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From: dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Esperanto
Message-ID: <2172@ecsvax.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 23-Oct-86 14:47:13 EDT
Article-I.D.: ecsvax.2172
Posted: Thu Oct 23 14:47:13 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 25-Oct-86 01:23:47 EDT
References: <102@ritcv.UUCP> <2081@ihlpa.UUCP> <691@nike.UUCP>
Reply-To: dgary@ecsvax.UUCP (D Gary Grady)
Distribution: net
Organization: Datalytics, Inc.
Lines: 33
Summary: More corrections

In article <691@nike.UUCP> kaufman@orion.UUCP (Bill Kaufman) writes:
>
>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'.

Wellll, no.  There is nothing of deliberate Chinese or Japanese origin
in the language and I suspect Romance (Latin) roots are more
predominant than you suggest.  Verbs end in s only in the indicative
mood, and nouns and adjectives end as you say only in the nominative
singular.

I disagree that Zamenhof was "far from being a linguist."  He was
fluent in Lithuanian, Polish, German, and Russian, knew at least some
Yiddish (Esperanto "Ho, ve!" comes from "Oy vay!"), knew enough English
and Hebrew to translate Esperanto books from them, had at least studied
Latin and Greek, and I'm sure I'm leaving out a few.  Oh, yeah,
Italian.  Considering the status of linguistics at the time, I suspect
Zamenhof was as much a "linguist" as any professional linguist of his
day.  The language itself, while certainly flawed, was pronounced a
"masterpiece" by a committee of the French Academy of Sciences, which
would certainly never bestow such an epithet on, say, English!  :-)
-- 
D Gary Grady
(919) 286-4296
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