Re: Let Me Introduce Myself

CB = Carsten Becker
ML = Maxime Lévesque

CB> Esperanto seems to have many words derived from Romance
CB> languages, doesn't it?

The primary influences on Esperanto seem to be Romance, Germanic,
and Slavic; within those groups, the largest contributors seem to be
Latin, English, and Polish, respectively.  Some examples:

The house  = la domo   (Slavic)
Thank you! = Dankon!   (Germanic)
To want    = voli      (Romance)

ML> I had to read about cases and when I
ML> undestood for what they can served I wanted to create a
ML> preposition-less language (after I discovered latin was
ML> already like that...)

Latin is not prepositionless by any means!  Classical Latin only has 5 and a
half cases (vocative being the half), so even though those cases are
overloaded with many different functions, there just aren't enough to
convey all the meanings for which caseless languages use prepositions.
Latin is, indeed, full of prepositions, such as ex (out of) and ab (away
from); even words like de (of) and ad (to), whose glosses often are
translated using cases instead.

ML> Probbly I'll create an ergative language someday
CB> Respect! I haven't understood it all yet.

Eragitivity is neat, but there are more categories than just
accusative and ergative - you mustn't forget tripartie languages, which
are arguably the most logical, or Monster Raving Looney languages,
which are arguably the least logical. :)   I personally still find it
hard to think ergativishly, though, so I've stuck with accusative
conlangs so far.

> And yes, Markos is right,..
I've seen that a couple times now - I only spell it "Markos" when speaking
Esperanto or Greek.  Otherwise it's "Marcos" with a C. :)

-Marcos

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