About Lingua Sistemfrater

(Please note that the Frater wiki has moved to https:\\uikipediafrater.blogspot.com.)

LINGUA SISTEMFRATER, "Brotherhood language," or simply Frater, was invented in 1957 by Vietnamese linguist Pham Xuan Thai. It was made to be a very easy international language. The vocabulary contains about 1000 word roots. The words have a very broad meaning; for example, the word optik means both "eye" and "see." Other words can be made by combining the word roots. Opposites are formed with -ne; for example, fasil means "easy," fasilne means "difficult." The result is that the language can be learned very quickly.

The alphabet has only 18 letters: ABDEFGIJKLMNOPRSTU. Vowels are pronounced as they are in most languages. The only consonant pronounced differently from English is the J; it sounds like the letter Z (a French J should be close enough as well).

Grammar is simple as well. Sentence order is subject, verb, object. Words that describe other words come after those words.

A dictionary and the 12 rules of grammar can be found at the official website:

linguasistemfrater.mozello.com

My personal view of Frater

I look at Frater as an artlang, a language for the sake of art. There is no right or wrong here.

I hope you will treat it the same. Take your time while writing in Frater. Try not to add new words to the dictionary - It is better to join shorter existing words together instead of making new ones. The long words are pretty. Use an English thesaurus if you need to to find the meanings of words not found in the Frater dictionaries. No one can stop you from making up new words, but remember that people can't look them up in a Frater dictionary. Challenge yourself not to make new words - make a thinking game out of it. The thinking is good mental exercise. Enjoy the minimalism.