living languages/ vivantaj lingvoj
dcout...@a2i-micro.fr
>On 1996/12/17, <jel...@sydney.net> wrote in sci.lang:
>have i misunderstood something?
>why is anyone still talking about esperanto
>fran jelley
Because it is a still living language.
Because it is pleasant to speak, easy to learn, and it gives no
avantage to a people over another one...
That's why.
I am an european teacher in a french elementary school, and I am to the
right place to see, how the teaching of english __prevents__ a lot of
children to learn other languages.
Some of them, because the experience is so umpleasant, that they become
defiant towards all foreign language
Some of them, because they success to learn it, and think that english
opens to them communication without restrictions, which obviously is
stupid. Only a small part of Humanity: middle class of wealthy countries,
can speak it well (or not too badly).
That's why.
************************************
Cxar gxi estas dawre vivanta lingvo.
Cxar gxi estas agrabla paroli, facile lernebla,
kaj ne donas superecon al iu popolo super alia.
Tial estas.
Mi estas instruistino en baza francia lernejo, kaj mi estas
je bona loko, por vidi, kiel instruado de la angla malhelpas
multaj infanoj lerni aliajn lingvojn.
Parto de ili, cxar la eksperimento estas tiel malplacxa, ke
ili poste farigxas malfidaj je cxiuj aliaj fremdaj lingvoj.
Parto de ili, cxar ili sukcesas lerni gxin, kaj pensas, ke la angla
malfermas al ili internacian komunikadon sen limigoj, kio
estas stulte, kompreneble. Nur malgranda parto de la Homaro:
mezricxa klaso de la ricxaj landoj, scipovas gxin bone
(aw ne tro malbone)
Tial estas.
******************************************
Dominique Couturier, enseignante en milieu rural (8-11 ans)
Ecole Publique de Valence-Charente
fax personnel: (33) 5 45 22 23 11 (fr/ it/ esp-o/ sp/ eng)
-----------------------------------------------------------
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Stan Goodman
In message <8536050...@dejanews.com> - Sat, 18 Jan 1997 11:01:05
-0600dco...@a2i-micro.fr writes:
:>
:>
:>>On 1996/12/17, <jel...@sydney.net> wrote in sci.lang:
:>
:>>have i misunderstood something?
:>>why is anyone still talking about esperanto
:>
:>>fran jelley
:>
:>Because it is a still living language.
:>Because it is pleasant to speak, easy to learn, and it gives no
:>avantage to a people over another one...
:>That's why.
:>
:>I am an european teacher in a french elementary school, and I am to the
------------------snip-----------------------
Esperantists make a big thing about the universality of the roots of
Esperanto, but that reflects a HIGHLY Eurocentric view of the world we live
in. The language ils derived (as I understand -- I am subject to correction)
entirely from IE roots, and its whole approach to word- and sentence-building
is IE. Not everyone is a speaker of an IE language.
Yes, it is possible to acclimate even a speaker of a non-IE language to that
approach, but if we are going to do that, we are better off to stick with an
organically developing natural language. At present, the donimant such
language is English (although this fact seems expecially unpalatable to
Francophones). In the past it has been French, Latin, Greek -- but only in the
relatively small segment of the globe to which Esperanto would like to
pretend. Other regions have had their own equivalents: in the area from which
I write, Aramaic (non-IE) once was the lingua franca. It is hubris for
Esperanto to claim universality.
*****************
* Stan Goodman *
* Qiryat Tiv'on *
* ISRAEL *
*****************
Don HARLOW
On 19 Jan 1997 20:09:45 GMT, sgoo...@netvision.net.il (Stan Goodman)
wrote:
>In message <8536050...@dejanews.com> - Sat, 18 Jan 1997 11:01:05
>-0600dco...@a2i-micro.fr writes:
>:>
>:>
>:>>On 1996/12/17, <jel...@sydney.net> wrote in sci.lang:
>:>
>:>>have i misunderstood something?
>:>>why is anyone still talking about esperanto
>:>
>:>>fran jelley
>:>
>:>Because it is a still living language.
>:>Because it is pleasant to speak, easy to learn, and it gives no
>:>avantage to a people over another one...
>:>That's why.
>:>
>:>I am an european teacher in a french elementary school, and I am to the
>
>------------------snip-----------------------
>
>Esperantists make a big thing about the universality of the roots of
>Esperanto, but that reflects a HIGHLY Eurocentric view of the world we live
>in. The language ils derived (as I understand -- I am subject to correction)
>entirely from IE roots, and its whole approach to word- and sentence-building
>is IE. Not everyone is a speaker of an IE language.
>
Yet another myth about what Esperantists say and think. May I ask
_who_ it was who claimed that Esperanto's source of lexical material
was "universal" (whatever that means)?
To the best of my knowledge, the _official_ set of roots remains
approximately 60% Romance, 35% Germanic, the rest an admixture of
Greek, Slavic, and those non-IE roots which have become common
(primarily Arabic) in the European languages. Among the very large
amount of unofficial lexical material, roots that have not been
recognized as part of the Esperanto vocabulary but that are used in
literature and elsewhere, non-IE roots are considerably better
represented.
>Yes, it is possible to acclimate even a speaker of a non-IE language to that
>approach, but if we are going to do that, we are better off to stick with an
>organically developing natural language. At present, the donimant such
>language is English (although this fact seems expecially unpalatable to
>Francophones). In the past it has been French, Latin, Greek -- but only in the
>relatively small segment of the globe to which Esperanto would like to
>pretend. Other regions have had their own equivalents: in the area from which
>I write, Aramaic (non-IE) once was the lingua franca. It is hubris for
>Esperanto to claim universality.
>
"Organically developing natural language"? What is that?
Rapide, gesamideanoj! Pruntu radikon de la Klingona -- tiam nia lingvo
estos ne nur universala, sed ankaux _universa_!!!
Don HARLOW
http://www.webcom.com/~donh/
(English version available at http://www.webcom.com/~donh/dona.html)
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
>>>>> "Antonio" == Antonio Martins <bac...@cc.fc.ul.pt> writes:
Antonio> It does not. It claims internationality. It is a
Antonio> functional, rather than a formal concept.
In what sense is Esperanto "international"?
If you say it is "international" WITHIN Europe, then I agree. If you
say it is *globally* "international", then I disagree. Esperanto not
only has its word roots derived mainly from IE langauges, but also has
its grammar based on IE languages. The design of this language lacks
consideration for speakers of non-IE languages.
--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)
.----------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| http://www.cs.hku.hk/~sdlee e-mail: sd...@cs.hku.hk |
`----------------------------------------------------------------------------'
Jim Howard
Don HARLOW <d...@donh.vip.best.com>
> On 19 Jan 1997 20:09:45 GMT, sgoo...@netvision.net.il (Stan Goodman)
> wrote:
>
> >Esperantists make a big thing about the universality of the roots of
> >Esperanto, but that reflects a HIGHLY Eurocentric view of the world we
live
> >in. The language ils derived (as I understand -- I am subject to
correction)
> >entirely from IE roots, and its whole approach to word- and
sentence-building
> >is IE. Not everyone is a speaker of an IE language.
> >
You're right, esperanto is a simplified form of a european language.
Previous european languages went through reforms - Spanish, for example,
but no reform was so all-encompassing as Esperanto.
> To the best of my knowledge, the _official_ set of roots remains
> approximately 60% Romance, 35% Germanic, the rest an admixture of
> Greek, Slavic, and those non-IE roots which have become common
> (primarily Arabic) in the European languages. Among the very large
> >Yes, it is possible to acclimate even a speaker of a non-IE language to
that
> >approach, but if we are going to do that, we are better off to stick
with an
> >organically developing natural language. At present, the donimant such
> >language is English (although this fact seems expecially unpalatable to
> >Francophones). In the past it has been French, Latin, Greek -- but only
in the
The most universally dispersed official languages in the world today are
Portuguese, Spanish, French, and English - boarder western European
languages which became more and more global from the 15th century on.
Esperanto fits very well into this group of four languages. Except, of
course, that it is even easier to learn.
> >relatively small segment of the globe to which Esperanto would like to
> >pretend. Other regions have had their own equivalents: in the area from
which
> >I write, Aramaic (non-IE) once was the lingua franca. It is hubris for
> >Esperanto to claim universality.
> >
Would you recommend a Semitic language as a candidate for a universal
language?
> "Organically developing natural language"? What is that?
>
La inteligenta persono lernas la interlingvon Esperanto rapide kaj facile.
Esperanto estas la moderna, kultura lingvo por la internacia mondo.
Simpla,
fleksebla, praktika solvo de la problemo de universala interkompreno,
Esperanto meritas vian seriozan konsideron. Lernu la interlingvon
Esperanto.
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Howard <jho...@vvm.com> writes:
Jim> La inteligenta persono lernas la interlingvon Esperanto
Jim> rapide kaj facile.
Hoho... La nova vesto de la re^go ?
Once upon a time, a tailor came to the King. With hands in positions
as if he were holding a piece of cloth, he said to the King, "Your
majesty, here is the most invaluable cloth in the world. It is
**visible only to the inteligent**!". The King responded, "Oh! What
a nice cloth! I like this color. Could you make me a clothes from
it?" ...
Jim> Esperanto estas la moderna, kultura
Jim> lingvo por la internacia mondo.
Jim> Simpla, fleksebla, praktika
Jim> solvo de la problemo de universala interkompreno, Esperanto
Jim> meritas vian seriozan konsideron.
The Kings new clothes was a beautiful, colourful and well-tailored
one! No other clothes is as comfortable as this one.
Jim> Lernu la interlingvon
Jim> Esperanto.
This invaluable clothes is now available at $5000. Order now! The
first 50 buyers can get a free pair of socks made from the same
material FOR FREE!
<Just kidding. Don't think this message serious! :P >
Antonio Martins
On 19 Jan 1997, Stan Goodman wrote:
> Esperantists make a big thing about the universality of the roots of
> Esperanto, but that reflects a HIGHLY Eurocentric view of the world we live
> in.
It's the same old tired argument again... Refute has been delivered time
and time again by others far more learned than I am.
> The language ils derived (as I understand -- I am subject to correction)
> entirely from IE roots,
Not entirely, but mostly. On the other hand,
a language is more than a mere set of words.
> and its whole approach to word- and sentence-building is IE.
Wrong. Please try not to make unbased asertions. It lokks bad on you.
> Yes, it is possible to acclimate even a speaker of a non-IE language to that
> approach, but if we are going to do that, we are better off to stick with an
> organically developing natural language.
Wrong again. The advantage of a neutral language is not limited to linguistic
grounds. The adopt of Latin, for example, as international language would be
much more fair (because neutral), than, say, italian -- although both are not
neutral in purely linguistic terms.
> At present, the donimant such
> language is English (although this fact seems expecially unpalatable to
> Francophones).
Nope. It would be unpapatable for everyone -- french-speking people just cry
louder...
> It is hubris for Esperanto to claim universality.
It does not. It claims internationality. It is a functional, rather than a
formal concept.
_]||/|[_ (\o_>_/\, -----------------------------------------------<-{@
<<Na~o invejo de quem tem
Anto'nio MARTINS carros, parelhas e montes.
Rua Alfredo Jose' Marques 21 c/v esq. So' invejo de quem bebe
PT-2735 CACE'M +351 (0)1 913 28 23 a a'gua em todas as fontes.>>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Edmund Grimley-Evans
|> Antonio> It does not. It claims internationality. It is a
|> Antonio> functional, rather than a formal concept.
|>
|> In what sense is Esperanto "international"?
It is international in the sense that it is not a national language
and is used, and is intended for use, primarily internationally.
|> If you say it is "international" WITHIN Europe, then I agree. If you
|> say it is *globally* "international", then I disagree. Esperanto not
|> only has its word roots derived mainly from IE langauges, but also has
|> its grammar based on IE languages. The design of this language lacks
|> consideration for speakers of non-IE languages.
The source of the grammar and vocabulary is not relevant. It is the use
and intended use that determine the choice of the word "international".
Of course you may still criticise the design, if you wish, but the
description/name is quite accurate in my opinion ...
(Does anyone still read sci.lang these days? I thought it had
degenerated into total chaos a long time ago.)
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
>>>>> "Edmund" == Edmund Grimley-Evans <et...@cl.cam.ac.uk> writes:
> Esperanto not only has its word roots
> derived mainly from IE langauges, but also has its
> grammar based on IE languages. The design of this
> language lacks consideration for speakers of non-IE
> languages.
Edmund> The source of the grammar and vocabulary is not
Edmund> relevant. It is the use and intended use that determine
Edmund> the choice of the word "international".
Well then... Are you implying that English is a suitable language for
international communication?
Nowadays, when a person meets another person from a different country
and finds that the other person does not understand his own native
language, he will most likely try English. Probably the other person
responds in English, and they an communicate. Here both the use and
intended use of English is for the communication between 2 persons
from 2 different nations. Isn't it international? So, what's so
special of Esperanto? English serves well.
Jim Howard
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~} <sd...@cs.hku.hk> wrote in article
<7f3evvu...@phoenix.cs.hku.hk>...
> >>>>> "Edmund" == Edmund Grimley-Evans <et...@cl.cam.ac.uk> writes:
>
> Well then... Are you implying that English is a suitable language for
> international communication?
>
> Nowadays, when a person meets another person from a different country
> and finds that the other person does not understand his own native
> language, he will most likely try English. Probably the other person
> responds in English, and they an communicate. Here both the use and
> intended use of English is for the communication between 2 persons
> from 2 different nations. Isn't it international? So, what's so
> special of Esperanto? English serves well.
>
Esperanto is much easier to learn than English, and so in the long run
could be more practical and more international.
Esperanto estas multe pli facile lernebla ol la angla, tial ke en la fino
estus pli praktika kaj pli internacia.
Jim Howard
> In what sense is Esperanto "international"?
>
> If you say it is "international" WITHIN Europe, then I agree. If you
> say it is *globally* "international", then I disagree. Esperanto not
> only has its word roots derived mainly from IE langauges, but also has
> its grammar based on IE languages. The design of this language lacks
> consideration for speakers of non-IE languages.
>
But that is the case with any language group in the world - their writing
systems and vocabulary are related to a certain geographical area.
Esperanto is only the best synthesis of European languages, in Latin
letters. Isn't the solution, that in order to make the world happy, there
should be more than one international language? One with the Chinese
writing system, one with a middle eastern writing system, and so on?
Anders Blehr
Jim Howard wrote:
> Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~} <sd...@cs.hku.hk> wrote in article
>
> > Nowadays, when a person meets another person from a different country
> > and finds that the other person does not understand his own native
> > language, he will most likely try English. Probably the other person
> > responds in English, and they an communicate. Here both the use and
> > intended use of English is for the communication between 2 persons
> > from 2 different nations. Isn't it international? So, what's so
> > special of Esperanto? English serves well.
>
> Esperanto is much easier to learn than English, and so in the long run
> could be more practical and more international.
How does "easier to learn" imply "more practical" and "more
international"?
- Anders.
--
Anders Blehr (ablehr [at] sn.no | http://www.sn.no/~ablehr/)
// "There are no significant bugs in our released software that any
// significant number of users want fixed." -- Bill Gates
Anders Blehr
Jim Howard wrote:
> Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~} <sd...@cs.hku.hk> wrote in article
>
> > In what sense is Esperanto "international"?
> >
> > If you say it is "international" WITHIN Europe, then I agree. If you
> > say it is *globally* "international", then I disagree. Esperanto not
> > only has its word roots derived mainly from IE langauges, but also has
> > its grammar based on IE languages. The design of this language lacks
> > consideration for speakers of non-IE languages.
>
> But that is the case with any language group in the world - their writing
> systems and vocabulary are related to a certain geographical area.
Yes, thank heaven!
> Esperanto is only the best synthesis of European languages, in Latin
> letters.
Esperanto may and may not be the best synthesis of European languages
(how do you measure that, by the way?). However, the question whether
there is a need for language syntheses at all is far more interesting
than which one is better or worse than the other.
> Isn't the solution, that in order to make the world happy, there
> should be more than one international language? One with the Chinese
> writing system, one with a middle eastern writing system, and so on?
The world is as happy as it's going to be already, and to the extent
that it's not happy, it's not because of lack of "international
languages" (whatever that may be).
