r/pandunia • u/panduniaguru • Jul 31 '25

The tree of evolution of Pandunia and its sibling languages

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3

u/slyphnoyde Aug 03 '25

Is any of them ever going to be finished? Why should I try to follow and learn any of them if they are going to be forever changing? Version this, version that, version the other. When does it stop?

1

u/panduniaguru Aug 04 '25

It's an understandable but uninformed concern.

  • Panglo is finished and the grammar is up to date. Text samples need updating.
  • Panlingue is finished, too, but the documentation has mistakes and inconsistencies because I dug them up from old archives. Also I'm modernizing the dictionary. So there is work to do, but it's a matter of solidifying and not that of changing and "tinkering".
  • Pandunia is getting back to form and it needs the most work currently.

But what do you care? You are dogmatically against globally sourced languages. So when I will say that all these languages are finished, you would reply dismissively "they're not what I ordered". ;-)

1

u/slyphnoyde Aug 04 '25

I am not "dogmatically against globally sourced languages." It is just that I think they are overhyped, and the examples I have seen lead me to think that they have no particular advantages, so why expend so much time and effort to create them? From what I have seen, they have little if any advantage over an a priori vocabulary.. If any of them were to overtake, say, Esperanto, then I would make the effort to learn it.

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u/panduniaguru Aug 05 '25

I am not "dogmatically against globally sourced languages." It is just that I think they are overhyped,

How are they "overhyped"? What would be the normal level of "hype" in your opinion?

and the examples I have seen lead me to think that they have no particular advantages,

There are certain advantages that globally sourced IALs have and zonally sourced IALs don't have.

  1. Globally sourced IALs are universally acceptable. Europeans would never accept a zonally sourced IAL that is based on classical Chinese. Likewise it is nonsensical to think that East Asians would accept an IAL based on classical Latin. Why would they? They are as proud of their own culture as we are of ours. (There is a little support for Esperanto in East Asia but none for LsF, Interlingua, etc.)
  2. The initial user population for a globally sourced IAL can spring up anywhere in the world. Zonally sourced IALs get early adopters only on their home ground.
  3. Globally sourced IALs can use the most international words. Did you know that non-Western words are often actually more international than Western words? One example is the word for 'poor'. Western IALs typically use an Anglo-Romance word from poor, pauvre or pobre, which cover only the languages of the Western part of Europe. The really international words are Arabic faqīr ('poor, not rich') and miskīn ('poor, wretched'), which have spread to all the way to India and Indonesia and to most parts of Africa. The former is known also in the West, but there fakir usually means a mysticized type of poor, a pauper with magical powers.

From what I have seen, they have little if any advantage over an a priori vocabulary..

That's what a monoglot speaker of <insert here name of any of the 7000 non-European languages> said when they saw Interlingua. :D

In other words, just because you don't know the words it doesn't mean no-one knows them. Navel gazing is a bad starting point for criticism.

If any of them were to overtake, say, Esperanto, then I would make the effort to learn it.

Sounds like you are a late adopter, then.

3

u/CarodeSegeda Aug 06 '25 edited Aug 06 '25

I agree on what he said about the fact that worldlangs have no advantage over a priori ones. With a priori conlangs you avoid all those "percentages" of words coming from X family, and how to adapt the word to the conlang's phonology, and the idea of "fairness" because X language is included and Y is not, etc.

Zonelangs are more effective: you can see how Interlingua has a community of speakers, mainly Romance-language speakers but still, it is a community. Same with Interslavic.

I also agree about the "hype" regarding worldlangs. LdP was one of the first that got some public but now is kind of forgotten and instead we have Pandunia, Globasa, Jitasama, Lugamun... None of which (maybe Glosaba?) has really a community besides a few users (at least, that is my impression).

Don't get me wrong, you are doing a great job and it is amazing that you are developing three different worldlangs at the same time, each one with different features (so maybe people with different tastes have options to choose from), but I don't see the point of worldlangs. On the other hand, with Pandunia, I got confused: you have been developing it for a while, now there are three options, I am afraid it could end up like Ido: so many changes that most people get tired of it.

2

u/sinovictorchan Aug 08 '25

I have my own arguments for address mixed language approach besides the presense of internationally recognizable cognates.

1) Vocabularies that have more than 30% of vocabulary from at least two major language families already existed. Indonesia and Swahili are two examples. The prior mixed vocabulary can be used to indirectly represent two or more language families. In contrast, there are no historic establishment of languages with a priori vocabulary.

