On Thu, Apr 05, 2001 at 12:51:31AM -0400, Alex Page wrote:
> AOL. A strongly grammatical language like Latin really makes you think about your
>grammar in English. I did Latin to A-level, and remembering which form of qui to use
>in a given situation really helps you work out that whole who / whom issue.
In all seriousness, a really fantastic introduction to grammar is
learning Esperanto. If you're a geek you'll absolutely dig how it
deals with some of the nastier aspects of who/how/why/when/whom/etc
(correlatives[1]). These apparently disparate words are formed by
combining a suffix and a prefix in a 5x9 grid. It is really elegant
and helps see through natural's languages pointless fluff.
An Esperanto/Natural dictionary looks odd -- it's hugely biased toward
the natural side because with Esperanto's affixes (goes between words)
you can generate additional words -- makes for a rich language. There's
some really good humour based on this too.
Not to mention you'll be able to speak to about another 2million
people with little more than two or three month's effort. And stay in
places around the world for free (Pasporta Servo[2]).
[1] http://www.webcom.com/~donh/Esperanto/correlatives.html
[2] http://home.planet.nl/~lide/ps_lingv/ps_en.htm
Paul, has a GCSE in Esperanto :)
