He sa Avdenio? · What is Avdenio?
Avdenio is a global hybrid language that is currently under development. It began in 2011 as an attempt by artist Lucas Wright to create an international mode of communication. It was inspired in part by other international auxiliary languages (IALs) such as Esperanto, Novial and Lojban. While sharing many features in common with these projects, this new language pays attention to details that have sometimes been overlooked by its predecessors.
The vocabulary of Avdenio is truly international and gender-neutral. It derives its words from fifteen of the most widely spoken languages in the world. If you speak English, Mandarin, Arabic or another major language, you will find many words in Avdenio familiar. This feature helps the language to be universally inclusive, allows for mnemonic memorization, and reduces cultural or national bias. Most early IALs and some modern ones tend toward Eurocentricism; they often based their word stock and grammar on Romance, Germanic, Greek, and Slavic sources. This might be helpful to westerners, but it excludes huge populations in Asia, India, the Middle East, and Africa. Avdenio also has no inherent gender in its word roots, though they can be so marked if needed. For example the word iman means "sibling", but can be marked masculine as imaniov "brother" or feminine as imanien "sister".
The grammar and structure of Avdenio is regular, flexible and adaptable. Speakers can leave as much to context as they wish, or they can be explicit and unambiguous. This is achieved through a system of articles - word parts that modify word roots - which can be had as prepositions, suffixes, or can be omitted. This means that Avdenio can be used in many styles, and allow for almost any sentence order. It can lean toward the grammar of Mandarin by preferring prepositions over endings, and by leaving tense, gender and plurality up to context. It can also resemble Spanish or Russian by suffixing to show tense, gender and number, and by being explicit about the aspect or mood of actions. These details are left up to the speaker. Avdenio is meant to be customized to suite the natural habits of speech, no matter what the speaker's native language is.
The sound system of Avdenio favors easy and aesthetic pronunciation. Words are composed of sounds that are common in world languages, and challenging sounds like clusters of three or more consonants have been avoided. Natural languages vary greatly in the sounds and sound combinations they allow, so Avdenio tends toward the average of language phonetics. There are additional ways to make words even easier to say: The helping vowel /ė/ can be added around and inside words to break up difficult syllables and consonant clusters. For example, the root *ked "giving" and the passive verbal article ·ta would be combined as kedėta "be given" instead of kedta; some might consider the latter more difficult to pronounce. While many other IALs have focused on simple sound systems, few have paid much attention to language aesthetics. The author of Avdenio has worked to make the language fluid and attractive. Avdenio is well suited for lyrics, poetry, prose, and rhetoric, all the while staying functional and practical.
Finally, Avdenio is a growing project that needs public influence. The core vocabulary is still being developed, and like any natural language it will always allow for expansion and addition. Avdenio "rules" are not meant to keep it from changing and evolving, so much as to provide guidelines for a basic form of the language. It is fully expected that as it gains speakers over time it will evolve into local dialects and continue to change and grow. No attempt to artificially freeze the language is necessary though, since there will always be the common form (which is described on these pages) to fall back on for clarity. All these traits make Avdenio a mode of communication that is both personal and public. It is artificial, but designed to grow and be used naturally.
If you would like to get involved in building the project, contact Lucas Wright. To begin learning Avdenio, start with the full guide or the conversational lessons.
The vocabulary of Avdenio is truly international and gender-neutral. It derives its words from fifteen of the most widely spoken languages in the world. If you speak English, Mandarin, Arabic or another major language, you will find many words in Avdenio familiar. This feature helps the language to be universally inclusive, allows for mnemonic memorization, and reduces cultural or national bias. Most early IALs and some modern ones tend toward Eurocentricism; they often based their word stock and grammar on Romance, Germanic, Greek, and Slavic sources. This might be helpful to westerners, but it excludes huge populations in Asia, India, the Middle East, and Africa. Avdenio also has no inherent gender in its word roots, though they can be so marked if needed. For example the word iman means "sibling", but can be marked masculine as imaniov "brother" or feminine as imanien "sister".
The grammar and structure of Avdenio is regular, flexible and adaptable. Speakers can leave as much to context as they wish, or they can be explicit and unambiguous. This is achieved through a system of articles - word parts that modify word roots - which can be had as prepositions, suffixes, or can be omitted. This means that Avdenio can be used in many styles, and allow for almost any sentence order. It can lean toward the grammar of Mandarin by preferring prepositions over endings, and by leaving tense, gender and plurality up to context. It can also resemble Spanish or Russian by suffixing to show tense, gender and number, and by being explicit about the aspect or mood of actions. These details are left up to the speaker. Avdenio is meant to be customized to suite the natural habits of speech, no matter what the speaker's native language is.
The sound system of Avdenio favors easy and aesthetic pronunciation. Words are composed of sounds that are common in world languages, and challenging sounds like clusters of three or more consonants have been avoided. Natural languages vary greatly in the sounds and sound combinations they allow, so Avdenio tends toward the average of language phonetics. There are additional ways to make words even easier to say: The helping vowel /ė/ can be added around and inside words to break up difficult syllables and consonant clusters. For example, the root *ked "giving" and the passive verbal article ·ta would be combined as kedėta "be given" instead of kedta; some might consider the latter more difficult to pronounce. While many other IALs have focused on simple sound systems, few have paid much attention to language aesthetics. The author of Avdenio has worked to make the language fluid and attractive. Avdenio is well suited for lyrics, poetry, prose, and rhetoric, all the while staying functional and practical.
Finally, Avdenio is a growing project that needs public influence. The core vocabulary is still being developed, and like any natural language it will always allow for expansion and addition. Avdenio "rules" are not meant to keep it from changing and evolving, so much as to provide guidelines for a basic form of the language. It is fully expected that as it gains speakers over time it will evolve into local dialects and continue to change and grow. No attempt to artificially freeze the language is necessary though, since there will always be the common form (which is described on these pages) to fall back on for clarity. All these traits make Avdenio a mode of communication that is both personal and public. It is artificial, but designed to grow and be used naturally.
If you would like to get involved in building the project, contact Lucas Wright. To begin learning Avdenio, start with the full guide or the conversational lessons.