Criticisms of Esperanto in sci.lang
SylvanZ
goal?" two of the particpants made specific criticisms of Esperanto and
Esperantists. I would like to reply to them.
Bill Taylor (mat...@math.canterbury.ac.nz ) wrote:
<<Esperanto has been called "The Language That Can't Live But Won't Die".
<<Very cute. And rather true. Whyever it is, it somehow just seems to put the
backs up of a vast number of folk. I suspect it's something to do with the
near-religious fervor of the converts, and their unspoken but VERY clear
feeling that ALL international intercourse should be done with Esperanto, on
pain of being considered just too silly and recalcitrant otherwise. There is
also the matter that it has always been suffused with a rosy glow of
internationalism and its concommitant optimism/leftishness, that doesn't sit
well with a lot of folk.
<<And, of course, as has been debated endelssly, it's far from perfect. It has
too many inconsitencies, and (as Lee Sau Dan keeps telling us) is far too
Euro-oriented, with its compulsory grammar markers.>>
It is hard to respond to a cute slur like "Esperanto is the language that can't
live but won't die."
All we Esperantists can do is point out that people today use Esperanto to
communicate when they write novels, poems, articles, essays, letters, e-mail
etc, when they lecture in Esperanto, when they argue in Esperanto, when they
make love in Esperanto, when they talk to their children in Esperanto, when
they play with their children in Esperanto, when they visit their friends from
other countries, when they sing in Esperanto and attend concerts given in
Esperanto, when they broadcast in Esperanto, when they share their hopes and
fears and delights and pains in Esperanto. And so on.
It may be that Esperanto will never be accepted as "the second language for
everyone". However it is clearly alive, successful and valued as an
international language spoken by individuals in more than a hundred countries.
These individuals enjoy communicating in a highly expressive international
language that can be learned _relatively_ easily.
People who really learn Esperanto, who get a good step beyond the beginner's
stage, do get fervid about the language. The reasons for this have been
explained by the psychologist (and former professional translator at the UN and
WHO) Claude Piron in his book "Le défi des langues" and in a talk he gave at an
international Esperanto gathering in Basel in March, 1998.
The text of the original talk "Psikologiaj Aspektoj De La Monda Lingvoproblemo
Kaj De Esperanto" may be read at:
http://members.aol.com/sylvanz/pirprel.htm
An English translation "Psychological Aspects of the World Language Problem and
of Esperanto" may be read at:
http://members.aol.com/sylvanz/pirprele.htm
Piron's main point is that when people gain a good understanding of Esperanto,
beyond the beginner's level, they find themselves thinking and communicating in
Esperanto so naturally and so easily, creating new words out of word-elements,
that they take on an identity as Esperantists. This does not happen when they
learn other languages because with other languages it is not safe to
generalize.
Children who grow up in Esperanto speaking homes generalize and very early on
speak good Esperanto.
Children who grow up in English-speaking homes generalize and make mistakes.
They hear "I laugh" and "I laughed", "I learn" and "I learn", and they
generalize saying "I run" and "I runned", and of course they are wrong.
Children who grow up in English-speaking homes hear "one dog" and "two dogs",
and "one house" and "two houses", and so they generalize and say "one child"
and "two childs", and of course they are wrong.
People who study Esperanto and children who grow up in Esperanto-speaking homes
hear "mi ridas" and "mi ridis", "mi lernas" and "mi lernis", and they
generalize saying "mi kuras" and "mi kuris", and they are always right.
People who study Esperanto and children who grow up in Esperanto-speaking homes
hear "unu hundo" and "du hundoj", and "unu domo" and "du domoj", and so they
generalize and say "unu infano" and "du infanoj", and they are always right.
Because of so many patterns like this that can be trusted, Esperanto feels
natural to students who reach a level of understanding of the language that is
comfortably beyond the beginner's level. Then when people who don't know the
language and are arguing a priori attack it, they get upset because the
language has become something that they think in so naturally and so fluently
that it has become in a sense part of themselves. It may not be logical, but
they tend to feel attacked.
