http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090320.wvulcan20/BNStory/Entertainment/home
"Mr. Nimoy is the only original cast member to appear in director J.J. Abrams latest addition to science-fiction lo..."
D: not quite wrong.
NOTE: Although names ending in s or an s sound are not required to have the second s added in possessive form, it is preferred.
Mr. Jones's golf clubs
http://www.grammarbook.com/punctuation/apostro.asp
D: So a natural language evolved itself into a corner.
Apostrophe-S for possessive.
Syllable rules permit ending in S.
Hissing out S repeatedly sounds like a snake with a stutter.
Abrams. Abrams's.
D: we cannot just place an apostrophe where it feels right.
Abram's.
D: the problem is singular nouns that are allowed to resemble plural forms. In this case, a proper name.
I think I know maybe a dozen people that understand plural and possessive.
The dogs' bone. The bone of the dogs.
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I was thinking about its and it's.
We need to get back to 'tis. Nobody but nobody can figure out the distinction.
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Esperanto.
I'm learning it again. Rapidly catching up through the first half of the chapters.
The old bugbears are still there.
Adjective/ noun agreement. Some tricky phoneme combinations.
Qiel and tiel for as...as in a metaphor.
Other examples of "closed class" words that get recycled excessively for double or even triple duty.
I'm having trouble keeping the correlatives straight. Who what where when why how.
Kie - where. Kiel - how.
I think this was touched upon in Ranto.
There is no rhyme or reason to the form of correlatives.
I can never seem to remember which is which. I end up relying on context.
Meaning I need to hold the whole sentence in my head to process the first word.
I have come up with some memory aids, but they are awkward.
Kiel. How the hELl are you?
Kie. WhEre.
NOT easy.
The words that seems to contain the most diacritic letters also seem to be the most common. They are disproportionately "closed class" words that cannot be avoided.
About (round) - cirkau. C^irkau8. (Two differnt accents.)
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Category:Esperanto_prepositions
Nepo and Nevo (grandson and nephew) prevent a useful VERY brief one-letter root. Ne would be confused with them, were they to exist.
E.g. root P.
With about 20 consonants, we could use a single letter root for the most common concepts. E.g. State, verb action thing....
I've often lamented the lack of a truly basic "vocabulary of language" in English.
Preposition. Posit. -ion. pre-. Pre- with a soft E, though most pre- words use a long.
Conjunction. Conjoin, modified. -ion.
The words TO learn English are themselves not basic words!
Verb - adverb. But noun- NOT adnoun. Adjective.
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O27-adjective.html
adjective
From: The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology | Date: 1996 | Author: | © The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology 1996, originally published by Oxford University Press 1996. (Hide copyright information) Copyright information
adjective (gram.) designating an attribute. XIV. — (O)F. adjectif, -ive — late L. adjectīvus, -īva, f. adject-, pp. stem of adicere add, f. AD- + jacere throw; see -IVE.
D: I'd need to think about it some more.
But imagine a special vocabulary in Esp-o that looks like ba be bi bo bu, da de... et al.
OK so in Espo, -A designates an adjective. -O a noun, -E an adverb. -AS and friends are verb endings, but we will ignore them for now.
Nouns: bo do fo...
Hmm, 20 types of nouns.
http://www.yourdictionary.com/grammar-rules/Types-of-Nouns.html
D: proper, common, countable, uncountable, collective concrete abstract, pronouns.
E.g. there are enough left to include ALL the pronouns.
A Ceqli- style setup could work.
Go -I. Zi-you. We... go-zi.
D: stray thought. Apply a Hebrew style mystical numerology and cross-mate it with my prime # dimensional naming convetion.
I think the value of the letters in mother and father add up to 'child' or somesuch.
It provides the basis for a singular/ plural distinction amongst various singular/plural pronoun combinations. Pretty powerful stuff.
D: anyway, you'll continue to hear my Espo Ranto as I encounter learning difficulties.
I think Decimese is largely a reaction to perceived deficiencies in Esperanto.
I think I'm making a 'for dummies' version, LOL!
Tomorrow: similarities between LOLCAT speak and Espo! <:
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