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.