Antonio Carlos R. da Fonseca | Re: Greetings and questions about vocabulary

• Autor: Antonio Carlos R. da Fonseca (“acrfonseca”)
• Tema: Re: Greetings and questions about vocabulary
• Data: 2005-03-19 00:12
• Mesaje: 927 (a supra, presedente, seguente)

Hy Isaac

I hope you continue reanding and, if possible, studying LFN.
You will see that LFN is  very simple.
The "fat" we are accostumed to in our native tongues were thrown
away. After a while we see that, really, we do not need that "fat" to
make ourselves  be clearly understood.
If the nom is in plural why does need the related adjectives and
other words be too?
LFN has a order to be expressed, so why cases would be needed?
Could the pronoms be simpler? In LFN they are.
Think about.

Salute e Bon Veni.

Antonio

==============

> 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.
>
> (1) I don't know much about languages, but as far as I understand,
a
> creole is characterized by a very simple grammer, a skeleton of the
> more developed languages' grammer. This is fine for the grammer, as
> simplicity and logic eases learning. But I believe that the
> vocabulary should be as vast and detailed as possible, because the
> words are the entities that carry all the shades of meanings in
> human thought. That's why I fail to understand the use of the same
> words for different meanings, however related, in LFN. Just a few
> examples:
>
> un - one; a, an
> fio - boy; son
> fia - girl; daughter
> pardon - forgive; pardon
> falsa - wrong; false
> porta - carry; wear
> basa - low; shallow; basic(?)
> el - he; she; it. (Why can't there be individual and general
> pronouns, like in Ido, so you can choose the level of granularity?)
>
> etc...
>
> I don't believe that adding words would increase complexity. It
> would only help to be more exact. I believe (but again, I am not a
> linguist) that we remember words as blocks, or "snapshots" of
> meanings. More words are only for the better.
>
> (2) For the same reason, I prefer the approach of new words as
> opposed to constructing words from affixes. We do not "calculate"
> the words when we speak, we just use these "black boxes" of
meanings
> as is. After you learn that "kandelingo" in Esperanto means "candle-
> holder", it becomes a black box. It doesn't matter anymore that it
> originally derived from "kandel", "-ing", and "-o". You
> stop "calculating" the word as you say it. So the affixes didn't
> really matter after all. I believe that the number of affixes
should
> be the absolute minimum required. Building words on-the-fly is not
> natural for us and doesn't give a specific shade of meaning. An
> extreme example: Previously, when you wanted to say "hospital" in
> Esperanto, you would have to construct the word, since "hospitalo"
> didn't exist yet. One possibility is "mal-san-ul-ej-o",
literally "a
> place of not-healthy people". But does it mean "hospital"? Any
place
> with sick people can qualify. If you argue that it can be agreed
> that this word should mean "hospital" as we know it, then I say
> again, what use were the affixes in the first place? Just teach
> people that "malsanulejo" is "hospital". A black box.
>
> OK, enough of my ramblings :-) I'd be happy to hear the opinions of
> the group.
>
> Greetings, Isaac.