Prologue
En-gi
The Sino-Japanese word "en-gi" (縁起) is the best to describe how Eucosmy was born. English, like the other Western languages, can NOT express such an Eastern idea; and the translation is never enough: "meet-happen". It conveys something like sex and love – connection and creation. It reminds me of the saying of Steve Jobs: “Creativity is just connecting things.”
By the way, in contrast, it is very easy for Eucosmy to assimilate all such beautiful words from all kinds of languages: by calque rather than transcription.
14 May 2021, my birthday, is the birthday of Eucosmy, when I connected Hebrew with Chinese in my mind. So, the first word of Eucosmy means "one", the second "two":
אִ | 1 | 一 | [i] |
אֵ | 2 | 二 | [e] |
Logo
A Platonic sun amid universe literally embodies "eu" (well ~ good) and "cosmos" (universe, also world). The sun is a double pentagon symbolizing decimalism (a trait of primates thus all human beings). Eucosmy prefers the number 5: five vowel levels, five sibilants, five tones...
Names
Autonym
Eucosmy script | Transcription | Meaning |
leamleaq (Lamlang) | leam (reason) + leaq (language) the reasonable language |
Exonyms
Western | Ἑλληνική – Ἐυκοσμία latinum – eucosmia English – Eucosmy français – eucosmie Deutsch – Eukosmie русский – евкосмия italiano – eucosmia español – eucosmia português – eucosmia …… | the good (proper) world language the well-ordered (decent) language |
Middle-Eastern | לְעוֹלָמִית – עִבְרִית الْلِعَلَمِيَّة – الْعَرَبِيَّة …… | the language for the world the language forever |
Middle-Western | देवभाषा – संसारभाषा ภาษาไทย – ภาษาสงสาร …… | the language by the world the enrichment language (quintessential) |
Eastern | 華夏語 – 易世界語* 日本語 – 易世界語 한국어 – 역세계어 …… | the easy world language the language changing the world |
Phonographology
Updating
Questions
Why monosyllabism?
All the pan-Eurasian (Euro-Irano-Indo-Sino-Indosinian) languages, counting more than 2/3 of the world's population and including 3 or 4 (depending on Hebrew or Persian) axial civilizations, are monosyllabic at root. As to the other languages, such as Hebrew, the primary ^ frequent words are prone to be monosyllabic, due to sign economy. Thus, Eucosmy has to be monosyllabic.
Eucosmy is designed particularly for academic use and thus should be fit to coin terminology. Less monosyllabic, English is less fit than Chinese for coinage. For example, "language family" (语系) costs only 2 syllables in Chinese but more than 5 syllables in English, thus the habitual omission, while omission means imprecision. Besides, the Sino-Indosinian style of coinage is very simple: with no morpheme variation, you never bother to hesitate between "language family" and "linguistic family". So Eucosmy adheres particularly to the Sino-Indosinian monosyllabism.
Such an adherence has two by-benefits: the tonal inflexion (the only inflexion in Eucosmy, extremely simple) and the syllable-characters (the phonologograms, extremely intuitive).
By the way, if the inflexional endings wear off, the Indo-European words will seem Sino-Indosinian. For example (the examples may well be true cognates):
ancient Greek | ancient Chinese |
glagos → glag → glak (milk) | 酪:glak (cheese) |
phōgō → phōg → bōg (bake) | 炮:bōg (bake) |
Why 3 plosives, 3 middles?
All the 2/3 oppositions are common: [d/t] like French, [d/th] like German, [t/th] like Chinese. Every choice would favor some and disfavor some, thus no choice but all of them! Besides, 3 of our 4 ancient languages, Greek, Sanskrit, Chinese, own all the 3 plosives. Finally, English indeed owns all the 3 plosives.
The same reason for 3 middles: 1 middle like Japanese, Latin, Russian, modern Greek... 2 middles like Korean, French, German, ancient Greek... Again, no choice but all of them! Again, English has set the example: "bid", "bed", "bad". With the short / long alternation, Eucosmy can better distinguish them!
Syntax
Basic Noun Phrase
Inspired by French, Eucosmy employs the difference of word order to distinguish restrictive and non-restrictive:
h<na+d'ea (only) the high mountain
h+d'ea<na the mountain, which is high
By the way, with the tonal inflexion, Eucosmy can well distinguish bound modifier and free modifier, which are not phonetical in English:
h<na+d'ea the high mountain
h+na-d'ea the high-mountain (highmountain)
Basic Verb Phrase
Subject (Means-Object) Verb (End-Object) Object