UREd - Linguifex (original) (raw)
The Unified Reform of Esperanto Dialects, widely known and stylized as uREd, is an a posteriori conlang created to be used as an Auxiliary Language, in a similar fashion to the original asset of Esperanto. It was developed in 2014 by Serena Innocenti. Its name is an intended pun as it's pronounced similarly to the english phrase "you read".
| uREd | |
|---|---|
| Υναλα Ρεμορφενο ηε λ'Εσπεράντα Σιντιποι (υΡΕς) | |
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| Pronunciation | [juː'ɹɪːd] |
| Created by | Serena |
| Setting | Europe |
| Native to | European Union (Proposed for) |
| Native speakers | Unknown (2014) |
| Writing systems | Greek Latin |
| Language codes | |
| CLCR | qre |
| This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. |
About the project
uREd was originally proposed to solve a few problems that caused troubles in Esperanto.
- While its easy and logical morphology is largely praiseworthy, the speaker has to face a poor phonology that makes the language nearly unpronounceable and truly unrealistic.
- The alphabet uses special diacritics that create all sorts of problems to those that frequently use Esperanto on a PC.
- The standard lexicon is largely Eurocentric and there’s a lot of unusable / redundant / unnecessary roots where the creator of the language himself claimed to have derivational morphology and linguistic economy as its major strong points.
Loads of proposal to reform Esperanto flourished over time, but in the opinion of the author, none of them really sees where Esperanto failed and none satisfies the real needs of an AUXLANG. uREd focuses on three problems: plausibility, usability and internationality. Esperanto fails to achieve the first and the third point, and its amendments (like Ido 1907) even threaten the integrity of the second one. What does uREd improve? Esperanto fails to achieve the first and the third point, and its amendments (like Ido 1907) even threaten the integrity of the second one. What should we look in a possible reform of Esperanto.
- The grammar of Esperanto, especially its verbs, is a wonderful system. An ideal reform of Esperanto should leave the grammar almost untouched and focus on the “visual appeal”, instead.
- The number of roots must be reduced. I find almost laughable that roots such as _arkitektur_- and _martel_- (respectively for architecture and hammer) exist. They are easily replaceable by compounds of other roots, such as “kun-strukt-em-o” and “bat-ist-o” (These are standard, none of this was applied the changes of my reform).
- The alphabet has to be revised, removing unnecessary diacritics.
- The number of distinguishable sound is ridiculously high. There’s almost no phonemic load for <ĝ> against <ĵ>, and the letter <ĥ> is almost unused. The useless ones will be removed and merged with their mainly used counterpars.
While no project really can assure an universally recognized masterpiece of constructed linguistics, one can hope to apply several enhancement, especially in the fields of phonology and orthography.
- uREd is less Eurocentric and its roots are focused on respect for a word’s etymological meaning. When I choose a root, I make a meticulous comparison between several languages to assure neutrality.
- The grammar features of uREd are almost untouched in terms of morphology, but allows a large number of syntactical features which are present in non-Indo-European languages.
- uREd reduces the number of phonemic sounds to 26, including the 5 vowels. <ĥ> and <ĵ> were completely removed, and the affricate has been changed into a handier , which is pronounced similarly to English.
- The alphabet of uREd doesn’t need additional diacritics. It uses four digraphs like in place of , for <ĝ>, for <ŝ> and naturally for <ŭ>. The Latin-centric has been replaced by a fair .
- A certain number of phonological phenomena were added, to make it less boring and more like a natural language.
Grammar and Phonology
uREd is a highly synthetic agglutinative language. Just like its parent language it has two cases, noun-adjective agreement and a rich verb inflection for tense, aspect, mood and voice. Unlike esperanto, uREd makes a heavy use of verbal adjectives to reduce the use of the verb to be; It has a lower number of phonemic sounds, as it shows no difference between the <ĝ> and <ĵ> sounds and the <ĥ> and sounds.
The inventory of sounds in Esperanto counts 26 distinguishable units, 22 of which are written with a single glyph. Its alphabet has been revised. Now the language has a better romanization system, which no longer makes use of carons in favor of four digraphs, ĉ, c, ĝ and ŝ.
| | Bilabial | Alveolar | Palatal | Velar | Glottal | | | | ----------- | -------- | ------- | ----- | ------- | --- | | | Nasal | m | n | | ŋ1 | | | | Plosive | plain | p | t d | | k g | | | aspirated | | θ2 | | | | | | Fricative | f v | s z ʃ | | | h | | | Affricate | plain | | tʃ dʒ | | | | | aspirated | | | | | | | | Liquid | | ɾ l | | | | | | Approximant | w | | j | | | |
- /ŋ/ only appears as an allophonic version of /n/ before velars.
- should be realized as a voiceless dental non-sibilant affricate, but the allophone /θ/ is widely accepted among most speakers.
| | Front | Central | | | --------- | ------- | - | | Close | i | u | | Close-mid | e | o | | Open-mid | ɛ | ɔ | | Open | a | |