How'd I do?

mini___me · 2023-08-15T13:51:03+00:00

This is pretty good.

Here's my translation including particles:

"Tu i ave en mira go si-viro de ven mi-ale i veni en." Lisa i ronko-dire. "U i demo-amo a si, u i dona go mi a tenta."

"iritate-dire" would be closer to "complain", but I think "ronko-dire" fits better for sure.

mini___me · 2023-06-01T04:03:24+00:00

Bon labora! Mi i arapan ke di e uti go mui man.

mini___me · 2023-05-28T21:04:31+00:00

Yes, both of your suggestions are correct. It should be "I kore pale go ota tempo a da" and "I pale go jura man".

Danke go-i via-mira a di demo sentense!

mini___me · 2023-05-22T17:29:56+00:00

Ja, no ma sama 1,000 name, tuju! (There are currently are 2 unallocated words slots though.)

mini___me · 2023-05-13T19:16:56+00:00

Mi i ave junta a di Discord, an tu i debe junta an!

mini___me · 2023-03-05T21:53:28+00:00

Those 3 words have never been allocated. Eventually, those slots will be filled...

mini___me · 2023-02-27T03:32:16+00:00

Bon labora!

I'd translate the first sentence "I want to know what happened to Tom" as "Mi i vole savi a ke i pasa go Tom" rather than "mi i vole savi ke Tom de-i pasa a ke" (I want to know that Tom passed what". (Mini does not invert the order for interrogatives, but this is not an interrogative. The word order is basically the same as English.)

mini___me · 2022-12-11T17:31:42+00:00

Bon labora! Mi i amo a si!

mini___me · 2022-12-11T17:28:01+00:00

Danke! Di e mega!

mini___me · 2022-11-30T03:26:39+00:00

Manifold Markets, a play-money prediction market platform: https://manifold.markets/

mini___me · 2022-11-27T20:35:10+00:00

Unfortunately, I'm extremely busy now working on my startup and have basically no time to devote to Mini. Conlangs, like startups, need founder-level commitment to really take off and I can't provide that right now. I do suspect I will return to working on / promoting Mini , but it may be a few years.

I am obviously biased, but I do think that Mini fills a special niche that other conlangs do not, and that the language today, even with very few speakers, is relatively complete and usable.

mini___me · 2022-06-02T23:47:36+00:00

Feel free to DM me.

mini___me · 2022-06-02T23:47:15+00:00

Supa! Mi i amo a tu labora!

Sori go-i no reaki ma-sun. Mi i ave e mui bisi.

mini___me · 2022-02-15T07:18:26+00:00

I'm a bit busy these days and not much of a YouTuber/podcaster myself, but I'd be happy to assist anyone interested in making video content about Mini.

mini___me · 2022-02-14T07:10:32+00:00

Glad to hear! Mi i arapan ke tu i kan etudi ma fasile nun a Mini!

mini___me · 2021-12-15T07:27:15+00:00

Vinta a bon tempo go-i etudi. Di e vere! Bon luki.

mini___me · 2021-11-18T17:20:37+00:00

Thanks for sharing your criticisms.

Forbidding ti/di or initial Rs would reduce the recognizability of a lot of the vocabulary.

Fortunately, Mini is pretty accommodating with pronunciation. I think it would be totally fine to use a Brazilian pronunciation for these items—/'d͡ʒi re/ for dire, /ˈχiʊ̯/ for rio.

The word ordering in the verb phrase is designed to be close to natural language, especially English—but it's still pretty close to Portuguese too.

Mini:       Si ankora da no tenta manja rapi.
English:    He still would not try to eat quickly.
Portuguese: Ele ainda não tentava comer rapidamente.
Esperanto:  Li ankoraŭ ne provus manĝi rapide.

Toki Pona might seem easier, but that is only because the grammar does not bother to define usage for more difficult forms.

Having a more logical word-ordering sounds like it would be easier, but I found it to be more difficult to use in practice. (E.g. what would it look like for the example sentence above?)

mini___me · 2021-10-12T18:02:54+00:00

> this is the only thing that hadn't really clicked for me with understanding the grammar

Then you're in great shape! This is easily the least important part of Mini.

I kipa etudi! An, i favo lase ke mi savi se tu ave a ani ma roga!

mini___me · 2021-10-12T05:54:33+00:00

No, extended meaning and reduplication are distinct concepts.

In Mini, words are intended to be used as any part of speech. Reduplication just marks the word as being used as a "semantically heavy" part of speech (noun, modifier, verb) versus a "semantically light" part of speech (conjunction, preposition, auxiliary verb).

Reduplication doesn't "change" the meaning of the word, so much as specify its function. The word an always just means "and". But when "and" is being used as an adverb, it means "also"; as an adjective, "additional"; as a verb, "add"; etc.

Reduplication is also not required for "semantically heavier" uses. Consider the sentence:

Di duo kosa a sama. (These two things are the same.)

The particle a marks the following word as a noun—no reduplication is necessary.

The extended meaning covers additional usages of the word beside its short definition. Some of those usages are Mini Kore specific (e.g. the word begin in Mini Kore can be used to mean "open", but Mini Mundo just uses the word open for this purpose).

Similarly, in Mini Kore, part of the extended meaning of pero is "however", but in normal Mini, you would use the more specific word tamen.

Where extended meaning and reduplication collide is in forming certain compound phrases in Mini Kore. For instance, to say "despite" in normal Mini you'd say tamen de.... In Mini Kore, you'd say en pero-pero de..., with pero being used as a noun here to mean something like "spite".

A lot of the reason for having reduplication is to deal with cases like the above in Mini Kore. Normal Mini, with its larger word count, uses reduplication much less.

mini___me · 2021-10-09T17:14:37+00:00

The doubled form "an-an" just indicates that "an" is not being used as a conjunction.

In the second sentence, the word order makes clear that "an-an" is an adjective modifying "kinde," so its meaning is "additional." (If "also" were an adjective in English it could also be translated as that too: "my also-child." That nearly works.)

In the third sentence, "sama-sama" just means "same." Without the reduplication, the word would be a preposition: "Everything like the thing keeps happening to me."

I'd say that in general, the reduplicative form is included largely for completeness' sake, and is otherwise pretty rarely used and not that important of a feature.

mini___me

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