Frater (lingua sistemfrater), an ''

a posteriori ("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current ex ...

international auxiliary language An international auxiliary language (sometimes acronymized as IAL or contracted as auxlang) is a language meant for communication between people from all different nations, who do not share a common first language. An auxiliary language is primaril ...

, published in ''Frater (Lingua sistemfrater). The simplest International Language Ever Constructed'', in 1957 by the Vietnamese linguist Phạm Xuân Thái. Phạm Xuân Thái gave it more than 6,000 words for the usage of a very extensive vocabulary.

Alphabet

This language uses 18 letters:
"a, e, i, o, u" "b, d, f, g, j, k, l, m, n, p, r, s, t" - help for best pronunciation:
"j" is pronounced as"z", "e" as "ei", and "o" as "ou". All the other letters have their normal pronunciation according to the

International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...

Stress

The stress is placed on the last syllable of the word. Every letter is pronounced; there are no silent letters.

Grammar

Article

There is no

indefinite article An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. In English, both "the" and "a(n)" a ...

definite article An article is any member of a class of dedicated words that are used with noun phrases to mark the identifiability of the referents of the noun phrases. The category of articles constitutes a part of speech. In English, both "the" and "a(n)" a ...

Personal Pronouns

Possessives are formed by adding the preposition ''ot'' before the

pronoun In linguistics and grammar, a pronoun ( abbreviated ) is a word or a group of words that one may substitute for a noun or noun phrase. Pronouns have traditionally been regarded as one of the parts of speech, but some modern theorists would not ...

. Unlike English that distinguishes three genders for the third-person singular pronoun, the pronoun was invariable.

Nouns

The

noun A noun () is a word that generally functions as the name of a specific object or set of objects, such as living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, or ideas.Example nouns for: * Living creatures (including people, alive, ...

in Frater is invariable. Plurals can be formed by adding ''-multi'' (many) to the end of the noun: mensa (table) - mensamulti (tables)

Adjectives

The

adjective In linguistics, an adjective ( abbreviated ) is a word that generally modifies a noun or noun phrase or describes its referent. Its semantic role is to change information given by the noun. Traditionally, adjectives were considered one of the ...

in Frater is invariable and is always placed after the noun; except for cardinal numbers.

Numbers

The cardinal numbers in Frater: 1 - uni 2 - bi 3 - tri 4 - kuadri 5 - kuinti 6 - ses 7 - sep 8 - okta 9 - nona 10 - deka 11 - dekauni 12 - dekabi 13 - dekatri 20 - bideka 24 - bidekakuadri 30 - trideka 40 - kuadrideka 85 - oktadekakuinti 100 - senti 367 - trisenti-sesdeka-sep 600 - sessenti 1000 - mil 1000000 - milion Ordinal numbers are formed by placing the cardinal number after the noun.

Verbs

The

verb A verb () is a word ( part of speech) that in syntax generally conveys an action (''bring'', ''read'', ''walk'', ''run'', ''learn''), an occurrence (''happen'', ''become''), or a state of being (''be'', ''exist'', ''stand''). In the usual descr ...

in Frater is invariable in person and in number. The passive voice is formed by adding the auxiliary verb ''es'' before the infinitive: Ilis es trauma (they are wounded).

Syntax

The

syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituenc ...

in Frater is: Subject - Verb - Object. Questions are formed by placing the verb before the subject. Interrogative words include: ''antropkia'' (who), ''kia'' (what), ''plaskia'' (where), ''temkia'' (when), ''prokia'' (why), ''kak'' (how), and ''multikia'' (how much; how many).

Example

The Lord Prayer

For comparison the

Lord's Prayer The Lord's Prayer, also called the Our Father or Pater Noster, is a central Christian prayer which Jesus taught as the way to pray. Two versions of this prayer are recorded in the gospels: a longer form within the Sermon on the Mount in the Gosp ...

is provided in Frater,

Glosa Glosa is a constructed international auxiliary language based on Interglossa (a previous ''draft of an auxiliary'' published in 1943). The first Glosa dictionary was published 1978. The name of the language comes from the Greek root ''glossa'' m ...

(a later auxiliary language with isolating grammar and Greco-Latin vocabulary), Latin and English.

References

* Pham Xuan Thai. "Frater (Lingua sistemfrater). The simplest International Language Ever Constructed". TU-HAI Publishing-House, Saigon (Republic of Vietnam), 1957.

External links

* Official website (English, Esperanto, Interlingua) * * (SCRIBD) International auxiliary languages Constructed languages Constructed languages introduced in the 1950s Isolating languages {{conlang-stub