Sambahsa

Sambahsa
Sambahsa-Mundialect
Created byOlivier Simon
Date2007
Purpose
Language codes
ISO 639-3(sph code proposal was rejected in 2018[1])
GlottologNone
IETFart-x-sambahsa

Sambahsa (IPA: [samˈbaːsa]) or Sambahsa-Mundialect is an international auxiliary language (IAL) and worldlang devised by French linguist Olivier Simon.[2] It is based on the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE) and has a relatively complex grammar.[3][4] The language was first released on the Internet in July 2007; prior to that, the creator claims to have worked on it for eight years. According to a study addressing recent auxiliary languages, "Sambahsa has an extensive vocabulary and a large amount of learning and reference material".[5]

The first part of the name of the language, Sambahsa, is composed of two words from the language itself, sam and bahsa, which mean 'same' and 'language', respectively. Mundialect, on the other hand, is a fusion of mundial 'worldwide' and dialect 'dialect'.

Sambahsa tries to preserve the original spellings of words as much as possible and this makes its orthography complex, though still kept regular.[6] There are four grammatical cases: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive.[7]

Though based on PIE, Sambahsa borrows a good proportion of its vocabulary from other language families, such as Arabic, Chinese, Indonesian, Swahili and Turkish.[2]

  1. ^ "Change Request Documentation: 2017-036". SIL International.
  2. ^ a b Olivier Simon (2010). "The Official Website of Sambahsa". Retrieved 2011-02-18.
  3. ^ Mithridates (2009-05-14). "Why You Should Keep an Eye on Sambahsa". Retrieved 2011-02-18.
  4. ^ "sambahsa / FrontPage". sambahsa.pbworks.com. Retrieved 2019-10-31.
  5. ^ "The Representation of Korean and Other Altaic Languages in Artificial International Auxiliary Languages" in Journal of Universal Language, March 2012, p.153, by Alan Reed Libert.
  6. ^ A full analysis of Sambahsa (written in Esperanto) has been made by S.Auclair in La Riverego n°104, pp. 11-16, http://www.esperanto.qc.ca/files/riverego/Riverego-104.pdf
  7. ^ Dave MacLeod (2010). "Foreword to the Sambahsa Grammar in English". Retrieved 2011-02-02.