Gilo Information

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1    Introduction

1.1       The Reason for Gilo

The aims of Gilo are quite simple – to provide an auxiliary language for world use, that is simple to use and learn, that is unambiguous in use and, by basing the vocabulary and format as much as possible on English, providing a language is most familiar to the maximum number of people.

1.2       The main features of Gilo:

·           Gilo follows the word order convention of English, Chinese etc (i.e. Subject, Verb, Object) but with a simpler grammar and vocabulary.

·           The vocabulary is based on 'condensed' English, providing maximum familiarisation for those people who have some knowledge of English as a first or second language and short simple words to learn for those who don't.

·           The whole vocabulary is logically categorised by the meaning of the words.

·           The grammar is 'logical', in that qualifiers (adjectives & adverbs) follow the word they are qualifying, enabling the listener to begin to understand the meaning of each sentence as it is spoken or read, rather than having to wait until the end.

·           International conventions for numbers and Latin based plant & animal genus names are retained (but transcribed into phonetic Gilo words).

·           The optional Gilo alphabet, using a single symbol matched to each sound, overcomes many of the difficulties associated with the well used, but far from uniform, Roman alphabet.  For further details see Gilo Alphabet

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Previous artificial languages have used a variety of mainly European based languages as their vocabulary.  Some have used Latin.  Esperanto uses a mixture of English, French and German.  The only true international language used today is English and therefore it makes more sense to use English than anything else.

The process of condensing the words has been done to simplify the vocabulary, the spelling and the learning.  Why use a two, three or even four syllable word when the meaning can be expressed clearly and uniquely in a single syllable, two or three letter word.  To the native speakers of Chinese, Japanese, Hindi and Arabic etc, a vocabulary based on Latin will have hardly any elements that would be familiar.  Anyone with a smattering of English would be more likely to find something familiar with a Gilo vocabulary.

At first sight it might appear that there is very little recognisable English within Gilo.  I can sympathise with that view since, many of the 'core' verbs such as to be, to have, to see, to go etc have been taken back to the simplest possible root base and then had the tense affixes etc added to them.  Many other words have had to be condensed into rather unfamiliar Gilo root words.  This is a reflection of the large number of English words of totally different meaning that use similar word formation (just look in a dictionary and see how many English words begin with 'con...').  Nevertheless, it is hoped that the majority of Gilo words, if not immediately obvious, should be easier to remember once the origin is known.

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There is a considerable amount of flexibility built into Gilo.  Not all of the following alternatives are recommended but they show what is possible.

3.1    Word Order

Examples of alternative word orders are already given in Gilo Grammar 21  Alternative Word Orders, e.g.

            From    two old men     one fat fish      was given    to    three black cats

            o       du peil ajoma,     an piskis fata       adogoz        u        ti filis blaka

            to     three black cats       one fat fish        by two old men               was given   

            u       ti filis blaka,           an piskis fata        ad du peil ajoma           adogoz      

Since Gilo does not have grammatical inflexions, a totally free word order is not possible (i.e. one in which the same words can be ordered in a sentence in any way).  However Gilo can accommodate any word order provided that the correct prepositions and conjunctions are used.

3.2    Omission of Tense Marking

Tenses are formed with the root word and the suffixes 'oz', 'ez' & 'uz' (past, present and future) with 'iz' for continuous & infinitive and 'az' for conditional.  It is possible to use Gilo with an infinitive verb marker only and apply tense markers only when required e.g.

3.3     Omission of Verb Marking

Verbs are automatically identified by their tense marker.  It is possible to construct sentences using the noun (substantive) form of the word instead of the verbal form e.g.

3.4     Elimination of Agglutanives

The addition of prefixes and suffixes to words can be eliminated by the use of them as prepositions instead.  The meaning for these sentences is identical.

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Here are some very useful sites giving a lot of background information about model and artificial languages and other international auxiliary languages developed this century.

Paul Bartlett's Conlangs Web Page

Chris Bogart's Conlang Resources

Richard Harrison's Artificial Language Lab

Jeffery Henning's LangMaker site

Richard Kennaway's Constructed Languages List

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Dr Zamenhof summarised the grammar of Esperanto in 16 rules.  I have included here a similar summary in order that people can compare the two.

1)         Substantives (nouns) can consist of

a)      Proper Nouns (names of people, places etc), Common Nouns (things), Abstract Nouns

b)      Prepositions & conjunctions etc can be turned to nouns by adding suffix 'o'.

2)         Verbs.  Any word that can have an action associated with it can be used as a verb.

3)         A sentence (statement/utterance) may consist of

a)      a single noun, adjective, verb, adverb or preposition/conjunction

b)      any combination of one or more of the above

4)         Word Order

a)      Subject, Adjective / Verb, Adverb / Object, Adjective / Preposition / Indirect Object, Adjective/

b)      Adjectives follow the noun that they describe

c)      Adverbs follow the verbs that they describe

d)      Prepositions & conjunctions precede the words they describe

5)         Adjectives & Adverbs end in 'a'.

6)         Plurals are formed by adding suffix 'i'.  This is not required if the word has a preceding number

7)         Numbers

a)      The cardinal numbers are

za, an, du, tri, før, fiv, sis, sev, ok, ni, ax, sen, kil, meg

(0; 1; 2; 3; 4; 5; 6; 7; 8; 9; 10; 100; 1,000; 1,000,000)

b)      Frequencies end in 'fe'.

c)      Collectives (substantives) end in 'o'.

d)      Ordinal numbers (position) end in 'a'.

e)      Fractions end in 'at'.

f)        Multiples end in 'om'.

g)      Groupings end in 'ga'.

h)      Single substantives end in 'bo'.

8)         Personal pronouns are me, mi, wi, yu, yi, il, el, ul, ol, ili, eli, uli, oli, su, sui.

(I/me, we, we+you, you(s), you(p), he, she, he/she, it, they(m), they(f), they, they(inan.), self, themselves)

9)         Possessives are formed by prefix 'ov'.

10)     Verbs

a)      Past tense verbs end in 'oz'.

b)      Present tense verbs end in 'ez'.

c)      Future tense verbs end in 'uz'.

d)      Infinitive verbs end in 'iz'.

e)      Conditional tense verbs end in 'az'.

f)        Passive verbs are prefixed by  'ad'.

g)      Active verbs may be prefixed by 'da'.

11)     Pronunciation.

a)      The alphabet consists of 21 consonants and 7 vowels (i.e. two new vowels added to the Roman alphabet).

b)      The differences between the usual English pronunciation of Roman alphabet letters is 'c' as in cheese, 'x' as in shed, 'ã' as in far, 'ø' as in fort.

c)      Every word is pronounced as it is spelt.

d)      In compound words the accent should be on the root word syllable.

12)     Names of people, places, currencies etc remain the same as their original languages.

13)     Compound words are formed by joining two or more root words.

14)     Comparatives are formed by suffixes

a)      More 'mu', most 'um'.

b)      Less 'tu', least 'ut'.

c)      Many/Multiple of 'om', fewer of 'ot'.

d)      Large size 'em', small size 'et'.