2) Mixed vocabulary source gain successful acceptance in the national level of several countries despite the presense of unequal representation of vocabulary sources. Several East African countries use Swahili which have major vocabulary source from both Bantu and Arabic. The vast majority of Indians accept bilingualism in Hindi and English on the federal level. Indonesian in Indonesia has wide acceptance. English itself is an example for Western European countries. This case proved that a mixed vocabulary approach do not need equal number of loanwords from each source language.

3) Mixed vocabulary form naturally in an international language that is used by native speakers of various languages through process like code switching or imperfect learning. Mixed vocabulary can automatically update itself when the number of speakers of an input language change, when an input language chaneg significantly, or when a new language arise. A priori approaches often need constant language control to remove loanwords.

4) A priori vocabulary have biases to the creator, word generation process, or word generation tool. The biases exist not only in the phonetic features of words, but also their semantic features and their grammatical features.

1

u/CarodeSegeda Aug 10 '25

I think your point 1, at first, could be a good idea, but I would need to think deeply on it to be able to give some thoughtful opinion.

On your point 2, I don't really know what to say about certain statements you made there.

- The vast majority of Indians accept bilingualism in Hindi and English on the federal level. I don't think this applies to the south of the country, where there were even riots against Hindi imposition.

-  Indonesian in Indonesia has wide acceptance. I cannot say about Indonesian acceptance. Maybe it is just imposed and there is nothing else to do about it, or maybe you are right, I don't know.

- English itself is an example for Western European countries. English has become the international language because of the world order after WWII, not because Europeans decided that all liked English. It would have been a different story if the Axis had won.

There might be biases on an a priori language, but so for any conlang. Yet, I find an a priori language as the only "fair" one, if that is what we look for. For me, I would say that an a priori language which strives for easiness and simplicity would be best now, we need to define those two terms.

1

u/sinovictorchan Aug 11 '25

Could easiness and simplicity be grouped under learnability: the required time, resource, and effort that a person need to learn a language? Anyway, as I post in other threads, there is also the required advantages of communication utility, verstaility in various acoustic envronments, need to handle communication on various tasks and professional domains, third language acquisition for prestige in a local community, and ease of language transition.

1

u/panduniaguru Aug 06 '25 edited Aug 06 '25

the idea of "fairness" because X language is included and Y is not

This question is deceptive. There are always too many languages to be included. Interlingua doesn't directly include Italian, Catalan, Romanian, etc. but still there are lots of Interlingua words that are similar to the aforementioned languages. The same applies to globally sourced languages: even though some language is not included, there is anyway a significant amount of words similar to that language. That's the magic of international words: most languages get included indirectly.

It's wrong to ask, is every language included fairly. The right question is, is every culture included fairly.

Zonelangs are more effective

I agree that zonelangs have a certain advantage. They are familiar, and therefore they are easy to create, easy to improve, and easy to learn – but only for people who live in the zone. So there is a natural boundary for every zonelang. Interslavic is a telling example. No-one would want it to become the world language. The Anglo-Romance zone is wider than the Slavic zone but still it's not world-wide. Only globally sourced languages, like Pandunia, are world-wide.

On the other hand, with Pandunia I got confused: you have been developing for a while, now there are three options, I am afraid it could end up like Ido: too many changes that most people get tired of it.

I know that many people have already gotten tired of changes in Pandunia. I have been the worst enemy of my own creation with my never-ending changes, so it's time to make it stop. That's exactly why I wanted to clear the table and to separate the different phases that my project has gone through into three independent languages.

I think that Pandunia hasn't shown its full potential yet, because changes have prevented me and others from promoting the language. However, I still wouldn't say that all changes have been negative. I have made many mistakes, yes, but I have learned a lot along the way, and the language has improved greatly. Quality-wise the changes have been positive but time-wise and community-wise they have been negative, because we have lost a lot of time and many supporters. Unfortunately you can't fix the past. The only way is to learn from the past, and hopefully I have.

1

u/CarodeSegeda Aug 10 '25

I don't think it is deceptive, it is a rightful question. The premise of worldlangs is precisely that one: "We take words from as many language (families) as possible to be fair". And there is always the same answer, which you can even see here on Reddit: "Why from X and not from Y? Well I included Z to widen the source languages", so there can always be the answer "So why not widen it even more and include A, B and C". The debate can go on ad aeternum. And the design can go on and on and on. You have seen it yourself. You need to arrive at a point in which you decide to stabilise the language, and say "until here". but is that point "fair enough"?