A more complete examination of this point of Piron's may be found at:
http://members.aol.com/sylvanz/gv12.htm
Antonio <ip20...@ip.pt> put forth this criticism:
<<I'd say that esperanto is not a language, it is a communications protocol.
The difference is that a 'true' language's grammar isn't written on paper.
People may write it, of course, but they'll be unable to dictate it very much.
In Esperanto, you just have 'regularity' and must be happy with it; you may
innovate, but the free exercise of innovation will result in a language with
irregularities where before there were none.>>
I'm not clear as to what a communications protocol is, but Esperanto is
certainly a language, and I refer you to the paragraph at the beginning of this
article in which I list things that people do using Esperanto.
Those who take the trouble to learn how to read Esperanto fluently and enjoy
such well written novels such as "Sed nur fragmento" by Trevor Steele or
Spomenka Šimec's moving memoir of the Croatian War, "Kroata Milita Noktlibro"
which she wrote during the long and terrifying siege of Zagreb (and which has
appeared in German and Japanese translations) or the witty poems and limericks
of Raymond Schwarz collected in ". . . Kun Siaspeca Spico!" know first-hand
that good writers in Esperanto can be and are highly creative precisely because
there are a few simple rules of the language that must be followed, giving them
tremendous leeway to be creative.
For example, because there is a mandatory accusative ending, --n, Esperanto
writers are free to vary the position of direct objects in a sentence as they
need to in order to create the particular emphasis that they want. Writers of
English, for instance, do not have this particular freedom.
Esperanto writers and speakers have full freedom to combine word elements to
create new words, as long as they make sense. Writers of English, for instance,
do not have this particular freedom.
Detailed examples of this feature of Esperanto may be found at:
http://members.aol.com/sylvanz/gv11.htm
and
http://members.aol.com/sylvanz/gv13.htm
When people argue that Esperanto is not an absolutely perfect language, there
is no way that they can possibly be wrong.
This is because different individuals create different and conflicting sets of
criteria according to which they judge the perfection of a language, so that
even a language that is perfect according to one set of criteria will be
imperfect according to a different set. There is no way that anyone could
invent or that any speech community could develop a language that was perfect
according to every possible set of criteria.
Sylvan Zaft (syl...@aol.com)
Farmington, Michigan, USA
Hejmpagxo/Homepage: http://members.aol.com/sylvanz
(To e-mail me remove REMOVE from my address. Forigu REMOVE de mia ret-posxta
adreso.)
C R Culver
I think Sylvan Z's response to criticism is just what this newsgroup needs
after the latest round of (unintentional sometimes, or not) Esperanto-bashing.
People who criticize Esperanto frequently refer to the fact that Esperantists
are absurd in their desire to see E-o be the international language ("English
is already the international language"). But, as Sylvan implied, there is
another side to the feelings to Esperantists: the joy of using Esperanto in
social contexts.
Yeah, E-o as a language of diplomacy and world trade is all well and good, and
should continue to be proposed, but I enjoy Esperanto as a means of
*conversation.* I enjoy speaking or writing to a person in a distant land who,
because he or she has no knowledge of English, I may otherwise never get to
learn anything from. My knowledge of culture and world events has increased
greatly due to communication with persons abroad who represent a different
country's ways of doing things.
As president (pro-tempore) of the U.S. Society for Young Esperantists (USEJ), I
am very serious in my use of Esperanto (otherwise, I'd never take this
thankless job <grin>). It is my way of seeing the world not from the biased
view of an English speaker, but from the purely international view of an
Esperantist. This unique language Esperanto, far from being a dry, intellectual
pursuit, went about creating its own culture. "La Espero," music by Kajto and
Amplifiki, and William Auld's sage writings (and translations) are known to
almost all Esperantists, and they represent the common discourse people of
different nationalities can share in an Esperanto-speaking environment. What's
even better is this unique Esperanto culture is open to everyone, who has a few
weeks to study a simple language. No particular nationality or first language
required!
Yes, Esperanto isn't for everyone, but I can't understand why anyone would
criticise it for being used, not yet as a grand international tool, but simply
as a fantastic means of communication between individuals.
