George Boeree | Re: [europidgin] HERE’S A RADICAL IDEA

• Autor: George Boeree (“cgboeree”)
• Tema: Re: [europidgin] HERE’S A RADICAL IDEA
• Data: 2002-09-16 19:36
• Mesaje: 77 (a supra, presedente, seguente)

Hi, Jay.

jjbowks wrote:
>  Here's a radical idea,
> since the suggestion of
> keeping a beginning vocab
> list of 500 to 600 words
> would seem enticing for
> beginning speakers, a
> great help would be to
> instead make a list of
> 500 or so "roots",
> or "radices".
There is a list of such roots under technical affixes, if you like.
>
> With so many words in
> Romance languages having
> pre-, post-, pro-, per-
> com- (col-, con-, cor- etc.)
> in- (il-, ir- etc.) contra-
> ob- and ab- and ad- and
> others...
Mostly, these are used metaphorically, and therefore are not strictly additive
in meaning.  If you wanted the precise, root-by-root meaning, you
would use the two roots separately, as two words!  Eg contenir vs
tenir con...
> by taking these
> prefixes off you have word
> roots which when listed
> together can be very useful
> to form words, and order
> up a colum of prefixes
> which can join to them
> and voila' you've got
> yourself a neat little
> package. Very "nouveau"
> and "retro" at the same
> time... Throw in some
> Greek roots used internationally
> and you've got the coverage
> for science and technology,
> a real dynamo!
>
> Of course this is exactly
> what happens naturally,
> we take it for granted
> and forget that a lot of
> the words we use everyday
> are merely fabrications
> or constructions made
> from meaningful blocks.
>
> antidisestablishmentarianism
Part of my goal in LFN was to avoid such agglutinative monstrosities!
If you want Turkish (or Esperanto), fine.  But I was looking for a
predominantly isolating Indo-European language.  I think it important
to limit the number of prefixes and suffixes a word should use.  KISS
is my motto as well as Bjorn's!

George