riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (09/30/83)
Those of you who are intrigued by Loglan might also like to know
something about aUI, "the language of space", a much less serious
distant cousin of Loglan. aUI was invented as a means of communi-
cating with the occupants of UFOs, if you want to know just how
serious it is. The official grammar of the language ("aUI, the
Language of Space" by Dr. John W. Weilgart) is full of little
stories about pleasant conversations with the space people ("'No,'
says space-girl (a-ynyvu), 'I give you a space-kiss' (a-ubogta).")
One feature of aUI is that there is a one-to-one correspondence
between its phonemes and its sememes. Every consonant or vowel
is associated with an unanalizable unit of meaning and words are
made by gluing these together into (hopefully) pronounceable combi-
nations. In the interest of communication with Space Beings, the
assignment of sounds to meanings is based on purportedly universal
principles: "a", for instance, means "space" since it is the vowel
made by opening the mouth wide. (By pleasant coincidence, the
Martians have the same vocal apparatus as us.)
So, if those colored disks have been buzzing your house lately and
you expect to get picked up any night, you can prepare for it by
dropping a line to:
Dr. John W. Weilgart
Cosmic Communication Company
100 Elm Ct.
Decorah, Iowa 52101tmoody@sjuvax.UUCP (T. Moody) (01/12/86)
Hello, constructed language buffs -- er, buffs of constructed
languages. In a recent posting, Mike Urban made some interesting
points about Loglan and Esperanto. One of the most interesting, in my
opinion, was his claim that Esperanto has a certain beauty owing
(perhaps) to its being the labor of love of a single individual:
Zamenhof. Esperanto is indeed a work of art.
I have discovered another constructed language that has this property.
It is, in conception and realization, even more visionary than
Esperanto. The language is aUI, and it is a very interesting piece of
work.
"aUI" (three syllables) means "the language of space". It was
invented by W. John Weilgart, who held doctorates in philology and
psychology from the Universities of Vienna and Heidelberg. He died in
the late 1970s, I think, but aUI is being perpetuated by his widow,
daughter, and a group of enthusiasts.
Weilgart's goal was to develop a language in which every phoneme is a
morpheme, so that one orthographical symbol corresponds to one sound,
which corresponds to one concept.
aUI features a basic vocabulary of 31 basic (better, "primeval")
concepts, which are supposed to be adequate, in various combinations,
to express whatever you need to say. The idea, frankly borrowed from
Jungian depth psychology (and quite Platonistic in inspiration, I
think) is to work with conceptual archetypes, and thus to avoid
certain abuses of language.
The basic symbols themselves can be written in two ways: roman letters
or ideograms. The ideograms are preferred, but I obviously can't
present them here. They are preferred because they are pictorial and
thus less conventional than letters. But here are the 31 basic
phoneme/morphemes:
1. a -- lower case 'a', pronounced as in "father", but shorter.
Meaning: space. [ideogram is a circle]
2. A -- upper case 'A', the full-length "Ah" sound. Meaning: time.
[ideogram is a horizontal oval]
3. e -- as in "jet". Meaning: movement. [ideogram is a little
spiral, like the letter 'e', but not quite closed]
4. E -- as in "fey". Meaning: matter. [ideogram is a horizontal
rectangle]
5. i -- as in "lit". Meaning: light. [ideogram is a decapitated '8',
or a downward pointing Greek alpha]
6. I -- as in "shriek". Meaning: sound. [ideogram is like a large
tilde]
7. u -- as in "push". Meaning: human. [ideogram is a baseless
triangle]
8. U -- as in "true". Meaning: mind, or spirit. [ideogram is a
triangle]
9. o -- short, as in "bought". Meaning: life. [ideogram looks
something like a flattened 'P']
10. O -- as in "emotion". Meaning: feeling. [ideogram is a rounded
heart symbol]
