Novial

Novial is an international auxiliary language created by Danish linguist Otto Jespersen in 1928. It was designed to facilitate communication between speakers of different native languages. The name of the language is a blend of the Novial word novi and IAL.
Jespersen had been an early supporter of another international auxiliary language, Ido, a reformed version of Esperanto, before leaving to create his own language in 1928.
Novial's vocabulary is borrowed largely from the Romance and Germanic languages, while its analytic grammar is influenced by English.
Novial was introduced in Jespersen's book An International Language in 1928. It was updated in his dictionary Novial Lexike in 1930, and further modifications were proposed in the 1930s, but the language became dormant with Jespersen's death in 1943.

Phonology

Consonants

Vowels

Stress

The basic rule is: stress the vowel before the last consonant. However, consonantal flexional endings do not count for this, so perhaps it is better to say that the vowel before the final consonant of the stem takes the stress.

Orthography

The digraphs ch and sh represent or, depending on the speaker. For example, chokolate would be pronounced either or. w is not used.

Grammar

Like many constructed IALs, Novial has a simple and regular grammar. The main word order is SVO, which removes the need for marking the object of a sentence with accusative case. There is however a way to mark accusative. There is no grammatical gender. Verbs are conjugated regularly, without agreement.
Nouns mainly end in e, a, o, u or um in the singular. There are definite forms of nouns marked with an article, and singular and plural forms, where the plural is marked with the suffix -s after vowels or -es after consonants. There is also a form for indefinite number, expressed by removing the ending of the noun in the singular.
If a noun refers to a living being, then the form ending in -e is neutral with regard to sex, feminine when ending in -a, and masculine when ending in -o. If based on an adjective, a noun referring to a living being can be made with the previously mentioned rule, and furthermore nouns referring to concrete objects with -u, and abstractions with -um. The third-person pronouns follow the same rule, together with the definite article.
Referring to an instrument – a tool or a means – a word that ends in -e is the tool or the means itself, a word that ends in -a is a verb describing usage of the tool and so on, and a word that ends in -o is a noun describing the act of using it:

Personal pronouns

The standard word order in Novial is subject–verb–object, as in English. Therefore, the object need not be marked to distinguish it from the subject, and nominative and accusative pronouns are identical:
The accusative is therefore most often identical to the nominative. However, for avoiding ambiguity, an optional accusative ending, -m, is available; it is rarely used. The preposition em is equivalent to this ending.
The genitive personal pronouns – whether dependent or independent – are formed by adding -n or after a consonant -en:
The genitive pronouns are thus men, vun, len, etc., lun and nusen, vusen, lesen etc. and lusen. Such a relationship may also be expressed with the preposition de: de me, de vu, and so on.
The reflexive pronoun is se: lo admira se – 'he admires himself'. The generic personal pronoun is on, with the genitive form onen.

Verbs

Verb forms never change with person or number. Most verb tenses, moods and voices are expressed with auxiliary verbs preceding the root form of the main verb. The auxiliaries follow the same word order as the English equivalent. The following are examples of the verb forms:

Grammar	English	Novial
Infinitive	to protect	protekte
Present	I protect	me protekte
Present Perfect	I have protected	me ha protekte
Past Simple	I protected	me did protekte or me protekted
Past Perfect	I had protected	me had protekte
Future	I shall protect or I will protect	me sal protekte or me ve protekte
Future Perfect	I shall have protected or I will have protected	me sal ha protekte or me ve ha protekte
Future in the Past	I was going to protect	me saled protekte
Conditional	I would protect	me vud protekte
Conditional Perfect	I would have protected	me vud ha protekte
First-person Imperative	Let me protect!	Let me protekte!
Second-person Imperative	Protect!	protekte!

Present active participle: protektent – 'protecting'
Past passive participle: protektet – 'protected'

Novial clearly distinguishes the passive of becoming and the passive of being. In English, the forms are often the same, using the auxiliary verb be followed by the past participle. However, the passive of becoming is also often expressed with the verb get, which is used in the examples below.
The passive voice of becoming is formed with the auxiliary bli followed by the root verb form. It can then be conjugated into the previously mentioned forms, for example:

Grammar	English	Novial
Infinitive	to get protected	bli protekte
Present	I get protected	me bli protekte
Present Perfect	I have got protected	me ha bli protekte
Past Simple	I got protected	me blid protekte
Past Perfect	I had got protected	me had bli protekte
Future	I shall get protected or I will get protected	me sal bli protekte or me ve bli protekte
Conditional	I would get protected	me vud bli protekte

The passive voice of being is formed with the auxiliary es followed by the past passive participle. For example:

Grammar	English	Novial
Infinitive	to be protected	es protektet
Present	I am protected	me es protektet
Present Perfect	I have been protected	me ha es protektet
Past Simple	I was protected	me did es protektet or me esed protektet
Past Perfect	I had been protected	me had es protektet
Future	I shall be protected or I will be protected	me sal es protektet or me ve es protektet
Conditional	I would be protected	me vud es protektet

Articles

The definite article is li, which is invariant. It is used as in English.
There is no indefinite article, although un can be used.

Nouns

The plural noun is formed by adding –s to the singular.
The accusative case is generally identical to the nominative but can optionally be marked with the ending -m with the plural being -sem or with the preposition em.
The genitive is formed with the ending -n with the plural being -sen or with the preposition de.
Other cases are formed with prepositions.

Adjectives

All adjectives end in -i, but this may be dropped if it is easy enough to pronounce and no confusion will be caused. Adjectives precede the noun qualified. Adjectives do not agree with the noun, but may be given noun endings if there is no noun present to receive them.
Comparative adjectives are formed by placing various particles in front of the adjective receiving the comparison. Likewise, the superlative particles precede the adjective. The adjective does not receive an inflection to its ending.

Adverbs

An adjective is converted to a corresponding adverb by adding -m after the -i ending of the adjective.
Comparative and superlative adverbs are formed in the same manner as comparative and superlative adjectives: by placing a specific particle before the adverb receiving the comparison.

Vocabulary

Affixes

See the Table of Prefixes and Table of Suffixes at the Novial Wikibook.

Novial compared to Esperanto and Ido

Jespersen was a professional linguist, unlike Esperanto's creator. He disliked the arbitrary and artificial character that he found in Esperanto and Ido. Additionally, he objected to those languages' inflectional systems, which he found needlessly complex. He sought to make Novial at once euphonious and regular, while also preserving useful structures from natural languages.
In Novial:

Syntax is largely a matter of word order, as in English and modern Scandinavian languages. There is no obligatory accusative marker as in Esperanto, but the accusative may optionally be marked with either an accusative ending or a preposition.
A genitive case is available as an alternative to the preposition de. This is based on Jespersen's observation that many modern languages have lost complex noun inflections, yet retain a genitive form.
Auxiliary particles express most verb tenses. An inflectional ending is available as a shorthand for the simple past tense.

A major difference between Novial and Esperanto/Ido concerns noun endings. Jespersen rejected a single vowel to terminate all nouns, finding it unnatural and potentially confusing. Instead, Novial nouns may end in -o, -a, -e, or -u or -um. These endings may be taken to indicate natural sex according to the custom in Romance languages, though there is no grammatical gender or requirement for adjectives to agree with nouns.