Tant que je suis sur ma lancée, vous ne seriez pas non plus le F..... avec pour surnom "E.... d'a..." (également présent sur le défunt "Europe Debate") du défunt Groupe Yahoo "Lingua Sistemfrater".
Sur cette langue, des amis m'avaient demandé des renseignements sur le forum Auxlang. Bon, la grammaire avait des senteurs asiatiques mais le vocabulaire reste européen. Pour mes amis, j'avais réussi, par une manipulation informatique, à récupérer l'article du défunt site "Langmaker" (je commence à avoir l'impression de faire le fossoyeur). Allez, voici les reliques:
Frater: an IAL from Vietnam
Date: Sat, 30 Mar 1996 18:44:36 -0500 (EST)
From: Paul O Bartlett <pobart@ACCESS.DIGEX.NET>
To: Conlang List <conlang@diku.dk>
Subject: CONLANG: Frater: an IAL from Vietnam
Most international auxiliary language projects seems to originate in western
Europe and the Americas. Today I had the opportunity to examine one from
what was to me an unexpected venue: Vietnam. And the author being
Vietnamese in the 1950s, I would have expected the discussion of it to be in
French. On the contrary, it was in good English.
Pham Xuan Thai
FRATER (LINGUA SISTEMFRATER): The Simplest International
Language Ever Constructed
Saigon: TU-HAI Publishing House
1957
no ISBN
275 pp.
decent printing job, some corrections made by hand
paper bound (originally)
Although the vocabulary is largely, though not totally, Greco-Latin in origin
(with some roots modified to fit the phonology), Frater is not just another
Euroclone, for its word building and syntax are rather un-European.
There are 18 pages of forward, largely given over to a brief survey of the IAL
movement. Towards the end of the foreward, the author writes,
With the hope of contributing a modest part in the construction of a
satisfactory international language advocated by peace-loving people, I have
much pleasure in publishing my world auxiliary project, named Lingua
Sistemfrater (Brotherhood Language) or merely Frater.
Frater based on Latin and Greek roots of international currency is designed
with due regard to needs of the Chinese, Japanese and other non-Aryan
speech-communities. [Note: this probably accounts for a lot of the root
modification
Following the forward are the 12 Rules of Frater (Lingua Sistemfrater):
Rule 1.-In Frater, there is neither article nor flexion, nor elision, nor affix, nor
concord of tense, of mood, of gender, of number.
Rule 2.-The noun, the adjective, the verb and the adverb have the same root.
Rule 3.-The adjective is always placed after the noun with the exception of
cardinal numbers.
The comparative of equality is translated with JE: as... as.
The comparative of superiority with PLUS: more... than.
The comparative of inferiority with PLUSNE: less... than.
The superlative of superiority is translated with PLASUNI: the most.
The superlative of inferiority with PLASUNINE: the least.
The absolute superlative is translated with TELE: very.
Rule 4.-The cardinal numbers are:
Uni: 1; bi: 2; tri: 3; kuadri: 4; kuinti: 5; ses: 6; sep: 7; okta:
8; nona: 9; deka: 10; senti: 100; mil: 1000; milion: 1.000.000; miliar:
1.000.000.000.
The cardinal numbers once placed after the nouns become ordinal numbers.
The multiplicative numbers are formed by adding the word TEM (time) to the
cardinal numbers.
The fractional numbers are formed by adding the word UNISUR (one above) to
the cardinal numbers.
The collective numbers are formed by adding PER (by) to the cardinal numbers.
[Note: other cardinal numbers are formed from the simple ones much
as in, say, Esperanto-pb]
Rule 5.-The personal pronouns are:
Mi: I; me Mis: we; us
Ni: you (singular) Nis: you (plural)
Ili: he; him; she; her; it Ilis: they; them
Antrop: one, they;
The possessive pronouns are formed by adding the word OT (of) to the
personal pronouns.
Rule 6.-The verb is absolutely invariant in person and in number.