Christopher R. Culver <crcu...@aol.com>
President Pro-Tempore of USEJ
Prezidanto Dumtempa de USEJ
--------------------------------------------------
http://ttt.esperanto.org/usej/
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
SylvanZ> People who study Esperanto and children who grow up in
SylvanZ> Esperanto-speaking homes hear "mi ridas" and "mi ridis",
SylvanZ> "mi lernas" and "mi lernis", and they generalize saying
SylvanZ> "mi kuras" and "mi kuris", and they are always right.
So what? People who grow up in Chinese-speaking homes hear
<wo3><xiao4> and <wo3><xiao4>, <wo3><xue2> and <wo3><xue2>, and they
don't even have to remember the rules of tense inflections. There is
simply no room for them to be wrong with tense inflections! Such a
grammatical error is eliminated.
SylvanZ> People who study Esperanto and children who grow up in
SylvanZ> Esperanto-speaking homes hear "unu hundo" and "du
SylvanZ> hundoj", and "unu domo" and "du domoj", and so they
SylvanZ> generalize and say "unu infano" and "du infanoj", and
SylvanZ> they are always right.
So what? People who grow up in Chinese-speaking homes here <yi1yue4>
(month 1, i.e. January), <er4yue4> (month 2, i.e. Feburary) and can
immediately generalize it to <san1yue4> (month 3, i.e. March),
<si4yue4> (month 4, i.e. April), ..., <shi2er4yue4> (month 12,
i.e. December). They can't get the month names wrong. How does
Esperanto compare? Esperanto is only a half-baked cake.
SylvanZ> Because of so many patterns like this that can be
SylvanZ> trusted,
How about "shovo" and "shovilo", "preso" and "presilo", etc?
Why isn't "la" inflected in the same way adjectives do, if such
inflectional concord are so "useful"?
There are still too many inconsistencies in Esperanto.
SylvanZ> Those who take the trouble to learn how to read Esperanto
SylvanZ> fluently and enjoy such well written novels such as "Sed
SylvanZ> nur fragmento" by Trevor Steele or Spomenka �imec's
SylvanZ> moving memoir of the Croatian War, "Kroata Milita
SylvanZ> Noktlibro" which she wrote during the long and terrifying
SylvanZ> siege of Zagreb (and which has appeared in German and
SylvanZ> Japanese translations) or the witty poems and limericks
SylvanZ> of Raymond Schwarz collected in ". . . Kun Siaspeca
SylvanZ> Spico!" know first-hand that good writers in Esperanto
SylvanZ> can be and are highly creative precisely because there
SylvanZ> are a few simple rules of the language that must be
SylvanZ> followed, giving them tremendous leeway to be creative.
You only know positive example. Are you aware of negative examples,
where people learnt Esperanto, found it too difficult or too
Eurocentric and eventually gave up?
Your argument isn't strong and is unfair. You just know and stated a
few postive examples. The negative examples, however numerous, all go
unnoticed, uncensused, or even ignored.
If you think your arguments are to the point, it is also possible for
someone to promote crimes by stating a few "positive" examples (or
success stories) in which people enjoy committing crimes, gaining much
satisfaction from doing crimes. This is dangerous!
SylvanZ> For example, because there is a mandatory accusative
SylvanZ> ending, --n, Esperanto writers are free to vary the
SylvanZ> position of direct objects in a sentence as they need to
SylvanZ> in order to create the particular emphasis that they
SylvanZ> want. Writers of English, for instance, do not have this
SylvanZ> particular freedom.
But writers of Esperanto lose the freedom of omiting the "-n". I
don't think this is an advantage.
SylvanZ> Esperanto writers and speakers have full freedom to
SylvanZ> combine word elements to create new words,
But they have no freedom concerning the rule of adjective-noun
concord. They don't have to freedom to omit the tense markers, case
markers and plural markers.
SylvanZ> as long as
SylvanZ> they make sense. Writers of English, for instance, do not
SylvanZ> have this particular freedom.
