(no subject)

[ewx]

I was amused to notice that the Lojban website is available in, among other things, Esperanto. Sadly the reverse isn't true of any Esperanto websites I could find (though that one does have Occitan, which while not invented does appeal to me almost as much). Volapük seems largely to be described only in English (and itself, of course).

Comments

[mtbc100.livejournal.com]

What appeals to you about Occitan?

Lojban looks awfully interesting. Where's Marisa when you want her? (-: It seems to let you express as much as you want about things in a systematic way, which I find most attractive, and not too Euro-centric. I wonder if it has an increasing number of speakers, and how it stacks against rivals.

[aldabra]

It has no speakers, to a first approximation, because it's a complete bugger to learn to fluency, none of the words having recognisable roots. I subscribed to their newsletter for a while and never read it; I suspect this is typical of their subscribers. OTOH there are millions of adequate Esperanto speakers, you can locate them in any large city, you can stay with them for free, and they have tea parties on canal boats. And you can follow what they're saying with not very much effort at all.

Occitan

[ewx.livejournal.com]

The Polari connection, holidays long since past spent in the area, the Angevin empire.

[burkesworks.livejournal.com]

Occitan doesn't look too hard to pick up if you have a good grounding in French, Spanish, Catalan or Latin.
Knocking around in one or other of my bookcases is a study and history of all the Romance languages, when I do get myself down to Cambridge in the summer I'll let you have it, or I can pass it on to lnr.

[naath.livejournal.com]

I still think that Nahuatl is the most interesting lanuage I've ever studied. Basque might be fun or whatever it is that the people who were in Japan before the Japanese speak, watch me forget English words for things!

Japan

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Ainu?

Re: Japan

[naath.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, that.

Re: Japan

[pm215]

Mmm; Ainu struck me as an interesting language; apparently it doesn't have any tenses, frex.

Unfortunately it's dead, in the sense that nobody learns it as a native language any more. (There might still be a few elderly native speakers floating around.)

[kaet.livejournal.com]

I've always liked the idea of Old Guntish. I'm pleased there was such a language. There doesn't seem to be much by the way of translations of the Old Guntish stuff on the web though, so I can't even glimpse what kind of people they were, :).

[kaet.livejournal.com]

I meant old gutnish. It's particularly annoying I mistyped it twice, :).