Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: philip@storcomp.demon.co.uk (Phil Hunt)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!udel!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!pipex!bt!btnet!peernews.demon.co.uk!storcomp.demon.co.uk!philip
Subject: Re: Esperanto nouns
References: <D7HMrC.Lo1@freenet.carleton.ca>
Reply-To: philip@storcomp.demon.co.uk
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Date: Sun, 23 Apr 1995 22:56:37 +0000
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In article <D7HMrC.Lo1@freenet.carleton.ca>
           ah514@FreeNet.Carleton.CA "Manuel M Campagna" writes:
> In Article 15926 harrisd@guvax.acc.georgetown.edu typed recently :
> [...]
> To the linguist, who is a specialist of language, structures of
> various kinds at various levels, make up a language. Words come and
> go. Hungarian still has no more than 250 originally Turanian words,
> yet it is clearly a full member of the Turanian family. Think that in
> Hungarian such household words as "house" (ha~z) and "garden" (kert),
> for instance, are Germanic in origin. As a matter of fact, most
> Hungarian words are either Germanic or Slavic. That doesn't make
> Hungarian an Indo-European language.

Indeed. And if Hungarian's grammar had changed so it was almost entirely
like German with only a few traces, it would still be a Turanian lang,
but with IE vocabulary and grammar.

> My advice to those who don't like Esperanto is : Choose another
> language.

That sounds fair enough. Anyone who wants to learn Eurolang can email
me, and I will send them information about it, including a grammar 
and vocabulary.
 
> <<
> I dont' have much against Esperanto. I like it. But I am just pointing
> out that having all words in in a certain vowel is outdated and
> unnecessary.
> >>
> 
> Take it as is or leave it and us alone.

One could be forgiven for thinking that Esperanto is not a language,
but a religion to you.
 
> <<
> In Novial, nouns ending in -o are masucline and in -a feminine. If you
> choose -e as your ending, no gender is implied. If you leave the vowel
> off altogether, no gender or number is implied. This way, people from
> a wide variety of langauge backgrounds can feel more like they are on
> an equal footing with those who differentitate for dumb arbitrary
> parameters like gender and number.
> >>
> 
> Go to soc.culture.novial and don't bother us any more and use your
> "masucline" and feminine endings.

"Out, heretic!"

> <<
> I'm just trying to get people to see that blind attempts to tout the
> superiority of Esperanto make all of us who cultivate a knowledge of
> it look like fools.
> >>
> 
> The proof is in the pudding. How many Unesco Resolutions has Novial
> garnered ? How many Universal Congresses of Novial have been held with
> how many delegates ? How many books have been published in Novial ?
> How many world associations use Novial ? How many international events
> are held annually in Novial ? How many Nobel Prizes have been won by
> Novialists ? Has the Pope ever used Novial publicly and officially ?
> How many worldwide billeting services has Novial ? (There are at least
> three in Esperanto). How many specialized associations use Novial ?
> 
> Get a life !

OK, lets compare E-o with English and rewrite your paragraph replacing
"Novial" with "Esperanto".

If we measure success by numbers of speakers, it is clear that Esperanto 
is a failure as an inter-language compared to English. (I am defining
an inter-language as one people use for communication when they have
different 1st languages).
 
> <<
> Face it. It's not the best language to learn.
> >>
> 
> Explain the success of Esperanto.

See my comments about comparing E-o with English.

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