Re: [glosalist] a universal grammar ish ??

At 04:07 PM 12/3/05, Nikolao grafo:

—– Original Message —– From: sydpidd@... To: glosalist@yahoogroups.com Sent: Friday, December 02, 2005 6:47 PM Subject: Re: [glosalist] a universal grammar ish ??

I have started free lessons in Esperanto - very interesting. Glosa seems to be developed from west europe languages and Esperanto from east european -I am more at ease with the western ones.I do not think that either is better or worse than the other, each has characteristics that help me and each some that don’t. It has made me think about universal language and the following is buzzing about in my head. *** I will answer this in the a.m. when I am more awake.

It’s OK. Try to make Glosa+Esperanto *** Not too sure about this: these two Planned Languages are at the opposite ends of the inflected/non-inflected spectrum. They are certainly ^chalk and cheese^ when compared. However organising the teaching and social intercourse of Glosa as aggressively as are those of Esperanto would definitely be of advantage to Glosa.

Make Glosa as strong as Esperanto Glosa++ as C++ *** This is a valid concept if it suggests tightening up the rules of Glosa allowing it to be more machine-handleable. And yes, the Syntax-based Grammar of Glosa could be researched and extended.

Nikolao Mihajlenko

Zamenhof is dead, so you do it. *** I did, already. Ron Clark has also joined Zamenhof, so that leaves the field wide open! But I am now 69 and retired, and short on physical resources. During my twenty-five-odd years of active promotion of Glosa, I had a hell of a lot of trouble in encouraging people to actually use the language in an every-day capacity. Also, the writing of short stories in Glosa was rather thin. Academic discussion in relation to Glosa was also in short supply.

Still, I am not dead, yet, and could contribute to meaningful discussion about the future of Glosa.

Think about -ebla, -inda, -ema, -igi, -ighi for Glosa. *** If these are category affixes - of the four-letter variety - by contrast with the existing two-letter category affixes, e.g. -pe, then yes, I would agree that there is a place for them in Glosa. However, while such affixes are joined invisibly in Esperanto, I do believe that Ron Clark was right in maintaining the integrity of each word, and using hyphens for affixes. This means that in written form the affixes do not create the appearance of false words. Spoken, the affixes are ssounded separately from the word-stem … thus the hyphen is felt, if not actually pronounced.

Saluta,

Robin