whole world, for the whole world).

As of 2014, no complete dictionary of Novbasa has been released, but some translations and lexicon are available on the Unilang forum and on this wiki.

Phonology and orthography

Alphabet

Latin	a	b	c	d	e	f	g	h	i	j	k	l	m	n	o	p	q	r	s	t	u	v	w	x	y	z
Cyrillic	a	б	ч	д	е	ф	г	h	и	ж	к	л	м	н	о	п	х	p	c	т	у	в	ў	ш	й	з
IPA	a	b	ʧ	d	е/ɛ	f	g	h	i	ʒ/ʤ	k	l	m	n	о/ɔ	p	x	ɾ/r	s	t	u	v	w	ʃ	j	z

Pronunciation

Some letters can be pronounced in two different ways in order to make the pronunciation easier to the majority of speakers. For example, a Russian or a French speaker would find more natural to pronunce j as /ʒ/, while an English or an Hindi one would rather choose /ʤ/. Both are equally valid and mutually interchangeable. It should be noticed that ng is always pronounced as /ŋg/ and not as /ŋ/ (as it would be in English or Indonesian). N is pronunced as /ŋ/ before velar plosives.

The stress is always on the penultimate syllable.

In the diphtongs ao and eo, "o" is considered a semivowel and the accent never falls on it.

The following rules apply only to the Latin script:

• Diphtongs au and eu are always pronounced as /aw/ and /ew/ respectively, while ia, ie, io and iu are pronounced as /ja/, /je/, /jo/ and /ju/ only when they are not part of the first syllable. The diphtong ai is pronounced as /aj/ only when it's not part of the last syllable.
• There cannot be three wovels together. So, for example, awal ("early"), cannot be written as aual. This also mean that a verb like baw ("to build") cannot be written as bau because it would eventually lead to bauer instead of the correct term bawer ("builder").

Grammar

Generally, the only way to identify a word as a noun, adjective or verb is the context and the position in the phrase. For example, tuk may stand for "poison", "poisonous" or "to poison". However, a name can be identified by the presence of an article.

Articles

There are two determinative articles: al (singular) and i (plural). There is only one indeterminative article: un, which is only singular. Articles are required when it's necessary to clear the status of a noun as singular or plural, or when the noun can't be immediately identified in the phrase.

Nouns

Nouns in Novbasa do not change for number or case. Some nouns have a masculine and a feminine form that can be obtained by adding o or a to the root.

bin - son or daughter (gender not specified)

bino - son

bina - daughter

However, a noun ending in o or a doesn't necessarily have a specified gender.

kiba - fang

feno - appearance

Few nouns have two different versions.

patro/matra - father/mother

bratro/sestra - brother/sister

Adjectives

Adjectives always precede the noun they're related to.

un hwan dom - a yellow house

al shao kal kat - the small black cat

Adverbs

Adverbs may be identified by adding -di to an adjective.

garm (warm) → garm-di (warmly)

The particle is pronunced separately from the root, whose pronunciation is left unchanged.

Pronouns

Personal pronouns

Novbasa	English
me	I
tu	you
hu/ta/he	he/she/it
na	we
vo	you
le	they

Possessive adjectives and pronouns are formed by adding y to the personal pronouns.

Novbasa	English
mey	I, mine
tuy	your, yours
huy/tay/hey	his/her, hers/its
nay	our, ours
voy	your, yours
ley	their, theirs

Correlatives

Much like Esperanto, Novbasa organizes demonstrative and relative pronouns in a table.

		Demonstrative ("This/that")	Indefinite ("Some")	Elective ("Any")	Universal ("Each, every")	Negative ("No")
		sa/to–	mo–	aon–	omni–	ne–
Individual	–jen	sajen/tojen (this/that one)	mojen (someone)	aonjen (anyone)	omnijen (everyone, each one)	nejen (no one)
Thing	–vas	savas/tovas (this/that)	movas (something)	aonvas (anything)	omnivas (everything)	nevas (nothing)
Time	–ci	saci/toci (this/that time)	moci (sometime)	aonci (anytime)	omnici (always)	neci (never)
Place	–stan	sastan/tostan* (here/there)	mostan (somewhere)	aonstan (anywhere)	omnistan (everywhere)	nestan (nowhere)
Manner	–kam	sakam/tokam (this/that way)	mokam (somehow)	aonkam (anyhow, anyway)	omnikam (in every way)	nekam (no way)
Reason	–karan	sakaran/tokaran (therefore)	mokaran (for some reason)	aonkaran (for any reason)	omnikaran (for all reasons)	nekaran (for no reason)
Amount	–kwant	sakwant/tokwant (this/that much)	mokwant (some)	aonkwant (any quantity)	omnikwant (all of it)	nekwant (none)

* Adverbs sastan and tostan are rarely used. They are often replaced by the more practical je ("here") and la ("there"). Also, ayna is often used instead of omnici.

