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: One point against Esperanto
References: <795931005snz@storcomp.demon.co.uk> <D60ws7.LtE@cix.compulink.co.uk>
Reply-To: philip@storcomp.demon.co.uk
X-Newsreader: Demon Internet Simple News v1.27
Lines: 74
X-Posting-Host: storcomp.demon.co.uk
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 02:37:20 +0000
Message-ID: <796271840snz@storcomp.demon.co.uk>
Sender: usenet@demon.co.uk

In article <D60ws7.LtE@cix.compulink.co.uk>
           antony@cix.compulink.co.uk "Antony Rawlinson" writes:
> I don't believe that a language can at the same time be recognisable to 
> someone who hasn't studied it and also follow independent word-formation. 
> In another posting (in <soc.culture.esperanto>, you describe the 
> formation of the E-L word "opmortizovera" which means "pregnant". 

Eurolang's word borrowing guidelines state that if a word is recognisably
the same in Englsh, French, German, Italian and Spanish (these being
the 5 most important languages in the EU), use it. If not, think about
a constructed word. Consider:

German    schwanger
English   pregnant
French    enceinte
Italian   incinta
Spanish   embarazada

Given these I could use "incinta" or something like it, but that would
not be recognizable to many people. Of course "opmortizovera" is not
recognizable to many people, although "mort" (=die) is. I expect that
most people, given the affixes, will be able to word out:

mort (v) die
opmort (v) be born
opmortiz (v) cause to be born, ie give birth
opmortizov (v) will give birth
opmortizover (n) someone who will give birth
opmortizovera (a) relating to someone who will give birth, ie pregnant

If someone knows EL's affixes and some common words, it greatly helps 
them to read it, so perhaps a solution would be to include a crib
sheet containing the most useful information. Since I envisage EL being
spread/used on the Internet, adding a small crib sheet to one's sig
might help (see below).

I am considering writing a "Eurolang Aide Memoire", which will be an
A4-size piece of paper. On one side it will have a summary of the grammar.
The other side will contain the 500 most common EL root words.

> I 
> doubt very much that this would mean anything to someone unfamiliar with 
> E-L,

I agree. BTW, the recommended abbreviation is "EL".

> or that s/he could make sense of a sentence containing many such 
> results of E-L word-building.  

Most EL sentences don't contain many such words.

> Yet being recognisable without separate 
> study was your first stated aim.
> 
> I'm not criticising either policy, by the way, I'm simply saying that you 
> can't follow both at the same time.

I agree, to some extent. Designing anything is a compromise between 
different goals. I want EL to be as easily understandable by non-users
as possible, and I also want it to be easy to learn. The second goal is
acheived by having a small number of roots, and making the roots as
familiar as possible. Unfortunately for some meaning there is no word
common to the many EU languages.

In some instances, one EL word can do the work of 10 or more words in
a natural language. This makes EL easy to learn. Eg if you know that
"mari" means "marry", you don't need to learn the words for: husband,
wife, bride, groom, fiance, fiancee, wedding, marriage, spouse, divorce.

-- 
Phil Hunt...philip@storcomp.demon.co.uk // Eurolang: op- opposite. -ab past.
-ov future. -a adjective. -ae adverb. -er agent. -ed patient. -ation action. 
-iz cause. -et small. -isim large. cum=with di/da=this est=be fac=do/make
ge=he/she ka=that on=one per=for pos=can rel=in_relation_to rel-er=by tota=all
