dave5dave5dave | [LFN] Re: Freezing the basic grammar

• Autor: dave5dave5dave
• Tema: [LFN] Re: Freezing the basic grammar
• Data: 2006-05-01 08:54
• Mesaje: 2128 (a supra, presedente, seguente)

--- In LinguaFrancaNova@yahoogroups.com, Paul Bartlett <bartlett@...>
wrote:
>
> On Sat, 29 Apr 2006, Kevin Smith wrote:
>
> > [most trimmed for brevity]
>
> >                           Especially if this new language is hard to
> > learn, either because of difficult grammar, or because they have to
> > memorize (or look up) thousands of words.
> >
> > That is why I still believe that the key for a new IAL to surpass
> > Esperanto is that it must be extremely easy to learn to read. Part of
> > that is being able to memorize or print out a tiny word list
> > (500-1000) and with it to be able to read almost any non-technical
> > material.
>
>      One of my disappointments with LFN has been this almost weed-like
> growth in the vocabulary.  Having some familiarity with Romance enables
> me to read much of it at sight, but don't ask me for an active use of
> it for now.  There is just too much of it.
>
> --
> Paul Bartlett
>
That's all well and good, but what is one to do with a sentence like
this when translating?

the coordination and unification of the petroleum policies of [its]
member countries and the determination of the best means for
safeguarding their interests, individually and collectively;
[devising] ways and means of ensuring the stabilization of prices in
international oil markets with a view to eliminating harmful and
unnecessary fluctuations; [giving due regard] at all times to the
interests of the producing nations and to the necessity of securing a
steady income to the producing countries; an efficient, economic and
regular supply of petroleum to consuming nations, and a fair return on
their capital to those investing in the petroleum industry."

In my opinion keeping a vocabulary too small is a waste of effort -
people use whatever vocabulary they need in their daily life, whether
large or small. Not knowing certain words doesn't make one any less
fluent, but not being able to express something as a language is a
fault. Here's a message from my brother telling me what he's been up
to lately:

but he has currently suggested i will be able to work on the
biosynthesis of ephedrine due to a contact we have in genomics
research in the plant biotechnology institute...we can use the
sequence pieces to guess at the gene functiona and i should be able to
pull out one or more genes involved in ephedrine biosynthesis...

Er, what? I can only venture a vague guess as to what he's up to, but
that doesn't matter. He uses what he needs in his life, and I use
terms that he doesn't know when talking about hanja/kanji and whatnot.
That's fine. But an IAL should have as much vocabulary as a natural
language; whether people use the vocab or not is up to them. People
don't have a large repetoire to work from anyway, usually only a few
thousand. People will do the weeding out themselves, and you can't
stop that. If it's too small they'll make up their own terms, and if
it's too large they'll just choose the ones they like to use and the
others will only be used in translating content and higher-level
discussions.

Dave