Kotava and Fedora

[papoanaya]

Dude, your distro is old!

It has come the time to update my current Fedora setup. It is running Fedora 11. Yes, I know, we're up to Fedora 18 which basically puts me in the end of having to do a full install on the system. Being that I am using it to do work, it is kind of hard to wipe everything out and start anew.

However, the problem is that the system is starting to show its age. I think I can hold on to it for a bit longer, but eventually I will have to back up everything, wipe out the system and install a newer distro. Which one? I am still undecided.

Kotava?

We got an invitation at the Toki Pona group in Facebook from a kind lady to learn about Kotava . It is a constructed language meant for international communications. Well, that sounds good, so I decided to read about it.

Well, It's an interesting language, but there's a bit to muster. This in itself is a chore for the following reasons:

• All documentation is in French. I can read French, but that does not mean that it's not an onerous process being that my knowledge of French is rather basic.
• It has different endings for verbs. In Esperanto, all verbs end the same depending on the tense. However in Kotava, they end according to the noun and tense. I have to admit that gives it a more natural sound than having all the verbs ending the same; but it adds complication while learning the language.
• Words were not made based on a starter language (a priori). This in itself is not bad, but this means that you have to learn a new set of root words without a familiar origin (like Latin or Greek). Yes, it makes it for an egalitarian language, but it also means, you have to learn everything from scratch. (Well, there's always Klingon...)
• Kotava uses a series of auxiliary words to indicate verb aspects. This is done in many languages. However, I think that the Kotava people went overboard because of the number of them.

My wife does not approve...

Even though these makes it a bit harder than other conlang it makes interesting, until I told my wife. She looked at me square in the eye and said.

Dear, just stick with Toki Pona and Esperanto...

She's not fun. :(.