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Wikipedia / Uropi

Uropi is a constructed language which was created by Joël Landais, a French English teacher. Uropi is a synthesis of European languages, explicitly based on their common Indo-European roots, and aims at being used as an international auxiliary language for Europe and thus contributing to building a European identity.

Uropi was begun in 1986; since then, it has undergone certain modifications as its vocabulary continues growing (the French-Uropi dictionary has over 10,000 words).

Uropi became known in Europe in the early 1990s.

Creator

After studying languages at the University of Orléans, then at the Sorbonne and at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, Joël Landais obtained the Agrégation diploma in English. He speaks French, English, Italian, Spanish and German and has a working knowledge of modern Greek and Russian. Today, he teaches English in a Chartres college. Parallel to his training as a linguist, Landais's travels throughout Europe, Senegal, the Maghreb, Egypt, Mexico, former USSR, Vietnam and the West Indies, together with a passion for languages, led him to create Uropi.

Orthography and phonology

The Uropi alphabet has 26 letters, the 26 letters of the ISO Basic Latin alphabet minus q, plus the letter ʒ, which comes from the International Phonetic Alphabet. Each letter corresponds to a sound and each sound to a letter.

All consonants are pronounced as in English except

The vowels are pronounced as in Italian or Spanish, e.g., , , and . Stress normally falls on the main root. For example, in "to behead", the stress falls on "head". However some suffixes (such as indicating an instrument) and the ending for the past are always stressed; when two or more suffixes are combined, the stress always falls on the penultimate suffix. The stress is marked with a written accent ( ) on the stressed vowel when it falls on the last syllable. For example: "knife", "carried", "photo", "menu".

Vocabulary

Roots

Uropi roots can be divided into three categories:

Indo-European roots

First and foremost Uropi claims to be a way to recreate a unity between Indo-European languages. With this aim, a great many Uropi roots correspond to common Indo-European roots which have been simplified, in their pronunciation and length (very often Uropi roots have one or two syllables). Thus, "mother" is (from Indo-European: ); "sun" is (from Indo-European: ). This simplification corresponds to the natural evolution of Indo-European roots which have given birth to the words which are used today in modern Indo-European languages. Thus corresponds to Hindi (), and to Spanish, Portuguese, Galician and Icelandic .

"Hybrid" roots

When there is no common Indo-European root or when there are several roots to express the same reality in various languages, Uropi may use "hybrid" words, crossing two different roots taken from different languages so as to create the most easily recognizable term for speakers of the greatest number of Indo-European languages. Thus, in "to love", the comes from Germanic and Slavic languages (cf. German and Russian ), and the , from Romance languages (, , ); or in "hand", the comes from Romance languages and the , from Germanic languages (cf. Latin and German , respectively). This process is not so artificial as it seems at first sight: it has been observed in natural languages, for example, the French "high" comes from the crossing between old French (from Latin ) and Frankish . Likewise, the English island comes from the crossing of Old English (from Proto-Germanic ) and Old French (from Latin ). It has also been deliberately used in languages like English to form new words, called portmanteaus, for instance, the word "smog" comes from the crossing of "smoke" and "fog". Others include (from + ), (from + ), and spanglish (from Spanish + English). These "hybrid" words only account for 3% of Uropi vocabulary.

International words

Uropi also uses many words which are already "international", like , "school", "match", "police", "symphony", and "tobacco".

Compounds

Like many other conlangs, Uropi uses many compounds, either combining two roots, or using prefixes and suffixes. Among the former, there are the following examples: "lighthouse" from "light" and "tower"; or, from "to sleep", "sleeping-bag" and , "sleeper (train)".

There are also numerous examples of compounds built with prefixes or suffixes: for example with "to give", "to distribute" can be formed; with "goal, purpose", "end up in, come to", can be formed; with "to break" and "out", "to break out", can be formed; with "apple", "apple tree" and "apple orchard", can be formed.

In most cases, those compounds reveal the roots and thus the meaning of the compound. However, some of those compounds, even if they follow the etymology of equivalent words in living European languages, have a more obscure, rather metaphorical meaning. Thus, , literally "to look back", means "to respect"; or , literally "to seize, to grasp inside", means "to understand" (reminiscent of "to grasp (a concept)").

Grammar

Substantives

Like some modern Indo-European languages, Uropi has a very limited declension with only two cases: nominative and genitive in the singular and the plural. Uropi substantives are divided into three groups: those ending in a consonant, those ending in -a and those ending in another vowel.

Among those ending in a consonant are all masculine nouns, i.e., nouns denoting men or male animals: "man"; "(tom)cat".

Those nouns take an -e in the plural; the genitive singular is marked with an -i, and the genitive plural with -is: "man, men, man's, men's".

All feminine nouns, i.e., nouns denoting women or female animals, end in -a: "woman", "(she)cat". These nouns take an -s in the plural. The -a becomes -u in the genitive singular, -us in the genitive plural: "hen, hens, hen's, hens'".

All the other substantives are neuter: they can equally end with a consonant or with an -a: for example, "table", "mind", "theatre", "centre". They correspond to the neuter personal pronoun "it".

The nouns ending with another vowel are essentially "international" words like . They take an -s in the plural, but no specific mark in the genitive.

Adjectives

As in English, qualifying adjectives are invariable. They are placed before the noun they qualify. Some are "pure" adjectives: "good", "green", "short"; others are derived from nouns. In this case, their form is identical to that of the genitive singular of the noun: "manly, man's", "feminine, woman's".

A few quantitative indefinite adjectives which are also pronouns take an -e in the plural: "much, many"; "little, few"; "every, all"; "some, a few".

Pronouns

Personal pronouns have three cases: nominative, accusative (also used with all prepositions) and dative. Possessive adjectives are used for the genitive. As in English, there are three pronouns in the third person singular (masculine: ; feminine: ; neuter: ) as well as a reflexive pronoun. For example: "I" (nominative), "me" (accusative), "to me" (dative); "you", etc.

The complete set of personal pronouns:Reflexive pronoun: "oneself".

Verbs

Uropi verbs have indicative, imperative and conditional moods, as well as a simple form, a durative (continuous) form and a perfect form.

  • Except in the imperative, the verbal form remains the same whatever the person.

  • The infinitive ending is -o: "to eat", "to sleep", "to have".

  • The form of the simple present is that of the radical: "I eat", "you sleep".

  • The simple past is formed by adding a stressed -ì: "I ate", "he had".

  • To form the future you use the particle ve with the infinitive: "I'll eat"; "will you sleep?"; "they won't come".

  • The conditional is formed by adding -ev to the stem: "If I was (lit. would be) hungry, I would eat".

  • The perfect uses the auxiliary "to have" and the past participle ending in -en: "I have eaten"; "she has come".

  • The durative (continuous) form uses the auxiliary "to be" and the present participle, ending in -an: "I'm eating", "is he sleeping?"

  • The imperative: "eat!" (singular/plural), "let's eat!"

  • The passive uses the auxiliary "to get, to become" and the past participle: "The mouse is eaten by the cat".

Numbers

Ordinal numbers are formed by adding -i or -j (after a vowel): duj: "second"; trij: "third", kweri: "fourth", pini: "fifth"; the exception is pri: "first".

Fractions are formed by adding -t to numbers: "a third", "a fourth, a quarter"; the exception is "half".

Example

See also

References