The fact that sounds unintelligible to one person can sound perfectly coherent to another fascinates me. Not only that, but a language's intricate, complex, and sometimes simple structure just blows my mind. That's why I have learned several languages and even dived into some constructed languages. Constructed languages, otherwise known as conlangs, are languages created by individuals or a group in order to fulfill a certain goal, whether that be achieving international communication (interlangs), complete neutrality (auxlangs) or an artistic purpose (artlangs).
Sona is an auxiliary neutral language created and its only copy was published in 1935 by Kenneth Searight. It was created in response to the eurocentricity of previously created auxiliary languages, such as Esperanto and Ido, which at the time, had grown massively popular throughout Europe. The creator's method of word selection was by categorizing vocabulary based off of Roget's Thesaurus, a book of roughly 1,000 categories under which every English word can fall under. Sona takes this idea and shrinks the number of categories to 375, applying these compressions to Sona's 360 radicals and 15 particles. The creator was inspired by Chinese Characters. Otherwise known as hanzi, this logographic writing system expresses ideas through various combinations of radicals. Radicals in Sona essentially work in a similar fashion, also called radicals. They work like puzzle pieces, where combinations of radicals create new words depending on their placement in the word. Sona's main goal is to be as culturally neutral as possible. This means that Sona is designed to have the least amount of bias towards one or many particular languages.
For those who are interested, I also am currently working on an online guide to learning Sona!
Note: Sona is not a copyrighted work. While ownership may not be claimed, profit is possible, but not recommended.
A PDF copy of Sona, provided by the generous Paul O Bartlett. [It might be difficult to read due to how densely compact the book is written, just a heads up!]
Read the juri, Johnathan! story entirely in Sona!
I studied Spanish in both middle and high school for approximately 6 years. I also took AP Spanish in 2023. Interested in learning Spanish? Check out the following crash courses I created myself:
Ever since I was young, my brother would often show me Japanese content. Seven year old me was bored one day, and was like "Hmm! I'm bored, let me explore the Japanese language; I wanna learn what they're saying." I am currently taking JPN203 at Binghamton University.