# mangsprak



## esra_

Hey,

currently I translate(1) zonal constructed language Alteutonik-mangsprak, 1915 by Elias Molee into German. Next year Alteutonik (I prefer stand alone "mangsprak" name) publishing date will get 100 years old. So, I plan to get translation of that mangsprak finished until next year.

Molee did grow up inside Scandinavian, German, Dutch community in US. His parents were Norwegian. Together with neighbourhood kids during that time he playfully developed some children language. Later he did develop it into full zonal constructed language.

My question is if he really developed zonal constructed language which can be understood instantly by Nordic native speakers. In Nordic language space, can it be understood nowadays?

mangsprak (1; pdf, odt, doc)

regards,

(1) sites.google.com/site/alteutonikradiogran/files

to admin: I got the message that new forum members are not allowed to post links. So, hhm, I broke the forum rules? What I have to do to get "trusted"? I have no spam intention in mind.


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## Cagey

This question is somewhat outside what we usually do, but we can give it a try. 

Please provide a sentence or two in mangsprak on commonplace topics. They would give a starting point for speakers of different Nordic languages to comment on how intelligible the sentences are to native-speakers of their language.


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## Ben Jamin

I have browsed through the book and read some paargraphs. For me it looks like High German with some loaned feathers from other Germanic languages, i.e. a language with a very strong bias towards High German. The "pangermanization" has not been very successful in my opinion. A much better starting point would be to use Low German as a base, as Low German is more in the center of the Germanic dialect continuum, easily understood by the Dutch and Scandinavians, and at least easier for the English than High German.


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## esra_

Hhm, thanks for your comments. I wonder somewhat. Molee never mentioned much contact with High German. Instead of he mentioned that mostly Low German speaking people were around him. But also he mentioned, that he was two years in Europe, most of it in Berlin and Kristiania (Oslo). Should it be that he lost passion in Low German during his stay in Berlin? Hhm.

archive.org, Alteutonik, 1915, page 35: 

moleo fadr n modr sagn oft, "it is slim dat germania, skandia, holand n amerika havn nit eselve sprake.   weil di nordgermanike kinda sprekn platgermanik, hav molee imr libn di platgermanike worta".   hi hav oft sagn, dat "it isn (war) se'r slim fyr germania, dat e bibl oversetzn to platgermanik in rostock in 1540 wordn nit damals annemen, als e folkosprake fyr e ganze germania; dan wiln e sprake hav wordn mer einfak, n mer anlike mit skandik, holandik n anglik. ..."

So, did I got it right, compared with David Parke's SamSkandinavisk and Frenkisch (konstspraik.blogspot.de), Mangsprak seems to be quite useless to Scandinavians?


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## myšlenka

esra_ said:


> My question is if he really developed zonal constructed language which can be understood instantly by Nordic native speakers. In Nordic language space, can it be understood nowadays?


 


esra_ said:


> archive.org, Alteutonik, 1915, page 35:
> 
> moleo fadr n modr sagn oft, "it is slim dat germania, skandia, holand n amerika havn nit eselve sprake. weil di nordgermanike kinda sprekn platgermanik, hav molee imr libn di platgermanike worta". hi hav oft sagn, dat "it isn (war) se'r slim fyr germania, dat e bibl oversetzn to platgermanik in rostock in 1540 wordn nit damals annemen, als e folkosprake fyr e ganze germania; dan wiln e sprake hav wordn mer einfak, n mer anlike mit skandik, holandik n anglik. ..."
> 
> So, did I got it right, compared with David Parke's SamSkandinavisk and Frenkisch (konstspraik.blogspot.de), Mangsprak seems to be quite useless to Scandinavians?


Abstracting away from my knowledge in German/English/Dutch, the passage you quoted is generally not understandable. So yes, Mangsprak is useless to Scandinavians.


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## Ben Jamin

esra_ said:


> Hhm, thanks for your comments. I wonder somewhat. Molee never mentioned much contact with High German. Instead of he mentioned that mostly Low German speaking people were around him. But also he mentioned, that he was two years in Europe, most of it in Berlin and Kristiania (Oslo). Should it be that he lost passion in Low German during his stay in Berlin? Hhm.
> 
> archive.org, Alteutonik, 1915, page 35:
> 
> moleo fadr n modr sagn oft, "it is slim dat germania, skandia, holand n amerika havn nit eselve sprake.   weil di nordgermanike kinda sprekn platgermanik, hav molee imr libn di platgermanike worta".   hi hav oft sagn, dat "it isn (war) se'r slim fyr germania, dat e bibl oversetzn to platgermanik in rostock in 1540 wordn nit damals annemen, als e folkosprake fyr e ganze germania; dan wiln e sprake hav wordn mer einfak, n mer anlike mit skandik, holandik n anglik. ..."
> 
> So, did I got it right, compared with David Parke's SamSkandinavisk and Frenkisch (konstspraik.blogspot.de), Mangsprak seems to be quite useless to Scandinavians?



