hîskûnco cûtî ûn ûsên cênbô
fun dûî yê ûsên li sî gô sûn fos hobîyô sî dêtoî yê môtowo nêôs, ûn û êto kon dî yôûlî li fos kôs sî. hoî ôfo li zûnlo cênbô yê dônûxin. kûu cînlî fûnlôk ze.
It has been half of a year since an update and lots of progress has been made. Here's a big list of changes. Enjoy!
As usual, let's discuss the smaller changes that have been added recently to the site.
Word Changes
council
A new word for the concept of meetings/councils because this is an important concept culturally.
participating
A new word for the concept of being involved because this is an important concept culturally.
joy/delight
A new word for a concept that is related to happiness but has less to do with contentment.
to borrow/lend
A new word added because this concept required a complex adverbial phrase. Culturally, this concept is closer to "share".
enemy
A new word added because this concept required ambigious attributive phrases and is necessary for survival, translation and historical explanations.
liver
A new word added because this organ is vital to human life and performs numerous functions that require complex phrases to elaborate.
to have
Changed the source for this word from Cantonese 擁有 jung jau to Māori whai to improve speech rate of a common word.
instant
Changed the source for this from Southern Min 瞬間 sùn-kan to Mandarin 秒 miǎo because the previous source word had a number of conflicts with other Hîsyêô words.
prudent/sensible
New word added to isolate concepts that were from colot into its own word for concepts like "prudent", "practical", "sensible", "common sense", "cautious", or even "intelligent". Whereas the other word will be used for concepts like "wise", "clever", "sage-like", "insightful", "experienced", or "keen". This distinction is extremely useful in translations but it is culturally relevant as well.
facility/equipment
New word added to separate some concepts of yôn, kûncîen, boxô into its own word for concepts like "facility", "equipment", "gear", and "apparatus". This concept is for a place or collection of items that performs a task or activity.
sandwich
New word added due to how long of a phrase is needed to describe a sandwich and its prevalence in more than just food domains. Hard to find an alternative to the Earl of Sandwich.
strong
Change "strong" source from Thai แรง rɛɛng to Eastern Min 強 giòng due to vowel collision
causal-final marker (for)
Change "for" source from Hijazi Arabic عشان ʕašān to Norwegian til due to information density research indicating these high usage words should be one syllable to improve speech rate.
click/snap
Added word for a sound that we didn't yet have covered by the other sound words.
Language Lesson Updates
Occuptations & Relations
Added a lesson that explains occupations and arrangements/meetings.
Food & Drink
Added a lesson that explains food and drink terminology and how to navigate some basic restaurant conversations.
Shopping & Clothes
Added a lesson that explains various shopping terms and how to navigate some basic market conversations.
Religion & Holidays
Update the religion lesson to include Hîsyêô holidays.
Language Reference Updates
Orthography
Added a page that discusses the orthographic systems and provides some simple tools for translating between them.
Nouns
Added the missing antecedent and succeedent roles to the noun page.
Interjections
Added a page that discusses the various interjections used in the language.
Pronouns
Added a page that explains all of the pronouns and how they are used in the language.
Spatial Relations
Added a page that explains the spatial relations and especially the radial time metaphor.
Punctuation
Added examples of the usage of punctuation.
Connectors
Added examples of the usage of connectors.
Enders
Added a ton of detail about the various enders including examples.
Religion Reference Updates
Metaphysics
Added a page that explains the deeper philosophical undercurrents of the religion.
Beliefs
Added a page that explains some of the core beliefs and also added lesser beliefs to each of the god pages.
Why Religion
Added a page that explains the reason for all of this strange religion content.
Other Updates
Mini Language Dictionary
Many missing translations were added and others updated in the Mini-to-Hîsyêô dictionary.
Parallel Speech Corpus
A study was done using translations of a corpus of sentences comparing Hîsyêô to 17 other languages which allowed us to estimate an information density and optimal speech rate. This work has inspired some of the word changes to make common words single syllables.
New Word Tags
Added tags for part of speech, language family, category and lesson name for easy surfing through the dictionary.
yôn Mocko
Made a tool that allows you to do basic CAT (computer assisted translation). It doesn't check for duplicate source segments but it does nearly everything else that a modern CAT tool does.
yôn Gicîdolû
Made a tool that allows us to use github and source control to manage dictionary entries and voting. This is the replacement for the old Kennings site.
Progress & Next Steps
Over the last quarter, many discussions have been had and materials created. It's all been a bit scattered across the various aspects of developing, learning and using a language. I am starting to feel more comfortable generating full sentencees with only a modicum of effort remaining. The list of new word candidates is getting quite small to the point where I wonder if any new words will be added after them (but I won't necessarily freeze anything if there's a new word that arises a couple years down the road). Likely this will get locked down sometime in 2026. Just like setting restrictions helps artists, restricting the core language helps language users to get more creative rather than rely on the crutch of a new word getting added.
For next steps, I plan to work on more lessons/guides, adding new compounds to yôn Gicîdolû, as well as continuing to work on 3 different translation projects:
- Proposed Roads to Freedom by Bertrand Russell
- Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling, and
- some radio plays
noyo xîwon xe monodo môî nîmû bi zelen hoî boxô yê nec nucoto yê hîskûnco Hîsyêô ze.
ny xiwN xq mnd moi nimu bj zqzqN hAi bxo ye nqC nrct ye hiSkuNc 〈 hiSyeo 〉 zq.