100 Words

I’m taking this really neat linguistics course this semester. It’s called Invented Languages: Klingon and Beyond. It’s all about constructed languages like Klingon, Vulcan, Esperanto, Ido, Elvish, etc.

Anyway, we just finished our first assignment. The assignment was this: Imagine that for some reason something happened to languages and only 100 Words were left. What do you think should be left?

So, I really liked this assignment, and decided to post my answer here. I hope you find it interesting.

Aside from a few noted exceptions, all the verbs are Latin, and everything else is English.

100 Words

Nouns

  1. person
  2. male
  3. female
  4. parent
  5. child
  6. uncle
  7. nephew
  8. cousin
  9. friend
  10. lover
  11. spouse
  12. enemy
  13. truth
  14. faith
  15. God
  16. Messiah מָשִׁיחַ (Hebrew: annointed one)
  17. spirit
  18. heaven
  19. earth
  20. hell
  21. word
  22. science
  23. art
  24. law
  25. plant
  26. animal
  27. object
  28. machine
  29. way
  30. aloha (Hawaiian: love, compassion, mercy, hello, goodbye)
  31. time
  32. top
  33. bottom

Verbs

  1. amare (to love)
  2. contemnere (to hate)
  3. esse (to be)
  4. ducere (to calculate, reckon)
  5. vivere (to live)
  6. habitare (to dwell, reside)
  7. habere (to have, possess)
  8. dare (to give, offer, furnish)
  9. facere (to make, do, bring about, perform, experience, sacrifice, be of service)
  10. cantare (to sing)
  11. videre (to see)
  12. ire (to go, progress)
  13. manere (to stay, remain)
  14. cogitare (to think)
  15. dicere (to speak)
  16. edere (to eat, consume, waste)
  17. bibere (to drink, quaff)
  18. faulenzen (German: to laze about, idle)
  19. laborare (to work, toil)
  20. discere (to study)
  21. scire (to know, understand)
  22. feiern (German: to party, revel, celebrate)
  23. quaerere (to ask, enquire, seek, [sometimes] obtain)
  24. incipere (to begin, commence)
  25. finire (to end, conclude, bound, enclose, restrain)

Adjectives/Adbverbs

  1. zero
  2. one
  3. two
  4. three
  5. four
  6. red
  7. yellow
  8. blue
  9. white
  10. black
  11. not
  12. very
  13. many
  14. few
  15. big
  16. small
  17. good
  18. bad
  19. fast
  20. slow
  21. hard
  22. soft
  23. real
  24. fake
  25. clean
  26. dirty
  27. light
  28. dark

Prepositions

  1. in
  2. out
  3. through
  4. over
  5. under

Miscellaneous

  1. please
  2. and
  3. or
  4. nor
  5. yes
  6. no
  7. domo ど (Japanese: hello, thank you, beg your pardon, goodbye, etc.)
  8. sumimasen すみません (Japanese: excuse me, I’m sorry, thank you: expressing that one can not properly reciprocate or accomodate)
  9. hallelujah הַלְּלוּיָהּ (Hebrew: Praise the Lord)

I decided that if we had lost all but 100 words, we would quickly create new words based on the ones left, so I tried to pick words that could be easily combined to make new words (e.g. house could be habito-object, and door could be in-habito-object). I also tried to pick words that already had many meetings (hence, aloha and ど). Most of the rest of the words are simply words I think are very useful, or words important to me personally. I only have zero through four because I figured we could just switch to base-5, instead of base-10, since we could still easily count on our fingers with such a number system. I decided not to include aunt and niece because that can be female-uncle, and female-nephew. Likewise, parent, sibling, etc. can be distinguished by gender in the same manner.

I decided that if we had lost all but 100 words, we would quickly create new words based on the ones left, so I tried to pick words that could be easily combined to make new words (e.g. house could be habito-object, and door could be in-habito-object). I also tried to pick words that already had many meetings (hence, aloha and ど). Most of the rest of the words are simply words I think are very useful, or words important to me personally. I only have zero through four because I figured we could just switch to base-5, instead of base-10, since we could still easily count on our fingers with such a number system. I decided not to include aunt and niece because that can be female-uncle, and female-nephew. Likewise, parent, sibling, etc. can be distinguished by gender in the same manner.