Summary of the planned language SLOVIO.

OUR THANKS to the many volunteer co-developers of the Slovio language: Fred Speck, Svetlana Sinodinou (sinko13@hol.gr), Roman V. Dushkin (darkus@yandex.ru), Marek Bogucki (flickerz@poczta.onet.pl), Horvath Robert (amen@real-net.sk), Helga E. Humlova, Victor Medrano, Michael Trittipo, Komensky University Bratislava, Viliam Slodicak, Marek Bocanek, Stefan Vitezslav Pilat, Piotr Mazur, Georgi Mihov, Richard Ruibar, Michael P Wnuk, and many others.

WILL YOU HELP?

We ask all linguists, all Esperantists (Idoists, etc), all departments of languages and Slavistic to join in our effort to perfect Slovio according to the same principles and guidelines upon which it was created.

The motto of Slovio is: simplicity and universality. In other words all the suggestions on improvement of Slovio should follow these guidelines. The grammar and spelling should be as simple as possible, and should be understood (without learning) by as many speakers of Slavic languages as possible.

In further development of slovio and by the definition of new words the following rules should be kept in mind:
1) All Slovio words don't have to be of Slavic origin, but they must be the most widely understood words among Slavic-speakers.
2) The words should be melodious, easy to pronounce, easy to use in music or songs.
3) One should try to avoid such sounds as "sx, cx, zx," or use them as little as possible. These sounds tend to reduce the clarity and the comprehensibility of languages.
4) The spelling of words should be kept as simple as possible in order to minimize errors of writers in Slovio language.
5) To avoid confusion when to use "j" and when to use"i", in Slovio "j" is being used only at the beginning of the words, and in a few suffixes. Otherwise we use only "i". The letter "j" is not being used in the middle of a Slovio word; exception being imported non-Slovio words or names.

As any real language also Slovio is still developing and changing with times. Your comments and suggestions are welcome. If you can help, please, join in our effort and write to: info@slovio.com Join the discussion, research and development of Slovio and become part of the history! If you have a better idea, better proposals, better definition of words, write them in red color in the XLS table of the dictionary in the column marked "possible alternatives" and send it to us. We thank for all ideas and suggestions.

WHY will Slovio succeed where other planned languages have failed? Because, unlike other planned languages, there is an intense NEED for Slovio. There has never been an intense need for other planned languages, they were designed mainly to facilitate neutral communication. In the century since the invention of Esperanto and since the invention of most other planned languages, much has changed in the world. English has gained pre-dominance in the world, not the least due to military reasons. This is not acceptable to the rest of the world because English is NOT a neutral language and it is not an easy language, as such it promotes discrimination of non-English speakers.

Slovio offers the ease of learning and there is an accute need for its existence in the post-communist world. It can be understood by more than 400 million people in the world, it is neutral, it is easy to learn, it is logical, and there is a need for Slovio in order to facilitate communication and economic development in all non-English-speaking countries of the world, including East-European and Slavic-speaking countries.

Is it really true that 400 million people understand SLOVIO?
This is an angry letter we have seen: "I don't know what language is Slavju, but .... anyone with half a brain and knowledge of at least one Slavic language can read this easily!"
We thank the angry writer for his appreciation of SLOVIO, because as he says "anyone with half a brain and knowledge of at least one Slavic language can read this easily!" Even angry people, even those who have no reason to be angry. We thank him anyway.

webmaster-info

Slovio Archive (old versions):
Slovio version 2.15
Slovio version 1.9.
Slovio version 1.8.
Slovio version 1.7.
Slovio version 1.5.
Slovio version 1.4.
Slovio version 1.3.
Slovio version 1.2.
Slovio version 1.1.

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Russian Transliteration

Useful links:
www.townn.com www.infodorf.ch www.immortology.com
www.ombudsmaninternational.com www.roofdir.com www.imesto.sk

Bukvas - Letters - Spelling

WHAT IS SLOVIO?

The development of the international language Slovio has been started by scientist and linguist Mark Hucko. It is both a written and a spoken language. The continuation of it's development is up to the rest of us.

author05.jpg (17224 Byte)
This practical and easy language is unique. Slovio, unlike other planned languages, is based on a limited number of widely spoken related natural languages and that's why as soon as you learn Slovio you can communicate with over 400 million people around the World.

The vocabulary of Slovio is based on that of the largest European language group, and includes many internationally known words from Latin, English, French, German, Spanish etc. Because Slovio is based mainly on mutually intelligible Slavic languages, as soon as one learns Slovio it should be possible to communicate with over 400 million people around the world, in such countries as: Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Croatia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Moldavia, Serbia, Monte Negro, etc.

(Why "SLOVIO" is called the way it is? "Slovio" is derived from the word "SLOVO", which means in pre-Slavic "word".)

Alphabet and pronunciation.

WORK IN PROGRESS!!
(we thank all for their constructive contributions)

The Slovio author is also the creator of BlitzEnglish

Esperantists welcome! If you are an Esperantist or an admirer of another planned language you are welcome! You may wonder why, after more than 100 years since its invention, Esperanto has not succeeded. And why Slovio will.