Stan Goodman
In message <7f3evvu...@phoenix.cs.hku.hk> - sd...@cs.hku.hk (Lee Sau Dan
~{@nJX6X~}) writes:
>
>Nowadays, when a person meets another person from a different country
>and finds that the other person does not understand his own native
>language, he will most likely try English. Probably the other person
>responds in English, and they an communicate. Here both the use and
>intended use of English is for the communication between 2 persons
>from 2 different nations. Isn't it international? So, what's so
>special of Esperanto? English serves well.
You are writing common sense, which will not be well received on this
newsgroup, and particularly in this thread. The idea is to take a bizarre
position and defend it against all comers.
Uzulo
> The language ils derived (as I understand -- I am subject to correction)
> entirely from IE roots, and its whole approach to word- and sentence-building
> is IE. Not everyone is a speaker of an IE language.
Strange, tio estas samtempe korekta kaj ... NE. Vere, la cxefaj
lingvaj modeloj en Eo estas simpligitaj evxrop-lingvaj; sed tio tute
ne signifas ke tiuj (avx tiaj) modeloj ne ekzistas en aliaj lingvoj
kaj estas fremdaj por ili. Ekz-le,
(1) la _kutima_ vort-ordo en Eo Subj-Verb-Obj (certe, oni povas
sxangxi tion lavxplacxe, tio tamen restas plej kutima) estas ankavx
kutima (kaj deviga, lavx mia scio) por multaj aziaj lingvoj, kiel la
cxina k.a.;
(2) la gxeneralaj reguloj de vort-farado ankavx tre similas al
tiuj de ekz-le cxina, kie oni 'algluas' radikojn sensxangxe (dank'al
la specifa strukturo de la cxina silabo, kiun Eo ne posedas); en Eo
oni ankavx ofte simple 'algluas' radikojn (kiel en la gxermanaj
lingvoj), kaj aldonaj vokaloj aperas cxefe por belsoneco;
ktp.
Cetere, artefaritaj lingvoj kiel Lojxban, lavx mia scio
(Lojxbanistoj korektos min, se necesos), prunte-prenas vortojn el
multaj lingvoj de la mondo; tamen, sxajne, tio ne tro helpas
popularecon de la lingvoj ...
> ... At present, the donimant such language is English ...
^^^^^^^^
dominant
Interalie, la angla ankavx estas hind-evxropa lingvo. Cxu gxi
estas pli bona ol Eo, rilate nome _universalecon_ ?
--
Uzulo <ty...@cile.msk.su>
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Howard <jho...@vvm.com> writes:
Jim> One with the Chinese
Jim> writing system, one with a middle eastern writing system, and
Jim> so on?
I prefer this idea, to the idea that Esperanto be the sole
international langauge. It is unjust for non-Europeans to use a
Eurocentric inter-language, which is designed without native speakers
of non-European languages in mind.
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Howard <jho...@vvm.com> writes:
Jim> Esperanto is much easier to learn than English, and so in the
Jim> long run could be more practical and more international.
Why? Why is an easy language more international? Why is it more
practical?
A language that already has wide acceptance and a large user-base is
more practical. A culturally neutral language is more international.
Esperanto fails both. Don't argue with me on the neutrality of
Esperanto. Esperanto is highly Eurocentric, both in lexicon and
grammar.
Jim> Esperanto estas multe pli facile lernebla ol la angla, tial
Jim> ke en la fino estus pli praktika kaj pli internacia.
Kial? Kial facile lernebla lingvo DEVAS esti internacia? Kial gxi
estas praktika?
Tiu lingvo, kiu jam estas akceptata kaj uzata per multaj (ne nur
kelkaj milmil, sed milmilmil) personoj, estas pli praktika. Kulture
neuxtrala lingvo estas pli internacia. Esperanto ne tauxgas. Ne
diskutu kun mi pri la neuxtraleco de Esperanto. Gxi estas tre
Euxropeca, leksike kaj gramatike.
Esperanto League N America
abl...@sn.nono writes in a recent posting (reference <32E507...@sn.nono>):
>
>The world is as happy as it's going to be already, and to the extent
>that it's not happy, it's not because of lack of "international
>languages" (whatever that may be).
>
dismiss huge topics with the wave of a pinkie....
Perhaps happiness is thwarted by isolation, and nurtured by communication.
I know that I have not felt happy when dealing with the frustration of
language barriers. And I do fancy myself happy when I use the international
language Esperanto in meaningful dialog with non-English-speakers.
I don't know what sense it might have to assert that "the world is happy"
but a population of people with increased communication opportunities
might well be made up of happier individuals.
Oh, I dare say I may have stumbled onto a sharp slogan here:
LEARN ESPERANTO: GET HAPPY!
--
Miko SLOPER el...@netcom.com USA (510) 653 0998
Direktoro de la ftp.netcom.com:/pub/el/elna fax (510) 653 1468
Centra Oficejo de la Learn Esperanto! Free lessons: e-mail/snail-mail
Esperanto-Ligo de N.A. Write to above address or call: 1-800-ESPERANTO
Anders Blehr
Esperanto League N America wrote:
> abl...@sn.nono writes in a recent posting (reference <32E507...@sn.nono>):
>
> >The world is as happy as it's going to be already, and to the extent
> >that it's not happy, it's not because of lack of "international
> >languages" (whatever that may be).
>
> I am always amused at the ease with which Usenet conversations can
> dismiss huge topics with the wave of a pinkie....
So Esperanto is a "huge topic"? Depends on who you ask, doesn't it?
> Perhaps happiness is thwarted by isolation, and nurtured by communication.
Yes, so what? In case you haven't noticed, people all over the world
are already engaged in happy communication, as they have been for
thousands of years and will be for thousands to come.
> I know that I have not felt happy when dealing with the frustration of
> language barriers. And I do fancy myself happy when I use the international
> language Esperanto in meaningful dialog with non-English-speakers.
My impression of Esperantists is that speaking the language makes them a
group apart, and that being part of the group is what's important, not
the act of communication itself. They tend to communicate only within
the group, having little tolerance towards people who don't belong to
it, and showing little or no interest in communicating with
"outsiders". The Esperanto *culture* seems to be much more important
than the language itself, and learning the language buys you a pass to
this *one* culture, not to a diversity of *different* cultures.
Esperantists boost about the diversity of the Esperanto community, but
somehow the inherent cultural diversity vanishes under the influx of the
Esperanto culture, making them a very homogeneous group. Having to
become equal to be accepted doesn't promote intercultural understanding
- on the contrary.
Disclaimer: I'm not saying that this goes for all Esperantists, but it's
an impression I've had when I've come across groups of Esperantists
(just because I don't speak Esperanto, it doesn't mean I can't
understand a lot of what they're saying, more particularly what they're
saying about those "poor" non-Esperantists).
D Gary Grady
Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> wrote:
>My impression of Esperantists is that speaking the language makes them a
>group apart, and that being part of the group is what's important, not
>the act of communication itself. They tend to communicate only within
>the group, having little tolerance towards people who don't belong to
>it, and showing little or no interest in communicating with
>"outsiders". [and so on...]
I've heard numerous odd notions about Esperanto speakers, but this, I
have to admit, is a new one on me. All I can say is, you must have
encountered some very exceptional Esperantists.
Common sense (let alone experience) makes it highly doubtful that
there are many Esperantists "having little tolerance towards people
who don't belong to it, and showing little or no interest in
communicating with 'outsiders'"! Unless these Esperantist you're
speaking of dwell in some isolated mountainous Esperantophone village
somewhere (perhaps in the midst of the avocado jungles east of Los
Angeles or on an island in the great central Australian lake), they
must suffer mightily in their everyday lives.
I will say that I wince when I hear people oversell Esperanto as some
sort of royal road to international brotherhood, or say something that
can be taken that way (because somebody is bound to misinterpret it
thus), but I hardly think such overblown advocacy of Esperanto
justifies an overblown response.
D Gary Grady
Durham NC USA
73513...@compuserve.com / dg...@mindspring.com
dcout...@a2i-micro.fr
In message <7f3evvu...@phoenix.cs.hku.hk> - sd...@cs.hku.hk (Lee Sau Dan
~{@nJX6X~}) writes:
>
>Nowadays, when a person meets another person from a different country
>and finds that the other person does not understand his own native
>language, he will most likely try English. Probably the other person
>responds in English, and they an communicate. Here both the use and
>intended use of English is for the communication between 2 persons
>from 2 different nations. Isn't it international? So, what's so
>special of Esperanto? English serves well.
You know what? Even if they DO NOT know if you can speak
their language, some people, when seeing you're a stranger,
beging to speak to you in english.
I was in Madrid in november, and a woman spoke to me in english.
I replied in spanish, that I prefered to speak spanish, and she was
very disapointed.
But which kind of people do that?
Only people of middle-class. English serves well, yes, but mostly a
very small part of humanity. Don't you know the picture (or the
sculpture): there are three little monkeys, and they do not want to see,
to hear, to speak. These monkeys live in their own world, and they
do not want to be disturbed... Esperanto disturbs, yes.
Like do disturbs people who claim that we live in a terrible word,
without Justice, where a small number of rich people make more
and more money while more and more other people die because
of hunger or diseases due to bad hygiene (usually, it is difficult
to be clean, when you are poor, you know...)
The truth is, that english (like any language you succeded to learn
well enough) is useful and pleasant to speak... after 6 or 7 years
of learning. And even in this case, you can use the wrong word,
or perhaps not know the meaning of a word like "hubris"...
It is pleasant, yes, but it is mainly a mean of exclusion, because it is
not possible to share it with the whole Humanity, because it's too
difficult.
And it has a lot of traps. Synomyms, idiomatic expressions, etc..
Do you know what says Mr Piron, who was professional translator
for russian, chinese and english during years, at WHO an UN?
That very often, professional interpreters change or invent the meaning
of what they have to translate, because they can not understand
the accent of Asian people speaking english!!
You see, even its reliability is an illusion.
I like english, but I do not like its hubris expansion.
And I prefer to learn Polish, Portuguese, Japanese (my plans for
the next 10 or 15 years) than "unroll a red carpet" for the
progression of english.
dcout...@a2i-micro.fr
In article <7fafq2e...@phoenix.cs.hku.hk>,
sd...@cs.hku.hk (Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}) wrote:
>A language that already has wide acceptance and a large user-base is
>more practical. A culturally neutral language is more international.
>Esperanto fails both. Don't argue with me on the neutrality of
>Esperanto. Esperanto is highly Eurocentric, both in lexicon and
>grammar.
Esperanto is NOT neutral. It has its own ideology. It aims to make communication
easier for all kind of people. That is not neutral.
It is easier for every people, than any other existing language,
even for Asian people.
If in some decades or centuries, we find how to make an easy
language, which in the same time is more neutral an equal than
esperanto is, why not? But now, the defenders of english are
mainly people defending their own privileges.
And excuse-me, regarding neutrality, english is at a very bad place
to pretend to it.
It is a lot less neutral than spanish, french, german...
It carries all over the world the culture of Disney, MacDonald,
and a lot of other things whose only aim is to make the maximum
of money with the minimum of quality.
That is not neutral.
Alan Gould
In article <32e2b4f...@nntp.best.com>, Don HARLOW
<d...@donh.vip.best.com> writes
>"Organically developing natural language"? What is that?
Maybe it's some kind of zoo-speak?
--
Alan Gould The words are fine, let's see the results
Alan Gould
In article <7fvi8tu...@phoenix.cs.hku.hk>, "Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}"
<sd...@cs.hku.hk> writes
> Antonio> functional, rather than a formal concept.
>
None, it is non-national and neutral.
--
Alan Gould - AGo - Woodrising, Thorn Lane, Goxhill, North Lincs.
England DN19 7LU Tel/Fax: (44) 01469 530356
E-Mail: al...@agolincs.demon.co.uk
*Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda en Britio (SATEB)
*SATEB Informservo
*Redaktoro de La Verda Proleto - oficiala gazeto de SATEB
*LEA ligilo
rmay
No offense, but I'll trade you a dozen Jean-Paul Sartres for a Walt
Disney any day. --rmay
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
>>>>> "dcouturier" == dcouturier <dcout...@a2i-micro.fr> writes:
dcouturier> And excuse-me, regarding neutrality, english is at a
dcouturier> very bad place to pretend to it. It is a lot less
dcouturier> neutral than spanish, french, german...
Excuse-me, too. May I clarify that I have never said that English is
easier or more neutral than Esperanto, and I'm not advocating English
as an international auxiliary language?
I'm just pointing out that Esperanto is not as neutral as many
Esperanto-enthusiasts claim. It is not as easy as the claim that it
is the *easiest* language *of all* for *everyone*. Esperanto's design
is very very Eurocentric.
BTW, you seem to have presumed that I'm a monoglot in English who is
advocating English as an IAL. Indeed, I ain't a native speaker of
English.
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
>>>>> "dcouturier" == dcouturier <dcout...@a2i-micro.fr> writes:
dcouturier> You know what? Even if they DO NOT know if you can
dcouturier> speak their language, some people, when seeing you're
dcouturier> a stranger, beging to speak to you in english.
This suggests that English is already the defacto IAL in many people's
mind.
dcouturier> But
dcouturier> which kind of people do that? Only people of
dcouturier> middle-class.
Then, what do you expect for Esperanto? Most often, people of
lower-class either have no interest or have no need to interact with
people not speaking their native tongue. Moreover, the structure of
Esperanto is so Eurocentric that the Asian lower-class people would
find it difficult and may not be able to afford the time and money to
learn it.
dcouturier> Synomyms, idiomatic expressions, etc..
Esperanto has them, too!
Synonyms: kol-eg-o (giraffe) and koleg-o (colleague)
reg-ul-o (one who rules) and regul-o (regulation)
...
Idiomatic Expressions:
de tempo en tempo (from time to time [ de temps en temps ])
ne nur ... sed ankaux ... (not only ... but also ...)
kaj tiel plu (and so on [ und so wiel ])
Jens S. Larsen
In article <7fzpy0q...@phoenix.cs.hku.hk>,
>
> dcouturier> You know what? Even if they DO NOT know if you can
> dcouturier> speak their language, some people, when seeing you're
> dcouturier> a stranger, beging to speak to you in english.
>
> This suggests that English is already the defacto IAL in many people's
> mind.
>
> dcouturier> But
> dcouturier> which kind of people do that? Only people of
> dcouturier> middle-class.
>
> Then, what do you expect for Esperanto? Most often, people of
> lower-class either have no interest or have no need to interact with
> people not speaking their native tongue.
Never heard of lower-class emigrants?
> Moreover, the structure of
> Esperanto is so Eurocentric that the Asian lower-class people would
> find it difficult and may not be able to afford the time and money to
> learn it.
It's only a question of contact and mutual respect, not money or difficulcy.
> dcouturier> Synomyms, idiomatic expressions, etc..
>
> Esperanto has them, too!
That's true enough. It's interesting to note, however, that idiomatic
expressions have a tendency to disappear when a good synonym can be found.
"Konatulo" and transitive "sciig^i", for example, have given way to "konato"
and "ekscii". The "Akademio" never pronounced themselves about these and
numerous other expressions, the changes just happened while people were
using the language.
> Synonyms: kol-eg-o (giraffe) and koleg-o (colleague)
Not "giraffe", but "big neck".
> reg-ul-o (one who rules) and regul-o (regulation)
A more expected translation for "one who rules" would be "reganto", though.
This might be the reason why nobody really cared to push for "reglo", even if
that form would be just as good. OTOH, pushing for "kolgo" to replace "kolego"
most probably would kill the word in favor of compounds like "samprofesiano",
"sammetiano", "kunlaboranto", "samcelano" etc.
> Idiomatic Expressions:
> de tempo en tempo (from time to time [ de temps en temps ])
"De tempo _al_ tempo" is the form used. I've also seen the somewhat
unconventional "tempaltempe", but I'm not sure I like it.
> ne nur ... sed ankaux ... (not only ... but also ...)
What's idiomatic about that one?
> kaj tiel plu (and so on [ und so wiel ])
Not "wiel", but "weiter" (assuming it is German). Again, is this really an
idiomatic expression? How do you say in Chinese, translated directly?
Have you encountered expressions in Esperanto with a completely different
meaning of what you would expect? I think of the type "as it were" in
English, that means more or less the same as "if I may use that expression",
whereas a learner would interpret it as something like "the way it was back
then".
Jens S. Larsen
Anders Blehr
D Gary Grady wrote:
> Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> wrote:
>
> >My impression of Esperantists is that speaking the language makes them a
> >group apart, and that being part of the group is what's important, not
> >the act of communication itself. They tend to communicate only within
> >the group, having little tolerance towards people who don't belong to
> >it, and showing little or no interest in communicating with
> >"outsiders". [and so on...]
