.i la ludovik. lazar. zamenxof cu jectnrosia. tutrpolksa xebro kalmikce .i jmive ca'o la 1859nan. bi'o 1917nan. .i finti le bangrnesperanto
- Nick used "charmingly maldotco" to describe Zamenhof's style in writing Esperanto; of course, this is not a use within Lojban yet.
- Wasn't he a native Russian speaker? And didn't his slavic usage allow the itistoj to win the -ata/-ita debate?
- Yes, and yes, but there's still plenty of German-inspired stuff in there (versxajne = wahrscheinlich; punctuation before subordinate clauses, etc. --- more stylistic than grammatical.)
- punctuation before subordinate clauses: Can one really call this "German-inspired"??? Shouldn't it rather be called "non-English" - since (as far I'm really aware of) it's the way most European languages do it (of course Yiddish, but also Hungarian, Italian etc.). BTW, I guess I never shall understand the English system: can anyone explain it to me? ;-)
- You can tell that the subordinate clauses is coming up from the word that introduces it or the grammar around it. When speaking, you don't actually pause before subordinate clauses (at least I don't). When I see those commas, it makes me stop unnecessarily: "I know, ........ that Esperanto is easy." Incidentally, I've never seen that use of commas in Hebrew. — Adam
- Ludwik Lazarus Zamenhof (zamenxof) *Bialystok 15.12.185'9' +Warsaw 14.4.1917 always was Polish (and of course Jewish), why should he have been a native 'Russian' speaker!! (Think he knew Russian like he spoke German, Yiddish, Hebrew etc.).
- *ahem* Zamenhof was a Litvak Jew, and as such culturally Russian. His first languages were Russian and Yiddish --- not Polish. His wife (Klara Silbernik) was from Warsaw, and his kids spoke Polish; but just 'cause you're from Poland doesn't mean Polish is your first language. (At least, it didn't before 1941.) .i lenu la zamenxof cu tutrlitvaka xebro cu mukti lenu loi se natmrlietuva (toizoigy. Lithuanian gy.toi) cu ji'a xusra lenu la zamenxof. cu namtymintu ny.ly. .i mi pujeca se cfipu ledu'u le se natmi be makau cu xabju le tutrlitrvaka po'u le ca stuna gugdrpolska
- Here I quote a pretty interesting discussion on this issue: Zamenhof's "Dream" language --mi'e .aulun.
- punctuation before subordinate clauses: Can one really call this "German-inspired"??? Shouldn't it rather be called "non-English" - since (as far I'm really aware of) it's the way most European languages do it (of course Yiddish, but also Hungarian, Italian etc.). BTW, I guess I never shall understand the English system: can anyone explain it to me? ;-)