www.nabel.org.uk NABEL La Neo Langa The New Language

A Basic Introduction to Nabel

Note: This language and this website were developed ONLY for the Key Skills modules for an NVQ I am completing (2004 AD). It is not intended as a serious linguistic proposal, and I would be dismayed if it were to be taken seriously.

Why Nabel?

The European Union is today larger than it has ever been.within the European Union there are already many languages, not all of them recognised at state level, and the linguistic advantange is given to the more widely spoken languages, such as English, German, or French, to the disadvantage of speakers of other languages. The budget for translation in the Eurocracy has reached unprecedented levels.

It is for these reasons that an auxiliary language may be proposed for common learning and understanding across the European Union. Given that, if an existing language such as English were to be chosen, there would be linguistic bias, it is best to propose an easy to learn, created alternative instead. Esperanto is the most famous example of these languages, and has been in use for over a century, but has faced much criticism and has never really been effective, particularly due to its strange orthography, which includes symbols such as the^ symbol over consonants, and a miniature hook above a variation of the Esperanto U, which has resulted in many problems altering typewriters and computers, which only today is slowly being addressed. The other most popular option within Europe, Glosa, is striken with obscure origins to the vocabulary, drawing from mainly scientific cognates. The word for woman, for example, is gina, which is perhaps only recognisable to the English speaker is one thinks of gynaecology.

Therefore, the proposal NABEL.

The Creation of Nabel

Nabel, it should be clarified, comes from the Nabel word neo, meaning new, and Babel (from the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel where language diversity was mythically created), combining to make Nabel (Neo Babel becomes Nabel). It might not, as it may be suggested, stand for "Not Another Bloody Euroclone Language!"

Its core vocabulary, with due respect to the inf luences of Latin and Greek on the languages of Europe and the world in general, is principally drawn from Latinate languages, as these have had undoubted influence on all of the languages of Europe, but given the influence and size of the Germanic languages and peoples socio-politically and economically, there is some derivation from Germanic sources also.

The core vocabulary presented here will be drawing from the basic Swadesh word list, which is primarily used as the core vocabulary for Glottochronology (plotting the length of time of divergence between two languages through analysis of comparitive vocabulary, a technique developed by Morris Swadesh 1909-67 and Robert Lees 1922-). Although not intended for any such lexicostatistical study in the case of Nabel, the vocabulary is usefull in creating a core lexicon for the language. There is much scope naturally for further expansion of vocabulary at a later stage in the development of Nabel, perhaps through usage of the 850 word BASIC English wordlist developed in 1930 by C.K. Ogden (1889-1958).