Re: Gentitive (was: Andrew catches up on his reading!)

[Andrew Smith <hobbit@mail.earthlight.co.nz>]

As I lie awake at night I find myself in agreement with Ray that casan ill
of is the heartfelt choice, but llo chas di'll of is what the mind says.
So I'm going to play my fiat here and go with llo chas di'll of.  I
consider there are a number of good reasons to do this:

A number of Romance languages have 'swallowed' -s, but no Romance language
has resorted to using -n universally and I am reluctant to be innovative
where analogical languages don't support it.

The need for an -n plural is imposed due to only one feature of the
language for which an alternative exists that doesn't need plural marking.

Having an Esperanta feel to the language is something I care to avoid,
nothing personal, I just don't like Esperanto's grammer, it feels a little
clunky to me.

For this reason I will begin revising the Brithenig homepage but replacing
the Celtic form with the Romance form in this case.  It may not be so
elegant but I confess it's sonorant sound is pleasing to me.

Llo ho^n as the plural of ill of will be staying.  It is in good company.

On another note I think we will be remain as a distribution list for a
while longer.  Replies have been ambivilent so far to the need of a
mailing list and a distribution list is simple to maintain while numbers
remain small and uncomplicated.

In case people did not understand my jest.  Snail is the nickname of my
flatmate's computer at work, because it was cobbled together from parts
and is slower than some of the other computers there.  Snail mail is a
description of postal mail being slower than email, hence my term
computerized Snail mail.  I hope that didn't ruin the joke, as such as it
was.

addew!

- andrew.

Andrew Smith                                  <hobbit@earthlight.co.nz>
Life is short, so am I...