[Offtopic] EsperantoConq

[Eric McDonald <mcdonald@phy.cmich.edu>]

Jim Kingdon wrote:
>>Esperanto appears to be a declined and conjugated language, like
>>Latin.
> 
> 
> Only a little bit.  There are only 2 cases (subject and object),
> compared with 6 (I think) for Latin, 4 for German.

Yes. Latin has Nominative (subject), Genitive (possessive), Dative 
(to/from), Accusative (object), Ablative (prepositional, excluding the 
Dative), and Vocative (direct address).

As a side note, the accusative can be used with 'ad' or 'a', in which 
case the meaning is "into" rather than "to".

Vocative would be like: "Dico te Pyrrhe..." -> "I say [to you], 
Pyrrhus..." (This is the beginning of a famous Latin pun (because the 
whole sentence can be parsed two different ways, both of which have 
perfectly valid semantics) in which a Roman author (I forgot whom) poked 
fun of the Greek general Pyhrrus' "Pyrrhic victory" over the Romans).

> And there are only 3 tenses (past, present, future), compared with
> many more for romance languages.

What, no pluperfect?! :-)

> There is no gramatical gender.

Then there are three separate 3rd person singular personal pronouns, I 
assume....

> Not sure where that comes from, but I have a vague recollection of
> other languages which form plurals by adding "y" (or "j", but it is
> the sound that would be spelled "y" in English).

That depends: "j" can also go to a breathing sound or a full "h". And 
with Latin, it is a consonantal "i".

> Here is the list of endings:

Agh, you ruined it for me! I had already guessed part of the list. But, 
not to sound ungrateful, I'll say thanks.

> There's always http://www.lernu.net/ (but that's only for people who
> read manuals - the Real Hacker(TM) will want to skip right to the
> grammar book written in Esperanto - http://purl.oclc.org/NET/pmeg )

Thanks.

>>Now we will have to see if any Klingon speakers want 
>>representation as well. 
> 
> Klingon speakers do not *want* representation; Kling speakers *demand*
> representation.

:-)
I hear that they're not just confined to mental institutions and Star 
Trek conventions anymore....

Eric