zompist bboard

An aboriginal Australian story (in Dama Diwan Int Aux Lang, not in the original Australian). There are only 5 suffixes used here: -A(N), O(N), E, and they are not glossed; note that Dama Diwan normally uses POSTpositions and not prepositions; modifiers precede (head-last syntax). I give glossing of the stems, try and give a translation of the story.

SUNA past SUNA past, TAMO sky BUNA low BUNA low; TO people WO plural AN get RITO standing MA direction UN not JE can.
TIRAN explanation, RITO standing MA direction BIRO space UN no. TO people, TARO animal RANA copying, WAN quantitatively WIKA* cross I they WIME leg.
BIKO one SUJA day, NUNA* ahead TO person BIKO one, RA will KIKO powerful, NUJE* held, RABA wooden SASON stick JENA using, TAMON sky KUTA up MA direction WASE push, WASE push, KUTE raise, KUTE raise…
I that SUNO past RASA starting, A you KAWE see MATO time MIJA reaching, TAMO sky KUTA high, TO people RITA standing.
TAMON sky KUTA up MA direction TO person WASE pushed SASO stick, WASA pressure AN got WOBO bent; I that AN became RASO original Boomerang (RIRA air WOTO thrown WARA again TUJO coming SASO stick).

*WA(N) WIK(O) “number indicated as a cross” means the number 4.
*NUN(A) TO “ahead, before – person” means ancestor; it is also the polite expression for elderly people.
*NUJE “to catch, hold, touch” is used, like Greek έπιασε and Turkic “tuttu”, to signify starting an action.
Punctuation is abundantly used or even overused in order to facilitate the learners, but also to show the natural divisions in orally telling a story.

suna suna, tamo buna buna; to wo an rito ma un je.
tiran, rito ma biro un. to, taro rana, wan wika i wime.
biko suja, nuna to biko, ra kiko, nuje, raba sason jena, tamon kuta ma wase, wase, kute, kute…
i suno rasa, a kawe mato mija, tamo kuta, to rita.
tamon kuta ma to wase saso, wasa an wobo; i an raso Boomerang (rira woto wara tujo saso).

(the story is also found in https://www.facebook.com/groups/omado.sosti.matiko where you may answer too as I am not often in zompist bboard)

Dama Diwan wrote:An aboriginal Australian story (in Dama Diwan Int Aux Lang, not in the original Australian).

Is this intended as a serious auxiliary language, or the seed of one, or an homage to Toki Pona?

Why don't you read the origina thread and see for yourself? It's there somewhere under the army of the undead you unleashed.

It is over here.

mèþru wrote:It is over here.

Isn't Kotava the only a priori auxiliary language with even a small following?

This Dama Diwan looks like Toki Pona and aUI had an African lovechild.

The OP is the only source of information on the language. I think its following is just him and his friends. As for homage to anything or its being invented:

KathTheDragon wrote:

Dama Diwan wrote:valiums, you obviously mixed up your words so I don't know what you mean, but since you used the word "construct", I must say Dama is not constructed. It is the most natural thing that can work as a language. Its whole form is simple mathematics, and all forms got their meanings by pure divination, but always with the purpose to use for international communication.
So, let me now go to post it into another place.

Lojban and Esperanto had a baby?

The conversation is very amusing. It is a thread worth following. My favourite part:

Abi wrote:

ObsequiousNewt wrote:

Dama Diwan wrote:Greek language is going to be extinct and that can be very soon, but the Greek vocabulary will remain internationally.

is that a threat?

Is it really a threat if its a fact? After the Germans kick Greece out of the EU, Greek will be demoted from indo-european to isolate. After a language is declared an isolate its all a downward spiral from there.

shanoxilt wrote:Is this intended as a serious auxiliary language, or the seed of one, or an homage to Toki Pona?

In toki pona to say the simplest thing in the world "he used a stick" you must use a whole line of 10 syllables in a rigid order: "ona li kepeken e palisa". In Dama the commonest way for the same is "sason jene", but also you can say "jenen saso", or, with that syntactic rigidness, "i jene saso". Well, in fact simply SASE usually means to use a stick (as -E is the verb making suffix, from SASO "a stick"), but to give a more precise description of the action we add JENE "(somebody) uses/used".

If you go for the small details, this http://linguifex.com/wiki/Dama_Diwan is the place for you to start.

Since you ask about the Dama concept, I have a very high opinion of Dama, but I post this here because I want YOUR opinion and evaluation. Please translate this aboriginal story in ordinary English, or your first language, so I see how well you understood it. But then, even if you do not dedicate a few minutes to translate it, this still has a meaning: that you understood it quite well as it is so no translation needed.

shanoxilt wrote:Is this intended as a serious auxiliary language, or the seed of one, or an homage to Toki Pona?

frankly you can consider it all these. A friend called it "an open source language", meaning it does not give terms for everything, but for building every term needed. Everybody can build terms, as long as s/he respects the original meanings and considers what is understood by the receiver. In this sense it is a seed. But it has already shown that it can make very explicit and concise terms for everything, so it is what you call "a serious auxiliary language". I would not hesitate to pay homage to Toki Pona, because what they present as the TP principles are realized only by Dama Diwan. TP does nothing of what it claims to do, they practice against what they preach. One thing is the allover ambiguity of TP terms, which results in the ambiguity of all combinations they make, so that the only things that can be unambiguously conveyed in TP are those that do not need to be spoken because the non-linguistic context makes them already obvious. The ambiguity starts when the available roots are less than 222. After 222 roots (morphemes) new terms or even more morphemes are still needed, but the extant ones are explicit and then their combinations make good sense. Dama has 258 roots and 4 or 6 possible suffixes. As to grammar and word order, we can further talk, but as it has been months I was absent from this forum, you better be a member in the group in my signature.