Re: [lojban] Re: No Italy

[Pierre Abbat <phma@phma.optus.nu>]

On Saturday 19 August 2006 22:20, Bob LeChevalier wrote:
> Both Spanish and Italian are dialects of neo-Latin.  But Spanish is the
> word that got the gismu because it is one of the 6 source languages.
<li'o>
> Based solely on population, Spanish is the mainstream and Italian is the
> dialect.  This is not based on history or values or anything other than
> plain numbers.

We consider Portuguese to be a distinct language. Portuguese and Spanish are 
much more similar to each other than either is to Italian:
*Spanish and Portuguese are both decem-et-sex. Catalan, French, and Italian 
are all sedecim.
*The "pt" in "septimana" [sp?] was lost in French, Portuguese, and Spanish. It 
became "tt" in Italian.
*Numerous words of Basque or Arabic origin in Spanish and Portuguese don't 
exist in Italian.
*The formal second-person pronoun in both Spanish and Portuguese is a 
contraction of "vuestra merced" and has a singular form and a plural form. 
The Italian pronoun is "Lei" and does not distinguish number.
*Italian plurals are formed by changing vowels. French, Spanish, Catalan, and 
Portuguese plurals are formed by adding "s".

Now as to Galician, some people consider it distinct from Portuguese, and 
others consider them to be both dialects of one language. We might call it 
{berporto}.

Pierre