What Is Ardano?

What Is Ardano? Posted by Transparent Language on Nov 19, 2009 in Esperanto Language

Ever since Zein posted a comment under the Purism or Pluralism? article from a ways back, I’ve been examining some of Esperanto’s “competitors.” I use the word “competitor” lightly, because it’s unfair to say that a language with essentially the same goals as Esperanto should be placed in an adversarial context. Perhaps we could refer to them as alternatives? Regardless, a fairly new and interesting auxiliary language has come into being within the last year, called Ardano.

I’m not entirely sure what to make of Ardano yet. From what I’ve seen there’s only a single book in existence about it. However, you can find free lessons in it online. There’s a popup-laden Ardano website here, where you can find lessons, a listing for Ardano under Yahoo Groups, and a Google Site that contains information and links about it.

While I doubt a mere mention of Ardano would be enough to persuade any devoted Esperantist to jump ship entirely, I do think Ardano may be worth a look. Nobody says you must forget Esperanto in order to study Ardano, after all! Comment if you have anything you’d like to say about it.

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Comments:

Gunnar Gällmo:

That “the lexicon of Esperanto is derived from only 4 languages”, as written at

http://sites.google.com/site/theworldlanguageardano/

just isn’t true. There are words from at least Latin (nacio), Greek (kaj), French (espero), English (birdo) and German (knabo), plus some Slavic (kolbaso) and some aprioric (tuj, edzo), and lately additions have been made from Japanese (shushio) and others; Buddhist terms are often taken from Sanskrit (budho, nirvano), and other special terms from other languages.
Formiko:

Besides those words you mentioned, Zamenhof purposefully didn’t choose words from across the specgtrum of languages. He primarily focused on French and German, otherwise, you’ll have a chaotic mess like Toki Pona. Plus , it’s silly to be sure all languages are represented. Where are the Afro-Asiatic or the Bantu? No Tibeto-Burman either.
Zeinelabidin Elhassi:

Thank you Lex for your interest and for adding Ardano here.

To Gunnar Gallmo
Thank you for your comment about the presence of 4 languages in Esperanto. I remember that I have read this information in one of Esperanto websites (70% from French ,and 30% from English, German and Russian). But anyway after reading your comment I have searched carefully this point ,and I have found an article in wikipedia titled (Esperanto etymology) it says that Esperanto words come from principally 5 languages. But to be fair I will count the other languages which Esperanto take even few words from. That is why I have modified my article. You can read the corrected article on the same website

http://sites.google.com/site/theworldlanguageardano/
David Welsh:

My impression is that new conlangs (constructed languages) like Ardano are ten a penny on the internet. If I was going to investigate Esperanto’s competition, I would be much more interested in Volapük (Esperanto’s predecessor in the 19th century), Ido (a reformed version of Esperanto which took as many as 15% of Esperantists with it in the early 20th century) or Interlingua (a more recent conlang, based on the Romance languages.)

All these three have or have had a fair amount of history, speakers and literature. I doubt any of the new conlangs being promoted by individuals on the internet will ever attain the popularity of Ido or Interlingua – which are in turn behind Esperanto in terms of speakers and publications by several orders of magnitude.
icemel:

I’m wondering if a computer program could (maybe has already ) create a conlang which takes a lexicon of all/most of the worlds languages and etymology and synthesizes a new vocabulary from the similarities in all, rather than taking words directly from contemporary languages. Just curious.

…also the first conlang that becomes the lengua franca of youtube football (soccer) highlights will rule the world. 🙂
Lex:

I half-wonder whether a computer-derived language would be more numerical than alphabetical. Maybe it sounds paranoid, but I could imagine an international binary language of 1s and 0s!
Olivier Simon:

I agree with Zein that Esp. is too much biased towards Western Europe; believe me, I’m French, Zamenhof took a majority (70 % ?) of French words, sometimes without carrying about their real pronounciation….

Olivier
http://sambahsa.pbworks.com/
geo:

Olivier Simon

It was not Zamenhof to spoil the vocabulary of Esperanto, but the French themselves – read the history. They added much unnecessary words to the language – luckily you don’t have to use them.
Matheus de Lima Pereira:

How is the formation of words in Ardano?

I think that it could have an advantage on inter linguas etymology, but the inner word formation (intra linguam etymology) should be like that one found in Esperanto (radices and affixes). Just curious. I’ve descovered Ardano today.

I think that we should have a diversity of world languages, culture languages and/or peace languages, such as Esperanto, languages derived from it, Latin, Ardano, Interlingua (in which the lexicon problem is even more remarkable), or even Volapük. However, in some media there are already linguae francae, and that use should be respected, however put altogether with peace and world languages mainly Esperanto, Esperantidoj, Ardano and/or Latin.

May the Force be with ye all!

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