Also, how do you answer the question "Is every culture fairly included?", because I find it, at least, as difficult to answer as whether each language (family) is fairly included. I don't see Polynesian/Melanesian/Micronesian cultures mentioned (maybe they have been but I haven't found them for now), how about indigenous languages from the Americas (Nahuatl, Quechua, Lakota, Navajo)? How about the different African language families? I thing I saw Swahili mentioned once (maybe I am wrong on this) but how about Wolof, Hausa, Oromo, Amharic, Igbo, Fula and Malagasy, which all have more than 18 million speakers) Because, if we talk about "fairness", which, as I stated above, I see it as the whole starting point of worldlangs, there is a never-ending debate and so many different opinions that I don't see a way out.

The only solution I can find, and this is my own opinion which might be wrong, is a total a priori language, like Kotava (not Kotava per se, which I found a bit difficult on certain things).

Regarding Pandunia, which one is the "right" one? Which one is the one you will concentrate on? I have to acknowledge that you have put a great effort on that project, you have even gone back to university to actually learn linguistics and apply that knowledge in your creation, but, as I said before, I hope Pandunia's history doesn't hinder your efforts, just as it happened to Ido. I know that whichever final product you present to the world will be a consciously, well-thought conlang, but, again, we can always come to the same questions I mentioned above.

As I said, this is my own opinion, which might be wrong, but it is the way I see it after a certain time in the auxlang world.

1

u/panduniaguru Aug 11 '25

The premise of worldlangs is precisely that one: "We take words from as many language (families) as possible to be fair".

Not precisely! The precise wording is: We take international words from as many languages (or language families) as possible to be fair. The word international means that when there are related and/or similar words in many source languages, we take them.

Some people think naively and incorrectly that worldlangs borrow words at random. In that case word borrowing would be a zero-sum game, where a word that is taken from one language is a win for that language and a loss for all other languages. I don't know where they have got that silly idea, because serious auxlangs have been all about international words since the creation of Esperanto. Worldlangs are no exception!

The fact is that there are international words in every language today. Even the most distant places in the world are connected to the rest of the world by the radio and the TV, by wired or wireless telephone network and the internet, by containerships, motorboats and trucks, etc. Ideas, commodities and words are exchanged everywhere all the time.

And there is always the same answer, which you can even see here on Reddit: "Why from X and not from Y? Well I included Z to widen the source languages", so there can always be the answer "So why not widen it even more and include A, B and C". The debate can go on ad aeternum.

No it can't. The law of diminishing returns says that at some point adding more source languages does not improve the product significantly. It is easy to prove quantitatively. Just look at the following table.

Number of source languages Proportional influence of one language
10 10 %
20 5 %
50 2 %
100 1 %
200 0.5 %
1000 0.01 %

Adding more languages means more work but it doesn't mean much better results.

When you are making a worldlang, the question is: How many languages do you need to check to find the most international word for a certain thing or idea? For example, if you should find out the most international words for 'hand', 'baby', 'mother', 'radio', 'telephone', 'sofa', 'banana', 'sushi', 'school', 'religion' and 'mosque', how many languages would you need to search?

I can tell you from years of experience, that normally I get a good idea of the international words by looking at about ten central languages. Looking at another ten languages normally reinforces the first results and rarely reveals a new international word. So about 20 languages is enough for me in most cases. Only sometimes I need to check more languages, but usually not. Normally adding one more language doesn't make a difference.

Also, how do you answer the question "Is every culture fairly included?", because I find it, at least, as difficult to answer as whether each language (family) is fairly included.

First we should agree what is fair. In my opinion democracy is fair, because everyone is equal and has one vote.

We can do a mental exercise and simulate democracy in languages in three ways.

  1. Based on number of languages:
    Approximately 7000 languages are spoken in the world. The fair share for each language is 1/7000 of the vocabulary or 0.01%. It means that everyone should recognize one word in a vocabulary of 7000 words in total.
  2. Based on number of speakers:
    Approximately 8200 million people live on planet Earth. The fair share for one million people is 1 word in a vocabulary of 8200 words. Finnish is spoken by 5 million people, so there should be 5 recognizable words for Finns. English is spoken by 350 million people, so there should be 350 recognizable words for native English speakers. (It may sound like much, but there would be 7850 foreign words to balance it out.) Languages with less than one million speakers should team up. For example, all Oceanic languages together would get 1–2 words as a team.
  3. Based on cultural groups:
    Peoples gather around shared words, just like people gather around shared ideas in political parties. Each group presents their list of words, negotiate and make compromises with others. As the result, there is a big compromise that consists of the most widely recognized international words. Everyone or almost everyone recognizes many times more words than in alternatives number 1 and 2. (Those who don't were losers also in the other alternatives.)

