Why is it so? No exceptions
Welcome to the Senatola blog! In the series “Why is it so?” we look behind the scenes: why is Senatola built the way it is? We start with its first principle: no exceptions.
What exceptions cost
In English you say “I go, I went, I have gone”, but “I laugh, I laughed, I have laughed”. Learners have to memorise hundreds of such forms one by one. Every exception is a small stumbling block, and together they are why learning a language takes so long.
How Senatola does it
In Senatola a verb never changes. A small word after the verb shows the time:
mi name nama.
I eat food.
lo name po nama.
He ate food. po marks the past.
ma lo name vi nama.
They will eat food. ma makes the plural, vi marks the future.
The same holds everywhere: the plural is always ma, a noun always ends in -a, a verb always in -e, and the opposite is always formed with vu-: biri (big), vubiri (small).
And what does it cost?
It does not come entirely free. Some sentences get longer, because Senatola would rather paraphrase than add a special rule. “The biggest house”, for example, is “the house that is bigger than all houses”. That is the trade Senatola makes on purpose: a simple, longer sentence rather than a rule with an exception.
That is why every new rule is checked against all existing ones before it applies. All decisions are recorded with their reasons in the project's log. More on the About page.