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Aise – ease (pronounced “ez” where this “e” has the same sound of the “e” from “dress”)
Bell – beautiful (it's pronounced like it's written, just know that this “e” has the same sound of the “a” from “lake”, but without the ee sound)
Anghen – person (pronounced “a‿nguen”. It's not a sin if you pronounce the Sambahsa's “a” like you do in “father”, but it's better to use the sound that you do when you speak “I”, but without the ee sound)
Behrg – to put out of danger (pronounced more or less as “berg” where this “e” has the same sound of the one from “bell”)
Kwaun – dog (it's pronounced like it's written, just know that the “au” is pronounced like “ou” from “mouth” having the Sambahsa's “a” sound that I explained to you)
Rat – rat (again, the pronunciation of this “a” is like the “a” from “anghen”. The pronunciation of the Sambahsa's “r” admits many forms, you can use the sound of “tt” from the American pronunciation of “better”)
Now let's look at some supposed complicated words that are not even common:
Zowngschie – anyway (pronounced as “dzowng‿g‿shee” where this “ow” has the same sound of “oa” frm the American pronunciation of “goat” and this “ng” has the same sound of the one from “thing”)
Rjienrlwey – mankind (pronounced as “r‿jien‿rw‿a” where this “a” has the same sound of the “a” from “face”)
Other complaint is that Sambahsa bases its vocabulary upon loanwords instead of compound words, I explain: in Sambahsa, the adjective “beautiful” is “bell” while “ugly” is “biaur”. Someone could say that, for example, an affix that inverts the meaning of the word would be better because it would eliminate the need of memorizing hundreds of words. Indeed, it's a resource that would bring some advantages, but, on the other hand, sentences with compound sentences take a time to be analyzed, so, after analyzing the pros and cons, it's more practical a word like “biaur” than “malbell”[1]. And frankly, until you master the grammar, you will have memorized all the most relevant words.
SAMBAHSA'S VOCABULARY
Just below there is a list of languages that had contributed for Sambahsa's vocabulary, the percentage of borrowed words and some examples between parentheses:
- Proto-Indo-European – 44.28 % (skadh, paursk, potnia)
- Latin – 15 % (facil, question, caise)
- Germanic family – 9.5 % (apter, buk, rogv)
- French – 6.21 % (journal, adresse, place)
- Greek – 4.64 % (pharmacia, ieftin, papier)
- Romance family – 3.95 % (important, visite, torte)
- Arabic – 3.42 % (lakin, mutawassit, hatta)
- English – 1.45 % (film, sport, wagon)
- Slavic family – 1.28 % (lige, grance, vessel)
- ↑ For those who do not know Esperanto and did not get the reference: in Esperanto, if you put the prefix “mal-” in a word, you invert its meaning, so “bela” means “beautiful” while “malbela” means “ugly”.
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