Newsgroups: uk.politics,alt.politics.ec,sci.lang,talk.politics.european-union
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!europa.chnt.gtegsc.com!howland.reston.ans.net!ix.netcom.com!netcom.com!donh
From: donh@netcom.com (Don HARLOW)
Subject: Re: Single European Language
Message-ID: <donhDADLEy.MvK@netcom.com>
Organization: Esperanto League for North America, Inc.
References: <690061730wnr@afin.demon.co.uk> <elnaDACGIw.5K@netcom.com> <803474387snz@ducks.demon.co.uk> <3s18a6$ghc@soap.pipex.net>
Date: Sun, 18 Jun 1995 15:52:10 GMT
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Sender: donh@netcom12.netcom.com

John Youles <john.youles@solo.pipex.com> skribis en lastatempa afisxo <3s18a6$ghc@soap.pipex.net>:
>Esperanto was a good attempt at creating an international language, it 
>has some good features but many bad.
>
>On the good side, the grammar is perfectly regular and you can create new 
>words by means of affixes, e.g. "hundo" = dog, "hundino" = bitch, 
>"hundito" = puppy, "hundejo" = kennel.  I'm not sure if the verb to dog 
>means anything, but if it did you'd use "hundi".  Verbs have participles 
>in all tenes and both voices, unlike English were the present participle 
>is active and the past is passive, and there is no future participle at 
>all. 
>
Scuse me -- the past participle is not automatically passive. The past 
participle of an intransitive verb is, if anything, active ("fallen"); 
the past participle of a transitive verb is just _past_, and is used 
actively or passively, depending on the helping verb ("he was killed" vs. 
"he has killed").

"Ne hundu antaux mi, mi ja scias, ke vi estas orgojla kanajlo!"

(Don't grovel like a dog in front of me; I know that you're an arrogant 
bastard!")

>On the bad side, there's an affix for female ("-ino"), but not for male; 
>so you can have a word for feminine ("ina") but not masculine (unless you 
>use "malina"); to have to use the "ge-" prefix to indicate a group of 
>mixed sex seems clumsy.  Also, you might be forgiven if you thoght that 
>all words ending in "-ino" were female, but the word "vino" means wine.
>
For "masculine" I have always used "vira", not knowing that there is no 
such word... Some net.esperantists have recently been playing with just 
the construction you mention, "malina", but it is certainly not in common 
usage.

GE- is far from clumsy; it is extremely utilitarian. It is also used 
quite commonly (though few textbooks teach this) with a singular ending 
to show a person of indeterminate or unimportant sex ("gepatro" = parent).

Since the suffix -IN- is supposed to be attached to a root, since a root 
contains at least one syllable, since each syllable has one and only one 
vowel ... the letter v- hardly qualifies as a root, and I have never, 
ever encountered anyone who thought that "vino" was a female letter 'v'.

(On the other hand, the principle you mention _does_ have real examples; 
the pseudonymous Henri Baupierre mentions the verb "aspiri" [to aspire] 
and the noun "aspirino" [meaning obvious], and the verb "vagi" [to 
wander] and the noun .... well, you get the idea. Still, I have never met 
anyone who stumbled over this, either. Besides, in the latter case the 
-IN- suffix does not seem totally out of place...)

-- 
Don HARLOW			donh@netcom.com
Esperanto League for N.A.       elna@netcom.com (800) 828-5944
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/el/elna/elna.html         Esperanto
http://www.webcom.com/~donh