11. Q -- pronounced as the German umlauted 'o', or the 'o' in "word".
Meaning: condition. [ideogram is like a pair of parentheses, with one
raised halfway above the other]
12. Y -- prounced like 'y'; before a consonant it sounds like the
German umlauted 'u'. Meaning: negation. [ideogram is a horizontal
line]
13. r -- a trilled 'r'. Meaning: positive, good. [ideogram is a
plus sign]
14. L -- regular 'L'. Meaning: round. [ideogram is a circle within
a circle, where the inner circle is tangent to the outer one at the
bottom]
15. m -- regular 'm'. Meaning: quality. [ideogram is a horizontal
oval with a piece cut out of the top]
16. n -- regular 'n'. Meaning: quantity. [ideogram is a topless
horizontal rectangle]
17. w -- the English 'w'. Meaning: power. [ideogram is a horizontal
thunderbolt]
18. v -- as in "vigor". Meaning: action, do, make. [ideogram is a
vertical thunderbolt]
19. f -- regular 'f'. Meaning: this. [ideogram is an arrow pointing
down, with the left tine of the arrowhead missing]
20. h -- the English 'h'. Meaning: question. [ideogram is a curvy
undotted question mark]
21. X -- the guttural sound, as in the Scottish "loch". Meaning:
relation. [ideogram is a horizontal two-headed arrow, with the bottom
tine of the left arrowhead and the top tine of the right arrowhead
missing]
22. j -- the French 'j', or the 's' in the English "pleasure".
Meaning: equality. [ideogram is the '=' symbol with the two lines
connected by a curve at the right end]
23. c -- pronounced as English 'sh'. Meaning: exist, be. [ideogram
is a vertical line]
24. s -- regular unvoiced dental sibilant. Meaning: thing.
[ideogram is a large solid dot]
25. z -- voiced dental sibilant. Meaning: part. [ideogram is a
closed half-circle, or backwards 'D']
26. 'g' -- regular hard 'g'. Meaning: inside. [ideogram is a dot in
the center of a circle]
27. k -- regular palatal 'k'. Meaning: above. [ideogram is rather
like an upside-down quarter note]
28. t -- regular 't'. Meaning: toward. [ideogram is a rightward
arrow with the top tine missing]
29. d -- regular 'd'. Meaning: through. [ideogram is a vertical
line with an intersecting line at a "one o'clock/seven o'clock" angle]
30. b -- regular 'b'. Meaning: together. [ideogram is two dots
joined by a horizontal arc, upward convex]
31. p -- regular unvoiced plosive 'p'. Meaning: before, in front.
[ideogram is a vertical line with a solid dot grafted to it in the
middle on the left]
As you see, "aUI" literally means "space-mind-sound". "Mind-sound" is
"language", so "aUI" is the language of space. The pronoun "I" or
"me" is "fu", meaning "this person."
Weilgart has used aUI extensively in a form of "logotherapy". His
idea is that it forces one to consider *exactly* what one means, by
creating aUI words. He believed that the conventionality and
arbitrariness of language is reduced to a minimum. The very
phoneme/concept linkages were established for a reason. The 'g' for
instance, means "inside"; it was chosen because it is sounded deep
inside the throat.
I do not know this language in detail, but it might be interesting to
show you a few more aUI words, to give the feel of it.
io = light-life = plant.
iO = light-feeling = sight.
iOm = light-feeling-quality = seeing.
YiOm = negation-light-feeling-quality = blind.
pAvU = before-time-act-mind = preparation.
pev = before-move-action = begin.
All verbs end in 'v', to represent action.
ypOm = no-before-feeling-quality = sudden.
pUm = front-mind-quality = principal (adj.).
puMs = front-mind-quality-thing = principle.
For obvious reasons, there are no homonyms or polysemes in aUI. Here
is a short paragraph of roman letter aUI, and its English translation.
It is an excerpt from Tolstoy's story "The Shark."
-pIn fAoms, ag pe, yc IOpAv, xE unIpAyv at nu, Ib yc iOpAv nyrjEos.
yUg, yfA, _a_ Ub nu tiOpAv al, Ib fnu can IOpAv dzem yrOI. Ib pIn
ynvu jEgepAv ayt tag jym taz.
"The youngsters, in the beginning, did not hear what was shouted to
them, and did not see the shark. But then one of them looked around,
and we all heard a piercing scream. And the boys swam off in
different directions."
I don't know if this sort of thing could ever work. It is certainly a
much more radical proposal than Esperanto; I haven't learned enough to
make any judgments. Nevertheless, it is one of the most fascinating
things I have encountered in a long while.
I am told that a small aUI organization exists. If you are
interested, the address is:
aUI Peace Language International
100 Elm Court
Decorah, Iowa 52101
There is a newsletter called the "communicator", edited by Weilgart's
daughter. Her address is:
Mrs. Andrea Weilgart Patten
602 Richards St.
Overton, Texas 75684
I think that Dr. Weilgart's book, _aUI_, _The_Language_of_Space_ is
available from the organization, for $12.95. I have a couple of
photocopied chapters, but I have not yet received the book.
