Uro

A constructed language for Europe

Rules

The basic rules for the construction of new words is as follows

1. Use the international form if available.
2. Otherwise use the common root from European languages
3. Otherwise use a familiar word (commonly known)
4. Otherwise use the English word

Orthography & Phonetics

Each letter or digraph (ch, sh, zh) always has the same sound, so a word is read as it is written. A few letters have one accepted alternative, such as w (/w/ or /v/) and z (/ts/ or /z/). See grammar/pronunciation.md for the full letter-to-sound table, stress rule and spelling rules.

• k vs c: Always use k for the hard /k/ sound (e.g. kalendar, klub, koktail, blanko). Use s for /s/ (e.g. sol, sistem). A Latin c before e or i becomes z, pronounced /ts/ or /z/ (e.g. ziti, dezember, zigarete, sozial). c is only used in ch for /tʃ/ (e.g. chiko, chika).
• i vs y: Do not use y for vowel sounds; use i instead, both at the end of words (e.g. famili, ziti, enemi, universiti, wiski) and internally (e.g. sistem).
• Stress: always on the second-to-last syllable (VI-der, ka-LEN-dar).

Grammar & Morphology (Max 2 Variants)

Unlike strictly schematic languages such as Esperanto that enforce a single artificial suffix for every part of speech, Uro intentionally preserves a natural European feel by allowing at most two valid variants for morphological and syntactic forms.

See grammar/grammar.md for the full grammar specification (including EBNF syntax rules). Where there are two variants, the default is what courses, tables and texts use:

• Word Order: SVO (Subject–Verb–Object) in statements, while questions can invert (see below), with invariant adjectives always before the noun (novo dom).
• Articles: Invariant un (a/an) and de (the).
• Noun Plurals (2 variants): -s by default (libres, ninios), or -i (brati, domi).
• Pronouns & Possessives: Personal pronouns (pronoun/personal_pronoun.md), object pronouns me/nos and reflexive se (pronoun/object_pronoun.md), and possessives (pronoun/possessive_pronoun.md).
• Verbs & Tenses (2 variants):
  • Base forms use either bare roots (hor, go, work) or -er (vider, parler, speler, jester).
  • Past: haf vider by default, or videred (ared, hafed, kaned for was, had, could). Future: wil vider by default, or go vider. Conditional: wud vider.
  • Modals take a bare verb (Je voler go.); las + object + verb means let (Las nos go!); the imperative is the base form (Go!).
• Adverbs & Comparison: -li by default, or the bare adjective (rapidli / rapid); plus / de plus / min / minst + adjective, niz = than.
• Prepositions: in, fon (of), od (from), a (to), op (on), mit / bez (with/without), pro (for), pre / post (before/after), trans (across), vers (toward), trots (despite), …
• Conjunctions: i, o, ale, if, dat (that), ke (which, who) and niz (than); compounds such as mem if (although) and durant ke (while).
• Negation: not placed before the verb (je not vider); the answer is no. Negative words such as nulting and nikdi replace not by default (je vider nulting), or can keep it (2 variants).
• Questions (2 variants): yes/no questions use SVO? by default (Ju parler Uro?), or inversion (Parler ju Uro?). After a question word the default is inversion (Wo ar de stazion?), unless the question word is the object (Ki ju vider?). Question words ki, ke, wo, kando, komo, kuanto, kual, pro ke.
• Word Formation: international affixes (-ist, -zion, -iti, -ik, non-, re-, …) and a conversion table for international words, see grammar/word_formation.md.

The language is versioned; see grammar/changelog.md and the plan for the next version in plans/v0.5.md. python tools/coverage.py reports how many of the 1000 most common English words have a Uro word; python tools/coverage.py tools/swadesh207.txt does the same for the Swadesh list. python tools/lint.py checks the words against the spelling rules. Sample texts with English translations are in texts/: The North Wind and the Sun, The King and the Beggar, A Day at Grandfather's and Bean Soup.

Learn Uro

The starter kit is in learn/:

• learn/grammar.md: Uro on one page, using the default forms
• learn/words.md: the 1000 most common words, most frequent first
• learn/texts.md: five graded texts, side by side with English, Dutch, Portuguese and Polish

python tools/kit.py rebuilds the word list and checks that the kit and the sample texts only use words from the tables.

Uro is a work in progress. The grammar and core words aren't stable before 1.0, so the kit can change with them.

Vocabulary

Examples of the vocabulary can be found in the various markdown files:

• Basics:
  • basic/basic.md — Core everyday vocabulary
  • basic/international.md — International words
  • basic/everyday.md — Everyday nouns (person, thing, place, money, language…)
  • basic/travel.md — Travel & services
  • basic/people.md — People & roles
  • basic/home.md — Home, things & materials
  • basic/places.md — Places & directions
  • basic/health.md — Health
  • basic/society.md — Society, politics & law
  • basic/work.md — Business, money & work
  • basic/media.md — Knowledge, media & technology
  • basic/leisure.md — Arts, sport & leisure
  • basic/abstract.md — Abstract nouns
  • basic/phrases.md — Greetings & useful phrases
  • basic/adjectives.md — Common adjectives & opposites
  • basic/adjectives_international.md — International adjectives (-al, -ik, -iv, …)
  • basic/adverbs.md — Adverbs of time, place & degree; yes/no
  • basic/prepositions.md — Prepositions
  • basic/conjunctions.md — Conjunctions
  • basic/questions.md — Question words
  • basic/nature_time.md — Time, nature, animals & world
  • basic/food_body.md — Food, drink & body parts
  • basic/colours.md — Colours
  • basic/family.md — Family & kinship
  • basic/daysofweek.md — Days of the week
  • basic/months.md — Months of the year
  • basic/seasons.md — Seasons
• Pronouns:
  • pronoun/personal_pronoun.md — Personal pronouns
  • pronoun/object_pronoun.md — Object & reflexive pronouns
  • pronoun/possessive_pronoun.md — Possessive pronouns
  • pronoun/demonstrative.md — Demonstratives & quantifiers
• Verbs:
  • verbs/verbs.md — Common core verbs
  • verbs/to_be.md — Present conjugation of to be (ar)
  • verbs/to_have.md — Present conjugation of to have (haf)
• Numbers:
  • numbers/numbers.md — Numerals, tens, hundreds & ordinals

These files contain:

1. English word
2. Uro (M) — Canonical specification (Manually curated pan-European vocabulary)
3. Uro (AI) — Historical/comparative baseline (AI-generated via ChatGPT)
4. Other languages — Reference comparison across 16 European languages (Germanic, Romance, and Slavic)