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From: hinsenk@cyclone.ERE.UMontreal.CA (Hinsen Konrad)
Subject: Re: Languages in the EC
In-Reply-To: philip@storcomp.demon.co.uk's message of Sat, 4 Feb 1995 02:31:29 +0000
Message-ID: <HINSENK.95Feb5102041@cyclone.ERE.UMontreal.CA>
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	<MATTHEW.95Feb3140634@baloo.cpd.ntc.nokia.com>
	<791865089snz@storcomp.demon.co.uk>
Date: Sun, 5 Feb 1995 15:20:41 GMT
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In article <791865089snz@storcomp.demon.co.uk> philip@storcomp.demon.co.uk (Phil Hunt) writes:

   >  - A smaller base vocabulary with many words being built up from affixes (a
   >    common Finnish technique)

   This is helpful to Finns, but not so helpful to many Europeans. English,

It *is* helpful to Europeans. Try it, and you will see.

   French and Italian share many words (most of which are also found
   in other EU languages). Many of these words are not in Esperanto (which
   prefers to build up its own words), or are hard to recognise because of
   differences in spelling.

For anyone with some experience in Esperanto, recognising the compunds
is no problem at all. It is no more difficult than recognising a
"similar" word from another language, and certainly much easier than
recognising a completely different word from another language!
Don't forget that Europe has more than one language family.
And the more countries in the east will join, the more people
in the EU will not be familiar with a latin-based vocabulary.

--
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