Thanks... :)
> I've heard numerous odd notions about Esperanto speakers, but this, I
> have to admit, is a new one on me. All I can say is, you must have
> encountered some very exceptional Esperantists.
As I said, I was talking about Esperantists acting as a group, not as
individuals going about their dayly business far away from other
Esperantists.
> I will say that I wince when I hear people oversell Esperanto as some
> sort of royal road to international brotherhood, or say something that
> can be taken that way (because somebody is bound to misinterpret it
> thus), but I hardly think such overblown advocacy of Esperanto
> justifies an overblown response.
It's not "overblown", it's just the impression that Esperantists (again,
acting as a group) have been kind enough to inflict on me. I'd me more
than willing to adopt another viewpoint, but first someone has to
convince me that Esperantists being at some Esperanto convention in some
remote corner of the world are just as interested in getting in touch
with the locals and their way of life as "ordinary people" being there
with a group of friends or collegues who they enjoy being with because
they are likable people, and not just because they share a common
denominator like Esperanto.
Anders Blehr
Alan Gould wrote:
> In article <32e2b4f...@nntp.best.com>, Don HARLOW
> <d...@donh.vip.best.com> writes
> >"Organically developing natural language"? What is that?
>
> Maybe it's some kind of zoo-speak?
No, it's a language that emerged and develops naturally in an almost
organic way, just like 999 out of every 1000 languages spoken in the
world (the odd ones out being the likes of Esperanto and Interlingua).
Anders Blehr
dcout...@a2i-micro.fr wrote:
> You know what? Even if they DO NOT know if you can speak
> their language, some people, when seeing you're a stranger,
> beging to speak to you in english.
Because they want to communicate with you and don't take it for granted
that you speak their language. If Esperanto had the position that
English has, they would have spoken to you in Esperanto, but somehow I
don't think you'd object to that.
> I was in Madrid in november, and a woman spoke to me in english.
> I replied in spanish, that I prefered to speak spanish, and she was
> very disapointed.
Because she wanted to practice her English. What if she'd spoken to you
in Esperanto, would you still have answered that you'd prefer to speak
in Spanish?
> But which kind of people do that? Only people of middle-class.
So what language do people of the "lower" classes use if they want to
speak to someone who doesn't speak their language? I hope you're not
postulating that only people of the "higher" classes know English...?
> English serves well, yes, but mostly a very small part of humanity.
(You're saying: "English serves only the middle classes"? Talking about
naïve!) It's growing. Day by day, week by week, month by month, year
by year. However much you want to stop it, you can't.
> Don't you know the picture (or the
> sculpture): there are three little monkeys, and they do not want to see,
> to hear, to speak. These monkeys live in their own world, and they
> do not want to be disturbed... Esperanto disturbs, yes.
To see, hear, speak *what*? Esperanto disturbs just about as much as a
dead leaf on a tree at midsummer. (So why do I even bother to follow
this thread...?) As to living in a world of one's own, well...
> The truth is, that english (like any language you succeded to learn
> well enough) is useful and pleasant to speak... after 6 or 7 years
> of learning. And even in this case, you can use the wrong word,
> or perhaps not know the meaning of a word like "hubris"...
As is the case with any language (even Esperanto) you don't speak
fluently. And even in your own native tongue you'll come across words
you don't know.
> It is pleasant, yes, but it is mainly a mean of exclusion, because it is
> not possible to share it with the whole Humanity, because it's too
> difficult.
Esperanto does *not* exclude? And if ease was a criterion for
wide-spread use of a language, how come Esperanto hasn't outdone English
long time ago?
> Do you know what says Mr Piron, who was professional translator
> for russian, chinese and english during years, at WHO an UN?
> That very often, professional interpreters change or invent the meaning
> of what they have to translate, because they can not understand
> the accent of Asian people speaking english!!
How about the accent of Asian people speaking (imperfect) Esperanto?
> You see, even its reliability is an illusion.
As is the reliability of any language (even Esperanto) that's not spoken
well.
> And I prefer to learn Polish, Portuguese, Japanese (my plans for
> the next 10 or 15 years) than "unroll a red carpet" for the
> progression of english.
First you say it's impossible to "unroll a red carpet" for English,
because it's "too difficult". Then you say that you don't want to do
it. Strange that you even consider doing the impossible. But you don't
mind the red carpet for Esperanto, do you?
That said, I'd like to learn Polish myself. :)
Anders Blehr
Jens S. Larsen wrote:
> Have you encountered expressions in Esperanto with a completely different
> meaning of what you would expect? I think of the type "as it were" in
> English, that means more or less the same as "if I may use that expression",
> whereas a learner would interpret it as something like "the way it was back
> then".
A learner, knowing that "it were" is in the subjunctive mood, would not
interpret "as it were" as "the way it was back then".
Jonathan Badger
Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> writes:
>Alan Gould wrote:
>> In article <32e2b4f...@nntp.best.com>, Don HARLOW
>> <d...@donh.vip.best.com> writes
>> >"Organically developing natural language"? What is that?
>>
>> Maybe it's some kind of zoo-speak?
>No, it's a language that emerged and develops naturally in an almost
>organic way, just like 999 out of every 1000 languages spoken in the
>world (the odd ones out being the likes of Esperanto and Interlingua).
The more that I know about languages the less I think that there is a
true distinction between "natural languages" and "artficial
languages", although it seemed an obvious distinction to me at one
time.
I am starting to learn German. Before knowing much at all about
German, I assumed that Hochdeutsch was completely natural and was what
all Germans spoke, and that the Swiss were just weird in having such a
different dialect. Now I know that there are lots of different German
dialects, and while Swiss German might be more different from
Hochdeutsch than most other dialects, it is not fundamentally
different from other German dialects, and that Hochdeutsch is merely a
standardized form of German created in the 19th century for talking to
people of other dialects (even though now there *are* native speakers
of Hochdeutsch.) It is hard to see how this creation cannot be seen as
artificial. Less artificial than Esperanto, perhaps, but it is a
matter of degree and not kind, no?
D Gary Grady
Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> wrote:
>As I said, I was talking about Esperantists acting as a group, not as
>individuals going about their dayly business far away from other
>Esperantists.
Could you provide a hint of just what groups of Esperanto speakers
you're talking about? Have you seen more than one example?
As for myself, I've never seen behavior suggestive of the attitude you
describe here. Every international Esperanto gathering I've ever been
to has included classes on the host country's language(s) and culture,
numerous excursions, and plenty of other outward-directed activity.
Since I'm pestering you for concrete examples of what you're talking
about, let me in fairness offer some from my end:
During the last two world Esperanto congresses, in Finland and the
Czech Republic, there were programs on on Finnish and Czech language,
the Kalevala, Finnish and Czech history, Kafka, Sibelius, Arthur Conan
Doyle, medieval persecution of witches (and their cats), various
lectures on everything from astronomy to economic theory, whole
evenings of entertainment showing local folk dance and folk music and
more modern local performers, and so on.
Nor did the participants spend all their time at the convention center
listening to lectures but rather took part in a multitude of guided
tours (there must of have been at least three dozen such in the Czech
Republic) and simply went wandering about. In Tampere Finland it
seemed that 20 or 30 percent of the people on the street in the main
shopping areas were wearing Esperanto convention badges (the local
tourist office had trained at least three Esperanto-speaking
employees, including one who manned a very busy booth in the
convention center). In Prague I know I spent at least half of my time
away from the convention proper and my roommate, linguist David K
Jordan, seemed determined to visit every museum, church, castle,
cemetary, and historic district within 100 kilometers. In my
wanderings I kept encountering a Czech Esperantist who told me he
considered himself 16, because that's how many years he had to go
before he reached 100 and gave a short and fascinating account of his
life, inter alia working as a translator.
In other travels I've visited Esperantist in Mexico who dragged me to
more parties in a weekend than I normally attend in a year in the
states (only one or two of those parties being an Esperanto-oriented
affair, by the way) and helped me see more of the day-to-day life of
the country than I possibly could have as an average tourist.
When a Russian Esperanto-speaking couple came through this area a few
years ago they showed me slides from their trip to Samarkand --
fascinating.
Which reminds me of a dumb thing I did that you might enjoy. A year or
two earlier a couple of Brazilian Esperantists had visited this area
and happened to mention that one can see signs beside some highways in
Brazil warning motorists to roll up their windows because of the
danger that the locals, (no doubt justly) irritated by the cars
whizzing by their hitherto quiet countryside, would sometimes shoot
arrows into the cars.
In my attempt to relate this tale to the Russians, I somehow managed
to substitute for the word "sago" (arrow) the word "seg`o" (chair).
This prompted a look of bewilderment and, realizing my mistake, I
attempted to correct it, saying, "NE! Ne 'seg`o', 'sag`o'!" Sag`o
means "wisdom." This they found rather amusing...
In defense of Esperanto, I should perhaps note that I have screwed up
at least that badly in English. On one memorable occasion when I was
working as an announcer for an American Forces Television station in
Keflavik, Iceland, I was called upon to introduce a program on Vienna.
At the end I was saying something to the effect that viewers wanting
to see the city in person could contact the base travel office and ask
to book a trip to Austria's capital, and the base travel office would
be happy send them winging their merry way to Venice. Suddenly
realizing I'd identified the wrong city and implicitly insulted the
base travel office's geographical competence, I attempted to correct
myself and said, "I mean Venus!"
(And this is getting REALLY far afield, but in further illustration of
the danger of trying to correct an error, an announcer at a radio
station in North Carolina reading live a commercial for the City
Shellfish Restaurant (in Morehead City, I think) predictably urged
listeners to enjoy a fine repast at the "shitty, selfish restaurant,"
then desperately said, "I mean the Silly Shitfish!" -- which sounds
rather more like the name of an English pub...)
Getting back on topic:
Of course, participants at Esperanto conventions typically do spend
*some* time attending some program items having to do with Esperanto
as well. That, after all, is one of the things that brings them
together. But it's wildly off the mark to suggest that it's the only
thing they do, or even the major part of it.
Jonathan Badger
Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> writes:
>(You're saying: "English serves only the middle classes"? Talking about
>naive!) It's growing. Day by day, week by week, month by month, year
>by year. However much you want to stop it, you can't.
Well, I haven't been to Europe, but *every* Latin American I've met on
their native soil who spoke English had a college education, or were
children of college educated parents who spoke English. Sounds pretty
middle class (or even upper class) to me. Granted European grade
schools are of higher quality that Latin American ones, but are you
*really* saying that the lower classes (with only a high school
equivilent degree or less) in Europe generally can speak English?
Secondly, I really question if English really is growing or even if it
is it will grow for very much longer. English became a popular
international language because the British Empire and then America
became huge economic forces. But the British Empire is dead, and
America has fallen far from the heights it had attained in the 1950's.
I really don't see why English won't soon go the way of French. I
think it would be unlikely that an artificial language will replace it
for political reasons, but I just don't see people speaking English
everywhere in the future like they do on "Star Trek".
Jonathan Badger
Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> writes:
>[..]but first someone has to
>convince me that Esperantists being at some Esperanto convention in some
>remote corner of the world are just as interested in getting in touch
>with the locals and their way of life as "ordinary people" being there
>with a group of friends or collegues who they enjoy being with because
>they are likable people, and not just because they share a common
>denominator like Esperanto.
Well, firstly, don't you have a common denominator (science fiction,
computers, linguistics or whatever) with most of your friends? I
assume you don't just somehow sense "goodness" in people and make
friends with random good people when you go grocery shopping. So
what's wrong with Esperanto as a common denominator?
And secondly, I think you have a very narrow view of what Esperanto is
good for. I'm not sure I actually count as an Esperantist -- I can
read (and to some extent write) the language but I really haven't
attempted to speak it, and the idea of Esperantro conventions with
thousands of green starred Esperantists singing "La Espero" in unison
doesn't really intrigue me anyway. But the fact is, with a very
little effort on my part over a few months I can read real books and
magazines in the Esperanto. This seems extremely cool to me. I never
really managed to do this with my three years of Spanish in high
school, and I doubt that one semester of German that I'm presently
taking will let me do this in German, either.
Mike Wright
Jim Howard wrote:
>
> Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~} <sd...@cs.hku.hk> wrote in article
> <7fvi8tu...@phoenix.cs.hku.hk>...> [..............]
>
> > In what sense is Esperanto "international"?
> >
> > say it is *globally* "international", then I disagree. Esperanto not
> > only has its word roots derived mainly from IE langauges, but also has
> > its grammar based on IE languages. The design of this language lacks
> > consideration for speakers of non-IE languages.
> >
> But that is the case with any language group in the world - their writing
> systems and vocabulary are related to a certain geographical area.
> letters.
I believe that Mr. Lee's main point was about the grammar, not the
writing system or vocabulary. When people who are familiar with only
European languages design an artificial language, they make many
assumptions about what syntactical features are and are not necessary.
Those assumptions are not the same ones that speakers of very different
languages, such as Chinese and Japanese, would make.
> Isn't the solution, that in order to make the world happy, there
> should be more than one international language? One with the Chinese
> writing system, one with a middle eastern writing system, and so on?
For most folks, learning one extra language is enough of a burden. Would
you ask them to learn three or more?
Besides, speakers of languages like Malay, Thai, and Vietnamese (all of
which share the Chinese tendency to use relative word position and
grammatical particals, rather than inflection) would not be very happy
with a Chinese writing system - even if you could figure out how to
apply Chinese writing to a non-Chinese language. The Japanese have been
at it for centuries, and their writing system is still a mess. The
Vietnamese have given up completely, and the Koreans aren't far behind.
And what might a "middle eastern writing system be"? Amharic? Hebrew?
Arabic? Which of these could gain acceptance all across the Middle East?
Maybe we could go back to Aramaic?
--
Mike Wright
____________________________________
email: dar...@scruznet.com
WWW: http://www.scruz.net/~darwin/language.html
Don HARLOW
On Thu, 23 Jan 1997 17:20:42 +0100, Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono>
wrote:
>Alan Gould wrote:
>
>> In article <32e2b4f...@nntp.best.com>, Don HARLOW
>> <d...@donh.vip.best.com> writes
>> >"Organically developing natural language"? What is that?
>>
>> Maybe it's some kind of zoo-speak?
>
>No, it's a language that emerged and develops naturally in an almost
>organic way, just like 999 out of every 1000 languages spoken in the
>world (the odd ones out being the likes of Esperanto and Interlingua).
>
English and Norwegian, among others, are products of the human
intellect. Esperanto and Interlingua, among others, are products of
the human intellect. It is not clear to me how these differ among
themselves in any functional way -- except that I personally can speak
(and have spoken) English and Esperanto with a large number of people,
but have not done so with either Norwegian or Interlingua.
Still, I suppose that this is as good a way of categorizing languages
as any -- those that are useful to me, and those that aren't.
Don HARLOW
http://www.webcom.com/~donh/
(English version available at http://www.webcom.com/~donh/dona.html)
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
>>>>> "Jonathan" == Jonathan Badger <bad...@aquarius.scs.uiuc.edu> writes:
Jonathan> I am starting to learn German. Before knowing much at
Jonathan> all about German, I assumed that Hochdeutsch was
Jonathan> completely natural and was what all Germans spoke, and
Jonathan> that the Swiss were just weird in having such a
Jonathan> different dialect. Now I know that there are lots of
Jonathan> different German dialects, and while Swiss German might
Jonathan> be more different from Hochdeutsch than most other
Jonathan> dialects, it is not fundamentally different from other
Jonathan> German dialects, and that Hochdeutsch is merely a
Jonathan> standardized form of German created in the 19th century
Jonathan> for talking to people of other dialects (even though now
Jonathan> there *are* native speakers of Hochdeutsch.)
Even within the single nation Germany, there are mutually
unintelligible dialects of the German language. According to my
memory of the contents of a book that I read months ago, the German
dialects spoken near the Germany-Netherlands border is not mutually
intelligible with the German dialects spoken near the
Germany-Swizerland border.
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
>>>>> "Mike" == Mike Wright <dar...@scruznet.com> writes:
Mike> I believe that Mr. Lee's main point was about the grammar,
Mike> not the writing system or vocabulary. When people who are
Mike> familiar with only European languages design an artificial
Mike> language, they make many assumptions about what syntactical
Mike> features are and are not necessary. Those assumptions are
Mike> not the same ones that speakers of very different languages,
Mike> such as Chinese and Japanese, would make.
