Newsgroups: soc.culture.esperanto,sci.lang
From: philip@storcomp.demon.co.uk (Phil Hunt)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!news.mathworks.com!udel!gatech!swrinde!pipex!peernews.demon.co.uk!storcomp.demon.co.uk!philip
Subject: Re: EuroLang: I was wrong
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References: <1995Apr10.123523.16494@guvax>
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Date: Tue, 11 Apr 1995 16:25:10 +0000
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In article <1995Apr10.123523.16494@guvax>
           harrisd@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu  writes:
> I wish to retract my earlier statements that there is not much new 
> about EuroLang. After reading Phil Hunt's response to my recent post, 
> I rethought the issue in terms of his criteria. Whereas I am 
> interested in exploring langauges both natural and constructed for the 
> purpose of discovering what's new and unique about each in terms of 
> syntax, morphology, etc, PH's intent was to create a language that 
> could easily be learned by Europeans. 

Indeed it is.

> I think EuroLang is an improvement over Esperanto in several ways. 
> (Not that I'm suggesting we all forget Esperanto now and suddenly 
> convert to every new and improved notion of it. That's not my 
> intention here at all.) Firstly, like Jespersen's Novial, it doesn't 
> require that certain parts of speech end in certain vowels. That may 
> not seem like much, but for a Spaniard or an Italian, the 'o' ending 
> on feminine verbs can be a little unnerving. And for anyone that 
> rejects the longstanding male-centricism in language, EuroLang is a 
> definite step up, since nouns are gender-neutral until you add a 
> masculine or feminine suffix.

This is true, with the exception of 2 particular nouns:

vir = man
femino = woman

> (Novial accomplished this in a 
> particularly ingenious way. Nouns ending in -e were gender-neutral and 
> could be made masc. or fem. by changing the 'e' to and 'o' or an 'a' 
> respectively. Novial also made it possible to form nouns in a 
> numberless, singular, or plural form, which accomodated Japanese, 
> Chinese, and others whose languages have no marker for singularity and 
> plurality. They could simply use the numberless form.) Anyway, words 
> like 'patrino' and 'fratino' which are masculine nouns made feminine 
> by the addition of the suffix 'in' seem somehow less than accomodating 
> to females - especially since that glaring masculine-looking 'o' is 
> still everpresent on all such forms. EuroLang does away with this by 
> assuming that nouns are genderless until a prefix for gender is added. 

> Another great addition is the separation of negative and opposite 
> affixes. It is useful to be able to differentiate between a thing or 
> concept's opposite and its negative. In English, 'unhappiness' implies 
> sadness. (Esperanto 'malfeliheco) There ought to be another affix that 
> does not imply opposition but simply negation such that "op-happiness" 
> would mean not happy BUT ALSO not sad. Oftentimes if one is so 
> engrossed in a particular activity, happiness and sadness don't apply. 
> Therefore, one ought to be able to express this. With EuroLang, you 
> can!

This is also useful for temperature. 'Not-cold means' something different
to 'opposite-of-cold'.

> another great thing is the restricted vocabulary. The dictionary is 
> less than one-thousand items long. I don't know if Hunt intends to 
> keep it short like that, but I think it would be useful to. 

Currently EL has about 1000 words made from about 500 roots. In addition
it has about 100 function words and standard affixes.

I do want to keep the vocabulary small. This is done by making compounds
of 2 or more root words. eg:

solid-aquo = ice

Although, if a word is common to most of EL's source languages, I use
that instead of creating a compound one.

I hope that the general-purpose vocabulary will not go much over 1000 
roots. In addition, there will need to be specialist vocabularies, for
eg different technologies.

> That was 
> one great strength about Odgen's Basic English. You just don't need a 
> whole lot of words to say most things. In my book, restricted 
> vocabulary is always a good thing. It simplifies language learning a 
> great deal. That's why I'm also a big fan of Zamenhof's correlative 
> table, even though I know that others criticize it a great deal. I 
> think that's the best thing about Esperanto- that and the system of 
> affixes.  

Certainly the correlative table is regular, but I think it is a pity
Zamenhof didn't use the same regularities as the rest of the language.

-e is used for adverb endings so, _kie_ should mean 'how'.

'mine' is _mia_, so 'whose' could be _kia_.

Similarly 'when' could have been _kitemp_, and 'why' _kimotiv_. This
chnage, while preserving regularity, would also stop all the words
from looking too similar - IMO this makes them harder to remember.

Place is usually -ej-, so 'where' should have been _kiej_ not _kie_.

>  Another thing I really like is that each constituent part of a 
> sentence is set off by commas. This doesn't do much for speaking, of 
> course, but since complex sentences are less often used in speech and 
> more often found in writing, I can see how this will be a useful 
> thing.

Yes. Separating clauses by commas, like I have done here, makes it easier
for the reader to understand. EL's guidelines recommend that simple
sentences be used where possible.

> How many times have you had to go back and reread a sentence 
> from the start in a difficult scientific or philosophical text in 
> order to figure out what words belong with each item? I can tell you, 
> I've done it a lot. It's not so bad in German where the nouns are at 
> least capitalized,

But in German all the verbs to the end of the sentence, which therefore
very complicated become can, go.

> but complex English or French sentences can 
> sometimes be a bear. 


>  Well, I've said my piece. In summary, then, I find the following
> innovations to be great improvements on Esperanto:
> 1] words can end in any vowel, ie. nouns aren't restricted to 'o' nor 
> are adjectives restricted to 'i'
      ^^^^^^^^^^
I think you meant verbs here.

> 3] Gender-free nouns remove a large percentage of sexism from 
> communication.
> 4] Differentiation between "oppositeness" and negation in nominal or 
> adjectival prefixes. (I haven't checked, but I assume these work for 
> verbs and other non-nominals as well.)

Yes, in principle they do, but there is less application for opposites
of verbs: what's the opposite of 'see'?
 

-- 
Phil Hunt....philip@storcomp.demon.co.uk
