Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site spar.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!allegra!bellcore!decvax!decwrl!spar!ellis From: ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) Newsgroups: net.nlang Subject: Re: Esperanto and the origins of some in Message-ID: <25@spar.UUCP> Date: Fri, 11-Jan-85 03:48:00 EST Article-I.D.: spar.25 Posted: Fri Jan 11 03:48:00 1985 Date-Received: Sun, 13-Jan-85 06:57:36 EST References: <1129@druny.UUCP> <10500037@uiucdcsb.UUCP> Reply-To: ellis@max.UUCP (Michael Ellis) Organization: Schlumberger Palo Alto Research, CA Lines: 31 From Judy Grass: >I looked over the list and saw very little that looked Slavic to me... > >... I once had a friend >(a linguist, who should have known better) try to demonstrate that >Russian was related to Latin on the basis of some similar vocabulary >between Italian and Russian. I am still not sure she could have >been serious. > Indeed, esperanto appears to have an extremely strong bias towards the Romance languages, with occasional Teutonic stems. Slavic, Semitic, Sino-Tibetan and Japanese seem to be totally unrepresented. As to the relationship between Latin and Russian, that has been verified beyond any shadow of doubt for perhaps a hundred years or more. Consult any elementary text on comparative philology. Latin and Russian derive from dialects of a postulated proto-indo-european language. The similarity goes deeper than just collections of `core' vocabulary, such as words for close relatives, basic verbs, numerals, pronouns, and so forth. These are revealing since they are the least likely to be replaced by loan-words, as they are acquired at such an early age. What I find most striking is the similarity in the inflections, particularly in nouns/pronouns. Check out grammars for Lithuanian (which allied to, yet more archaic than, the Slavic family), ancient Greek (similar, but more archaic than, Latin) and Sanskrit someday. I bet you'd find many old acquaintances lurking about.. -michael