Exactly! Vocabularies can be memorized (although a Eurocentric
lexicon still gives the Europeans a grand advantage over
non-Europeans) easily. However, following the grammatical rules of a
language is a difficult task. It requires the development of *habit*.
If you don't have the habit of marking plurality of nouns (because you
don't do so in your native language), you'll often forget about the
suffix "-j" when you write Esperanto. If you don't have the habit of
inflecting adjective to agree with nouns, you'll forget about the
agreement between adjectives and nouns in Esperanto.
One obvious example of the Eurocentrism of Esperanto is that Esperanto
has _grammatical number_. I have discussed this grammatical feature
with many people, including some Esperantists speaking only European
langauges. We all feel that grammatical number is not a necessary nor
useful feature. We believe that Zamenhof, when he designed his
"lingvo internacia", must have been unable to imagine a langauge
without grammatical number. Consequently, grammatical number became
an "obvious, natural and indispensable" feature of Esperanto. Did
Zamenhof study the grammar of Chinese, Malay, Thai or Vietnamese, he
might have removed grammatical number from Esperanto, in the same way
he didn't introduce grammatical gender into the grammar of Esperanto.
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
>>>>> "Anders" == Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> writes:
Anders> A learner, knowing that "it were" is in the subjunctive
Anders> mood, would not interpret "as it were" as "the way it was
Anders> back then".
When I learnt the form "it were" in schools, my teachers, according to
textbooks, said that it was the _past tense_ used for a special
meaning. Obviously, the teachers (and perhaps also the textbooks
authors) didn't have the concept of "subjunctive mood", or didn't want
to make things more complicated. Tense is already a complicated
concepts for the Chinese, and now you introduced one more confusing
concept called "mood"!
The "past tense used for a hypothetic situation instead of a past
event" explanation works well, because of the coincidence that verbs
in English have the same form for the subjunctive mood and the past
tense, except for the verb "to be". So, memorizing the "I/he/she/it
were" rule, I can understand and write subjunctive sentences without
knowing what is called "subjunctive mood".
STAN MULAIK
Dominique, vos es un bon representante de esperanto. Si il vos place,
continua vostre bon obra. Es multo importante que on attacca le
anglese e americanos del classe medie, le burgese, qui curre circa
europa como simias ric, parlante a tote le mundo in anglese. Isto va
facer multe bon amicos pro le movimento esperantese in America.
--
Stanley A. Mulaik
School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332
uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!pscccsm
Internet: psc...@prism.gatech.edu
STAN MULAIK
sd...@cs.hku.hk (Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}) writes:
|One obvious example of the Eurocentrism of Esperanto is that Esperanto
|has _grammatical number_. I have discussed this grammatical feature
|with many people, including some Esperantists speaking only European
|langauges. We all feel that grammatical number is not a necessary nor
|useful feature. We believe that Zamenhof, when he designed his
|"lingvo internacia", must have been unable to imagine a langauge
|without grammatical number. Consequently, grammatical number became
|an "obvious, natural and indispensable" feature of Esperanto. Did
|Zamenhof study the grammar of Chinese, Malay, Thai or Vietnamese, he
|might have removed grammatical number from Esperanto, in the same way
|he didn't introduce grammatical gender into the grammar of Esperanto.
Interlingua has no grammatical gender or accord between adjectives
and nouns in number and gender. It has no accusative case endings for
nouns and adjectives.
But Interlingua is not necessarily for Chinese to speak with Malays,
unless they want to. Interlingua is for those who want to participate
in Western Civilization. Chinese and Malays are still welcome.
STAN MULAIK
"Jim Howard" <jho...@vvm.com> writes:
>The most universally dispersed official languages in the world today are
>Portuguese, Spanish, French, and English - boarder western European
>languages which became more and more global from the 15th century on.
>Esperanto fits very well into this group of four languages. Except, of
>course, that it is even easier to learn.
Le linguas official le plus dispergite universalmente in le mundo hodie es
portugese, espaniol, francese, e anglese - linguas al bordos de west Europa
que deveniva plus in plus global desde le dece-quinte seculo. A un
certe grado le esperanto conforma a iste gruppo de quatro linguas, mais
le interlingua es mesmo plus in conformitate a illes, proque illo se
basa super illos como un lingua prototypic commun a illes e le anglese.
E le grammatica de interlingua es tanto facile si non plus facile a
apprender que illo de esperanto.
Pro plus informationes: http://www.naz.com/personal/interlng
Jens S. Larsen
In article <7fzpxzv...@phoenix.cs.hku.hk>,
sd...@cs.hku.hk (Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}) wrote:
>
> >>>>> "Mike" == Mike Wright <dar...@scruznet.com> writes:
>
> Mike> I believe that Mr. Lee's main point was about the grammar,
> Mike> not the writing system or vocabulary. When people who are
> Mike> familiar with only European languages design an artificial
> Mike> language, they make many assumptions about what syntactical
> Mike> features are and are not necessary. Those assumptions are
> Mike> not the same ones that speakers of very different languages,
> Mike> such as Chinese and Japanese, would make.
> Exactly! Vocabularies can be memorized (although a Eurocentric
> lexicon still gives the Europeans a grand advantage over
> non-Europeans) easily. However, following the grammatical rules of a
> language is a difficult task. It requires the development of *habit*.
> If you don't have the habit of marking plurality of nouns (because you
> don't do so in your native language), you'll often forget about the
> suffix "-j" when you write Esperanto. If you don't have the habit of
> inflecting adjective to agree with nouns, you'll forget about the
> agreement between adjectives and nouns in Esperanto.
>
> One obvious example of the Eurocentrism of Esperanto is that Esperanto
> has _grammatical number_. I have discussed this grammatical feature
> with many people, including some Esperantists speaking only European
> langauges. We all feel that grammatical number is not a necessary nor
> useful feature.
I don't think "we all" agree on anything. Personally I agree that
grammatical number isn't a _necessary_ feature of the grammar of a human
language, but I wouldn't say it's not _useful_. The way Esperanto is
held together, however, suggests to me that if the "-j" ending (the one
and only way that plurality is indicated) should be abolished, it could
only happen in one step; removing it first from the adjectives, and later
from the nouns, wouldn't work.
> We believe that Zamenhof, when he designed his
> "lingvo internacia", must have been unable to imagine a langauge
> without grammatical number. Consequently, grammatical number became
> an "obvious, natural and indispensable" feature of Esperanto. Did
> Zamenhof study the grammar of Chinese, Malay, Thai or Vietnamese, he
> might have removed grammatical number from Esperanto, in the same way
> he didn't introduce grammatical gender into the grammar of Esperanto.
Zamenhof conceived Esperanto with a lot of features that were as "little
obvious, unnatural and dispensable" for Europeans of his own time as
they are for other people now, most notably the accusative and the
agreement between nouns and adjectives. But Zamenhof had experimented
-- and worked hard! -- with prototypes of Esperanto for at least a decade
before he went public in 1887, including prototypes without those features.
He didn't limit himself to abstract speculation, for his 20-years birthday
in 1879 he had taught his friends a prototype called "Lingwe Uniwersale",
so that they could make speeches and sing together in it. We can't be
sure if all of the prototypes showed grammatical number on the nouns; when
Zamenhof went to Moscow to study medicine, his father burnt his notes, and
WWII took most of the later ones.
During the period between the wars, Esperanto didn't yet have such a
secure status vis-a-vis other "constructed" languages that it has now,
so there was a consensus to be discrete about the pre-1887 versions of the
language; that, and the fact that editing manuscripts can be hard work,
is the reason why hardly anybody before the late 1940's knew anything about
the proto-Esperantos. This may have been a better idea than one should
think. The reason we know about "Lingwe Uniwersale" is because Zamenhof
mentioned in a famous letter to a certain Mr. Borovko, and it actually
prompted some British Esperantists to try to celebrate Esperanto's
centennial in 1979 rather than 1987!! Imagine what could have happened,
if people had had even more facts to misinterpret...
Jens S. Larsen
In article <32E798...@sn.nono>, abl...@sn.nono wrote:
> Jens S. Larsen wrote:
> > Have you encountered expressions in Esperanto with a completely different
> > meaning of what you would expect? I think of the type "as it were" in
> > English, that means more or less the same as "if I may use that expression",
> > whereas a learner would interpret it as something like "the way it was back
> > then".
> A learner, knowing that "it were" is in the subjunctive mood, would not
> interpret "as it were" as "the way it was back then".
A learner, knowing that "be" unlike all other English verbs has a
seperate subjunctive mood in some cases, will only be even more
confused as the expression is normally used without an if-clause.
JSL
Anders Blehr
Jens S. Larsen wrote:
> In article <32E798...@sn.nono>, abl...@sn.nono wrote:
>
> > A learner, knowing that "it were" is in the subjunctive mood, would not
> > interpret "as it were" as "the way it was back then".
>
> A learner, knowing that "be" unlike all other English verbs has a
> seperate subjunctive mood in some cases, will only be even more
> confused as the expression is normally used without an if-clause.
This constitutes a challenge for teachers (and learners), not a bad
trait of English as a language.
Anders Blehr
Jonathan Badger wrote:
> Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> writes:
>
> >[..]but first someone has to
> >convince me that Esperantists being at some Esperanto convention in some
> >remote corner of the world are just as interested in getting in touch
> >with the locals and their way of life as "ordinary people" being there
> >with a group of friends or collegues who they enjoy being with because
> >they are likable people, and not just because they share a common
> >denominator like Esperanto.
>
> Well, firstly, don't you have a common denominator (science fiction,
> computers, linguistics or whatever) with most of your friends? I
> assume you don't just somehow sense "goodness" in people and make
> friends with random good people when you go grocery shopping. So
> what's wrong with Esperanto as a common denominator?
Yes, I do have a common denominator with the people I frequent
(ex-colleagues, present colleagues, common interest, friends of friends,
... ), but this common denominator is not "Norwegian" for my Norwegian
friends, nor is it "English" for my English speaking friends, "German"
for my German speaking friends or "French" for my French speaking
friends, &c. Not that this in itself is wrong, it just seems odd to me
that the language we use to communicate about our common interest should
coincide with the interest itself.
> And secondly, I think you have a very narrow view of what Esperanto is
> good for.
What's Esperanto good for that not any language is equally good for? I
have no doubts that Esperanto can express most anything you'd ever want
to express, but so can any other language.
> I'm not sure I actually count as an Esperantist -- I can
> read (and to some extent write) the language but I really haven't
> attempted to speak it, and the idea of Esperantro conventions with
> thousands of green starred Esperantists singing "La Espero" in unison
> doesn't really intrigue me anyway. But the fact is, with a very
> little effort on my part over a few months I can read real books and
> magazines in the Esperanto. This seems extremely cool to me.
I enjoy learning languages myself, but somehow the satisfaction I get
out of understanding and finally mastering the language and its
structure and logic is proportional to its complexity. I don't mind
simple languages either, but a simple *constructed* language (i.e.,
constructed to be simple) doesn't get my vote (nor do complex
constructed languages...).
> I never
> really managed to do this with my three years of Spanish in high
> school, and I doubt that one semester of German that I'm presently
> taking will let me do this in German, either.
It takes effort to learn an "uneasy" language. But what you put in in
the process, you reap when you've mastered the language (my opinion, I
know).
Anders Blehr
D Gary Grady wrote:
> Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> wrote:
>
> >As I said, I was talking about Esperantists acting as a group, not as
> >individuals going about their dayly business far away from other
> >Esperantists.
>
> Could you provide a hint of just what groups of Esperanto speakers
> you're talking about? Have you seen more than one example?
I based what I said on one experience and what I read here om Usenet (so
when I used the plural "experiences" I was exaggerating - but isn't that
what you do when you argue...? ;P).
My "encounter" was several years ago in a cramped train compartment
somewhere between Paris, France and Sevilla, Spain. There were eight
people in the compartment, four Esperantists and four non-Esperantists
(we). They (the Esperantists) were a bunch of of completely intolerable
characters who rambled about their own splendour and about how ignorant
the rest of us were because we weren't part of their Esperanto
community.
> Since I'm pestering you for concrete examples of what you're talking
> about, let me in fairness offer some from my end:
>
> [Convincing stuff deleted]
As I said, I'd be more than willing to adopt a different viewpoint -
which I have, thanks to you... ;)
> [Esperanto screw-up deleted}
>
> In defense of Esperanto, I should perhaps note that I have screwed up
> at least that badly in English. On one memorable occasion when I was
> working as an announcer for an American Forces Television station in
> Keflavik, Iceland, I was called upon to introduce a program on Vienna.
> At the end I was saying something to the effect that viewers wanting
> to see the city in person could contact the base travel office and ask
> to book a trip to Austria's capital, and the base travel office would
> be happy send them winging their merry way to Venice. Suddenly
> realizing I'd identified the wrong city and implicitly insulted the
> base travel office's geographical competence, I attempted to correct
> myself and said, "I mean Venus!"
Another screw-up, but of a different kind (and with a somewhat smaller
audience): On one occasion when I was living in Germany a few years
back, one of my colleagues had a British business associate visiting.
My colleague hardly spoke any English at all, so I was asked to come
along to do the German-English-German translation (neither of which is
my native language, which is Norwegian). We went to a restaurant, sat
down, ordered food, they started talking and I started translating to
the best of my ability. Apart from the fact that we had to shout to
each other because there was a huge festival in town that day, with more
or less drunk people singing profound German drinking songs ("Alles hat
ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei, jawohl mein Schatz, es ist vorbei...")
everywhere, everything was going smoothly. After a while my colleague's
wife entered the restaurant and sat down at our table, at which time my
colleage decided he wanted to practice his broken English with the
Brit. So I turn to his wife, relieved to finally be able to relax. I
spoke to her, but somehow she didn't seem to understand. I attributed
this to the general noise level, and repeated what I'd said, only
louder. She looked even more baffled. Only then did I realize that I
was speaking Norwegian to her...
Pedro Macanás Valverde :-#
Je la 19 Jan 1997 20:09:45 GMT, sgoo...@netvision.net.il (Stan
Goodman) skribis:
>
>Esperantists make a big thing about the universality of the roots of
>Esperanto, but that reflects a HIGHLY Eurocentric view of the world we live
>in.
Mi estas Murcia Esperantisto. Se iam Murcio sendependigxos de
Hispanio, mi petos ke estos murciaj vortoj kaj gramatikeroj en
Esperanto aû mi ne konsideros gxin universala ( aû cxu jes ?).
Jes, por mi estos universala, kvankam ne havus multajn el la murciaj
radikoj kaj sendube la nura universala kompare kun la angla .
Jonathan Badger
Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> writes:
>Jonathan Badger wrote:
>> And secondly, I think you have a very narrow view of what Esperanto is
>> good for.
>What's Esperanto good for that not any language is equally good for? I
>have no doubts that Esperanto can express most anything you'd ever want
>to express, but so can any other language.
Of course. But Esperanto was easy to learn to learn for me. Spanish
and German (the other languages I have studied, although neither to
fluency at either the spoken or written level -- but to be fair I've
only just begun German) are much harder.
My point was you seemed to suggest the whole point of learning
Esperanto was to go to Esperanto conventions. In contrast, I happen
just to like the idea of reading books in foreign languages, and while
I hope someday to have that ability in other languages besides
Esperanto, it appears that learning to read well in other languages is
much harder.
>I enjoy learning languages myself, but somehow the satisfaction I get
>out of understanding and finally mastering the language and its
>structure and logic is proportional to its complexity.
Woah! Okay, maybe we just have completely different reasons for
learning languages. I want to learn languages to do something with
them. The complexity of languages is a barrier and not an attractant
to me.
Yes, German and Spanish are objectively more useful than Esperanto
(they have countries associated with them that one can visit for one
thing). The question is if they are enough more useful to be worth
the headache of learning. I'm not at all sure for me the answer is a
definite "yes". More of a "maybe". This might have something to with
the fact that I'm American, however. Foreign countries with different
languages are in general considerably farther away for most of us and
not someplace one can drive to in an hour or two like one can in
Europe.
>I don't mind
>simple languages either, but a simple *constructed* language (i.e.,
>constructed to be simple) doesn't get my vote (nor do complex
>constructed languages...).
