adinspect | Re: goals
Hello George
50 email messages, that's all? Try 250 :)
But anyway, I wanted to join this list because I find the idea of a
Pidgin interesting. I work in advertising and I dable in foreign
languages. From time to time I have to make myself understood and end
up dumbing down my English so as to help the hearer to make some
sense out of what I'm saying, yes, too I admit I raise my voice
sometimes, but it actually works if you pronounce distinctly, folks
do catch on if they have a little smattering of English. I know
because I can understand portuguese that way, they have to say things
more clearly and a little louder and most of the time with what I
know of Spanish, which isn't much, I can understand what they say. No
lying!
Why other people join and advertise other languages is probably
because they like the idea and have something to offer. It's like
kids with playing cards you want to show yours off too :) well so do
they.
Let me see if I understand this right though. Europidgin is a dumbing
down of Lingua Franca Nuova isn't it? It shouldn't be the same.
Otherwise why not just change the name of this grouplist? It is
something different, so that's why there's a lot of suggestions on
what to make it. Like a bunch of cooks all in the kitchen, though,
everyone has their suggestions and their tastes. Put a little more of
this or put a little more of that, change "ma" to "mi", change "-va"
to "pa", etc., etc.
Incidentally I don't understand so many of the changes, they are way
above my head. Some of the emails I can't understand easily. I don't
want to learn Esperanto. The messages from Mike were cute, it sounds
like something I'd say attempting to talk with someone in Rio. Does
anyone really know what the real Lingua Franca sounded like, though?
I don't mind the messages in either text or html. I use the web
interface because that way I don't get attachments and don't run the
risk of catching viruses from emails.
Sorry to add to your reading load, George, but hang in there, I
always enjoy the professor tone in your messages, their precious!
Best to you too
Lori
--- In europidgin@y..., George Boeree <cgboeree@a...> wrote:
> Hello, everyone.
>
> I was away this weekend, and found myself barraged by 50 emails --
half
> of them from this group! As I read them, I was struck by some of
the
> discussion: With the changes we have made so far, many new problems
> have arisen! for example, before the changes, we had io/me/ma,
which
> allowed clarity in regards to occasional word-order exceptions
allowed
> because so many languages allow them, and clarity in regards to
when we
> have a possessive and when not. As I pointed out years ago in the
faqs
> section of the LFN pages, I chose io/me/ma (etc) for good reasons
in the
> first place!
>
> On the other hand, we are seeing a variety of emails with agendas
> different from what we started out with: some want something more
like
> lojban, some want another version of esperanto, some want the
original
> lingua franca... This is getting frustrating to me. I am very
confused
> as to why someone who really prefers esperanto or nuova lingua
franca
> would join this group and try to convert others to their way of
> thinking! Isn't easier and more enjoyable to speak with people who
> already share your goals? And how can anyone belong to more than
one of
> these groups? Wouldn't you be spending your whole day reading
email?
>
> Anyway, I think that some of the problems would be fixed by using
mi,
> tu, and el rather than me, te, and le. The length of the list of -
va
> and -ra words Kevin sent does suggest that perhaps we would be
better
> off with a particle. Pa and fa, however, are too artificial for a
> naturalistic language. My earlier suggestion of e for the past is
> indeed ambiguous. So may I suggest ai for the past, and va for the
> future? Also, I suggested eliminating the -da and -nte endings in
> pijin, but I think the inconvenience of sentence reconstructions is
far
> greater than the small inconvenience of learning what all European
> languages do anyway!
>
> Best wishes,
>
> George
>
> PS. Incidently, I was sending my emails in html before, which
> apparently some of your email programs can't use, so I will send my
> emails in both html and plaintext from now on. I hope that helps.
The
> graphics, on the other hand, are not from me, they are from yahoo
> groups.