Pas (past) denotes the past tense;
Futur (future) denotes the future tense;
Intem (In time) denotes the gerund;
Probable (probably) denotes the conditional tense;
The passive voice is formed by adding the auxiliary verb Es (to be) to the
infinitive.
Rule 7.-There is no inverting in the following word-order of Frater, except in
poetry:
Subject-Verb-Object
[Note: later discussion indicates that some interrogatives are
formed by inverting subject and verb-pb]
Rule 8.-Each word is pronounced absolutely as it is written: each letter has
always the same sound.
Rule 9.-The stress is placed on the last syllable of the word.
Rule 10.-Compounds are obtained by the mere combination of the elements
that form them, the fundamental one being always placed at the beginning.
Rule 11.-If there is in the sentence another word having a negative meaning,
the adverb NE (not) is omitted.
Rule 12.-Foreign words, namely international words, if they are formed by the
roots existing in Frater, change according to Rule 10. In case their roots do
not exist in Frater, they do not change. They only take the spelling of the
language.
Following these rules are thirteen pages which largely elaborate on them and
also deal with interrogatives, which the Rules do not discuss. There are also
lists of primary adverbs, conjunctions, and prepositions. Here can can see
some non-Greco-Latin elements, such as BSERA (yesterday) and SAFTRA
(tomorrow): but compare POSTESAFTRA (day after tomorrow).
Frater's phonology is fairly simple: there are five vowels and thirteen
consonants, written with eighteen letters of the Roman alphabet, CHQVWXYZ
not being used. There is little actual description of the sounds, but the vowels
AEIOU seem to have more or less the so-called continental pronunciation.
Consonants are about as one would expect, except that J is pronounced /z/.
This simple phonology means that some words, especially proper names,
undergo some modification, such as V -> B, as Venezuela -> Benesuela. Also,
there seems to be some adaptation to the phonetic habits of non-Europeans:
ABRIKO (apricot); ABSOB (absorb).
Nevertheless, more consonant clusters persisted than I might have expected
in a language designed by an Asian. (I am not especially familiar with
Vietnamese, and maybe they don't have as much problem with consonant
clusters as some other east Asians.) However, if a largely Greco-Latin
vocabulary is to be at least marginally recognizable, the roots cannot undergo
too much mangling.
There are several distinctive features of the language which I noted. Roots
can serve indifferently as nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs with no
modification. (There are no part of speech markers, not even something like
Glosa's u/plu.) Except for cardinal numbers, _all_ modifiers come after the
word they modify. (A following number is an ordinal.) MENSA MI is "my table."
Unlike most west European languages, Frater does not have separate gender
forms for the third person pronoun, even in the singular.
In compounds, the lexically most significant element comes first, with
qualificative roots coming after-this is just the exact opposite of English
usage. Frater has no particular system of lexical affixes, in the manner of
Esperanto, Ido, Novial, or even Interlingua, but it makes very heavy use of
compounding, even in what I call "grammatical stickum" words: TEMKIA (when:
TEM = time + KIA = what). Also, sometimes a compound is used in place of an
existing Greco-Latin form: ASURAU (alphabet: A + SURA = till + U).
Following the didactic matter, there are 112 pages of parallel texts in Frater
and English, including the entire 1945 Charter of the United Nations. Then
come 51 pages of the English-Frater lexicon and 71 pages of the Frater-
English lexicon.
I might note here that I could not make a good estimate at first glance how
many primary roots there are because of the extensive number of compound
entries in the vocabularies.
I put the book on reserve at the Library of Congress in case I can get back to
it in the next three days, but my preliminary impression is that Frater is a
workable language which might be more acceptable to east Asians than many
of the Euroclones. With its non-west-European compounding and syntax, the
learning difficulty is spread out a little more. However, I am not aware that it
ever "went anywhere," like so many IAL projects.
Following are a few short parallel Frater and English specimens.
(Apart from the UN charter, most of the texts have to do with ethics, religion,
and peace.)
Accueil 
...
Idéolangues : elko, kelep, englo, ... (+27)
Ca m'intéresse beaucoup ce classement, je n'arriverais pas à trouver des correspondances aussi claires pour toutes les lettres... 
