Comments on the Ape language

Implied rules

  1. All compound words have the modifier before the modified word.
    This is like the Germanic languages and Japanese, and unlike the Romance languages.
  2. Most compound words have hyphens between the individual words, but some do not.
    A few examples of hyphenated compound words:
    A few examples of unhyphenated compound words:
  3. Not all hyphenated words are compound words.
    The hyphenated words that aren't compound words seem to be hyphenated by syllable to make the pronunciations more obvious. A few examples:
  4. The difference between singular and plural is not represented by spelling.
    This is like Japanese, and unlike most European languages like English and German. Some examples where the singular form is the same as the plural:
    In cases where it is important to represent plural, some variation of the prefix "ho-" (many-) is used.
    Some examples where the plural form is represented by the prefix "ho-":

Hyphenation study

Burroughs seems inconsistent in his use of hyphens. This causes problems when deciding whether to use hyphens or not when creating new compound words.

The exceptions

Since the unhyphenated words are rarer the hypenated words, here is a complete list of the unhyphenated words. This will aid attempts to discern patterns.

unhyphenated
compound
word		 word1 + word2 proper
name?		 use1-use2 topic1-topic2 compound
use 		compound
topic 		change
of
concept?
bundolo bund + olo - adj-verb life-action verb action -
galul ga + lul - adj-noun color-substance noun anatomy +
gomangani go + mangani - adj-noun color-man noun man -
hoden ho + den - adj-noun quantity-plant noun plant -
hohotan ho + ho + tan - adj-adj-noun quantity-quantity-man noun man -
hotan ho + tan - adj-noun quantity-man noun man -
omtag om + tag - adj-noun size-anatomy noun animal +
tandlan tand + lan - adv-adj negation-direction adj direction -
tantor tan + tor - noun-noun noun-animal noun animal -
tarmangani tar + mangani - adj-noun color-man noun man -
Tarzan tar + zan + adj-noun color-anatomy noun anatomy -
Tublat tub + lat + adj-noun condition-anatomy noun anatomy -
zugor zu + gor - adj-verb size-sound verb sound -

Reverse mapping

The above table can only suggest attributes of importance for finding patterns. To make useful generalities it is necesssary to also consider reverse mappings. This is done below by considering each suggested attribute as a possible pattern and then considering the consistency of the reverse pattern.

Are all proper names of apes unhyphenated?
Yes!

Note that no other names in the above list are compound words. This suggests the following rule:

Hyphenation is always omitted in proper names of individual apes.

Are all actions unhyphenated?
No. In fact, no other obvious verbs are unhyphenated. A few examples:

Are all compounds words about parts of anatomy unhyphenated?
This is debatable since many hyphenated compound words that describe anatomy either describe a non-anatomical concept when the anatomical words are combined (e.g., strong), or describe anatomy only indirectly (e.g., meat).

Since the issue is not clear-cut, a hyphenation rule based on anatomy seems ill-founded.

Are all compound words about men unhyphenated?
The only base words in question are "mangani" (man) and "tan" (warrior). All other words related to man are ambiguous in species (e.g., baby, male, female). All words of the form Xmangani and Xtan are unhyphenated:

This pattern fails for the form tanX because of "tan-klu" (rooster). However, since the pattern is quite consistent on the previous two forms, and since that pattern describes many cases in the above table, this suggests a useful rule:

Hyphenation is always omitted when the word being described is a man.

Are all compound words using quantity as the decriptor unhyphenated?
The base words in question are "ho" (many) and "eho" (much). The answer is clearly no, because compounds with even "ho" are sometimes hyphenated, no matter where the "ho" appears:

A similar situation occurs with the form eho-X. Therefore quantity does not suggest any practical rule for nonhyphenation.

Are all compound words about plants unhyphenated?
The base words in question are "den" (tree), "ro" (flower), and possibly "sopu" (fruit). The conjectured pattern fails on "den" and "sopu," and there are no compound words using "ro," so no practical rule suggests itself concerning plants.

Are all compound words about animals unhyphenated?
No, this conjectured pattern not only fails in multiple cases, but the cases in the table dealing with animals aren't even consistent about concept change.

Are all compound words about direction unhyphenated?
The only base words in question are "lan" (right) and "nala" (down). Such a general rule fails on "nala" (up) because of "tand-nala" (down). A rule could be made for only horizontal directions, but since it would involve only one word, such a rule is not practical.

Are all compound words about color unhyphenated?
The base words in question are "ga" (red), "go" (black), "mal" (yellow), "tar" (white), and "wa" (green). This conjectured pattern fails on "tar-bur" and "wa-usha", there are no compound examples with "mal," and the pattern is absolutely consistent on "ga" and "go":

However, since the hues red and black are unrelated and do not form a pattern within the spectrum of hues, and since the case of "gomangani" is already covered by another rule, it would be impractical to create a rule to cover only the single remaining case ("galul").

Are all compound words about anatomical condition unhyphenated?
The only clear-cut base words in question are "mado" (lame), "gumado" (sick), "tub" (broken). The only one of these words used in compound is the one already in the list ("Tublat"), which is already covered by another rule.

Are all compound words about negation unhyphenated?
Not at all. The only base word in question is "tand" (not) and in fact the example in the above table is the only exception to the usual form tand-X.

