Vendergood

Vendergood was a constructed language, the invention of the child prodigy William James Sidis.

Sidis described the language in his second book, entitled "Book of Vendergood," which he wrote while still a boy. Apparently, the language was mostly based on Latin and Greek, but also drew on German and French as well as other Romance languages. It distinguished between eight different conjugations: indicative, potential, imperative absolute, subjunctive, imperative, infinitive, and Sidis's grammatical creations: strongeable and optative. Articles were grouped by a gender inflection that one observer described as "more complex than a Japanese verb."

Vendergood employed a base-12 system of numbers, because, as Sidis explained, "The unit in selling things is 12 of those things [dozens] and 12 is the smallest number that has four factors!"

The few surviving examples of Vendergood follow:

While Vendergood is said to be simpler than Esperanto, a comparable language, it is rather difficult to pronounce, and inflexible in grammatical exceptions (though one must remember that it is an invented and not a spoken language). Bear in mind, however, its inventor was a seven-year-old.

References

*Wallace, Amy, "The Prodigy: A biography of William James Sidis, America's Greatest Child Prodigy", New York: E.P. Dutton & Co. 1986. ISBN 0-525-24404-2