Pasilingua is an

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

proposed by

Paul Steiner Paul Steiner (born 23 January 1957) is a German retired professional footballer who played mainly as a central defender. Club career Born in Waldbrunn, Baden-Württemberg, Steiner began playing football in his hometown with TSV Strümpfelbrun ...

, first published in

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in 1885 in his book ''Three World Language Systems (

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

: Drei Weltsprach-Systeme)''.

Overview

For a time, Pasilingua was regarded as a serious competition to

Volapük Volapük (; , 'Language of the World', or lit. 'World Speak') is a constructed language created in 1879 and 1880 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Roman Catholic priest in Baden, Germany, who believed that God told him to create an international lang ...

, but never got much support. However, Frederick Bodmer lauded the project and its author for its inclusion of pidgin elements; it was quoted by

Louis Couturat Louis Couturat (; 17 January 1868 – 3 August 1914) was a French logician, mathematician, philosopher, and linguist. Couturat was a pioneer of the constructed language Ido. Life and education Born in Paris. In 1887 he entered École Normale S ...

and

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, in their ''Histoire de la langue universelle'', and in books of various other interlinguists at the beginning of the 20th century. The language was based on

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

, with influences from

French French may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France ** French people, a nation and ethnic group ** French cuisine, cooking traditions and practices Arts and media * The French (band), ...

and

. Its radicals had natural appearance, without much deformation, but the derivation was not natural, as it was possible to radically change the appearance of word; however, word families were formed regularly. In spite of its name, the language is not a

pasigraphy A pasigraphy (from Greek πᾶσι ''pasi'' "to all" and γράφω ''grapho'' "to write") is a writing system where each written symbol represents a concept (rather than a word or sound or series of sounds in a spoken language). The aim is to ...

because it is not an a priori language, but a posteriori/natural one, almost a

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

Alphabet and pronunciation

The alphabet has 31 letters: * 10 vowels: a, ä, è, e, i, y, o, u, ü (French u); * 21 consonants: b, c, ç (/s/), d, f, g, h, j, k, l, m, n, p, q, r, s, t, v, w, x, z. There are also two digraphs: ch and sch. The words are pronounced like in

. There is no stress.

Grammar

Article

The definite article is to (masculine), te (feminine), ta (neuter); The indefinite article is uno (masculine), une (feminine), una (neuter). The articles agree with the noun in number and case. There are four cases in a single conjugation; case can be indicated on the article - to (nominative), tode (genitive), toby (dative) and ton (accusative) - or on the noun.

Nouns

Noun In grammar, a noun is a word that represents a concrete or abstract thing, like living creatures, places, actions, qualities, states of existence, and ideas. A noun may serve as an Object (grammar), object or Subject (grammar), subject within a p ...

s have four cases and three genders; all form plural by adding -s. Gender endings are: masculine in -o; feminine in -e and neuter in either -a (concrete) or -u (abstract). For example, to homino (the man), te femine (the woman), ta cita (the city), ta modestiu (the modesty). The four cases are nominative, genitive, dative and accusative, like in German.

Verbs

Verbs have four conjugations: : 1) Grander esse - to be big : 2) Grandir esse - to become big : 3) Grandar esse - to make (something) big : 4) Grandor esse - to be made big Each conjugation has three tenses: : 1) mi morter - I die : 2) mi mortefer - I died : 3) mi morterer - I will die

Vocabulary

The majority of the vocabulary was based on English, French, German and Latin; particles were generally based on the former. A lot of words had two synonyms, Germanic and Romance - for example bono and guto mean "good" and Deo and Gotto mean "God". Much like in other

constructed language A constructed language (shortened to conlang) is a language whose phonology, grammar, orthography, and vocabulary, instead of having developed natural language, naturally, are consciously devised for some purpose, which may include being devise ...

s, words are formed by affixes. For example, - mortu, death; morto, dead (

masculine gender In linguistics, a grammatical gender system is a specific form of a noun class system, where nouns are assigned to gender categories that are often not related to the real-world qualities of the entities denoted by those nouns. In languages wi ...

); morte, dead (fem.); morta, dead (neut.); mortiro, dying; mortaro, murderer; mortamenta, instrument of murder; mortana, poison; mortarea, battlefield; mortitarea, churchyard; mortiblo, mortal; mortablo, fatal; mortoblo, easy to kill; morter, to be dead; mortir, to die; mortar, to kill; mortor, to be killed

Examples

The ''

Lord's Prayer The Lord's Prayer, also known by its incipit Our Father (, ), is a central Christian prayer attributed to Jesus. It contains petitions to God focused on God’s holiness, will, and kingdom, as well as human needs, with variations across manusc ...

'': : Patro miso, : quo er in coela, : nama tü sanctore : kingdoma tüa kommire, : tüa willu fairore : sur erda ut in coela. : Donnare misbi misan brodan taglian; : pardonnare missas dettas : uti mis pardonnars misosbi debitorosbi. Numbers from one to ten: Some sentences: : Quota hora er al? - What o'clock

time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...

is it? : Ubi habitiris tüs? - Where do you live? : Annóncius ers pro tos affäriros qua ta vapora pro ta industriu. - Advertisements are to the man of business what steam is to industry.

Bibliography

* F. Bodmer: The Loom of Language (1943), p. 442 * Moser, Hans: Zur Universal-Sprache: Kritische Studie über Volapük und Pasilingua, Berlin euwied Heuser, 1887 (32 p.), 408.9 M853u * Pei, Mario: One Language for the World. New York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1958. * Steiner, Paul: Elementargrammatik nebst Übungsstücken zur Gemein- oder Weltsprache Pasilingua, Neuwied: 1885 (80 p.) * Steiner, Paul: Summary of the Universal Language Pasilingua, Neuwied: 1900 (35 p.)

External links

* A

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o
Pasilingua

Works
by Paul Steiner on the

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Histoire de la langue universelle
- A book by

and

which contains a description of Pasilingua (pages 280-293) {{Constructed languages Constructed languages International auxiliary languages Constructed languages introduced in the 1880s 1885 introductions