This is an attitude I really don't get. I understand that for you
reading books in Esperanto might not be as interesting to you as it is
for me because you can already read English and German in addition to
your native Norwegian. But I really don't understand why the fact that
a language is "constructed" or not should make much of a difference to
anyone.
Jim Howard
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~} <sd...@cs.hku.hk> wrote in article
<7fvi8tu...@phoenix.cs.hku.hk>...
> >>>>> "Antonio" == Antonio Martins <bac...@cc.fc.ul.pt> writes:
>
> Antonio> It does not. It claims internationality. It is a
> Antonio> functional, rather than a formal concept.
>
> In what sense is Esperanto "international"?
"Inter" - between, among "national" - nations. Esperanto is evenly
dispersed among many nations and used to communicate between different
nationalities, thus it is international to the degree that it is
successful.
> If you say it is "international" WITHIN Europe, then I agree. If you
> say it is *globally* "international", then I disagree. Esperanto not
> only has its word roots derived mainly from IE langauges, but also has
> its grammar based on IE languages. The design of this language lacks
> consideration for speakers of non-IE languages.
European languages are more international than others, simply because more
countries in the world regard them as official languages - unlike Chinese,
for example, which is only official in one or two countries of the world.
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
>>>>> "Jens" == Jens S Larsen <st...@dorit.ihi.ku.dk> writes:
>> One obvious example of the Eurocentrism of Esperanto is that
>> Esperanto has _grammatical number_. I have discussed this
>> grammatical feature with many people, including some
>> Esperantists speaking only European langauges. We all feel
>> that grammatical number is not a necessary nor useful feature.
Jens> I don't think "we all" agree on anything. Personally I
Jens> agree that grammatical number isn't a _necessary_ feature of
Jens> the grammar of a human language, but I wouldn't say it's not
Jens> _useful_.
Sorry, by "we all", I was refering to the group of persons with whom I
had discussed. You were not one of them. Perhaps, I have to blame
English (and Esperanto, too) for not having two distinct pronouns for
"inclusive we" and "exclusive we".
Jens> But Zamenhof had experimented -- and worked
Jens> hard! -- with prototypes of Esperanto for at least a decade
Jens> before he went public in 1887, including prototypes without
Jens> those features.
Did he carry out (or even think of carrying out) his experiments
outside Europe?
Anders Blehr
Jonathan Badger wrote:
> My point was you seemed to suggest the whole point of learning
> Esperanto was to go to Esperanto conventions.
No, I didn't say that *I* thought that learning Esperanto had no use
besides being able to go to Esperanto conventions, I said that that was
the *impression* I had, that it seemed more important for Esperantists
to be immersed in the Esperanto culture with other Esperantists than
communicating with people not belonging to this culture. However, I
have been convinced that this is not so (and if it is, it's only for the
few - the ones I have met...).
> [Anders Blehr:]
>
> >I enjoy learning languages myself, but somehow the satisfaction I get
> >out of understanding and finally mastering the language and its
> >structure and logic is proportional to its complexity.
>
> Woah! Okay, maybe we just have completely different reasons for
> learning languages. I want to learn languages to do something with
> them. The complexity of languages is a barrier and not an attractant
> to me.
If I just want to communicate with people or read books, I'll try and
get along with the languages I already know (and as to books, read
translations if I'm not able to read the original). My main motivation
for learning a new language lies in the language itself and it's inner
beauty - if in addition it enables me to communicate with a lot of
people, then that's great, but that's not a criterion for selecting
which language I'm going to learn next.
Right now, for instance, I'm learning Irish, which, communicationwise,
is not a very useful language to know. The main reason why I want to
learn it is obviously not to be able to communicate with as many people
as possible, it's because (in my opinion) it's an extremely beautiful
and fascinating language in its won right. Of course, when (if) I've
mastered it, I won't mind going to Dingle or Donegal, get to know the
locals and spend quiet evenings there, overlooking the ocean, enjoying a
smooth pint of Guinness and talk about trivial subjects. I don't mind
doing that now either - I just wouldn't be able to say very much in
Irish.
> Yes, German and Spanish are objectively more useful than Esperanto
> (they have countries associated with them that one can visit for one
> thing). The question is if they are enough more useful to be worth
> the headache of learning. I'm not at all sure for me the answer is a
> definite "yes". More of a "maybe". This might have something to with
> the fact that I'm American, however. Foreign countries with different
> languages are in general considerably farther away for most of us and
> not someplace one can drive to in an hour or two like one can in
> Europe.
Obviously your motivation for learning languages is completely different
from mine. But if the fact that living in the US it's hard to go
anywhere where they speak a different language is an argument for not
learning, say, German and Spanish (Miami isn't *that* far away... ;),
why bother to learn languages at all? And no matter how you look at it,
learning German and Spanish is much more useful communicationwise than
learning Esperanto. Learning Esperanto, in my opinion, is more of a
political statement than something you do to be able to communicate.
> >I don't mind
> >simple languages either, but a simple *constructed* language (i.e.,
> >constructed to be simple) doesn't get my vote (nor do complex
> >constructed languages...).
>
> This is an attitude I really don't get. I understand that for you
> reading books in Esperanto might not be as interesting to you as it is
> for me because you can already read English and German in addition to
> your native Norwegian. But I really don't understand why the fact that
> a language is "constructed" or not should make much of a difference to
> anyone.
To me the concept of a constructed language is as repulsive as the
concept of fake flowers. Fake flowers serve the purpose of "being
beautiful" just as well as real ones, but if you smell it, it has no
scent, it's dead. Constructed languages may very well serve the purpose
of supporting communication, but for someone who enjoys languages for
their "scent" (i.e., the roots of the language in a time and era long
gone, the silent people who have been speaking it for thousands of years
and how they and their history and culture have contributed to bringing
the language to where it is today, &c.), they're as dead as a plastic
flower.
This is, of course, my very own, very subjective opinion.
Anders Blehr
I wrote:
> [...] Learning Esperanto, in my opinion, is more of a
> political statement than something you do to be able to communicate.
I should have said: "Promoting Esperanto...", not "Learning
Esperanto...".
Richard K Harrison
Anders Blehr (abl...@sn.nono) wrote:
: To me the concept of a constructed language is as repulsive as the
: concept of fake flowers. Fake flowers serve the purpose of "being
: beautiful" just as well as real ones, but if you smell it, it has no
: scent, it's dead.
Perhaps you haven't heard of "artlangs," languages created as an
artistic expression, for their aesthetic qualities. It's like
painting a portrait of an imaginary person; of course it's not the
same thing as a real person, but it might or might not be
aesthetically pleasing. I have links to several artlangs
(Tokana and Inda come to mind, not to mention Tolkien's little
snippets of naturalistic constructed languages) on my
list-of-links page at http://www.magicnet.net/~hrick/linkage.html
STAN MULAIK
sd...@cs.hku.hk (Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}) writes:
>Is the plural marker obligatory in Interlingua?
Yes, to the extent that it is in English. That is, in English one can
say, "I saw many horse and many Indian with rifle, Kemosabe," and
you'd be readily understood. I suppose, if you wished to, you could
write in interlingua
"Io videva multe cavallo e multe indiano con carabina, Kemosabe"
but then you'd be marked as a novicio.
In interlingua the plural is formed by the addition of -s or--after a
consonant--of -es. Final c changes to -ch- before -es:
tablua > tabulas, pagina > paginas, homine > homines, aer > aeres,
glutton > gluttones, roc [Chess] > roches
The reason Interlingua retains the plural marker is because it is retained
in all of its base languages in some form or another. Interlingua is not
designed to be the most logical or the simplest language to learn, but
rather as a simple standardization of the common features of French,
English, Italian, Spanish/Portuguese, with grammar simplified by eliminating
grammatical features not found in all of these.
>--
>Lee Sau Dan 李守敦(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)
>.----------------------------------------------------------------------------.
>| http://www.cs.hku.hk/~sdlee e-mail: sd...@cs.hku.hk |
>`----------------------------------------------------------------------------'
Don HARLOW
On Thu, 23 Jan 1997 10:13:01 -0600, st...@dorit.ihi.ku.dk (Jens S.
Larsen) wrote:
>In article <7fzpy0q...@phoenix.cs.hku.hk>,
> sd...@cs.hku.hk (Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}) wrote:
>>
>> Idiomatic Expressions:
>> de tempo en tempo (from time to time [ de temps en temps ])
>
>"De tempo _al_ tempo" is the form used. I've also seen the somewhat
>unconventional "tempaltempe", but I'm not sure I like it.
>
The actual translation of the English "from time to time" is "foje" or
"fojfoje" (if you want to be emphatic), since it refers to "from
occurrence to occurrence" (fojo) rather than "from duration to
duration" (tempo).
>> kaj tiel plu (and so on [ und so wiel ])
>
>Not "wiel", but "weiter" (assuming it is German). Again, is this really an
>idiomatic expression? How do you say in Chinese, translated directly?
>
Definitely not idiomatic -- "and in that way further," a good
description of what the author is usually trying to convey with this
expression.
D Gary Grady
Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> wrote:
>Yes, I do have a common denominator with the people I frequent
>(ex-colleagues, present colleagues, common interest, friends of friends,
>... ), but this common denominator is not "Norwegian" for my Norwegian
>friends, nor is it "English" for my English speaking friends, "German"
>for my German speaking friends or "French" for my French speaking
>friends, &c.
Surely you have in common with your English-speaking friends the fact
that they speak English, etc. As for interests not coresponding with
languages, are you saying you learned English and French without
having any interest in English or French culture and language?
>What's Esperanto good for that not any language is equally good for? I
>have no doubts that Esperanto can express most anything you'd ever want
>to express, but so can any other language.
Quite so. Esperanto's sole major advantage is that it is relatively
quite a lot easier to learn. (Some would also note that its political
neutrality, the fact that it isn't associated with an imperial power,
makes it more acceptable to a few people, but I don't consider this a
particularly major advantage.)
>I enjoy learning languages myself, but somehow the satisfaction I get
>out of understanding and finally mastering the language and its
>structure and logic is proportional to its complexity.
For many this seems to be the case (and reinforces my notion that you
are indeed interested in the languages you've learned qua language,
and not just as media). But for many others, linguistic complexity is
more an annoyance than a source of entertainment.
> I don't mind
>simple languages either, but a simple *constructed* language (i.e.,
>constructed to be simple) doesn't get my vote (nor do complex
>constructed languages...).
It would seem, then, that you simply have a bias against constructed
languages. Fine, to each his own.
D Gary Grady
Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> wrote:
>My "encounter" was several years ago in a cramped train compartment
>somewhere between Paris, France and Sevilla, Spain. There were eight
>people in the compartment, four Esperantists and four non-Esperantists
>(we). They (the Esperantists) were a bunch of of completely intolerable
>characters who rambled about their own splendour and about how ignorant
>the rest of us were because we weren't part of their Esperanto
>community.
I can see how that might incline one to a negative view of
Esperantists. But I suggest that one should be careful about forming
too firm an impression about Esperantists, or about chess players or
cat enthusiasts or Americans or Norwegians based on one encounter with
four representatives of some group.
>[...]. So I turn to his wife, relieved to finally be able to relax. I
>spoke to her, but somehow she didn't seem to understand. I attributed
>this to the general noise level, and repeated what I'd said, only
>louder. She looked even more baffled. Only then did I realize that I
>was speaking Norwegian to her...
I left out my story of trying to help some people order a meal and
winding up talking to *everybody* in the wrong language...
D Gary Grady
Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> wrote:
>To me the concept of a constructed language is as repulsive as the
>concept of fake flowers. Fake flowers serve the purpose of "being
>beautiful" just as well as real ones, but if you smell it, it has no
>scent, it's dead. Constructed languages may very well serve the purpose
>of supporting communication, but for someone who enjoys languages for
>their "scent" (i.e., the roots of the language in a time and era long
>gone, the silent people who have been speaking it for thousands of years
>and how they and their history and culture have contributed to bringing
>the language to where it is today, &c.), they're as dead as a plastic
>flower.
I think this is the kernel of the whole affair. I wish more critics of
constructed languages would be so forthright. For some people this is
even a very emotional issue.
I'm not saying that't the case with you; I'm recalling in particular
the wife of a friend who, informed that I had some interest in
Esperanto, became "furious" with me -- her own characterization -- and
started in on a remarkably extended rant that ran hither and yon, even
dragging in Ezra Pound at one point. I've encountered a number of
lesser variations on that theme from time to time, and it's always
rather surprised me. I can see someone finding the whole subject
uninteresting, but if one isn't interested, why even talk about it?
The answer, I think, is the perception that a language is a beautiful
and glorious magical natural thing, and hence an artificial language
must be something like an artificial flower or Frankenstein's monster.
Yet no one seems to object to artificial sound -- i.e., music -- or to
art in general. Humans have always made languages. Isn't it possible
to make a language consciously, as an art? (See my comments in another
thread about Modern Hebrew and the artistic achievement of Eliezar ben
Yehuda.)
It's also worth noting perhaps that Esperanto is far less "artificial"
than many people seem to imagine. It's of course based upon "natural"
antecedent languages, but it has also evolved quite quite a bit in
use, just as any living language does, and it continues to do so.
Jim Howard
Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> wrote in article <32EA0F...@sn.nono>...
> Jonathan Badger wrote:
>
> learning German and Spanish is much more useful communicationwise than
> learning Esperanto. Learning Esperanto, in my opinion, is more of a
> political statement than something you do to be able to communicate.
Is that really true that Esperanto is less useful? German and Spanish you
could use in some countries, but lets say you were travelling in the Far
East and wanted to spend a few months in each country getting to know the
people. Believe it or not, there are very large numbers of esperantists
and esperanto clubs in Japan, Korea, and China, especially in the larger
cities. Esperanto has deep roots and has often had government support in
those countries.
> To me the concept of a constructed language is as repulsive as the
> concept of fake flowers. Fake flowers serve the purpose of "being
> beautiful" just as well as real ones, but if you smell it, it has no
> scent, it's dead. Constructed languages may very well serve the purpose
> of supporting communication, but for someone who enjoys languages for
> their "scent" (i.e., the roots of the language in a time and era long
> gone, the silent people who have been speaking it for thousands of years
> and how they and their history and culture have contributed to bringing
> the language to where it is today, &c.), they're as dead as a plastic
> flower.
But is esperanto really that much more constructed than, say, Spanish?
Spanish went through a number of governmental reforms, one of which, for
example, makes the Spanish writing system and pronounciation very simple.
Esperanto is not that dissimilar from other ordinary, modern european
languages - except that it is much easier to learn.
Jim Howard
Mike Wright <dar...@scruznet.com> wrote in article
<32E7FB...@scruznet.com>...
> Jim Howard wrote:
> >
> > Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~} <sd...@cs.hku.hk> wrote in article
> > <7fvi8tu...@phoenix.cs.hku.hk>...
> > > >>>>> "Antonio" == Antonio Martins <bac...@cc.fc.ul.pt> writes:
> > [..............]
> >
> > > In what sense is Esperanto "international"?
> > >
> > > If you say it is "international" WITHIN Europe, then I agree. If
you
> > > say it is *globally* "international", then I disagree. Esperanto
not
> > > only has its word roots derived mainly from IE langauges, but also
has
> > > its grammar based on IE languages. The design of this language
lacks
> > > consideration for speakers of non-IE languages.
> > >
> > But that is the case with any language group in the world - their
writing
> > systems and vocabulary are related to a certain geographical area.
> > Esperanto is only the best synthesis of European languages, in Latin
> > letters.
>
> I believe that Mr. Lee's main point was about the grammar, not the
> writing system or vocabulary. When people who are familiar with only
> European languages design an artificial language, they make many
> assumptions about what syntactical features are and are not necessary.
Your right, I should have written: ...their writing systems, vocabulary,
and grammar are related to a certain geographical area....
> Those assumptions are not the same ones that speakers of very different
> languages, such as Chinese and Japanese, would make.
>
> > Isn't the solution, that in order to make the world happy, there
> > should be more than one international language? One with the Chinese
> > writing system, one with a middle eastern writing system, and so on?
>
> For most folks, learning one extra language is enough of a burden. Would
> you ask them to learn three or more?
Yes, I would ask them to learn around three. That's not so unusual. In
southern China, they often learn three dialects of Chinese, along with
some English. If the international languages were easier, like Esperanto,
why couldn't someone learn three?
