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From: brg@netcom.com (Bruce R. Gilson)
Subject: Re: Judging Esperanto
Message-ID: <brgE7DLxK.5x6@netcom.com>
Organization: Netcom
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Date: Fri, 21 Mar 1997 04:32:08 GMT
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In article <333416bf.2594761@news.mindspring.com>,
D Gary Grady <dgary@mindspring.com> wrote:
>brg@netcom.com (Bruce R. Gilson) wrote:

[...]

>As for Novial's rules for adjective-noun agreement and the use of the
>accusative, I note that Novial (like Ido) preserves the accusative
>ending, but uses it only under certain circumstances. To my mind this
>is not much of an improvement for Chinese-speaking students, who also
>have to deal with tenses and a mandatory plural marker.

The accusative ending in Novial is only required when the subject does not
immediately precede the verb, and even then it can be omitted if the sense is
clear. Actually, in several tens of pages of Novial text, I have not seen a
single instance of the accusative ending used. So to all intents and purposes,
Novial does _not_ preserve the accusative ending.

>What's wrong with something closer to Interglossa, with an
>Indonesian-style grammar?

Perhaps that may be acceptable. Interglossa, after all, is alive in the form
of Glosa. I never said that Interglosa/Glosa was worse than Novial in its
grammar, only that Esperanto was.

I do, however, find Glosa harder to read than Novial. I could however be
convinced of the value of such a language with, perhaps, a better choice of
vocabulary.

>More generally, I've nothing at all against Interglossa, Interlingua,
>Novial, Lojban, Klingon, or anything else. My personal use of
>Esperanto stems not from the notion that it is perfect or even the
>best, but only from the fact that it is both relatively easy to learn
>(for me) and that it has proven itself useful (to me) in having a
>critical mass of speakers -- i.e., enough to support a varied
>publishing industry, conferences, and so on.

I see the number of E-o speakers as still so small as to be insignificant.
As a result I feel that the competition is still not over, or even really
begun.

>In short, can't we all just get along?

I'd like to. It's the put-downs by E-ists that make me feel compelled to fight.
If they agreed that what we need is only a friendly competition, I'd happily
desist. I'd rather sell Novial on its own merit than spend my time fighting
unjust accusations by E-ists.



                                Bruce R. Gilson
                                email: brg@netcom.com
                                IRC: EZ-as-pi
                                WWW: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3141
                                (for language stuff: add /langpage.html)