All planned languages owe a lot to Esperanto. Esperanto was not the first planned language but Esperanto made the world awareof the fact that a planned language is not only possible, but that it can be better, more melodious, more logical, simpler, and easier to learn than natural languages. Esperanto took words from most European languages and put them together into one whole. Then it took the simplicity of new word formation with prefixes and suffixes from Slavic languages and created a simple way to create new words. However, because Esperanto words come from too many unrelated sources, the result is a language which nobody can understand without some effort. And on top of that, the West European and American countries have never had any interest to learn a new language, and to this day the interest in Esperanto in those countries is just about zero.

The only place where Esperanto became a success, was the same place where it was invented: in the Slavic-speaking countries. But if no one wants to learn Esperanto in Western Europe then the teaching of Esperanto only to Slavic speakers makes no sense. Slavic speakers don't need Esperanto to talk to each other, since their languages are mutually intelligible. So, if someone could design a simple, neutral international language based on those words, prefixes and suffixes which are understood by all Slavic speakers, then we would have a language which can be used in everyday life to improve the communication with and among 400 million Slavic speakers. And we would also have a language which is logical, easy to pronounce and easy to learn for the rest of the world. A planned language, or for that matter any language, needs a solid basis of a mass of people who can understand it and who can speak it or a dialect thereof.

Slovio meets these requirements, since it can be understood and used for communication with 400 million Slavic speakers, and at the same time is as simple and as logical as Esperanto, Ido or as any other planned language.

So if you learned Esperanto or another planned language, it may have been a waste of time. You would do more for international communication if you joined the Slovio movement instead, and helped with the further development and propagation of the Slovio international language, the most widely understood planned language in the World!

CONTACT

Making of Slovio language, and its spelling.

There are several types of languages: those that claim to be 100% phonetic, those that are not phonetic, and those that are mixed.

Phonetic languages: Esperanto ... ?

Non Phonetic languages: English, Chinese, French ...

Mixed languages: Czech, German.... (they have some phoneticly written words and some non-phonetic "foreign" words, mostly from Latin and English)

Disadvantages of the 100% phonetic languages is that in order to use new words from other languages they have to be phoneticized, in other words, their spelling has to be changed into the spelling system of the "phonetic" language. This reduces the comprehensibility of the changed word.

Slovio wants to be primarily a "phonetic" language, but it wants to keep the flexibility of the non-phonetic languages. That kind of flexibility gives Slovio the ability to absorb words from other languages without the change of spelling. And that kind of flexibility gives Slovio also the ability to grow without limits.

CX, SX, ZX: The reason why these 3 and only these 3 combinations have been chosen to represent the corresponding sounds was that these letter combinations (cx, sx, zx) are practically non-existent in any major languages, and especially they are non-existent in English and Latin. That's why we can use these letter combinations without fear of creating any confusion. And that's why it doesn't matter if we use any "foreign" words which have "X", because as long as the "X" is not in the "cx, sx, zx" combination it can be used and pronounced the way it is usually done in the original (foreign) language.
Example:
Ja bu experimentit zavtra. Vasx sobak imenijt Rexi.
(As you can see it creates no conflict with cx, sx, zx.)

If you want to express other sounds, you should avoid using combinations which exist in other major languages, in order to avoid confusion. We want Slovio to be as non-confusing and as exact language as possible. For other spelling possibilities please visit this link:
http://www.slovio.com/spell-cy.html

IA, IO, IU, IE: This is another spelling problem. By keeping a 100% "phonetic" spelling we create many complications and difficulties in spelling. We have noticed that many Slavic people who stick to 100% phonetic spelling rules have this kind of problem:
How to spell: SLAVIA - SLAVIJA - SLAVJA - SLAVYA ....?
How to spell: PIAT - PJAT - PIJAT - PYAT ....?
And for that reason often have a problem deciding how to spell the words with these sounds.

This spelling problem seemed to be a bigger problem than pronounciation. That's why we have chosen to use within Slovio roots only the letter "i" to replace both "i" and "j" sounds. (The letter "j" is being used only in a few clearly defined cases.) This also creates a problem with pronounciation, but we believe that this problem with pronounciation is a lesser problem than the above mentioned problem with spelling. So even though we have a slight problem with pronounciation, this problem is much lesser than to have a problem with spelling. We have decided that it was more important to have SIMPLE NON-CONFUSING SPELLING, than to have a 100% "phonetic" spelling in the case of "ia, io, iu, ie".

We believe that the clarity of the Slovio language is such that it doesn't really matter how you pronounce the words. For those who believe in 100% phonetic pronounciation as it is in Esperanto (?) we leave it open to pronounce the Slovio words the same way as in Esperanto. For others, who believe that it is more important to pronounce the words in the Slavic way, we leave the option to pronounce these sounds as dipthongs. We believe that this "duality" will produce no confusion.

We hope we have made everybody at least 50% happy. We believe that it is better for Slovio to have some of the non-phonetic flexibility of English and of other languages in order to keep its spelling simple and in order to have the ability to absorb other languages. Perhaps in time Slovio will also absorb English, German, Esperanto and other languages....?

Slovio development team.