The Slavic Esperanto

[Kostov]

A friend of mine showed me Interslavic today. The whole language and its goals and promises impressed me, especially as a person with a Slavic background and an interest in the Russian language and the Slavic world as a whole. I know this community has its fair share of Slavs, so it might be interesting or useful to some of you.

I even decided to try my hand at translating part of GZDoom into Interslavic, considering I’ve messed around with that stuff before, with a topic on it:



I’m curious how many speakers of any Slavic languages can understand this screenshot, and to what extent?

[m8f]

Russian. In general, this menu is understandable, but there are some strings that are not:
- Brzo odbacanje
- Strafe (there was already "Idti")
- Pokazyvati Semafor - it's not clear why "scoreboard" is "semafor". At least in russian, "semafor" has another meaning.
It doesn't help understanding that in some places there is "obzirati", and in others "gledati" for English "look". And "nalevo/napravo" vs. "v levo/v pravo". But maybe this is just needed by Interslavic grammar.

[Kostov]

Thanks for the post. I’ve just addressed some of that.

To start with the na/v levo/pravo, it seems that a few of those different verbs have different prepositions. I can’t be sure, though; I don’t speak the language, and I’ve only used the tools on the Interslavic website for help.

“Odbacancje” was a bit too long. I found a better word: “obrat”.

“Semafor” can mean “scoreboard” in the Serbo-Croatian-speaking region, but to make it more universal, I’ve changed it to “Tablica točk”.

Can’t do much about “strafe”, considering a translation would make it a bit more complicated. It might just be more efficient to keep it as it is.

[lil'devil]

Wow. Recently, I've been reading a lot about Esperanto language, but I never knew Interslavic language existed. you made me read about it.
Well, I understand (intuitively) most of the things here, my only complain are the diacrtitic marks (accents), they look horrible with the Doom font.

[Kostov]

I have to agree. There are a few ways they could be redone, but as long as they’re readable, they’ll do for the time being.

[Apeirogon]

I’m curious how many speakers of any Slavic languages can understand this screenshot, and to what extent?

That's not entirely "understand", but some sort of guessing game:
1.listen/read to how the word sounds
2.bethink all, mostly old as world, similary sounds words
3.based on this words make a guess what does this word means in this place of sentences
4.in most cases, confirm guess by reading next word.
5. goto 1.
And using of latin/roman alphabet to writing words makes it even harder. Because most slavic language use more than 30 letters to.....mmm describe, I think.... what sound they means, with which cant cope 26 letter of english alphabet.

About you screenshot, "Brzo odbacanje".I must open gzdoom to check that it is "quick turn".
For me, the first thing that comes to mind, its something like "un see" and its derivatives.

[Cage]

Wow, after checking the shot and the actual website I'm surprised how well it works! I can understand pretty much everything, looking at the writing it kinda looks like a bit like Slovakian?

I'm Polish btw.

[Kostov]

Wow, after checking the shot and the actual website I'm surprised how well it works! I can understand pretty much everything, looking at the writing it kinda looks like a bit like Slovakian?

I'm Polish btw.

The alphabet and writing are mish-mashes of several Slavic languages. The website has details on this:

http://steen.free.fr/interslavic/design_criteria.html
http://steen.free.fr/interslavic/orthography.html

Long articles, but they are interesting.

[CWolf]

I never knew Interslavic language existed.

If you told about something basic for all of them (like, Czech, Russian, Serbian, etc.) so well yeah, it exists, kinda... and at same moment? it don't.

[Xeotroid]

Very interesting. There are some weird things like the already mentioned "Brzo odbačanje", since I'd understand it as "Turn (left/right) soon" instead of "Turn around quickly," but otherwise I'm nicely surprised how well this works, even though full sentences on the conlang's site are a little bit harder to read, given the way they wanted to merge the various ways of sentence structure together.

[Sgt. Shivers]

This is pretty interesting! I wonder if something like this would be possible for Pasifika languages and Maori...

[Kostov]

This is pretty interesting! I wonder if something like this would be possible for Pasifika languages and Maori...

Do you speak any of those?

[Sgt. Shivers]

Do you speak any of those?

I speak a really minimal amount of Maori, I really ought to learn more of it. Many of the languages in the pacific share words with slight letter differences (1 = Tahi, 2 = Rua, 3 = Toru, 4 = Wha for Maori, 1= Tasi, 2 = Lua, 3 = Tolu, 4 = Fa in Samoan etc.)