The main difference with Esperanto is that "question" pronouns are not formed this way, and therefore are listed apart.

Novbasa	English
ki	who
ko	what
kwan	when
kwer	where
kwom	how
kwey	why
kwant	how much

Verbs

Much like in English, verbs in Novbasa change only for mood and tense but not for number and person. Apart from es ("to be"), all verbs are regular. The subject must always be expressed. If the verb ends with a consonant, "a", "o", or "u", the suffixes are simply attached to it. If the verbs ends in "e" or "i", the last vowel must be taken off before adding the suffixes.

Tense	Novbasa	English
Infinitive	baw	to build
Present	me baw	I build
Past perfect	me li baw	I built
Future	me sa baw	I will build
Near future	me va baw	I am going to build
Conditional	me ud baw	I would build
Past conditional	me ud li baw	I would have built
Imperative	(ba) baw	build!
Present Participle	bawint	building
Past Participle	bawit	built

The reflexive is formed by adding se- before the verb and after eventual particles.

The passive is formed by coupling the verb es with the past participle of the verb.

Es

Es ("to be") is the only irregular verb.

Tense	Novbasa	English
Infinitive	es	to be
Present	me es	I am
Past perfect	me bu	I was
Future	me sa es	I will be
Near future	me va es	I am going to be
Conditional	me ud es	I would be
Past conditional	me ud bu	I would have been
Imperative	(ba) es	be!
Present Participle	esint	being
Past Participle	bi	been

Numerals

Number	Cardinal	Number	Cardinal
0	nul	11	dekun
1	un	20	dudek
2	du	21	dudekun
3	san	30	sandek
4	ca	40	cadek
5	pen	50	pendek
6	lyu	100	bak
7	sep	200	dubak
8	pa	237	dubaktrideksep
9	nav	1000	kil
10	dek	2000	dukil

Lexicon

Main article: Novbasa/Lexicon

Novbasa lexicon draws from the main language families of the world. The main source are Indo-European languages (around 60% of the current lexicon), but the core of everyday use terms includes many Afro-Asiatic and Sino-Tibetan terms.

Source languages

Virtually, any language can be a source for Novbasa. However, due to historical, geographic and/or cultural relevance and to the number of speakers, a restricted number of languages forms the main core. These languages are classified as it follows.

• Indo-European: Latin, Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, English, German, Russian, Sanskrit, Hindi-Urdu, Bengali, Persian
• Sino-Tibetan: Chinese
• Afro-Asiatic: Arabic
• Altaic: Japanese, Korean
• Austronesian: Malay-Indonesian
• Niger-Congo: Swahili

Minor sources include Nahuatl, Basque, Turkish, Tamil, Telugu, Finnish, Vietnamese, Irish and Armenian.

Novbasa also draws from proto-languages when the root is clear and widespread enough. The most used proto-language is Proto-Indo-European (PIE from now onwards). Few words are derived from Nostratic roots, like kerd ("heart"), from k̕ærd, or nem ("to take"), from nʲamo.

Selection criteria

Although the selection doesn't follow a specific path, some criteria are followed to choose a specific translation among the various languages.

• Familarity: The main criteria for a word to be chosen is its diffusion.
  • Terms used on a worldwide scale have the priority. Examples: sport; chay (tea) from Chinese 茶 (chá); muzik ("music").
  • Words borrowed by many languages have a good chance of being chosen. Examples: kitab (book) from Arabic كتاب‎ (kitāb) and borrowed by many languages, including Persian, Hindi, Indonesian, Malay, Hausa and Turkish.
• Simplicity: When possible, the priority goes to words that are short and easy to pronounce.
• Unambiguousness: Novbasa tries to eliminate the typical ambiguities of natural languages.
  • Each word should refer to only one concept. Example: "right" is translated as dex if referring to the direction, but is translated as pravo if referring to the legal term.
  • If an eligible word would be pronounced as another already existing one, it must be discarded.
• Diversity: While searching for easily recognizable words, Novbasa tries to challenge biases like Eurocentrism. Words of everyday use are thus taken from various language families.
• Relevance: A language can get the priority if it has a particularly meaningful cultural and/or historical relation with the term. Examples: soyuz ("union") from Russian, adab ("good manners") from Arabic, fob ("fear") from Greek, xamrog ("shamrock") from Irish, tao ("way") from Chinese.

Translations

Sample translations

Article 1 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Omni human janma azad wa ekwal in dignita wa pravo. Le hav ration wa lyanxin wa deb akti un a ali in spirit de hyondita.

Lord's Prayer

Nay Patro, ke es in akax
Tey nam ba es fait sakre
Tey wangwo ba lay, tey vol ba es fait
Kam in akax, so sur ard
Da hodi a na nay din pan
Wa pardon a na nay utan
Kam na pardon le na a nay utaner
Wa ne indukti na in temptati
Lekin azad na ab mal

Various quotes

Qaos es nur orden intazarint de es desifrit. (Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered.) ‒ José Saramago