I sent my post before I could read the paragraph you sent, but I read quickle several passages from the book.. Maybe the intention of the author was to base on Low German, but he keeps the special High German phonetic features (in your quotation: overse*tz*n, gan*z*e), uses largely High German vocabulary (albeit phonetically modified, but it does snot improve understandability), using cryptic word like "n", and so on. The whole concept seems to be very dilletantic, and lacking a deeper understanding of the linguistic issues.

I know other attempts at creating an artificial "zone language", for example _Interlingua _and _Slovio_, and these are much more successfull, even if their practical importance is close to zero.

The method used to create _Interlingua _and _Slovio_ was to list words in all the included source languages and choose the one which ocurred in most of them. It doesn't seem that this method was used here, the choice is perfectly arbitrary and biased by the authors mother tongue.


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## Sepia

@My question is if he really developed zonal constructed language which can be understood instantly by Nordic native speakers. In Nordic language space, can it be understood nowadays?


From a practical point of view I'd say that he utterly failed. I is more than 30 ago since the last time I heard anyone being serious about publishing anything in any kind of mixed-universal Scandinavian language. (The Danish Tourist Board tried that).

And an furthermore - there is no Nordic language space - there may be a Scandinavian one. Nordic includes Finland, Faroes, and Iceland. The languages of the two last mentioned is too different from contemporary Scandinavian languages and Finnish belongs to a totally different group of languages.


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## esra_

Thanks everybody for your feedback. 

Yes, I know Interlingua (IALA). I also run another project which aims to digitize some "pre-computer" course "Interlingua for Germans". 

sites.google.com/site/interlingualingvo/file-cabinet

Regarding Alteutonik/mangsprak. Well, I have to confess I'm somewhat envy to Slavic (Slovianski) and Romanic native speakers. It seems to be much more easer to compile some zonal constructed language to them then for Germanic natives. 

I was not sure, but Alteutonik was to easy to translate into German. So, what you wrote regarding its similarity to High German seems to verify that. 

Hhm, okay, I will think about how to follow up. 

Thanks, again.


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## Ben Jamin

esra_ said:


> Thanks everybody for your feedback.
> 
> Yes, I know Interlingua (IALA). I also run another project which aims to digitize some "pre-computer" course "Interlingua for Germans".
> 
> sites.google.com/site/interlingualingvo/file-cabinet
> 
> Regarding Alteutonik/mangsprak. Well, I have to confess I'm somewhat envy to Slavic (Slovianski) and Romanic native speakers. It seems to be much more easer to compile some zonal constructed language to them then for Germanic natives.
> 
> I was not sure, but Alteutonik was to easy to translate into German. So, what you wrote regarding its similarity to High German seems to verify that.
> 
> Hhm, okay, I will think about how to follow up.
> 
> Thanks, again.


It would be a challenging task, but not impossible to create a "Germanic Interlingua". Try to begin with finding a common word for "luck" (lykke (No and Da), lycka (Sw) and lukka (Ic).


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## NorwegianNYC

Another serious obstacle is word migration. Scandinavian has borrowed extensively from Low German (in particular), but High German has borrowed very little from Low German, and almost nothing from Scandinavian. English, on the other hand, has a considerable amount of borrowings from Scandinavian, and much less, but quite a few, from Low German.


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## Ben Jamin

NorwegianNYC said:


> Another serious obstacle is word migration. Scandinavian has borrowed extensively from Low German (in particular), but High German has borrowed very little from Low German, and almost nothing from Scandinavian. English, on the other hand, has a considerable amount of borrowings from Scandinavian, and much less, but quite a few, from Low German.


I think that a Germanic Interlingua should use Low German dialects, for example from Schleswig Holstein as a base. One should try to avoid words containing g- and ge- prefixes as they will impair the understanding by the Scandinavians, and adjust the spelling of words taken from High German disregarding the second Germanic sound shift.


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## Sepia

Ben Jamin said:


> I think that a Germanic Interlingua should use Low German dialects, for example from Schleswig Holstein as a base. One should try to avoid words containing g- and ge- prefixes as they will impair the understanding by the Scandinavians, and adjust the spelling of words taken from High German disregarding the second Germanic sound shift.




The question is, who would benefit from this. My experience is that High German speakers who are not really good in foreign languages or don't care to learn will have a hard time understanding even SH-Platt. Even my spouse who is pretty good in foreign languages didn't unterstand Plattdeutsch until after learning to speak Danish. 

But when somebody already speaks High German, Danish or Swedish, and English, what do they need an artificial hybrid for?


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## NorwegianNYC

If anything, this hybrid must be based more on the Northwestern goup (English, Low German and Frisian) than High German. Scandinavian is a footnote, but due to the heavy influence from Low German, and the borrowings into English, it is the closer connection


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## Ben Jamin

Sepia said:


> The question is, who would benefit from this. My experience is that High German speakers who are not really good in foreign languages or don't care to learn will have a hard time understanding even SH-Platt. Even my spouse who is pretty good in foreign languages didn't unterstand Plattdeutsch until after learning to speak Danish.
> 
> But when somebody already speaks High German, Danish or Swedish, and English, what do they need an artificial hybrid for?