Are all compound words about sound unhyphenated?
No, "kreeg-gor" (scream) immediately violates this conjectured rule, especially since the only such base word in the above table is "gor" (growl).

Are all compound words about size unhyphenated?
No, because "zu-kut" (cave) immediately negates that conjectured rule.

Similarly, compound words about water are usually of the form Xlul, so no nonhyphenation rule is justified about water or other substances. Similarly, rules about frequency logically fail since some of the unhyphenated words are not very common concepts ("zugor" = roar, "galul" = blood, "omtag" = giraffe). Similarly, rules about separating vowels or consonants in merged basewords also logically fail. Similarly, the only word about life is already in the above table, which makes any general rules impractical.

Grand conclusions

Burroughs was just careless. He should have hyphenated nearly all his compound words in Ape.

The two rules stated earlier for omitting hyphenation are the only rules general enough and logical enough to be justified. Even those rules are somewhat suspect since there is vague evidence that they can be violated in certain cases. Those rules cover only 6 of the 13 unhyphenated exceptions in the table above, which suggests a third rule that states that hyphenation should be the norm. Therefore I assert that the rules that best cover Burroughs' system of hyphenation are:

  1. Hyphenation should normally be used between all base words in a compound word.
  2. Hyphenation is always omitted in proper names of individual apes.
  3. Hyphenation is always omitted when the word being described is a man.

This suggests that the words not covered under the above rules would be better spelled with hyphens. This even makes sense from the standpoint of pronunciation, since hyphens would make it much clearer where certain syllables start and end. Therefore, unless used as proper names, I recommend the following spelling changes:

Miscellaneous comments

Spelling

Letters used

Most of the letters of English are used in Ape. This is unusual for even human languages that use a lot of primitive sounds (e.g., Swahili, Hawaiian, Japanese), and would be even more unusual for animal speech.
The letters used are:
a, b, d, e, g, h, i, j, k, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u, v, w, y, z
The letters not used are:
c, f, q, x
The unique letters are:
(seemingly none)

This suggests that the Ape language was modeled after Swahili, since Swahili also lacks the letters c, q, x.

Spelling variations

The published dictionary shows alternative spellings in parentheses. What, if anything, is suggested by these alternative spellings? The complete list is summarized below:

word1 (word2) difference between word1 & word2
gorgo (gogo) "r" dropped
histah (hista) ah-a swap
pisah (pisa) ah-a swap
ungo (unga) o-a swap
tongani (tongoni) o-a swap
zu-dak-lul (za-dak-lul) u-a swap

Assuming that the parenthesized words are the least preferred versions (this is corroborated by other dictionary examples), we might conclude the following:

Phonemes

Many sounds in Ape are uncommon even for human languages, and would be even more unusual for animal speech.
Some examples of phonemes in Ape that are rare in all languages:

Inconsistent phonetic spellings

The spellings of words in Ape aren't consistent, although they are done phonetically. Burroughs' spellings strongly resemble English with all of its inconsistencies, rather than say French, where an "i" is always pronounced as "ee", and so on.
A few of these inconsisencies are:

Etymology

Onomatopoeia

Many Ape words come from the sound of the objects they describe, a phenomenon called "onomatopoeia."
This is quite realistic for an animal language, as in human baby talk. Some examples:

Human language influence

Some Ape words are suggestive of words from existing languages.
Some examples:

Pseudo-stems

Many Ape words of similar meaning have similar words, even when there is not an obvious prefix.
Some examples:

Elisions

Elisions (combined vowels) occur in the Ape language in at least one case:
eta-arad (lit. "little-spear") => etarad

Pseudo-compounds

Some long words have the appearance of compound words, but they would make little sense if the syllables were considered base words.
Some examples:

Parts of speech

All the English parts of speech are present in Ape, although prepositions are rare. The only preposition is "zor" (in).

Parts of speech are interchangable in compound words. Nouns, adjectives, verbs, prepositions, and adverbs are all combined freely as modifiers when forming compound words.

There are a number of expected words dealing with Africa that are missing from this dictionary.

The presence of pronouns is unusually sophisticated for primitive languages. One can imagine Tarzan saying "Tarzan go" but not "I go." Also, if there was any pronoun that was going to be used far more frequently than others, it would be "I," but "I" is not in the Ape dictionary.
The Ape pronouns are:

The dictionary has a few consistency errors that are likely errors or omissions.

Abstract concepts

Some of the Ape words seem unrealistically abstract for apes.
Some examples:

Loan words

Some of these words may have given rise to words used in later works of fiction.
Some examples are:

Swahili

Unfortunately, the Tarzan films deviated from the Ape language by using Swahili, especially where Ape terms already existed for the needed terms. Some examples of such substitutions used in the films:

Alternate words

Some ape words have multiple meanings, and some English words have multiple ape translations. Some ape words have alternative spellings, as well.

Grouping withing compounds

Any language like Ape that is built up from many small base words will have many compound words that are ambiguous because of the various ways in which the base words can be grouped. For example:

Misc. Ape suffixes

"-ah".

Vocabulary limitations

There are some very useful words that are missing from the published dictionary, especially words on which many other words and terms could be based.
Some examples:
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Created: Febuary 13, 2005
Updated: Febuary 21, 2005