Subject: Re: [lojban] genders of language names

From: Ivan A Derzhanski <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 04 May 2000 18:28:07 +0300

[email-masked] 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 <http://www.math.bas.bg/~iad/univers.html>).
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.

-- 
<fa-al-_haylu wa-al-laylu wa-al-baydA'u ta`rifunI
wa-as-sayfu wa-ar-rum.hu wa-al-qir.tAsu wa-al-qalamu>
(Abu t-Tayyib Ahmad Ibn Hussayn al-Mutanabbi)
Ivan A Derzhanski <http://www.math.bas.bg/~iad/>
H: cplx Iztok bl 91, 1113 Sofia, Bulgaria <[email-masked]>
W: Dept for Math Lx, Inst for Maths & CompSci, Bulg Acad of Sciences