If there is any interest, I will present more aUI material in future
postings.
Todd Moody | {allegra|astrovax|bpa|burdvax}!sjuvax!tmoody
Philosophy Department |
St. Joseph's U. | "I couldn't fail to
Philadelphia, PA 19131 | disagree with you less."breuel@h-sc1.UUCP (thomas breuel) (01/15/86)
I have heard about 'aUI' a few years ago in Germany. Unfortunately, the language never received the attention it deserved. Weilgart was actually American (that's what the 'John' comes from) and returned to the United States after many years of teaching at a number of renowned European universities. 'aUI' was sort of a hobby of his. Professionally, his greatest achievement was probably that he came up with the concept of syntactic transformations (no, Harris was not the first person to whom it occurred). For your reading pleasure, you find another short translation of the beginning of a German 19th century novel. The spirit of that novel actually reflects the spirit behind 'aUI' rather well. Since the grammar and vocabulary of 'aUI' are pretty intuitive, you should be able to decode this passage rather easily. Unfortunately, the translation isn't very good, so that some of the features of the German language shine through when you have studied it closely. Well, enjoy, and if in a few days nobody has figured out what it was taken from, I'll post the passage in the original and give the title of the book (a book that I highly recommend, btw): rF vFg qbPU rgJnf FpuBrarf, uReeYvpurf, ReUnorarf hZ qnf Yrora. "B Qh fHrFmR TRJbUaurvG qrF QnFrvAf!" ehsG wRarE avRqReynraQvfPur UryQ vA QrE GeNtbRqvr Nhf. Fb NhPU vPU, Nore avPug JvR qrE UryQ va qRz FpuZremYvpurA NhtraOyvPx, Nyf re Fvpu qnIba GerAAra Fbyy -- ArVa! -- vA qRz ZbzrAg, Qn zVpu Rora qvr IbyyR yHfg qrf TrQnaXraf qhEpuQevatG, qNfF vpu va WraR fhrFmr TrJbuAurvG aha tNam haQ tne UvarvAtrXbzzrA haQ qHepuNhf aVpug JvyyRaf ova, wrZnyf jvrqrE uvaNhfmhXbzzra. Enjoy, Thomas.
lambert@boring.UUCP (Lambert Meertens) (01/16/86)
I have always suspected that natural language originated as constructed
language. Now I have conclusive evidence that English is a constructed
language. aUI supplied the key. Apparently, the mapping "invented" by
Weilgart originated independently before--quite possibly, it is hardwired
into our brains, which is consistent with the Chomskyan hypothesis.
Look at how English words can be decoded using the aUI key:
abbey: space-together-together-movement-negation
Apparently, the original meaning of the word "abbey" is: a place where one
is very close together, so that one can hardly move. Now this may seem
tenuous and contrived, but the number of English words that can be
deciphered this way is just too large to be ascribed to coincidence.
Some more examples:
academia: space-exist-space-through-movement-quality-light-space
We have here a space (the campus) on which there exist other spaces
(buildings) filled with class rooms or "teaching-spaces". Teaching is
moving the students towards "quality-light" (understanding). Need I point
out the prevalence of torches or radiating suns in university seals, and of
words like "lux", "lumen", "sol" or "illuminat"?
advance: space-through-action-space-quantity-exist-movement
Here we have a word built up from two parts, each of which already carries
the meaning. "adv" means "action through space", i.e., advancing, whereas
"ance" means "movement covering an amount of space". Why we have this
duplication, I don't know. One possible explanation is found in the
development of Chinese, in which many similar duplications occur. Also, it
is possible that the original word "adv" through the usual inflation of
positive words (by which "advances" are claimed, e.g. in science, that are
all but imperceptible steps) became so weak that the need was felt to
strengthen it with "ance" to stress the amount aspect.
Lest one think that this decipherment covers only the initial part of the
English vocabulary, one "final" example:
zombie: part-life-quality-together-light-movement
Here we find a very apt description: zombies are ascribed the quality of
life, but only partly. The together-light-movement refers to the habit of
zombies to march together toward light sources (cf. the excellent
documentary movie on the behavior of zombies, The Night of the Living
Dead).
In case you are not convinced: that will not surprise me, as their will
always remain skeptics, however massive the evidence, as witnessed by the
history of the decipherment of Linear B.
--
Lambert Meertens
...!{seismo,okstate,garfield,decvax,philabs}!lambert@mcvax.UUCP
CWI (Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science), Amsterdam