> Besides, speakers of languages like Malay, Thai, and Vietnamese (all of
> which share the Chinese tendency to use relative word position and
> grammatical particals, rather than inflection) would not be very happy
> with a Chinese writing system - even if you could figure out how to
> apply Chinese writing to a non-Chinese language. The Japanese have been
> at it for centuries, and their writing system is still a mess. The
> Vietnamese have given up completely, and the Koreans aren't far behind.
You're right, the Japanese writing system is a veritable monstrousity. So
those non-Chinese asian countries are switching to simpler phonetic
alphabets (Latin, in the case of Vietnamese). That leaves the Chinese
writing system (with its many dialects), standing out in sharp relief.
It's uniqueness as a language and writing system, and the fact that it is
very widespread, shows that it merits a simplified, universal, just as
European languages have a simplified, universal form - Esperanto.
> And what might a "middle eastern writing system be"? Amharic? Hebrew?
> Arabic? Which of these could gain acceptance all across the Middle East?
> Maybe we could go back to Aramaic?
>
Aramaic is an ancient Semitic language. Europeans considered going back
to Latin, but the trend is towards a simpler, modernized language such as
Esperanto. Among the Semitic lands, we would have to see what will happen
after Israel joins the Arab League. They could do that if the name were
changed from "Arab League" to "Semitic League", for example.
Anders Blehr
Jim Howard wrote:
> You're right, the Japanese writing system is a veritable monstrousity. So
> those non-Chinese asian countries are switching to simpler phonetic
> alphabets (Latin, in the case of Vietnamese). That leaves the Chinese
> writing system (with its many dialects), standing out in sharp relief.
> It's uniqueness as a language and writing system, and the fact that it is
> very widespread, shows that it merits a simplified, universal, just as
> European languages have a simplified, universal form - Esperanto.
This is your opinion, right, and not, like, a universal truth?
> [...] Europeans considered going back
> to Latin, but the trend is towards a simpler, modernized language such as
> Esperanto.
Enlighten me if I'm wrong, but the Merriam Webster definition of "trend"
still holds, doesn't it? I mean, a "trend" is still the "general
movement in the course of time of a statistically detectable change"?
Do you have some statistics that prove that the "trend [in Europe] is
towards a simpler, modernized language such as Esperanto"? To me this
sounds like mere wishful thinking.
> Among the Semitic lands, we would have to see what will happen
> after Israel joins the Arab League. They could do that if the name were
> changed from "Arab League" to "Semitic League", for example.
What world do you live in?
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
>>>>> "D" == D Gary Grady <dg...@mindspring.com> writes:
D> Quite so. Esperanto's sole major advantage is that it is
D> relatively quite a lot easier to learn.
Easier than WHAT language for WHOM to learn?
My own experience shows that Esperanto is NOT easier than Mandarin for
me, a native speaker of Cantonese.
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Howard <jho...@vvm.com> writes:
Jim> Is that really true that Esperanto is less useful? German
Jim> and Spanish you could use in some countries, but lets say you
Jim> were travelling in the Far East and wanted to spend a few
Jim> months in each country getting to know the people. Believe
Jim> it or not, there are very large numbers of esperantists and
Jim> esperanto clubs in Japan, Korea, and China, especially in the
Jim> larger cities. Esperanto has deep roots and has often had
Jim> government support in those countries.
But then, you'll be confining yourself to the group of Esperantists in
those Far East countries. Could you really enjoy the local culture
(pop songs, novels, TV programmes) and local customs? Would you have
the excitements of exploring the places on your own?
When I went to Paris 2 years ago, I found the Chinatown. In the
Chinatown, I could find a lot of speakers of my own native langauge --
Cantonese. I could even do my purchase in a supermarket solely in
Cantonese. I also visited Amsterdam in the same trip, and I could
also find many Cantonese speakers in the Chinatown there. I could
even find a Chinese restaurant in a small town in the Netherlands,
where the shopkeeper was a Cantonese speaker. I could not only order
the dishes in Cantonese, but she also told me something about the
country, in Cantonese! That's a nice chat and I knew much more about
that country after the chat. On the same trip, I also visited Rome.
One afternoon, I was locating the office of a ship-company (to arrange
for a ship trip to Greece) in a busy street in Rome. A Chinese lady,
seeing that I was holding a map in my hand and hereing me talk to my
friends in Cantonese, approached us and talked to us in Cantonese!
She helped us find the location of the office. When I passed by some
shops in a busy street in Athens, a shopkeeper -- surely not a Chinese
-- shouted "Come in! Have a look!" to me in Cantonese! Would
Esperanto serve me that well too?
Anders Blehr
Jim Howard wrote:
> Is that really true that Esperanto is less useful? German and Spanish you
> could use in some countries, but lets say you were travelling in the Far
> East and wanted to spend a few months in each country getting to know the
> people. Believe it or not, there are very large numbers of esperantists
> and esperanto clubs in Japan, Korea, and China, especially in the larger
> cities.
I don't have any numbers, but I'd be surprised if there aren't as many
or more Spanish and German as Esperanto speakers in any country you'd
ever want to go to. Maybe they aren't organized in "clubs", but then
again, arriving in a country and being hosted by a "club" based on a
common language doesn't seem as attractive (to me, at least) as just
walking around meeting people regardless of what language(s) they speak.
> But is esperanto really that much more constructed than, say, Spanish?
> Spanish went through a number of governmental reforms, one of which, for
> example, makes the Spanish writing system and pronounciation very simple.
"Govermental reforms" can only busy themselves with spelling, the spoken
language is way beyond their grasp. So if Spanish pronunciation is
simple, it's because that's how the language is, not because the
goverment decided that it should be.
> Esperanto is not that dissimilar from other ordinary, modern european
> languages - except that it is much easier to learn.
What was the word? ... "e-a-s-i-e-r" - yes, that's it, I've got it now!
Anders Blehr
D Gary Grady wrote:
> The answer, I think, is the perception that a language is a beautiful
> and glorious magical natural thing, and hence an artificial language
> must be something like an artificial flower or Frankenstein's monster.
>
> Yet no one seems to object to artificial sound -- i.e., music -- or to
> art in general.
What's an artificial sound? Certainly you don't mean that music in
itself is artificial - it's been around as long as languages have. Of
course it's "invented", but so is any cultural expression, like customs,
dance, food, religion, clothing, &c. Artificial languages just don't
fall into the category of "cultural expressions".
> Humans have always made languages. Isn't it possible
> to make a language consciously, as an art? (See my comments in another
> thread about Modern Hebrew and the artistic achievement of Eliezar ben
> Yehuda.)
Have we always made (i.e., constructed) languages? For how long is
"always"? Other than that I agree with you, that it's possible to
construct languages as an art form. But then they would have to be
appreciated as just that, as an expression of art, and their possible
use for communication purposes would only be secondary. I'm refraining
from commenting on the eternal question of what constitutes "art"... ;)
> It's also worth noting perhaps that Esperanto is far less "artificial"
> than many people seem to imagine. It's of course based upon "natural"
> antecedent languages, but it has also evolved quite quite a bit in
> use, just as any living language does, and it continues to do so.
So if we pick up this discussion in, say, a thousand years, we wouldn't
have anything to discuss... ;)
Anders Blehr
D Gary Grady wrote:
> Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> wrote:
>
> I can see how that might incline one to a negative view of
> Esperantists. But I suggest that one should be careful about forming
> too firm an impression about Esperantists, or about chess players or
> cat enthusiasts or Americans or Norwegians based on one encounter with
> four representatives of some group.
Completely agreed. However, as I said, my impression of Esperantists
wasn't based solely on this one encounter, but also on what I read here
on Usenet, where there surely are some loopy Esperantists around (the
sensible ones, like yourself, don't seem to generate as much noise...
;).
Anders Blehr
D Gary Grady wrote:
> Surely you have in common with your English-speaking friends the fact
> that they speak English, etc.
Indeed I have in common with my English speaking friends the fact that
they speak English. But so do I have with a lot of English speaking
people that I wouldn't even dream of socializing with. The reason
they're my friends is not that they speak a language that I too speak.
> As for interests not coresponding with
> languages, are you saying you learned English and French without
> having any interest in English or French culture and language?
I learned English in school long before I was given a say in such
matters. French, on the other hand, is a language I decided to learn
after being acquainted with a number of Francophones (Frenchies and
Belgians) who now and then slipped into French when we were generally
conversing in German. My frustration was not that they were speaking a
language I didn't understand, but rather that I didn't understand the
language they were speaking (i.e., I wasn't saying to them, "I can't
understand, you have to stop speaking French"; I was thinking to myself,
"I can't understand, I have to learn French").
> [Anders Blehr:]
>
> >I enjoy learning languages myself, but somehow the satisfaction I get
> >out of understanding and finally mastering the language and its
> >structure and logic is proportional to its complexity.
>
> For many this seems to be the case (and reinforces my notion that you
> are indeed interested in the languages you've learned qua language,
> and not just as media). But for many others, linguistic complexity is
> more an annoyance than a source of entertainment.
Isn't that what sci.lang is, a forum for people who are "interested in
[...] languages [...] qua language", and not primarily for those that
find "linguistic complexity [...] more an annoyance than a source of
entertainment"?
Which is why I suppose anyone promoting Esperanto here raises a storm
(at least from those (like myself) who've been away from Usenet for a
couple of years and still bothers to raise it... ;)
Jonathan Badger
Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> writes:
>D Gary Grady wrote:
>> For many this seems to be the case (and reinforces my notion that you
>> are indeed interested in the languages you've learned qua language,
>> and not just as media). But for many others, linguistic complexity is
>> more an annoyance than a source of entertainment.
>Isn't that what sci.lang is, a forum for people who are "interested in
>[...] languages [...] qua language", and not primarily for those that
>find "linguistic complexity [...] more an annoyance than a source of
>entertainment"?
No. Not particularly. I rather thought sci.lang was a forum for those
interested in languages, their relations to one another, the origins
of words, etc. I'm interested in these topics and for languages other
than Esperanto besides. I hadn't realized that one has to *like*
things like the bizzare (and essentially useless) gender system of
German and other irritating and complex features of languages in order
to be a legitimate user of this forum.
>Which is why I suppose anyone promoting Esperanto here raises a storm
>(at least from those (like myself) who've been away from Usenet for a
>couple of years and still bothers to raise it... ;)
Well, I think the problem is that certain people like yourself make
the assumption that any mention of Esperanto is "promoting" it. In
general how these threads start is someone posts something along the
lines of "Why does anyone bother with Esperanto? Isn't it useless and
dead anyway?" and then people who know something about the language
respond with reasons in Esperanto's defense.
And as irrational as some fanactical Esperantists get with their
defense of the language (Esperanto as the path to world peace, etc.),
why is the assertion made by many anti-Esperantists that constructed
languages are cold and lifeless any less irrational?
Anders Blehr
Jonathan Badger wrote:
> Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> writes:
>
> >Isn't that what sci.lang is, a forum for people who are "interested in
> >[...] languages [...] qua language", and not primarily for those that
> >find "linguistic complexity [...] more an annoyance than a source of
> >entertainment"?
>
> No. Not particularly. I rather thought sci.lang was a forum for those
> interested in languages, their relations to one another, the origins
> of words, etc. I'm interested in these topics and for languages other
> than Esperanto besides. I hadn't realized that one has to *like*
> things like the bizzare (and essentially useless) gender system of
> German and other irritating and complex features of languages in order
> to be a legitimate user of this forum.
But if you *dislike* these features, you have no business complaining
about them here, just like I have no business complaining that Pi is not
a natural number in some sci.numbers newsgroup. That's what "sci"
stands for, "science", which concerns itself with the world as it is,
and not as you'd like it to be.
> >Which is why I suppose anyone promoting Esperanto here raises a storm
> >(at least from those (like myself) who've been away from Usenet for a
> >couple of years and still bothers to raise it... ;)
>
> Well, I think the problem is that certain people like yourself make
> the assumption that any mention of Esperanto is "promoting" it.
No. And yes, I *am* able to distinguish between someone just mentioning
Esperanto and someone promoting it. I'm not triggered by the mere
mentioning, only by someone promoting it. If you go back in this thread
you'll see what I mean.
If you give it some consideration, you'll realize that Esperanto (and
maybe Interlingua) are the only languages that are actually *promoted*
here in sci.lang. It's just as absurd to promote Esperanto as it'd be
if someone started arguing that Norwegian should be learnt by everyone.
> And as irrational as some fanactical Esperantists get with their
> defense of the language (Esperanto as the path to world peace, etc.),
> why is the assertion made by many anti-Esperantists that constructed
> languages are cold and lifeless any less irrational?
It isn't. It's all about what you like and what you don't like, and
there's no rationality to why I like a certain kind of music, food,
dance, &c., and someone else doesn't. It's the same thing with
languages. Like I said myself in a recent posting:
> [Anders Blehr:]
>
> To me the concept of a constructed language is as repulsive as the
> concept of fake flowers. Fake flowers serve the purpose of "being
> beautiful" just as well as real ones, but if you smell it, it has no
> scent, it's dead. Constructed languages may very well serve the purpose
> of supporting communication, but for someone who enjoys languages for
> their "scent" (i.e., the roots of the language in a time and era long
> gone, the silent people who have been speaking it for thousands of years
> and how they and their history and culture have contributed to bringing
> the language to where it is today, &c.), they're as dead as a plastic
> flower.
It's all very subjective indeed.
Jonathan Badger
Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> writes:
>Jonathan Badger wrote:
>>
>> No. Not particularly. I rather thought sci.lang was a forum for those
>> interested in languages, their relations to one another, the origins
>> of words, etc. I'm interested in these topics and for languages other
>> than Esperanto besides. I hadn't realized that one has to *like*
>> things like the bizzare (and essentially useless) gender system of
>> German and other irritating and complex features of languages in order
>> to be a legitimate user of this forum.
>But if you *dislike* these features, you have no business complaining
>about them here [...]
I don't recall *having* complained about them here; I was merely
responding to your assertion that sci.lang was only for those who
obtained enjoyment from these features.
>If you give it some consideration, you'll realize that Esperanto (and
>maybe Interlingua) are the only languages that are actually *promoted*
>here in sci.lang [...]
Well... how about English? It is one thing to simply acknowledge that
English is currently a popular second language (and apparently
particularly so in Western Europe), but many posts here (even from you
in a couple of cases) seem to actively promote the use of English
beyond the level currently seen.
But at least you have the right to take such a stand if you wish --
you learned English as second language -- the majority of people
promoting English seem to have it as their native tongue.
>It's all about what you like and what you don't like, and
>there's no rationality to why I like a certain kind of music, food,
>dance, &c., and someone else doesn't. It's the same thing with
>languages.
Yes, it is all subjective, and arguing about different tastes is
pointless. But to make an informed opinion about a language isn't it
worth learning something about it? Have you actually looked at any
constructed language or are you simply assuming that they must be
"dead and without scent -- like plastic flowers"? I assume the latter.
Alan Gould
In article <32e807bb...@nntp.best.com>, Don HARLOW
<d...@donh.vip.best.com> writes
>On Thu, 23 Jan 1997 17:20:42 +0100, Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono>
>wrote:
>
>>Alan Gould wrote:
>>
>>> In article <32e2b4f...@nntp.best.com>, Don HARLOW
>>> <d...@donh.vip.best.com> writes
>>> >"Organically developing natural language"? What is that?
>>>
>>> Maybe it's some kind of zoo-speak?
>>
>>No, it's a language that emerged and develops naturally in an almost
>>organic way, just like 999 out of every 1000 languages spoken in the
>>world (the odd ones out being the likes of Esperanto and Interlingua).
>>
>English and Norwegian, among others, are products of the human
>intellect. Esperanto and Interlingua, among others, are products of
>the human intellect.
Mia aludo al besta komuniko enhavis sugeston ke pli diversaj faktoroj
influas evoligon de lingvoj ol aux homa intelekto aux organa kresko.
La kvar supre menciitaj lingvoj estas vortaj, sed multaj aliaj lingvoj
kaj metodoj de komunikado ekzistas ol sole vortaj.
Konsente, lingvo kutime indikas homa parolado, sed aliaj specoj, bestaj,
plantaj kaj mineralaj ankaux komunikas, uzante ne-vortajn lingvojn.
Tiuj estas la veraj organaj kaj naturaj lingvoj.
--
Alan Gould The words are fine, let's see the results
Jim Howard
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~} <sd...@cs.hku.hk> wrote in article
<7fohecl...@phoenix.cs.hku.hk>...
