Re: To Christophe (Uusisuom and Esperanto)

On Thu, 26 Apr 2001, John Cowan wrote:

> J Matthew Pearson wrote:
>
>
> > My sense is that the /u/ - /U/ distinction is quite uncommon in the world's
> > languages.
>
> Although it certainly exists in English, even there it has a very low
> functional load, and there are many words that vary dialectally.
>
> > Of course, Daniel44 has already expressed a contempt for linguists, so I doubt if
> > he'll be interested.  But others might...
>
> More precisely, he expressed contempt for the linguists *that he had met*,
> personally or Net-wise I don't know.  There are, as we all know well,
> plenty of linguists who have nothing but contempt for conlanging
> (on a par the astronomers' view of astrologers), and Alexis Manaster-Ramers
> and Geoffrey Sampsons are few and far between.
So Manaster-Ramer and Sampson are conlang-friendly? That's good
to know; Alexis e-mailed me a month or so ago about some
collaborative work on Uto-Aztecan he was interested in doing
(Numic historical phonology; yum!).

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga                          dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu

"The strong craving for a simple formula
has been the undoing of linguists."               - Edward Sapir

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