As long as it makes sense, English writers have as much freedom (but
different types of freedom) as Esperanto writer. Moreover, English
writers know that they can reach a larger potential audience DIRECTLY
understand they writings without the need of translations. How does
Esperanto compare? (Don't get me wrong. I'm not promoting English as
an international language. I just don't think Esperanto is in any way
better than English.)
SylvanZ> When people argue that Esperanto is not an absolutely
SylvanZ> perfect language, there is no way that they can possibly
SylvanZ> be wrong.
Esperanto is even worse (more complicated rules, more inconsistencies,
less freedom) than some other native languages.
SylvanZ> This is because different individuals create different
SylvanZ> and conflicting sets of criteria according to which they
SylvanZ> judge the perfection of a language, so that even a
SylvanZ> language that is perfect according to one set of criteria
SylvanZ> will be imperfect according to a different set. There is
SylvanZ> no way that anyone could invent or that any speech
SylvanZ> community could develop a language that was perfect
SylvanZ> according to every possible set of criteria.
But Esperanto is too Eurocentric to be an IAL. Esperanto may be
"good" or even "perfect" when judged by Eurocentric criteria, but it
is definitely "bad" when judged by other criteria.
--
Lee Sau Dan �,X)wAV(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)
.----------------------------------------------------------------------------.
| http://www.cs.hku.hk/~sdlee e-mail: sd...@cs.hku.hk |
`----------------------------------------------------------------------------'
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
C> Yes, Esperanto isn't for everyone, but I can't understand why
C> anyone would criticise it for being used, not yet as a grand
C> international tool, but simply as a fantastic means of
C> communication between individuals.
No one would criticize Esperanto for being used in a close group.
However, when you try to *promote* Esperanto as an *international*
auxiliary language, people would and should criticize it.
Chris S.
syl...@aol.comREMOVE (SylvanZ) wrote:
> Children who grow up in English-speaking homes generalize and make mistakes.
> They hear "I laugh" and "I laughed", "I learn" and "I learn", and they
> generalize saying "I run" and "I runned", and of course they are wrong.
>
> Children who grow up in English-speaking homes hear "one dog" and "two dogs",
> and "one house" and "two houses", and so they generalize and say "one child"
> and "two childs", and of course they are wrong.
>
> People who study Esperanto and children who grow up in Esperanto-speaking
> homes hear "mi ridas" and "mi ridis", "mi lernas" and "mi lernis", and they
> generalize saying "mi kuras" and "mi kuris", and they are always right.
But the thing is that people learn from their mistakes too. There is a
chance that there is an Esperanto-speaking kid out there who can say "mi
lernas".. But does he know how to use past and future tenses yet? Not unless
he hears his parents say it.
That's the same thing with "I run/I runned." They don't know it has a
different form until they listen to their mom or dad say it. And when they
do know, they probably won't make the mistake again. It will be more
"natural-sounding" to them when they're older to hear "I ran" ...
I do not know why you brought up children into the discussion. They are
different from adults learning the language. Children making errors in their
own languages is very common in every language.. They learn by trial and
error. And yes, even in Esperanto.
--Chris
--
* Mabuhay, sti! * ;)
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own
SylvanZ
>I do not know why you brought up children into the discussion.
I was responding to criticisms made of Esperanto in this group.
While doing so I was summarizing Piron's ideas about why many Esperantists
grow so fond of the language.
Piron's point is that Esperanto is a more natural language to learn than, for
instance, English both for the children who grow up in Esperanto-speaking
homes and for those people who study it as a second language.
Instead of having to learn a very large number of arbitrary rules, people who
learn Esperanto can safely generalize from examples.
This is the natural way that the human brain works--generalizing from examples.
The child hears "I will go" and "he will drive" and the child generalizes
saying "I will play".
But then the child says, "I will must" and, of course, encounters a correction.
There is an additional rule that says that you cannot generalize in the case of
the verb "must".
There are many thousands of such additional rules that must be mastered to
speak English correctly.
Naturally, as time goes on, the child learns how to speak English correctly.