> >>>>> "Jim" == Jim Howard <jho...@vvm.com> writes:
>
>
> Jim> Is that really true that Esperanto is less useful? German
> Jim> and Spanish you could use in some countries, but lets say you
> Jim> were travelling in the Far East and wanted to spend a few
> Jim> months in each country getting to know the people. Believe
> Jim> it or not, there are very large numbers of esperantists and
> Jim> esperanto clubs in Japan, Korea, and China, especially in the
> Jim> larger cities. Esperanto has deep roots and has often had
> Jim> government support in those countries.
>
> But then, you'll be confining yourself to the group of Esperantists in
> those Far East countries. Could you really enjoy the local culture
> (pop songs, novels, TV programmes) and local customs? Would you have
> the excitements of exploring the places on your own?
>
My only point was that Esperanto might be more useful than German or
Spanish in those countries. Of course, if they had years, they could learn
all three languages - Korean, Chinese, and Japanese - but that wasn't the
question. Or are you saying that if a person learned Chinese instead of
Esperanto, they could enjoy the local culture of all three countries? Only
if the Japanese and Koreans agreed to learn it, too.
> When I went to Paris 2 years ago, I found the Chinatown. In the
> Chinatown, I could find a lot of speakers of my own native langauge --
> Cantonese. I could even do my purchase in a supermarket solely in
> Cantonese. I also visited Amsterdam in the same trip, and I could
> also find many Cantonese speakers in the Chinatown there. I could
> even find a Chinese restaurant in a small town in the Netherlands,
> where the shopkeeper was a Cantonese speaker. I could not only order
> the dishes in Cantonese, but she also told me something about the
> country, in Cantonese! That's a nice chat and I knew much more about
> that country after the chat. On the same trip, I also visited Rome.
> One afternoon, I was locating the office of a ship-company (to arrange
> for a ship trip to Greece) in a busy street in Rome. A Chinese lady,
> seeing that I was holding a map in my hand and hereing me talk to my
> friends in Cantonese, approached us and talked to us in Cantonese!
> She helped us find the location of the office. When I passed by some
> shops in a busy street in Athens, a shopkeeper -- surely not a Chinese
> -- shouted "Come in! Have a look!" to me in Cantonese! Would
> Esperanto serve me that well too?
>
So, don't you think that in a similar way, a European going to the Orient
would be happy to find someone who knew a European language, like
Esperanto?
Are you saying that Cantonese (or Chinese) has a similar status as an
international language? Lucky for you it is your native language - you
won't have to make a special effort to learn it!
In a certain sense, you are saying that Chinese is international. Would it
be possible to ask the rest of the world to learn it? How difficult do you
think that would be? Would it be as easy for the world in general to learn
Chinese, compared with Esperanto? Take someone in an Arab country, for
example - which would be easier for them, Chinese or Esperanto?
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Howard <jho...@vvm.com> writes:
Jim> So, don't you think that in a similar way, a European going
Jim> to the Orient would be happy to find someone who knew a
Jim> European language, like Esperanto?
Jim> Are you saying that Cantonese (or Chinese) has a similar
Jim> status as an international language? Lucky for you it is
Jim> your native language - you won't have to make a special
Jim> effort to learn it!
You're also lucky that you're (based on my [perhaps wrong] assumption)
a native speaker of a European language and you may have learnt 1 or 2
other European languages at school. So, you're lucky because
Esperanto has a grammar that resembles the languages that you've
already learnt and you're familiar with. So Esperanto appears easy to
you.
However, the same is not true for EVERYONE on Earth. Esperanto simply
fails the claimed advantage that people can communicate in it
*fairly*. Obiously, a person familiar with the grammars of European
languages and the European culture has great advantage over a person
who knows little about Europe and its langauges. (For me, Esperanto
is no easier than Mandarin.)
Is Esperanto in any way better than Cantonese, then?
Jim> In a certain sense, you are saying that Chinese is
Jim> international.
Why not? Esperantists claim that Esperanto is internation in the
sense that its speakers is spread through different countries on
Earth. So are Chinese speakers! You can find speakers of Chinese in
every continent, except [well... perhaps] Antarctica.
Jim> Would it be possible to ask the rest of the
Jim> world to learn it?
If it were possible to ask the whole world to learn and use Esperanto,
I can't see why it is not possible to ask the rest of the world to
learn Chinese.
Jim> How difficult do you think that would be?
Don't you know that Esperanto is no easier than Chinese for some
people?
You can't see the difficulties of Esperanto, because its grammar and
lexicon resemble those of the langauges that you are familiar with.
So, it appears easy to you and you didn't need to spend much effort to
lean it. The same does not hold for EVERYONE on Earth. For those
whose languages very different from Esperanto in grammar, Esperanto
would be more difficult than the language of an adjacent country.
Jim> Would it be as easy for the world in general to learn
Jim> Chinese, compared with Esperanto?
It will be no more difficult.
Jim> Take someone in an Arab
Jim> country, for example - which would be easier for them,
Jim> Chinese or Esperanto?
I don't know. Could any Arab who knows both Chinese and Esperanto
answer this question?
Jens S. Larsen
In article <32EB4F...@sn.nono>, abl...@sn.nono wrote:
> Jim Howard wrote:
>
> > Is that really true that Esperanto is less useful? German and Spanish you
> > could use in some countries, but lets say you were travelling in the Far
> > East and wanted to spend a few months in each country getting to know the
> > people. Believe it or not, there are very large numbers of esperantists
> > and esperanto clubs in Japan, Korea, and China, especially in the larger
> > cities.
> I don't have any numbers, but I'd be surprised if there aren't as many
> or more Spanish and German as Esperanto speakers in any country you'd
> ever want to go to. Maybe they aren't organized in "clubs", but then
> again, arriving in a country and being hosted by a "club" based on a
> common language doesn't seem as attractive (to me, at least) as just
> walking around meeting people regardless of what language(s) they speak.
If you want to meet people regardless of what languages they speak,
then you'll have to be pretty regardless with what languages you use
yourself (as you actually are, studying Irish as a Norwegian). But
I think it's a little unrealistic to claim universality, or even
generality, to that attitude of yours, even if it's sympatic.
> > But is esperanto really that much more constructed than, say, Spanish?
> > Spanish went through a number of governmental reforms, one of which, for
> > example, makes the Spanish writing system and pronounciation very simple.
> "Govermental reforms" can only busy themselves with spelling, the spoken
> language is way beyond their grasp. So if Spanish pronunciation is
> simple, it's because that's how the language is, not because the
> goverment decided that it should be.
Spoken and written language don't divide themselves neatly like that.
It may be beyond governmental grasp to dictate a certain pronunciation,
but it's not beyond their grasp to elevate a certain dialect to the status
of "literary" (i.e. also radio and TV) standard. And if such a decision
has legitimacy with the population, then it will be carried out.
> > Esperanto is not that dissimilar from other ordinary, modern european
> > languages - except that it is much easier to learn.
> What was the word? ... "e-a-s-i-e-r" - yes, that's it, I've got it now!
Careful with irony, Anders, not everybody understand it the same way...
Jens S. Larsen
-------------------==== Posted via Deja News ====-----------------------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Post to Usenet
D Gary Grady
Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> wrote:
>What's an artificial sound? Certainly you don't mean that music in
>itself is artificial - it's been around as long as languages have.
I suppose it depends upon one's notion of what consititutes
"artificial." Certainly individual pieces and specific forms of music
-- jazz, rock, musique concrete, symphonic music, chamber music --
have been more or less consciously invented. The only form of music
that truly parallels the development of language is folk music.
Incidentally, it occurs to me that your likening artificial languages
to artificial flowers is a weak analogy. "Art" languages, such as
Tolkien's Elvish, are arguably similar to artificial flowers. A
full-fledged living planned language is closer to a cultivated flower
(like a tulip) as opposed to a "natural" wildflower.
More fundamentally, while the negative emotional reaction some persons
have to the whole idea of constructed languages is not necessarily
wrong, it isn't right either. I can think of other commonplace and
presumably "natural" negative emotional reactions that turn out on
examination to be at best mistaken. (Prejudice against anything
"different" is one such class of emotional reaction that is negative
in more than one sense.) Of course, there are also negative emotional
reactions that are entirely justifiable.
In reference to the specific subject of constructed languages, it
seems to me that from an esthetic viewpoint the question is not how a
language came to be but what its current attributes are. Can it for
example serve as a vehicle for all sorts of expression, from the
technical and legal to the poetic and comic?
The fact that, say, Modern Greek represents a more unified chain of
development than the rather more chaotic history of English (a sort of
grand bastard of a language) makes the latter to my mind neither more
nor less "real" a language than the former, nor any better or worse.
Similarly, Esperanto's history is interesting, perhaps, but it doesn't
in itself say very much about the language's expressive power or
suitability for art or anything else.
Your hypothesis seems to be that constructed languages are inherently
inferior to natural ones. That's not an unreasonable hypothesis,
perhaps, but it ought to be backed up with something substantive.
>> Humans have always made languages. Isn't it possible
>> to make a language consciously, as an art? (See my comments in another
>> thread about Modern Hebrew and the artistic achievement of Eliezar ben
>> Yehuda.)
>
>Have we always made (i.e., constructed) languages? For how long is
>"always"?
I was trying to say that language, at least modern literary language,
is in general a product of the human intellect. Humans have been
consciously influencing the development of their languages at least
since the Greek rhetoricians and Roman grammarians and the parallel
developments in other cultures.
Anders Blehr
Jonathan Badger wrote:
> Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> writes:
>
> >But if you *dislike* these features, you have no business complaining
> >about them here [...]
>
> I don't recall *having* complained about them here; I was merely
> responding to your assertion that sci.lang was only for those who
> obtained enjoyment from these features.
I was using the "you" (pl.) in the sense "you Esperantists", not the
"you" (sg.) in the sense "Jonathan Badger", although I admit it's not
very clear. Sorry. Still there definitely are people here who complain
about the "bizzare (and essentially useless) gender system of German and
other irritating and complex features of languages".
> >If you give it some consideration, you'll realize that Esperanto (and
> >maybe Interlingua) are the only languages that are actually *promoted*
> >here in sci.lang [...]
>
> Well... how about English? It is one thing to simply acknowledge that
> English is currently a popular second language (and apparently
> particularly so in Western Europe), but many posts here (even from you
> in a couple of cases) seem to actively promote the use of English
> beyond the level currently seen.
I have never *promoted* English, all I've done is respond to people that
say something along the lines of "what the world needs is one language
that's taught in all schools so that everyone could understand each
other", that there already is such a language, namely English. This is
not promoting anything, it's just observing a fact.
> [...] Have you actually looked at any
> constructed language or are you simply assuming that they must be
> "dead and without scent -- like plastic flowers"? I assume the latter.
Well, I quoted myself in my previous post to let you know why I don't
fancy constructed languages, but somehow it seems that you skipped that
section.
To me, the "scent" of a language is knowing that it has deep roots in a
time and era long gone, hearing the echo of the silent people who have
been speaking it for thousands of years and imagining how they, their
lives, history and culture have contributed to bringing the language to
how we know it today. A constructed language has none (or very little)
of this, which makes it dead as far as I'm concerned.
Again, this is my very own, very subjective opinion.
John Cowan
D Gary Grady wrote:
> Quite so. Esperanto's sole major advantage is that it is relatively
> quite a lot easier to learn. (Some would also note that its political
> neutrality, the fact that it isn't associated with an imperial power,
> makes it more acceptable to a few people, but I don't consider this a
> particularly major advantage.)
Cantonese has this second property also: it is not associated with
an imperial power, and all existing imperial powers either ignore it
or actively repress it.
--
John Cowan co...@ccil.org
e'osai ko sarji la lojban
D Gary Grady
Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> wrote:
[responding to a passing comment about some aspects of German grammar]
>But if you *dislike* these features, you have no business complaining
>about them here, just like I have no business complaining that Pi is not
>a natural number in some sci.numbers newsgroup. That's what "sci"
>stands for, "science", which concerns itself with the world as it is,
>and not as you'd like it to be.
This is a very good point, and it suggests that emotional arguments,
whether for or against Esperanto, have no place here. Unless they can
be backed up by something more than emotion, objections to Esperanto's
origins or praise of its alleged benefits for world peace and
understanding are no more appropriate than gripes about German nouns.
If mere "promotion" of Esperanto -- or any other language -- is out of
place in this forum, and I think it probably ought to be, then the
same rule ought to apply to advocacy from the opposite direction as
well.
I would urge my fellow Esperanto speakers to refrain from postings
intended merely to advertise or promote Esperanto. (I don't think
anyone would have reason to object to an occasional announcement of a
course or a Web page about any language, however, provided it doesn't
stray into advertising.) I would also respectfully urge Anders and
like-minded people to refrain from promoting an anti-Esperanto (or
anti-any-language) cause.
Anders Blehr
Alan Gould wrote:
> Mia aludo al besta komuniko enhavis sugeston ke pli diversaj faktoroj
> influas evoligon de lingvoj ol aux homa intelekto aux organa kresko.
> La kvar supre menciitaj lingvoj estas vortaj, sed multaj aliaj lingvoj
> kaj metodoj de komunikado ekzistas ol sole vortaj.
> Konsente, lingvo kutime indikas homa parolado, sed aliaj specoj, bestaj,
> plantaj kaj mineralaj ankaux komunikas, uzante ne-vortajn lingvojn.
> Tiuj estas la veraj organaj kaj naturaj lingvoj.
Sjølv meine eg at nordhordlandsmåle, som korkje he nasjona elle stata
bak seg burde verta da einaste språkje i heile verda. Ikkje minst med
tankje på strilane, som jo he hatt ei hard tid før i tide, dei kunne då
reise nett *kor* så helst i verda utan å tenkja eit einaste sekund på ka
da eina og da hitt heite på da og da språkje. Ved nerare ittetankje
trur eg at åsanemåle e enno betre egna, for da e snart utdødd likevel.
Why is it that it's OK to write Esperanto here, and not some Western
Norwegian dialect (like I just did)?
Paul O Bartlett
(Followup restricted to sci.lang.)
On Mon, 27 Jan 1997, Anders Blehr wrote:
> Alan Gould wrote:
> > Mia aludo al besta komuniko enhavis sugeston ke pli diversaj faktoroj
> > [...]
> Sj=F8lv meine eg at nordhordlandsm=E5le, som korkje he nasjona elle stata
> [...]
>=20
> Why is it that it's OK to write Esperanto here, and not some Western
> Norwegian dialect (like I just did)?
I will not presume to tell a quasi-private club like
soc.culture.esperanto what to do, although I suspect I have some idea
what the attitude of most of the regulars there is. However, on
sci.lang, as far as I am concerned, you are free to write in any
language you wish as long as your post is relevant to the newsgroup.=20
How many readers will understand you, of course, may depend on what
language you write in. I cannot read Norwegian, but I have no
objection to your having posted in it. (Nor Alan Gould in Esperanto,
Stan Mulaik in Interlingua, or others who have done so in French.)
Paul <pob...@access.digex.net>
----------------------------------------------------------
Paul O. Bartlett, P.O. Box 857, Vienna, VA 22183-0857, USA
Finger, keyserver, or WWW for PGP 2.6.2 public key=20
Home Page: http://www.access.digex.net/~pobart =20
Anders Blehr
D Gary Grady wrote:
> [...] Certainly individual pieces and specific forms of music
> -- jazz, rock, musique concrete, symphonic music, chamber music --
> have been more or less consciously invented. The only form of music
> that truly parallels the development of language is folk music.
I'd say that practically all kinds of music have roots deep in the
people, whether it be the upper classes (classical music), Afro-American
slaves (jazz), frustrated youngsters in the 50's (rock - although you'd
be very correct in saying that rock'n'roll was invented - however, it's
been living its own very organic life ever since), &c. "Modern music"
(I don't know the English term) that has no big audience, only a narrow
circle of people that "understand" it (as opposed to everyone else),
compares more to modern art than to any musical form that has a basis
among "ordinary" people, and thus can be said to be "artificial"
> More fundamentally, while the negative emotional reaction some persons
> have to the whole idea of constructed languages is not necessarily
> wrong, it isn't right either. I can think of other commonplace and
> presumably "natural" negative emotional reactions that turn out on
> examination to be at best mistaken.
When it comes to personal taste and preference, every negative emotional
reaction is as just as any positive. There's no "right and wrong"
determining what should and shouldn't like.
