George Boeree | Re: [LFN] Greetings and questions about vocabulary

• Autor: George Boeree (“cgboeree”)
• Tema: Re: [LFN] Greetings and questions about vocabulary
• Data: 2005-03-18 17:47
• Mesaje: 918 (a supra, presedente, seguente)

Hi, Isaac.

Welcome to the group!

LFN is radical on two things:  spelling and grammar.  On vocabulary, it
takes a middle road.  We only have 20 affixes, and they are used in a
fairly flexible way -- more like the source languages than, say,
Esperanto.  Like Kevin said, it is of value to at least provide new
speakers with a limited vocabulary:  In the tutorial, we have about
1200 words, which do good service for a beginner.  In the dictionary,
we have about 3500 words, and we expect to have another 1500 before we
are through.  Many of these words are actually just variations, using
two words (such as portacandela) or affixes (such as portor).  It is
not that we expect people to freely invent words; it's just that they
are easier to remember this way!  You may notice also that we rarely
use sequences of even two suffixes, unlike Esperanto.  LFN is an
isolating language, like Chinese or Indonesian, not an agglutinating
one like Turkish or Finnish (or Esperanto).

There are also quite a few words derived from Greek, especially
technical ones.  We don't want to get too far into the technical with
our dictionary only because we are more interested in general discourse
rather than technical.  On the other hand, I am working on a 2000 word
plus medical dictionary.  We will probably enter some of the more basic
words into the general vocabulary, but most will remain separate.
There is also a list for adding computer-related words and one for
heraldry.  It's only a matter of people's interests growing, and I'm
sure we'll have vocabularies for engineers or sociologists or musicians
as well!

I actually agree with both you and Kevin in many respects:  a vast
vocabulary will eventually arise as people need to talk about
specialities; a limited basic vocabulary is necessary for entry into
the language.

As for specific words, go to the lfn wiki and find parolas mancada --
needed words -- and make your suggestions!  Although we don't want to
tamper with the basics (otherwise we'll never stop tinkering),
vocabulary is still something we work on.

Best wishes,

George ("Jorj")

On Mar 18, 2005, at 9:41 AM, Isaac Ben Harush wrote:

>
>  Hello, I'm Isaac. I recently discovered this project and am very
>  interested in it for its simplicity and beauty.
>
>  I do have a couple of issues that are nagging me.
>
"Some men dream of fortunes; others dream of cookies." -- actual
fortune cookie, 3-9-2005

  ----------

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]