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Ersever - A Language You Can Learn in Minutes

Created Feb 8, 2010
Last Modified Feb 8, 2010

Ersever - Una Eguangal Ouy Nac Urneal ni Etunimes

Imagine being able to master a language in just a few minutes. There are few languages that are that sophisticated, including the well-known Pig Latin, and the Gibberish Family of languages which includes such notable languages as Ubi Dubbi, Oppish, and Double Talk.

Like these other famous languages, Erserver works by making some simple changes to ordinary English. The changes are:

  1. Consonant clusters and vowel clusters are reversed intact. For example: "the" -> "eth" not "eht", and "star" -> "rast" not "rats".

  2. "w" and "y" are treated like either consonants or vowels depending on their context. E.g: "youth" -> "thouy" (consonant); "cycle" -> "eclyc" (vowel); "lawyer" -> "reyawl" (mixed).

  3. When a terminal consonant cluster become initial, and is not pronounceable, prefix "u-" to the reversed word: "start" -> "urtast" instead of "rtast"; "camp" -> "umpac".

  4. When an initial consonant cluster becomes terminal and is not pronounceable suffix an "-e" to the word. E.g: "clamp" -> "umpacle", "bristle" -> "estlibre".

  5. Words with ugly consonant clusters like "ght" are spelled semi-phonetically before reversing them. E.g: "thought" ("thawt") -> "tawth"; "light" ("lite") -> "etil"; "trough" ("trawf") -> "fawtre".

  6. Plurals and verb tense forms are made by first reversing the singular or present tense form and then adding the appropriate suffix: "children" (child-es) -> uldiches; "followed" (follow-ed) -> "wollofed"; brought (bring-ed) -> ungibred; "bringing" (bring-ing) -> "ungibring"; "running" (run-ing) -> "nuring".

  7. An optional refinement is to remove suffixes before reversing and then put them back, reversed. For example: "patiently" (patient-ly) -> "untietapyl" (untietap-yl); "happiness" (happy-ness) -> "yppahssen" (yppah-ssen); "government" (govern-ment) -> "urnevoguntem" (urnevog-untem). This has the advantage of keeping related words together in the dictionary: play, playfull, playfully, playfullness -> yaple, yaplelluf, yaplylluf, yaplellufssen.

A Sample Text

Just for fun, here's a sample piece of text taken from a large corpus of English text collected by Brown University: 

      Sample text from the Brown Corpus:

      The board said it thought it had gone as far as instructed so far and
      asked for more information to be brought at the next meeting. It was
      generally agreed that the subject was important and the board should
      be informed on what was done, is going to be done and what it thought
      should be done.

      Emplas uxtet mofre eth Nowbre Surpoc:

      Eth urdoab dais ti tawth ti dah enog sa raf sa dectunstri os raf unda
      deska rof erom niormonfi o eb tawbre ta eth uxten ungiteem. Ti saw
      yllareneg deegra tath eth uctebjus saw untartompi unda eth urdoab doush
      eb dermonfi no tahu saw enod, si ungoig ot eb enod unda tahu ti tawth
      doush eb enod.