On 5/24/12, Risto Kupsala <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>  >> There is a long
>  >> list of grammatical features that most eurolangs share. There are
> always
>  >> some deviations, but on the whole they have many things in common in
> deed.
>  >
>  > Indeed? But the more relevant term isn't "westlangs" or "eurolangs" or
>  > even "naturalistic." LFN is naturalistic in a different way than
>  > Interlingua, but they are both Latino-Romance--and Interlingua differs
>  > from Interlingua sometimes on how Latino and how Romance. Are they
>  > westlangs? I guess so. Are they eurolangs? Interlingua is; I'm not
>  > sure a creoloid can be a eurolang.  Eo isn't naturalistic, but I'm not
>  > sure it's truly a euroclone, either. Is it a westlang? More or less,
>  > though its unique structure allows it to work in very non-westy ways.
>
> Okay, so the categories are ill defined. The difference between
> eurolangs and westlangs is unclear.

To the extent that "eurolang" means anything, I suppose it refers to a
language that is lexically and grammatically based on Romance and/or
Germanic sources. (The term sounds as though it should cover a
simplified Basque as well.) If this is true, I don't see a distinction
for "westlang," unless the latter term allows for things like Inlis
and the former doesn't. But both Europe and the West are large and
diverse areas, so I don't think the descriptions are that useful
except politically.

> LFN is different, yes, but it uses participles as heavily as any Romance
> based IAL. Participles do not even exist in many languages. "Tu ia
> labora" is not really that different from "Vi laboris" when tense
> marking is obligatory. It's the same thing in a different guise. So my
> intuition tells me that LFN is not that far from Standard Average
> European after all. But I admit that I haven't studied LFN that well to
> be sure.

I'm not that current with it, so some of my impressions may be
outdated. And there were some L1 Romanophones who seemed intent on
dragging it in that direction, much as they do with Interlingua.
Paul's remarks on this are in my view accurate, so I'll just "ditto"
them and move on.

> Esperanto has many features common with SAE though it does some tricks
> of its own. But is it really so big deal that affixes can be used as
> full words? It's noteworthy, yes, but alone it's not enough to throw
> Esperanto into a different linguistic category.

That in itself isn't, but the extreme flexibility allowed by PoS
marking enables it to mimic non-SAE structures, including Indic and
generally "Asian" ones. It has a number of Chinese supporters who seem
to have no problem with it, and I find their stylistic quirks
ingenious and often worthy of imitation.

> Auxlang death rate concerns me. All worldlangs, except maybe Lidepla,
> depend on their "primus motor".

Which is also the only one with a fairly quick and simple way to
import vocabulary. Not necessary, perhaps (Eo has no such thing), but
certainly useful. Occ lacks the feature, so once you go beyond obvious
derivations, you're pretty well stuck, and it doesn't have the Eo user
base to save it. In any case, I expect Pandunia to be fully viable
within a year or so.

> The key to survival is about building a reputation. I doubt that
> Interlingua is really any good, but it has a reputation that makes it
> "immortal".

It was the final answer to the auxlang question, arrived at by Real
Scientists.In most respects I prefer Occ, which is faster, more
flexible, and more powerful, but it's also less organized. If some
kind of importation rules could be worked out, and if the orthography
could be reformed in a more Mondial-ish direction, it would be about
the perfect Anglo-Romance project. (I would still find a slightly
tweaked Novial worthwhile, though.)

Anyway, worldlangs begin with a kind of reputation, and I think
Pandunia will do well enough. It has a very distinctive look and feel
that should make it easy to promote.

Steve