Re: Re : Re: Fw: irregular conlangs

Dans un courrier dat=E9 du 08/10/99 11:56:46  , Paul a =E9crit :

> This strikes me as being the remnant of a complex Gender system in
>  proto-japanese.
> =20
>  Is there any truth in that?
> =20
it's all chinese-rooted classificators.
except for the last one (-tsu) and i'd bet for -ri (people) and -ka (day).
and now thinking of it i realize there are tens more. but all of them are SJ=
.
rather than proto-japanese i'd say it's prothese-japanese.

what do you mean by "gender" ?
we europeans and else have man, woman and optionally castrated,
but that's never been the case in japanese.

't reminds me that discussing with a japanese teacher years ago, we agreed=20
that
without chinese - read : korean - settlement in the 5th century japlang
would still be polynesian-like. so that it would take more than ten syllable=
s
to say "let's have a beer". granted, we already had a few ones. and anyway
saying that politely still requires more.

mathias