Esperanto and Novial compared
Encyclopedia : E : ES : ESP : Esperanto and Novial compared
Alphabet and Pronunciation
Both Esperanto and Novial are written using versions of the Latin alphabet. The Esperanto alphabet has 28 letters: 22 without diacritics and 6 with diacritics unique to Esperanto: ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ and ŭ. Novial uses the standard 26 letters of the Latin alphabet with no diacritics.
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In Esperanto one letter corresponds to one phoneme and one phoneme to one letter: there are no digraphs. Novial has 3 digraphs: ch, sh and qu; c and q are unique to these digraphs (except in foreign proper nouns) and permit no ambiguity; when s and h are separate phonemes this is indicated by separating with a hyphen: s-h. Novial permits some 2-vowel combinations to be pronounced either as 2 separate vowels or as diphthongs; for example, au, eu and oi may be pronounced as a + w, e + w and o + y, respectively, and ie, io and ia as y + e, y + o and y + a, respectively.
In handwriting neither Esperanto nor Novial presents any problem. However, the diacritics of Esperanto require special methods for typing and printing. The original method was a set of digraphs now known as the "h-system", but with the rise of computer word processing a so-called "x-system" has become equally popular. These systems are described in the article Esperanto orthography. However, with the advent of Unicode, the need for such work-arounds has lessened.
Personal Pronouns
The personal pronouns of Esperanto all end in i and some may be difficult to distinguish in a noisy environment (especially mi and ni). The personal pronouns of Novial use various vowels making them more distinct, although some differ only in the initial consonant (e.g. nus, vus and lus). A later form of nus – nos, more distinct from vus – has sometimes been used. Novial does not distinguish familiar and polite forms of “you” (e.g. French tu and vous). Novial’s inventor argued that such a distinction has no place in a language intended solely for international use. The distinction is available in Esperanto but is little used in practice.
| singular | plural | indef. | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | 2nd | 3rd | 1st | 2nd | 3rd | |||||||||
| familiar | formal | m. | f. | n. | pan-gender | m. | f. | n. | pan-gender | |||||
| English | I | thou¹ | you¹ | he | she | it | he/it | we | you | they | one | |||
| Esperanto | mi | ci¹ | vi¹ | li | ŝi | ĝi | ĝi² | ni | vi | ili | oni | |||
| Novial | me | vu | vu | lo | la | lu | le | nus | vus | los | las | lus | les | on |
¹ ci and thou, while technically the familiar form of the word "you" in Esperanto and English, respectively, are almost never used. Results on Google have shown that ci is used less than half of one percent of the amount vi is in Esperanto. Zamenhof himself did not include the pronoun in the first book on Esperanto and only later reluctantly; later he recommended against using ci on the grounds that different cultures have conflicting traditions regarding the use of the familiar and formal forms of "you", and that a universal language should avoid the problem by simply using the formal form in all situations. Novial uses only vu as the singular "you".
² tiu, "that person", is usually used in this circumstance, because many people find it unnatural to use "it" referring to humans.
The Novial system displays a systematic correspondence between singular and corresponding plural forms (i.e. vu, vus; lo, los; la, las; lu, lus; le, les). Strictly speaking "we" is not the plural of "I", because "many I’s" is nonsensical. Jespersen suggested that nu, the singular of nus could be used as a "royal we". The optional marking of sex in Novial, especially in the third person plural, permits greater flexibility than in Esperanto. Exactly the same system is applied to other pronouns and to nouns with natural sex differences.
Marking Sex
The system of sex marking for Esperanto nouns is frequently criticised for being asymmetric and male biased. In contrast Novial has one symmetric, unbiased system for both nouns and pronouns which marks either male, female, epicene or inanimate.
Verbal Systems
The grammars of Novial and Esperanto differ greatly in the way that the various tenses, moods and voices of verbs are expressed. Both use a combination of auxiliary verbs and verb endings. However, Novial uses many more auxiliary verbs and few endings, while Esperanto uses only one auxuliary verb and a greater number of verb endings.
In Novial all verb forms are independent of person (1st, 2nd or 3rd persons) and number (singular or plural). In Esperanto verb forms are independent of the person but compound tenses, with participles, require the participle (which is an adjective) to agree with the subject of the verb in number (singular or plural).
The continuous tenses are less common in both Esperanto and Novial than in English.
In the following table endings are separated from stems by hyphens. Alternative forms with the same meaning are in brackets. In the Esperanto forms (j) indicates agreement when the subject of the verb is plural.
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Language sample for comparison
Here is the Lord's Prayer in both languages:
Esperanto version:
| Novial version:
|
See also
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