From iad@MATH.BAS.BG Thu May 04 08:28:26 2000 Return-Path: Received: (qmail 3114 invoked from network); 4 May 2000 15:28:25 -0000 Received: from unknown (10.1.10.142) by m4.onelist.org with QMQP; 4 May 2000 15:28:25 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO argo.bas.bg) (195.96.224.7) by mta3 with SMTP; 4 May 2000 15:28:23 -0000 Received: from banmatpc.math.bas.bg (root@banmatpc.math.bas.bg [195.96.243.2]) by argo.bas.bg (8.10.1/8.9.3/Debian 8.9.3-6) with ESMTP id e44FRR918042 for ; Thu, 4 May 2000 18:27:32 +0300 Received: from iad.math.bas.bg (iad.math.bas.bg [195.96.243.88]) by banmatpc.math.bas.bg (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id SAA01428 for ; Thu, 4 May 2000 18:27:20 +0300 Message-ID: <39119707.52B1@math.bas.bg> Date: Thu, 04 May 2000 18:28:07 +0300 Reply-To: iad@math.bas.bg Organization: Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01Gold (Win95; I; 16bit) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: lojban@egroups.com Subject: Re: [lojban] genders of language names References: <1e.4c3388f.2641f788@aol.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit From: Ivan A Derzhanski BestATN@aol.com wrote: > I don't usually contradict native speakers of other languages, > but I feel it's warranted in this case. Perhaps Russians actually > use masculine terms for Esperanto, but every Russian dictionary > I have has it listed as indeclinable neuter, and not masculine. > Most of these dictionaries are from the USSR or Russia, > so I trust them on this point. I consulted a book I have, a collection of papers on interlinguistics by various authors, published in Moscow in 1976 (for the complete reference see the top of ). I found that most of the time Esperanto's name is used in apposition to _jazyk_ `language', or in other contexts where one can't tell what gender it is; but on the several occasions where one can, it is consistently used as masculine. The authors of the papers are (or were) leading Soviet Esperantists or interlinguists, which makes it seem unlikely that their usage differs from everyone else's. So any Russian dictionary that only lists the word as neuter fails to justify the user's trust on this point. That said, there is a tendency for masculine but neuter-looking indeclinable nouns to become neuter -- _pal'to_ `overcoat', now neuter, was masculine once. But that's a slow process. -- (Abu t-Tayyib Ahmad Ibn Hussayn al-Mutanabbi) Ivan A Derzhanski H: cplx Iztok bl 91, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria W: Dept for Math Lx, Inst for Maths & CompSci, Bulg Acad of Sciences