Ideas of Panglo
Principles of Panglo
Panglo is fair. Everybody has an equal chance of learning and speaking Panglo well. It is supposed to be the great equalizer — a way of communicating that everybody can use on the same level.
Panglo is evenly global. It borrows words from from all regions and all cultures of the world. It is the world language that stands for the whole world!
Panglo is practical. It re-uses things that have already become international, including the basic Latin alphabet, basic words from English, and international words from Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Chinese and Arabic, among others. That way Panglo can be used in real international communication right from the start.
Panglo is simple. In international situations it is best to use plain words, short sentences and simple language because they are much more effective than specialized words, long sentences and complex language. So, let's keep it simple!
Panglo feels real. It is like a lost relative of English that seems to be of the same kind as English but that is at the same time distinctly its own kind. In this regard it is similar to the real relatives of English (like German, Dutch, Afrikaans and the Scandinavian languages) and the children of English (like Jamaican, Singaporean and Nigerian versions of English).
Evenly global
Is it really global?
Panglo really is global! The first thing that you probably notice about Panglo is that it looks and sounds something like English but in fact the English words are only the tip of the iceberg. A lot more is hidden under the surface! Panglo is much more diverse than what one might see at first sight.
The more you study Panglo, the more cosmopolitan it appears.
Why all languages are not included?
The figure below shows cumulative distribution of the 50 most spoken native languages. The figure tells that:
- 25 percent of the world population speaks the top-3 languages
- 50 percent of the world speaks the top-13 languages
- 75 percent of the world speaks the top-50 languages
The remaining languages – there are over 6000 of them! – are outside the picture. The curve, which is steep at the beginning, turns virtually into a flat line when it approaches the last language, which is spoken only by a handful of people.
The figure indicates that beyond a certain point including one more language to the mix wouldn't make the interlanguage significantly more international. For example, if the top-50 languages were already included, adding the 51st language wouldn't make much of a difference, ecause it would increase the coverage from 75.07% to 75.43%.
One can also question the practical implications of including 51 languages versus 50. The increase in coverage would be marginal, only 0.36%, and it would not help the remaining 24.24% of the world who speak other, smaller languages!
Figure. Percentage of world population by language by number of native speakers.
The vocabulary of Panglo is based on the most spoken languages. They cover all continents and all major modern cultures of the world. They also have a lot of international words in common with less spoken languages. That's why Panglo-like words can be found also in smaller languages.
Useful in real life
Panglo is meant to be a useful language in real life. What does it mean? It means that you can speak it immediately in hotels, shops, taxis, airports, train stations, etc... It means that you can understand road signs and signboards of hotels, bars and restaurants. It means that you can make yourself understood.
Panglo is open. You are allowed to use words from other languages in Panglo. Use whatever is necessary to make yourself understood! You may say, for example, mi wan gow do "fan dien" in China, even though restoran is the normal word for restaurant in Panglo. It's more important to get to the restaurant than to speak perfect Panglo, isn't it?
Panglo is not a secret language for a small club or a cult. It's more important to be able to communicate with everybody in practice than to protect "the purity of our language" in theory.
What Panglo should sound like?
Panglo is spoken in the "continental" manner. It means that the Germanic part of Panglo sounds rather like German, Dutch and the Scandinavian languages, and the Romance part sounds like Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and French.
Continental pronunciation is typically the original way of pronouncing words. That's why spelling is much more phonetic in Panglo than in English!
For example, the words nation and native are related. So let's compare how they are spelled and pronounced in different languages.
| Language | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| English | nation | /neɪʃən/ | native | /neɪtiv/ |
| German | Nation | /natsio:n/ | native | /nativə/ |
| Dutch | natie | /na:tsi/ | – | – |
| Russian | нация | /natsiya/ | – | – |
| French | nation | /nasyõ/ | natif | /natif/ |
| Spanish | nación | /nasyon/ | nativo | /natiβo/ |
| Portuguese | nação | /nasãũ/ | nativo | /natʃivu/ |
| Panglo | nation | /nation/ | native | /nativə/ |
In this case Panglo brings the spelling and pronunciation back to their roots.
Minimalism?
One of the goals of Panglo is to have less words to be memorized than English and other natural languages, but it's not meant to be absolutely minimal. Therefore there can be some near-synonyms, like frende and doste, both of which mean 'friend'.
Easy sentences
In this section we will compare the sentence structures of Panglo with English and Chinese, the two most widely spoken languages of the world.
The normal sentence word order is subject–verb–object – just like in English and Chinese.
English: I love you, and you love me.
Panglo: mi love tu, tu love mi.
Chinese: Wǒ ài nǐ, nǐ ài wǒ. (我爱你，你爱我。)
The auxiliary verb ben is used when the object of the action comes first in the sentence. (This is called the passive clause.)
English: Apples were eaten.
Panglo: aple ben yam.
Chinese: Píngguǒ bèi chī le. (苹果被吃了。)
ben is more or less similar to Standard Chinese bèi and English be, but it is never inflected like the latter one.
English: It can not be eaten.
Panglo: dey no kan ben yam.
Chinese: Tā bù néng bèi chī. (它不能被吃。)
Like Chinese, Panglo doesn't mark verbs with a word like "to".
English: I ask him to drink coffee.
Panglo: mi ples hi yam kafe.
Chinese: Wǒ qǐng tā hē kāfēi. (我请他喝咖啡。)
In Panglo and Chinese, nouns can be singular or plural depending on surrounding words. There's no plural ending like -s in English. Also verbs are not conjugated. In Panglo, one word, es, is used instead of am, is, are, was, were...
English: It is an apple.
Panglo: hi es aple.
Chinese: Tā shì píngguǒ. (他是苹果。)
English: They are apples.
Panglo: dey es aple.
Chinese: Tāmen shì píngguǒ. (他们是苹果。)