This is possible with one's native language because native speakers practice
(use) their language over five thousand hours a year. When you practice a
language over five thousand hours a year for decades you get pretty good at it.
You can master the thousands of rules about exceptions.
People who study a second language simply
do not have that much time to put in.
Esperanto fills the gap here because you can safely generalize when you learn
Esperanto.
The Esperanto-speaking child learns how to trust his or her generalizing
powers, powers that naturally develop in the human brain. In this way Esperanto
fits the human brain.
The English-speaking child cannot trust his or her genralizing powers because
of the many thousands of special rules that create exceptions.
When it comes to learning most second languages most of the work goes into
learning the exceptions.
When it comes to learning Esperanto an enormous amount of this extra work is
simply not necessary.
Therefore the Esperanto student can more quickly progress to the point where he
or she is speaking naturally, not worrying about exceptions, and can reach the
point where it is as natural to engage in a conversation in Esperanto as it is
in his or her native language.
Speaking Esperanto becomes so natural that it can easily become part of one's
identity. Then when people slur Esperanto as, for instance, "the language that
can't live but won't die" or "it's not a real language", Esperantists get upset
and protest, sometimes too vehemently.
And then their opponents accuse them of being fanatics.
For more details I refer you to the WWW sites I mentioned in my previous
posting.
I hope this explains why I brought children into the discussion.
Sylvan Zaft (syl...@aol.comREMOVE)
SylvanZ
>
>
> SylvanZ> People who study Esperanto and children who grow up in
> SylvanZ> Esperanto-speaking homes hear "mi ridas" and "mi ridis",
> SylvanZ> "mi lernas" and "mi lernis", and they generalize saying
> SylvanZ> "mi kuras" and "mi kuris", and they are always right.
>
>So what? People who grow up in Chinese-speaking homes hear
><wo3><xiao4> and <wo3><xiao4>, <wo3><xue2> and <wo3><xue2>, and they
>don't even have to remember the rules of tense inflections. There is
>simply no room for them to be wrong with tense inflections! Such a
>grammatical error is eliminated.
>
Very good.
I'm not criticizing Chinese. There's nothing wrong with a language that has no
tense inflections.
I was showing a way in which Esperanto works better than English.
I was not trying to show that Esperanto works better than all of the 6000 or so
languages that are spoken in every conceivable way.
Chinese is easier than Esperanto or English in this particular way.
Learning to write Chinese is much, much harder than learning to write
Esperanto.
Learning to speak in tones (for foreign students) presents a special challenge
for students of Chinese.
So what?
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
wrote:
>Piron's point is that Esperanto is a more natural language to learn than, for
>instance, English both for the children who grow up in Esperanto-speaking
>homes and for those people who study it as a second language.
>
>Instead of having to learn a very large number of arbitrary rules, people who
>learn Esperanto can safely generalize from examples.
>
>This is the natural way that the human brain works--generalizing from examples.
Obviously not. Otherwise natural languages wouldn't have all
those irregularities and arbitrary rules.
First time I've seen it claimed that an artificial language is
more natural than a natural language.
==
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal ~ ~
Amsterdam _____________ ~ ~
m...@wxs.nl |_____________|||
========================== Ce .sig n'est pas une .cig
Michael Urban
SylvanZ <syl...@aol.comREMOVE> wrote:
> [ responses to particular criticisms of E'o seen recently ]
One problem that we often see in discussions about Esperanto is that
criticisms about Esperanto itself -- for example, objections to the
accusative case -- get all muddled together with criticisms of the
basic _idea_ of Esperanto, i.e., a regularized, planned idiom intended
as a global interlanguage.
The two types of criticisms are at opposite ends of the spectrum, it
seems to me. The former seem to share the faith of the inventors of
Ido, Interlingua, Novial, Uni, and all the other variations on the
theme, that if someone could just devise a _better_ Esperantoish
language, the world will be able to get behind it and flock to learn it
and make it the universal second language that the world needs.
Amusingly, these critics themselves are often in two diametrically
opposed varieties: those who find Esperanto `too European' and hence
unsuitable as an interlanguage; and those who find Esperanto
`insufficiently international' with its a priori correlatives, words
like "kaj", etc., and want to reform its vocabulary and phonology to
more resemble internationally-recognizable (i.e. European) tongues.