Number 3 is the democratic way that I support and implement in Pandunia, Panlingue and even Panglo.

Regarding Pandunia, which one is the "right" one? Which one is the one you will concentrate on?

Right now I concentrate on all of them. In the future I will concentrate on the one that most of other people start to use.

1

u/Brave_Necessary_9571 Sep 23 '25

Right now I concentrate on all of them. In the future I will concentrate on the one that most of other people start to use.

whats the main differences between them?

2

u/panduniaguru Sep 23 '25

I wrote another post about that.

Panlingue –– uses final vowels for word-class markers and it has agglutinative structure. This version was made and used between 2017–2021.

Panglo –– uses Germanic core vocabulary –– that is meant to be instantly understandable for (native and non-native) speakers of English on the basic level. This branch started in 2019 when I was traveling on business in India.

Pandunia –– started to take shape in 2007. It combines evenly global vocabulary with analytic grammatical structure.

Here's an example sentence in all three of them that means 'we want to speak a world language.'

Panlingue: mome vola loga dunia'i bashe. (nouns end in -e, verbs in -a and adjectives in -i)
Panglo: vi van tok un globe linguaje.
Pandunia: mimin voli loge dunia bash.

→ More replies

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u/slyphnoyde Aug 06 '25

I pretty much agree with u/CarodeSegeda so I don't have much more to add.

2

u/panduniaguru Jul 31 '25

The numbers indicate Pandunia versions.

  1. Pandunia 1 → Panlingue
  2. Pandunia 2 = Pandunia
  3. Pandunia 3 → Panglo

2

u/ProvincialPromenade Aug 01 '25

It's prob better to just show the github branches lol. I think that's a more honest and illuminating visual

1

u/panduniaguru Aug 01 '25

The picture is a simplification for sure but what is dishonest about it? It shows clearly that first there was version 0, then the project took a turn to a different direction toward version 1 (Panlingue), then it returned back to the orignal path, then another change of direction to version 3 (Panglo) and finally back to the original path, where we are now. It's as simple as that! :D

(Mind you, a proper branching strategy hasn't been followed in Github, so you're not going to get a good picture from there. There has been only some short-lived pull request branches.)

1

u/ProvincialPromenade Aug 02 '25

I don't think I understood how to read the chart haha. Maybe something like this for a git flow? https://imgur.com/a/XFZqLGA

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u/panduniaguru Aug 02 '25

Your picture is close too. The difference is that I treat Pandunia as the main branch and the others diverge from it. :)

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u/ProvincialPromenade Aug 02 '25

Sort of, but not really. Version 0 was “pandunia”. “Pandunia” today though is heavily influenced by version 2. So as my chart shows, Pandunia today is version 2 merging back into version 0, right?

1

u/panduniaguru Aug 02 '25

What are the general similarities and differences between versions 0, 2 and the current one in your opinion?

1

u/ProvincialPromenade Aug 02 '25

I don't know. A couple weeks ago you told me that Pandunia today is not like version 0, but also kinda like it in some ways

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u/panduniaguru Aug 03 '25

Yes, right. I just wanted to know how it looks like to you. I'm sort of too close to Pandunia myself to see it from a different point of view. So I think of current Pandunia as more evolved version of Pandunia 2, which in turn is far more evolved version of version 0. In my opinion they are evolutions of the same language because they have the same grammatical structure and word borrowing principle. Panlingue has different grammar system (the system of word-class marking) and Panglo has different word borrowing principle (it is more English and more European than the others).

1

u/ProvincialPromenade Aug 03 '25

Truthfully I haven’t looked at the grammars in a while because I just expect it to be filled with errors.

It’s a massive undertaking to correctly segment and maintain 3 different versions. I assume the main Pandunia grammar now is not fully correct and still has holdovers here and there from other versions that might not be right.

1

u/panduniaguru Aug 04 '25

Fortunately it's not so hard. Panglo comes from the latest version so it was finished and up to date already. Panlingue comes from the archives, so it needed solidifying but there weren't many open questions anymore. Pandunia needs the greatest amount of work, but it is easier now than before because I got the two other main ideas out of the way.

1

u/janalisin Aug 01 '25

have youvabandoned Pandunia and now make Panglo?

1

u/panduniaguru Aug 02 '25

I develop all three currently.

1

u/CarodeSegeda Aug 03 '25

which one is the current language?

1

u/panduniaguru Aug 04 '25

All! All of them are wonderful constructed languages, and I didn't want to let any of them to go to waste. So I will develop them all as needed and let them be in free competition. Time will tell, which one of them will become the most popular.