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From: kaufman@nike.uucp (Bill Kaufman)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Esperanto
Message-ID: <691@nike.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 21-Oct-86 12:43:04 EDT
Article-I.D.: nike.691
Posted: Tue Oct 21 12:43:04 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 22-Oct-86 04:41:42 EDT
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In article <2081@ihlpa.UUCP> normt@ihlpa.UUCP (N. R Tiedemann) writes:
>> Can someone please explain what Esperanto is?  I've never heard of it
>> . . .
>>         Steve Wall  @  Rochester Institute of Technology
>
>	Esperanto is a "universal" language that was invented by an international
>group of linguistics about 20 (I think) years ago. They intended for it to
>be the language that everyone in the world would learn and be able to communicate
>with.

Weelll, no.  It was invented by a Polish (Russian) eye doctor around 1877.
The rest is true, though.

From a (much too) short study of it, it's about 40% Latin, 40% German,
and the other 20% a combination of Russian, Chinese and Japanese.
It uses *thoroughly* regular grammer--all nouns end in 'o', adjectives
in 'a', and verbs in 's'.  Lots of prefixes and suffixes give a lot
of room for expression.  Pretty neat language, for a guy who was *far* 
from being a 'linguist'.

					-Annoyingly,
					 Bilbo.
___________________________________________________________________________ 
"The French, they are a funny race./They fight with their feet, and..."
						-Norbert Sykes.
DISCLAIMER is a trademark of Kaufman Enterprises. I await my royalties.
E-MAIL: nike!orion!kaufman     
FLAMES: There are no flames.  Re-check your opinions.
(Forgiv any mising 'a', 'e', 'd', 's'; I'v got a ticky kybord.)
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