The other type of critic works from an entirely different set of
premises. The whole notion of a planned idiom is distasteful to them.
Such things are "artificial" and "sterile", and are not "real"
languages. Or the idea that such a language would solve any problems
is ridiculous. Or the proponents of such idioms are naive and
unrealistic in failing to recognize that English is already the
international language. Such critics focus on Esperanto not because of
any of the details of the language -- indeed, most such critics display
a ignorance of Esperanto itself that would be laughable in a similar
discussion of any national or ethnic language -- but simply because it
is the most visible and successful attempt to establish such a language
on a worldwide basis.
It is probably impossible to answer both sets of criticisms at once, in
any coherent and rational manner. Sometimes I think that Esperantists
would best be served by stepping back and letting the language
reformers argue with the interlanguage skeptics. Let them rehash the
same arguments, while the Esperantists just go on with _using_
Esperanto-- writing WWW pages, corresponding with friends, attending
the many international gatherings of Esperantists, improving computer
support for the language, and so on.
Nur kelkaj gutoj malgrandaj.
Greg Lee
...
: But then the child says, "I will must" and, of course, encounters a correction.
: There is an additional rule that says that you cannot generalize in the case of
: the verb "must".
Oh yeah? I don't believe it.
There is a literature and there are competing theories on this question. Here
you've made a substantial and controversial proposal, probably without noticing.
I think you probably also made up this fact about what children say. You want
to know why sometimes some linguists get irritated with Esperantists?
This is why.
...
--
Greg Lee <l...@Hawaii.edu>
Jens S. Larsen
[...]
> Antonio <ip20...@ip.pt> put forth this criticism:
> <<I'd say that esperanto is not a language, it is a
> communications protocol. The difference is that a 'true'
> language's grammar isn't written on paper. People may write
> it, of course, but they'll be unable to dictate it very much.
> In Esperanto, you just have 'regularity' and must be happy
> with it; you may innovate, but the free exercise of innovation
> will result in a language with irregularities where before
> there were none.>>
> I'm not clear as to what a communications protocol is, but
> Esperanto is certainly a language, and I refer you to the
> paragraph at the beginning of this article in which I list
> things that people do using Esperanto.
And below (also snipped) you show how the free exercise of innovation
(in children's language) is just as likely to do away with
irregularities as to create them.
[...]
> good writers in Esperanto can be and are highly creative
> precisely because there are a few simple rules of the language
> that must be followed, giving them tremendous leeway to be
> creative.
>
> For example, because there is a mandatory accusative ending,
> --n, Esperanto writers are free to vary the position of direct
> objects in a sentence as they need to in order to create the
> particular emphasis that they want. Writers of English, for
> instance, do not have this particular freedom.
>
> Esperanto writers and speakers have full freedom to combine
> word elements to create new words, as long as they make sense.
> Writers of English, for instance, do not have this particular
> freedom.
I don't think the freedom, inasmuch as it makes sense to speak of it
in this context, resides in the language as such, but rather in
people's attitudes. It's important for people who want to learn
Esperanto that they are told that this language is theirs too; they
must feel welcome into the culture its speakers generate, whereas
national cultures don't inherently need to be regenerated through
newcomers. All languages are equally complex in the long run, but the
Esperanto culture also needs those who only run a very short distance
-- which is why Esperanto's _entrance_ has been cleared of so many
difficulties. You can have all the complexity you want if you only
dig deeper, but of course people should be seduced to dig rather than
forced.
[...]
--
Jens S. Larsen
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Michael Urban <ur...@netcom.com> wrote a lot of sense, most of which I've
deleted, concluding with:
>It is probably impossible to answer both sets of criticisms at once, in
>any coherent and rational manner. Sometimes I think that Esperantists
>would best be served by stepping back and letting the language
>reformers argue with the interlanguage skeptics. Let them rehash the
>same arguments, while the Esperantists just go on with _using_
>Esperanto-- writing WWW pages, corresponding with friends, attending
>the many international gatherings of Esperantists, improving computer
>support for the language, and so on.
