History and trivia about Zoinx

The first Zoinx

The Zoinx language was "born" the 31st October 93, when I posted a sentence in it to a local discussion group (some BBS-like message system) at the ENS. At that time I had a very rough idea of what the grammar would be like, and decided that I'd be adding words and rules only as I needed them, and that I wouldn't write everything down. And, to make it more interesting, I wouldn't tell people what it meant. That first message was:

Som stribea eadre burem, bidytela sarbu onakireli. Bader Zoinx, misulyten trena zarong Daiala go Tilar. ?Elasafu Tilar Izecarell. Teav rabe Zoinx ...
Tilar#go

I've since forgotten what most of those words were supposed to mean and what the weird capitalization and punctuation meant, but the next message, a reply to someone else's, remained since then as the one sentence I'd annoy everyone with, by refusing to tell them what it meant, and by perfecting its pronounciation. The sentence was:

Esane go farova xerva ga sa dedelamnio era.

and it just meant "I don't know why you write your message here." I've changed some bits of grammar and vocabulary since then; the proper way to say that in Zoinx now is "Esane go forea xerva ga ro sga dedelamnio era."

Before I started writing the Zoinx grammar and vocabulary in detail, the messages I posted were mostly a testbed for what it'd be like, so they were not always consistent with each other, and don't necessarily make much (or any) sense according to the rules of "modern" Zoinx.

The early Zoinx

The only reason why this ended up being called the Zoinx language is that some friends of mine and I picked up the habit of randomly saying "Zoinx" to people, and at some point even started a pseudo-mythology about it (which was referenced in a couple of local efforts in collective writing; see Les évadés de la boite verte and yaf sf, both unfinished and in French). We'd also made a discussion group called ZOINX, to the annoyance of just about everyone, and that's where I originally posted my messages, so people started referring to them as being "in Zoinx"

I've found some notes that I'd taken back when I posted those first few messages, and realized, to my surprise, that the Zoinx language was originally meant to be called "Teral". I obviously forgot all about this name right after making it up.

According to these notes, quite a few of Zoinx's features were already outlined by then:

Verb-Subject-Object sentence order
stress on the first syllable
genderless nouns
verbs mostly ending in -a and taking suffixes like -ne
the "#go" rule for names, which was supposed to be optional
a few words: go, ga, esa, xerva, era, dedelamnio

because I didn't have those notes at hand when I started systematically developping Zoinx, some of the planned features weren't kept:

the y was supposed to be the French u sound, and the w was supposed to be the English w; neither sound appears in Zoinx now
the z was supposed to be the English z, the k was supposed to be the Zoinx x, and the x was supposed to be the English sh. Those got switched around.
the infinitive didn't have the -s suffix; there used to be a future tense.
the pronouns were going to be go, ga, gi, gi`o, gi`a, gu for the singular (respectively: I, you, he/she, he, she, it) and vo, va, vi, vi`o, vi`a, vu for the plural (meaning: we, you, them, them[masculine], them[feminine], them[things]).
the corresponding possessives were going to be: so, sa, si, si`o, si`a, vo, va, vi. They didn't require an article like they do now.
some of the original words didn't make it or were changed: elasa (meaning to like, appreciate); rabe (meaning only), farova (which changed to forea), and others that I didn't note.

Future developments and background

The idea of Zoinx is that it should have a pronounciation that sounds nice, be hard to understand if you don't know it, but still relatively easy to learn. It aims to have a natural "feel", as if it had evolved on its own rather than been constructed. And it is obviously allowed to borrow features and roots from other languages, but not to directly borrow words without at least mangling them somewhat, except for technical words and neologisms.

There isn't a fictional population of speakers, with its corresponding history, location, and culture, associated to the Zoinx language, nor is there an explicit fictional history of the language itself, and this is meant to be this way. However, quite a bit of cultural information can be gathered from the language itself, the vocabulary, the extent of meaning that the various words cover, the grammar, etc.

Word formation

One of the most common questions I get about Zoinx is where I get my words from. The answer is, from a variety of places and methods; some of the words are simply made up, others are borrowed (straight, or after some modification) from various languages or language families.

Here are some examples:

Sometimes I'll just grab a word from another language, with a completely different meaning:

anem, which means what, from the Catalan anem which means let's go.
entra, which means discerning intuition, from the Catalan entra which means go in.
pez, which means man, from the Spanish pez, which means fish.
si, which expresses unlikelihood, from the Catalan/Spanish/French si which means yes.
fals, which means table, from the English false.

Sometimes I'll take a word from a language, with the same or a similar meaning, but adapting or changing the spelling:

onas, which means to be there, from the Finnish on, which is a form of the verb to be.
mla, which means small, from the Slavic root mlad- which means young.
dedelamnio, which means text or message, from the Swedish meddelande, meaning message. Here the syllables got turned around.
era, which means here, from the English here.
be, which means two, from the common root bi-.
set and ves, which mean it and at, from the Swedish det and vid; here the letter d changed to s.
malaveldi`a, which means to fascinate, mesmerize, from the Kobaïan malawelekaahm, meaning incantation.

And then there are words that are references to people or things:

verzel, which means upside down, from Verzi, who can walk upside down.
slaki, which means frog, from Amanda's old nickname; she likes frogs
lora, which means chocolate, from Laura, who likes chocolate.
seko, which means big, from sequoia.ens.fr, a machine with a big screen.
man, which means about, from the Unix command of the same name (RTFM).
dregin and keno, which mean insipid and drivel respectively, from someone who signs Draeguhn Kaehno (sp?) on alt.irc, and is known for the words "insipid drivel".

Some words also come from recycled old Zoinx sentences where I'd forgotten the original intended meaning. For example, in gonefafu lei`on en pinka i`erar si, I didn't remember any of the original words, so they got all recycled. The sentence, now spelled gonefata go lei`on, en pinka i`erar si, means: I'd certainly run, if the rain would stop.

Finally, may of the words are just plain made up, like femlas (to read), xiruli (something), etc.