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From: pardoej@lonnds.ml.com (Julian Pardoe LADS LDN X1428)
Subject: Re: Esperanto-English
Message-ID: <D5LCt2.70K@tigadmin.ml.com>
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Organization: Merrill Lynch Europe
References: <3k9d80$1t0@nz12.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de>
Date: Fri, 17 Mar 1995 15:39:02 GMT
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In article 1t0@nz12.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de, s_salomo@iraul1.ira.uka.de (Thierry Salomon) writes:
>In article <3549900383.46089885@inform-bbs.dk>, Hansolav@inform-bbs.dk (HansOlav Nymand) writes:
>|> Does anyone know how close Esperanto is to Spanish or Portoguese.
>
>Esperanto is closer to Italian than to Spanish or Portuguese I think.
>But as the present of the verb "to be" is "estas", and a lot of
>words end with "o" or "a" it is also close to Spanish.
>(I don't know portuguese good enough to compare it with Esperanto.)
> in English)

In Spanish "-o" and "-a" indicate gender in nouns and adjectives.  In E-o
"-o" in the noun ending and "-a" the adjective ending.  Thus any similarity
is pretty superficial -- though not coincidental, as I'm sure Zamenhof
chose endings that would seem euphonious to Europeans.

On the whole, I'd say that grammatically E-o is less similar to the Romance
languages than it might seem at first sight.  The forms might appear Romance
but the way they're used is often not Romance-like. 

-- jP --