I can only agree. If Esperantists devoted all their time to using Esper-
anto and none of it to trying to convince anyone else to use it, I doubt
they would catch much flak. When's the last time you saw someone rag on
Klingon or Quenya in this newsgroup? As soon as an Esperantist (Don HAR-
LOW) explained to me that most people are involved with the language be-
cause they enjoy the dynamic, internationalist culture it serves as vehi-
cle for and not because they think it will solve any of the world's pro-
blems, my opposition to it ceased.
So, go nuts with your webpages, correspondence, conferences, whatever.
I'll think fondly of y'all as I sample Mark Rosenfelder's Verdurian, play
with a Baluchi phrasebook or a description of the secret language of the
Blacks of Tabatinga, or puzzle out Weanerisch comic books and song lyrics.
Laebn un laebn lassi, gel?
--
Daniel "Da" von Brighoff /\ Dilettanten
(de...@midway.uchicago.edu) /__\ erhebt Euch
/____\ gegen die Kunst!
pricer...@my-dejanews.com
m...@wxs.nl wrote:
(snip)
> Obviously not. Otherwise natural languages wouldn't have all
> those irregularities and arbitrary rules.
Not sure about the "obviously"! ;-) What _is_ obvious is that this
discussion will definitely pivot on all the slippery meanings given to the
words "nature", "naturally", etc. One could make a similar argument that all
humans must be naturally wicked because of wars, slavery, rape, and
oppressions of all kinds that we all know about. In fact, come to think of
it, that argument already has been made! ;-) There are cogent arguments,
though, that the human animal is instead inherently compassionate and social,
and that institutions such as war and slavery are relatively recent
inventions. The debate rages on, with each side adducing evidence from
research with humans and with our simian "cousins".
It seems reasonable to speculate that human infants who were socialized in a
way which supported and encouraged their inherent nature would develop very
differently from what we're used to seeing, and that this would apply to
language usage as well. This idea goes back _at least_ to Rousseau. It's
not "obvious" that it's true... but it's also not obvious that it's not.
>
> First time I've seen it claimed that an artificial language is
> more natural than a natural language.
>
> ==
> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal ~ ~
> Amsterdam _____________ ~ ~
> m...@wxs.nl |_____________|||
>
> ========================== Ce .sig n'est pas une .cig
>
-----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
Padraic Brown
: I was showing a way in which Esperanto works better than English.
Well, here's just one point where Esperantists often get into trouble. It doesn't "work
better" than English; just differently. Such 'better than the common muck' attitudes tend to
turn many against E-o and its adherents; it makes Esperantists seem very defensive; and such
arguments won't get any of us anywhere. Most studiers of language -- those more learned than
me and those less so -- I'm sure would support the idea that there is no such thing as a
"better" language; and that the idea of one part of lang. x being "better than" the analagous
part of lang. z is very odd, if not rediculous.
Padraic Brown.
: Sylvan Zaft (syl...@aol.comREMOVE)
pricer...@my-dejanews.com
de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote:
(snip)
> Laebn un laebn lassi, gel?
Would that it were possible.
However, there are many reasons why it is unlikely. For one thing, most
Esperantists are not trained linguists. When we appear in this forum, we are
quite likely to make elementary gaffes and blunders which are irritating or
annoying to professionals... just like any non-Esperantist who, having read,
say Pinker's book, or some old book by Mario Pei, wanders into sci.lang and
asks some damfool question for the Nth time. I recall Peter Daniels catching
me in a truly stupid remark about Hebrew. How easy it is slide from "gosh,
that was a dumb remark" to "Well, what can you expect from someone stupid
enough to learn Esperanto", etc. (I am not implying that any such though ever
passed through Peter's mind; I'm suspect he doesn't even recall what I'm
referring to). And for us to enjoy the "international culture" you speak of,
it _is_ necessary for us to recruit new speakers _somewhere_ (not necessarily
sci.lang), unless we want the whole thing to stagnate and die (increasing the
speech community by sexual reproduction sounds like more fun, but in practice
so far hasn't been conspicuously effective; Jouko Lindstedt, who seems to
have the best handle on things, guesses that there are perhaps as many as a
thousand people who speak it as their first language... and by no means all
choose to continue active use of the language into adulthood. ;-) ). Even
just including a URL for a website in ones .sig, which seems to me about as
low-key as one can get, evokes the most bizarre reactions from some people.
