Inlis: Importation and Homonyms

The main thing to remember when importing vocabulary into Inlis is that you will be importing nouns--not verbs as such nor adjectives as such. However, the forms may look like adjectives or (less often) verbs.

Verbs are imported as verbal nouns, and they generally end in -in: tinkin (thinking), wakin (working), wokin (walking), and so on. The reason for this ending is that -ing can suggest a noun or participle (and -en a participle), thus indicating the usage, and the marking as a verbal noun can avoid homonyms: rid (reed), ridin (reading); rait (right, privilege), raitin (writing). To avoid unwanted diphthongs, use -en instead of -in for roots ending in -a (rare--in fact, I can't think of an example right off) or -o: noen (knowing), goen (going). We also use -en after -i: sien (seeing, sight), not *siin. After -e we use -yen: breyen (braying), freyen (fraying), preyen (praying, prayer).

On the other hand, phrasal verbs don't use -in: bloap (not *bloenap, much less *bloapin), setap, wakaut (workout), etc. This generally coincides with English usage.

We seldom use -ion forms unless they are more common than the verb: neshan, opinyan, etc. Thus "creating, -ion" is krietin, not krieshan, which may however be used for the religious idea: Dem tok dibetin da krieshan oa da evolushan (They debate creation or evolution). Similarly, "sight, vision, seeing" is (as noted above) sien; vijan is vision in the mystical sense or that of what a visionary has.

Adjectives are imported in the shortest, simplest form unless that creates a homonym. Thus "wise" is wais, not wisdam, though the latter is more distinctive. Also hai (not *hait), waid (not wid, which means "weed"), and so on.

For nouns as such, we sometimes resort to the plural to avoid a homonym: tri "three," tris "tree"; bi "be," bis "bee."

In some cases, however, homonyms are acceptable. Thus, both "coat" and "court" become kot, but "court" will normally be lo-kot ("law-court"). But in compounds lo- will normally be dropped: kot-haus ("courthouse"). This won't keep punsters and fantasy-writers from construing it as "coat-house," nor is there any danger in such a move.

We try to avoid final consonant clusters, so the final consonant usually drops: impotan ("important"), esperantis ("Esperantist"), but esperantisam ("Esperantism").

This doesn't cover everything, but it should make current choices more intelligible and help someone who wants to import a form do so accurately.

Next time I'll sketch the grammar, which should explain some of the quirks we've already encountered.