Novial

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Novial
Spoken in:	various countries
Timeline/Universe:	international auxiliary language
Total speakers:	ca. 1000
Genealogical classification:	a posteriori primarily Romance-based
Basic word order:	SVO
Morphological type:	agglutinating > isolating
Morphosyntactic alignment:	accusative
Created by:
Otto Jespersen	1928

Novial is an international auxiliary language designed by the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen, published in 1928. Novial is thus the only major auxlang designed by an academic linguist. It is a moderately naturalistic a posteriori language based on the major languages of Europe, mainly the Romance languages.

Novial never had a large speaker base, but a small international community exists.

Phonology

Consonants

	Labial	Alveolar	Postalveolar	Velar	Glottal
Stops	p b	t d	tʃ~ʃ dʒ~ʒ	k g
Fricatives	f v	s~z			h
Nasals	m	n
Liquids and Semivowel		l r	j

Vowels

	Front	Central	Back
High	i		u
Mid	e		o
Low		a

Morphology

The grammar of Novial largely follows Standard Average European patterns. Nouns are inflected only for plural (suffix -s, -es after consonant) and genitive (–(e)n). Nouns denoting males end in -o, nouns denoting females end in -a, nouns denoting beings of either sex end in -e.

Adjectives end in –i, adverbs in –im.

The definite article is an indeclinable li. The personal pronouns are:

	Singular	Plural
1st person	me	nus
2nd person	vu	vus
3rd person, masculine	lo	los
3rd person, feminine	la	las
3rd person, common	le	les
3rd person, neuter	lu	lus
Impersonal	on

Like nouns, pronouns take genitive –(e)n.

Verbs form tenses with auxiliary verbs:

Tense	Auxiliary
Past	did
Future	sal
Conditional	vud
Perfect	ha

The past tense can also be expressed by a suffix -(e)d.

There are two passives. The "become" passive is formed by the auxiliary bli and the uninflected verb. The "be" passive is formed by the auxiliary es and the past participle (suffix -(e)t.

Pronouns, demonstratives, correlatives

The morphology of pronouns, demonstratives and correlatives is consistent with that of nouns, adjectives and adverbs, and therefore is extensible. For example:

demonstrative	te ‘that one’ (animate)	ta ‘that female’	to ‘that male’	tanti ‘so much’	tali ‘that kind’	talim ‘in that way’
interrogative	que ‘who’	qua ‘what female’	quo ‘what male’	quanti ‘how much’	quali ‘what kind of’	qualim ‘how’
relative	ke ‘[the one] who’	ka ‘[the female] who’	ko ‘[the male] who’	kanti ‘[the amount] which’	kali ‘[the kind] which’	kalim ‘as’
indefinite	irge ‘anyone’	irga ‘any female’	irgo ‘any male’	irganti ‘any amount’	irgali ‘any kind’	irgalim ‘in any way’
other …	altre ‘someone else’	altra ‘another female’	altro ‘another male’	altranti ‘a different amount’	altrali ‘a different kind’	altralim ‘otherwise’

External link

• Novial-Informatione by James Chandler, in Novial and English.

This article is part of a series on International Auxiliary Languages. Romance-based Auxlangs: Aercant * Atlango * Interlingua * Latin Nov * Novial * Occidental (Interlingue) * Panroman * Romanal Germanic-based Auxlangs: Folksprak * Nordien Slavic Auxlangs: Novoslovnica Turkic Auxlangs: Jalpi Turkic African Auxlangs: Afrihili Mixed-Origin Auxlangs: Esperanto * Adjuvilo * Ido * Ayola * Medial Europan * Bolak * Kotava * North American * Pantos-dimou-glossa * Pasetok * Sasxsek * Universalglot * Volapük A priori auxlangs: -