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From: stevemac@bud.indirect.com (Pascal MacProgrammer)
Subject: phonetic Esperanto (Re: languages with phonetic alphabets?)
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Organization: Department of Redundancy Department
Date: Thu, 6 Apr 1995 10:42:44 GMT
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Not so very long ago, rharmsen@knoware.nl (Ruud Harmsen) said...

>One problem with Esperanto (don't take me wrong, I'm a fan!) is that
>short and often used words like "estas" have two syllables, and thus are
>too long. They violate the redundancy principle, which is why the letter e
>is a single dot in Morse. So these words are the first likely candidates
>for being reduced, which would mean that Esperanto shared a feature with
>most other (Indo-European?) languages, viz. that the commonest words are
>irregular. 

   I don't think the verb "esti" needs to become irregular in order to 
become shorter; it just needs a shorter synonym or alternative.  Possibly 
"sti", or even "i".  The longer form would still be around for literary 
use, or for emphasis in speech, while shorter words like "stas, stis, 
stos" or "as, is, os" could be used when the verb "to be" is just a 
mortar word in among the brick words.

-- 
                              ==----=                    Steve MacGregor
                             ([.] [.])                     Phoenix, AZ
--------------------------oOOo--(_)--oOOo----------------------------------
        Help stamp out, eliminate, and abolish redundancy!