Actually, a need of such zone language is marginal, and people that construct them do it for fun. But if you do things for fun it is still necessary to do it well, and make something that could be useful. 
I don't feel any need for a zone language, being able to communicate well in the Germanic, Romance, and Slavic zone, but i feel it is fun to read texts in Interlingua, Slovio and Esperanto.


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## Sepia

That is not my impression. The Esperanto people I ran into take this language very seriously and the hybrid Scandinavian I was talking about was used in printed public information from The Danish Tourist Board. When you print something in 5-digit copies it is usually meant seriously.


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## willem81

The question is whether a vast majority really needs constructed languages. Most frequent reasons in favor of such languages are that they would greatly facilitate communication, decrease the expenses spent on professional translators. Esperanto is still the biggest of them, but it never became what it intended to be - a global lingua franca, however esperantists are optimistic, they say "look, in one hundred years the number of its speakers has increased from 5 persons to about a couple of millions, isn't it impressive?". The answer may differ.


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## esra_

Recently I found this:

http://www.cea.ulg.ac.be/eurocomgerm/beziehungen/index.php

There they claim that: "germanischen Sprachen auch in Syntax und Morphologie große Gemeinsamkeiten haben." 

I like that EuroComGerm method. Next time I will order regarding reference book. It even contains soma audio examples. Maybe Molee (origin author of Alteutonik/mangsprak) was not that wrong with his extraction attempt. 

EuroComGerm - Die sieben Siebe: Germanische Sprachen lesen lernen Broschiert – 1. Mai 2014
von Britta Hufeisen (Herausgeber), Nicole Marx (Herausgeber)

regards,


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## esra_

Ben Jamin said:


> I know other attempts at creating an artificial "zone language", for example _Interlingua _and _Slovio_, and these are much more successfull, even if their practical importance is close to zero.
> 
> The method used to create _Interlingua _and _Slovio_ was to list words in all the included source languages and choose the one which ocurred in most of them. It doesn't seem that this method was used here, the choice is perfectly arbitrary and biased by the authors mother tongue.



Well, I wouldn't put Interlingua and Slovio into same category. Slovio takes root words of Slavic source languages and mixes it up with Esperanto grammar ideas. In Interlingua (IALA) nearly nothing is invented, better "Interlingua doesn't contain elements which before were not smoothed in the wild by native speakers of regarding source languages". 

There excists scientific dissertation work about current Interslavic efforts: Pdf file

Interlingua for German speaker: Google sites

regards,


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## esra_

Sepia said:


> But when somebody already speaks High German, Danish or Swedish, and English, what do they need an artificial hybrid for?


 Well, I grow up native with High German, I never learned Danish or Swedish. I have to confess, that my English needs complete be relearned. 

Over last years three time I was on holiday in Sweden. So, yes, there already exists some cognance between High German and Swedish. 

I.e. I can get the idea behind Swedish blåbärsoppa = Blaubeersuppe = dickflüssiger Blaubeersaft = Blaubeersaft mit hohem Fruchtanteil (viscous blueberry juice). 

Det war fantastiskt! = Das wäre fantastisch. 
Söt = süß (aussehend)
Det war trevligt att få lära känna dig. = Das war (vor)trefflich (zu) für lernen kennen dich. 
Hjärtliga gratulationer = Herzliche Gratulationen. 

I would say at least 20-30 percent of Swedish some German native speaker can understand without learning Swedish before.

I could be wrong, but maybe main value of mangsprak is to prepare German native speakers get understanding of Scandinavic languages, not reverse.


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## Sepia

esra_ said:


> ...
> 
> I would say at least 20-30 percent of Swedish some German native speaker can understand without learning Swedish before.
> 
> I could be wrong, but maybe main value of mangsprak is to prepare German native speakers get understanding of Scandinavic languages, not reverse.



True - if you have enough imagination you can understand a lot once you get familiar with the phonetic rules.

But this idea of "preparing for ..." etc. That is what they told us were the reason for us waisting several hours a week for three years learning latin. Was it any good? Did it help me learning French? Or did I have to look to French and English vocabularies to prepare for the Latin tests. 

Sorry, but why should anyone want to learn one language first - for which he has no use at all - in order to learn some other language in stead of investing the same amount of time to learn the language he really needs? 

And when you are moving form High German to Danish or Swedish, what extra preparation do you need? You are moving from a highly complex grammar with lots of flexions of verbs and noins in four cases - to a language where I can type out the complete verb system on one sheet of A4 paper - and on an additional sheet you can have the 40 most used irregular verbs. 
NOBODY needs to learn an extra and next to useless  language to prepare for that. But if you already know English, a lot of the grammar can be explained with: Do it like you do in English. When in doubt and you don't know better, do that and you'll be OK 80% of the time.


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