Theiling Online    Sitemap    Conlang Mailing List HQ   

Re: Conlang Development With Multple Noun Cases

From:Nik Taylor <fortytwo@...>
Date:Friday, January 1, 1999, 7:48
list James E. Hopkins wrote:
> My only question is: looks masculine to whom? > looks feminine to whom? That is a very Euro-centric way of looking at word > forms.
Just to play Devil's Advocate for a moment, Esperanto *was* intended largely as a European lang, uniting the various European and European-descended societies, where the -o/-a masc/fem distinction might be a valid point. Of course, IMO, it doesn't matter what the vowels are - having an obligatory vowel to terminate words can be rather annoying, IMHO - makes borrowing and recognition difficult, which is why in my con-IAL, there are no such obligatory endings in nouns and adjectives, except that both frequently end in -o when borrowed from sources with foreign phonologies, e.g., land --> lando.