> In reference to the specific subject of constructed languages, it
> seems to me that from an esthetic viewpoint the question is not how a
> language came to be but what its current attributes are. Can it for
> example serve as a vehicle for all sorts of expression, from the
> technical and legal to the poetic and comic?
Not true (to me, that is... ;). It's all the unanswerable questions
about a why a certain language turned out exactly as it did that makes
each language unique and mysterious in its own right. Constructed
languages pose no questions, they've got nothing but answers, and for
each feature there's one and only one answer to why it is as it is. No
mystery.
As you may guess, I like questions better than answers... ;)
> The fact that, say, Modern Greek represents a more unified chain of
> development than the rather more chaotic history of English (a sort of
> grand bastard of a language) makes the latter to my mind neither more
> nor less "real" a language than the former, nor any better or worse.
Completely agreed.
> Your hypothesis seems to be that constructed languages are inherently
> inferior to natural ones. That's not an unreasonable hypothesis,
> perhaps, but it ought to be backed up with something substantive.
It's not a hypothesis, it's my opinion, nothing but my opinion. As a
hypothesis, it's sound in my world, not in yours. Superiority and
inferiority is inherently unmeasurable.
> [...] Humans have been
> consciously influencing the development of their languages at least
> since the Greek rhetoricians and Roman grammarians and the parallel
> developments in other cultures.
Then how do you explain the deviations from standard Latin that led to
Purtuguese, Castillan, Galician, Catalan, French, Occitan, Italian,
Sardinian, Ladinsch and Romanian?
Although I admit you have a point - the language of literature has
heaviliy influenced what "dialects" are considered the "standard"
version of various languages. But the ones defining the language of
literature were mainly writers, not governments.
Edmund Grimley-Evans
Anders Blehr:
|> Why is it that it's OK to write Esperanto here, and not some Western
|> Norwegian dialect (like I just did)?
Nu, ^car Esperanto estas la Internacia Lingvo, kaj norvegaj
dialektoj estas iaj fu^sa^joj, ^cu ne? :-)
In fact, I'm not sure that it is OK to write Esperanto here, and I'm
not sure that it isn't OK to write Norwegian, and I'd be interested to
know whether by "here" you mean sci.lang or soc.culture.esperanto
or both ...
Anders Blehr
Edmund Grimley-Evans wrote:
> In fact, I'm not sure that it is OK to write Esperanto here, and I'm
> not sure that it isn't OK to write Norwegian, and I'd be interested to
> know whether by "here" you mean sci.lang or soc.culture.esperanto
> or both ...
I have no doubts that Esperanto is OK, even preferred, in s.c.e. :)
STAN MULAIK
Lo que vos dice concernente le esperanto, que vos vos diverte de leger le
lingua--un complimento--es le mesme con me con interlingua. Io ama le
traduction a in iste lingua facile, proque io pote esser fluente in illo,
durante que mi tres annos de germano in le gymnasio solmente faceva
possible que io poteva leger historias de Til Eugenspiegel, mais non Kant
o Wittgenstein. Io tam ben ama a visitar le gruppos de novas in que on
scribe in espaniol, o francese, o portugese e leger le notitias, o
scriber alique in interlingua--io es comprehendite per le lectores. Mi
interlingua provide un sapientia de altere linguas romance tal que io
pote comprehender un bon parte de lo que io lege.
What you say concerning esperanto, that you amuse yourself by reading the
language--an accomplishment--es the some with me with interlingua. I like
translation into this easy language, because io can be fluent in it,
while my three years of German in high school only made it possible for
me to read stories of Til Eulenspiegel, but not Kant or Wittgenstein.
I also like to visit newsgroups in which one writes in Spanish, or French,
or Portuguese and to read the notices, or to write something in Interlingua--
I am understood by the readers. My interlingua provides a knowledge of other
romance languages such that I can comprehend a god part of what I read.
--
Stanley A. Mulaik
School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332
uucp: ...!{decvax,hplabs,ncar,purdue,rutgers}!gatech!prism!pscccsm
Internet: psc...@prism.gatech.edu
Steve Conley
>dcout...@a2i-micro.fr wrote:
>> It carries all over the world the culture of Disney, MacDonald,
>> and a lot of other things whose only aim is to make the maximum
>> of money with the minimum of quality.
>> That is not neutral.
In article <32E6CD...@ticz.com>, rmay <rm...@ticz.com> wrote:
>No offense, but I'll trade you a dozen Jean-Paul Sartres for a Walt
>Disney any day. --rmay
Yeah, but how many Jean-Paul Sartres for a Michael Eisner?
--
Steve Conley It's now safe to turn off your television.
st...@coil.com http://www.coil.com/~steve
!! By sending me any unsolicited advertisements in email, you hereby consent
!! to having 5 days of articles from alt.tasteless sent back to you.
Esperanto League N America
abl...@sn.nono writes in a recent posting (reference <32E66A...@sn.nono>):
>Esperanto League N America wrote:
>
>> abl...@sn.nono writes in a recent posting (reference <32E507...@sn.nono>):
>>
>> >The world is as happy as it's going to be already, and to the extent
>> >that it's not happy, it's not because of lack of "international
>> >languages" (whatever that may be).
>>
>> I am always amused at the ease with which Usenet conversations can
>> dismiss huge topics with the wave of a pinkie....
>
>So Esperanto is a "huge topic"? Depends on who you ask, doesn't it?
>
I was referring to the huge topic of "Happiness".
>> Perhaps happiness is thwarted by isolation, and nurtured by communication.
>
>Yes, so what? In case you haven't noticed, people all over the world
>are already engaged in happy communication, as they have been for
>thousands of years and will be for thousands to come.
>
Of course.
And when people travel, they *often* encounter language barriers, which
can cause frustration and unhappiness.
>> I know that I have not felt happy when dealing with the frustration of
>> language barriers. And I do fancy myself happy when I use the international
>> language Esperanto in meaningful dialog with non-English-speakers.
>
>My impression of Esperantists is that speaking the language makes them a
>group apart, and that being part of the group is what's important, not
>the act of communication itself. They tend to communicate only within
>the group, having little tolerance towards people who don't belong to
>it, and showing little or no interest in communicating with
>"outsiders". The Esperanto *culture* seems to be much more important
>than the language itself, and learning the language buys you a pass to
>this *one* culture, not to a diversity of *different* cultures.
>Esperantists boost about the diversity of the Esperanto community, but
>somehow the inherent cultural diversity vanishes under the influx of the
>Esperanto culture, making them a very homogeneous group. Having to
>become equal to be accepted doesn't promote intercultural understanding
>- on the contrary.
>
I regret that this is your impression: mine is *quite* different!
When I talk to a Russian in Esperanto, I use the occasion to learn about
the heart of Russian culture; we speak of things that matter, because
Esperanto allows a deeper conversation than most Russians can manage in
basic-level English (I know no Russian). Likewise when I talk with my
Japanese friends, we compare details of Japanese and US culture. I do
not doubt that some dullards use Esperanto just to talk about Esperanto
stuff, but I can honestly claim I have never met one!
I take great delight in the ability of this international language to
eliminate group distinctions, not to create them.
Perhaps the judgement about Esperantists' allegedly having "little
tolerance toward people who don't belong to [the Esperantists' group]"
is the flip side of their natural enthusiasm for people with whom they
*can* use this method of communication...
>Disclaimer: I'm not saying that this goes for all Esperantists, but it's
>an impression I've had when I've come across groups of Esperantists
>(just because I don't speak Esperanto, it doesn't mean I can't
>understand a lot of what they're saying, more particularly what they're
>saying about those "poor" non-Esperantists).
>
Well, like I said, the pleasure of using Esperanto is so keen and
immediate that those who are left out will *feel* left out!
I have felt like this at friends' houses when they play bridge: I am
then useless and ignored.... [Poor Miko-- he can't play with us!]
--
Miko SLOPER el...@netcom.com USA (510) 653 0998
Direktoro de la ftp.netcom.com:/pub/el/elna fax (510) 653 1468
Centra Oficejo de la Learn Esperanto! Free lessons: e-mail/snail-mail
Esperanto-Ligo de N.A. Write to above address or call: 1-800-ESPERANTO
Esperanto League N America
abl...@sn.nono writes in a recent posting (reference <32E8F9...@sn.nono>):
>
>I enjoy learning languages myself, but somehow the satisfaction I get
>out of understanding and finally mastering the language and its
>simple languages either, but a simple *constructed* language (i.e.,
>constructed to be simple) doesn't get my vote (nor do complex
>constructed languages...).
>
One should not argue about matters of taste. "De gustibus..."
I enjoy the elegant economy of Esperanto's agglutinative structure.
But more importantly, I enjoy the ease with which it can be "used"
at reasonable conversational levels, and the range of people with whom
it can be used. We in the US were taught to dislike and fear Russians,
but I find that many of my propogandized preconceptions fall away when
I meet Russian Esperantists, because I can come to know something about
the way they think, their aspirations, disappointments, etc. I have also
been led away from stereotypical notions about Japanese, Israelis, et al.
by simply getting to know people from these national groups via this
artificial language.
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
>>>>> "John" == John Cowan <co...@ccil.org> writes:
John> D Gary Grady wrote:
>> Quite so. Esperanto's sole major advantage is that it is
>> relatively quite a lot easier to learn. (Some would also note
>> that its political neutrality, the fact that it isn't
>> associated with an imperial power, makes it more acceptable to
>> a few people, but I don't consider this a particularly major
>> advantage.)
John> Cantonese has this second property also: it is not
John> associated with an imperial power, and all existing imperial
John> powers either ignore it or actively repress it.
Cantonese has the first property, too! Nowadays, many HK families
employ female household workers from Philipines. Those filipino
ladies can usually take up Cantonese very quickly -- within 3 or 4
months.
fbernalf...@hotmail.com
La Thu, 23 Jan 1997 17:20:42 +0100, Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono>
tajpis:
>No, it's a language that emerged and develops naturally in an almost
>organic way, just like 999 out of every 1000 languages spoken in the
>world (the odd ones out being the likes of Esperanto and Interlingua).
>
>- Anders.
Yes, like american english and Ebonics assimilation.
Pedro Macanás Valverde :-# es
Je la Thu, 23 Jan 1997 17:20:42 +0100, Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono>
skribis:
>Alan Gould wrote:
>
>No, it's a language that emerged and develops naturally in an almost
>organic way, just like 999 out of every 1000 languages spoken in the
>world (the odd ones out being the likes of Esperanto and Interlingua).
Illness is natural too.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
La malsano esta ankaū natura.
Anders Blehr
Esperanto League N America wrote:
> abl...@sn.nono writes in a recent posting (reference <32E66A...@sn.nono>):
>
> >So Esperanto is a "huge topic"? Depends on who you ask, doesn't it?
>
> I was referring to the huge topic of "Happiness".
Then I'll refer you to the statement that prompted my response about
"happiness": "Isn't the solution, that in order to make the world happy,
there should be more than one international language? One with the
Chinese writing system, one with a middle eastern writing system, and so
on?" The introduction of "happiness" into the discussion was not my
idea...
> And when people travel, they *often* encounter language barriers, which
> can cause frustration and unhappiness.
So people have to learn languages, and more than one at that.
> >[My former impression of Esperanto and Esperantists deleted]
>
> I regret that this is your impression: mine is *quite* different!
If you read some of my more recent postings in this thread, you'll se
that I have a more nuanced impression now than I used to.
> When I talk to a Russian in Esperanto, I use the occasion to learn about
> the heart of Russian culture; we speak of things that matter, because
> Esperanto allows a deeper conversation than most Russians can manage in
> basic-level English (I know no Russian).
Because *good* Esperanto allows a deeper conversation than basic-level
English, just as good English allows a deeper conversation than
basic-level Esperanto. What's your point?
> Perhaps the judgement about Esperantists' allegedly having "little
> tolerance toward people who don't belong to [the Esperantists' group]"
> is the flip side of their natural enthusiasm for people with whom they
> *can* use this method of communication...
Well, how about people communicating in other languages, should they,
because of their "natural enthusiasm for people with whom they can
[communicate]" in a certain language, not try and communicate with those
speaking another language they too speak. What's important is what you
have to say, not what language you use to say it.
> >Disclaimer: I'm not saying that this goes for all Esperantists, but it's
> >an impression I've had when I've come across groups of Esperantists
>
> Well, like I said, the pleasure of using Esperanto is so keen and
> immediate that those who are left out will *feel* left out!
>
> I have felt like this at friends' houses when they play bridge: I am
> then useless and ignored.... [Poor Miko-- he can't play with us!]
Then Esperanto must be the only language in the world that's so exiting
to speak that you don't even try to communicate with others. I'm sure
you're not saying that "the pleasure of using Esperanto" is "keener"
than the pleasure of using any other language you master perfectly...?
Jonathan Badger
Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> writes:
>Pedro Macanás Valverde :-# es wrote:
>> [Anders Blehr:]
>>
>> >No, it's a language that emerged and develops naturally in an almost
>> >organic way, just like 999 out of every 1000 languages spoken in the
>> >world (the odd ones out being the likes of Esperanto and Interlingua).
>>
>> Illness is natural too.
>You can choose to close your eyes to the unpleasant aspects of life, but
>that won't make them go away.
True. But one can *do* something about the unpleasant aspects of life
and that often *does* make them go away. Smallpox for instance. Millions
of years of viral evolution by Nature was beaten by a few years of human
effort and logic.
It is one thing to love Nature blindly in all its forms, cultural and
linguistic as well as biological. But it is quite another to assert
that humans are powerless to change Nature if they want. You seem to
be confusing them.
Anders Blehr
Esperanto League N America wrote:
> We in the US were taught to dislike and fear Russians,
> but I find that many of my propogandized preconceptions fall away when
> I meet Russian Esperantists, because I can come to know something about
> the way they think, their aspirations, disappointments, etc. I have also
> been led away from stereotypical notions about Japanese, Israelis, et al.
> by simply getting to know people from these national groups via this
> artificial language.
This is about getting to know people from different cultures and learn
about their countries, culture and customs. I'm sure you're aware that
Esperanto isn't the only way of achieving this.
Anders Blehr
Paul O Bartlett wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Jan 1997, Anders Blehr wrote:
>
> > Why is it that it's OK to write Esperanto here, and not some Western
> > Norwegian dialect (like I just did)?
>
> I will not presume to tell a quasi-private club like
> soc.culture.esperanto what to do, although I suspect I have some idea
> what the attitude of most of the regulars there is. However, on
> sci.lang, as far as I am concerned, you are free to write in any
> language you wish as long as your post is relevant to the newsgroup.
> How many readers will understand you, of course, may depend on what
> language you write in. I cannot read Norwegian, but I have no
> objection to your having posted in it. (Nor Alan Gould in Esperanto,
> Stan Mulaik in Interlingua, or others who have done so in French.)
I know, I went a little over the top there - and I didn't realize I was
cross-posting to s.c.e, which has brought a flood of hate mail on me.
Accept my humble apologies.
Anders Blehr
Pedro Macanás Valverde :-# es wrote:
> [Anders Blehr:]
>
> >No, it's a language that emerged and develops naturally in an almost
> >organic way, just like 999 out of every 1000 languages spoken in the
> >world (the odd ones out being the likes of Esperanto and Interlingua).
>
> Illness is natural too.
You can choose to close your eyes to the unpleasant aspects of life, but
that won't make them go away.
- Anders.
D Gary Grady
Anders Blehr <abl...@sn.nono> wrote:
>Because *good* Esperanto allows a deeper conversation than basic-level
>English, just as good English allows a deeper conversation than
>basic-level Esperanto. What's your point?
The point is rather obvious, isn't it? In a given amount of time, most
students can reach a higher level of fluency in Esperanto than in
English.
>Well, how about people communicating in other languages, should they,
>because of their "natural enthusiasm for people with whom they can
>[communicate]" in a certain language, not try and communicate with those
>speaking another language they too speak. What's important is what you
>have to say, not what language you use to say it.
Of course; who would argue otherwise?
Anders Blehr
D Gary Grady wrote:
> I certainly can't see anything wrong with appreciating a languages's
> historical heritage, but on the other hand I don't understand why that
> would be the dominant factor in one's judgment.
Taste.
> Suppose you came
> across an unfamiliar (natural) language whose history was unknown to
> you for some reason. Might you not still find the language itself rich
> and interesting?
Yes, indeed, because the origin of the language would be a mystery.
That's what intrigues me about languages, all that's unknown and hard to
explain. With constructed languages there's no mystery.
This is taste, too.