And even if we chose to not recruit at all, there's no way we can
"un-publish" all the material, ranging from out-dated elementary textbooks to
outlandish propaganda brochures, which are out there. My take on
"Esperanto-bashing"is that most such flamewars are provoked by someone who
has (1) encountered some of the aforementioned propaganda somewhere (2)
learned _a little bit_ of Esperanto (3) decided to enlighten the world.
Perhaps you recall "sinjoro DONKON" who has appeared under various aliases
and posts in all caps with "?" replacing "!". "The Esperantists" include
him, at least the way most people would use the term "the Esperantists"...
and we have absolutely no control whatsoever over him and his ilk.
Similarly, "the linguists" have no way of keeping someone who, though
otherwise a sane and pleasant person, has some irrational and uncontrollable
animus against Esperanto, from making some parenthetic slur against the
language or its adherents in a post. I may eventually learn to refrain
myself from reacting in any way, but can there be some sort of guarantee that
no one else will?
George, hoping it's not as cold in Chicago as it is in Alaska today
SylvanZ
were made in the thread "Should an international language have a more modest
goal?"
In that thread Bill Taylor wrote:
<<Esperanto has been called "The Language That Can't Live But Won't Die".
<<Very cute. And rather true. Whyever it is, it somehow just seems to put the
backs up of a vast number of folk. I suspect it's something to do with the
near-religious fervor of the converts. . . .>>
I complained about the "cute slur". Then, for those who were interested in the
origin of the strong emotions which many Esperantists have about the language,
I indicated the web site of a paper by the psychologist Claude Piron that dealt
with this topic.
I pointed out that Esperanto is used as a vibrant living language by an
international community of users and that it is very much alive.
Then I summarized some of Piron’s points. Some of these referred to children
generalizing in English and in Esperanto. One point was that English has a lot
of exceptions to grammatical rules. Esperanto does not. Because of this young
native speakers of Esperanto speak much more correctly than young native
speakers of English do. Learners of Esperanto as a second language are also
helped by the lack of exceptions to the grammatical rules. Because they can
operate freely within the rules and not have to worry about so many thousands
of exceptions, once they get to a certain intermediate level they have a sense
of operating so confidently and naturally in the language that the language
becomes part of them and so they get upset at unfounded slurs on the language.
I wrote, "It may not be logical, but they tend to feel attacked."
I suggested that Esperanto could "be learned _relatively_ easily." I underlined
"relatively."
Antonio, another writer in the previous thread wrote:
<<I'd say that esperanto is not a language, it is a communications protocol.
The difference is that a 'true' language's grammar isn't written on paper.
People may write it, of course, but they'll be unable to dictate it very much.
In Esperanto, you just have 'regularity' and must be happy with it; you may
innovate, but the free exercise of innovation will result in a language with
irregularities where before there were none.>>
I took exception to this and pointed out examples of fine literature in
Esperanto. I pointed out some features of Esperanto that such authors take
advantage of, such as word order that is freer than that of English (because of
the accusative ending --n) and the freedom to combine word elements to create
new understandable words.
Then I wrote that of course Esperanto is not a perfect language. There are
competing sets of criteria for perfection in a language, so even if a language
were to be perfect according to one set of criteria it would necessarily be
imperfect according to conflicting sets of criteria.
Lee Sau Dan then posted several criticisms of what I wrote. He pointed out some
ways in which Chinese is easier to learn than Esperanto. For instance, there
are no tenses and the months are numbered and not named.
Then he pointed out some of the inconsistencies that do exist in Esperanto. He
wrote "There are still too many inconsistencies in Esperanto."
I agree that Esperanto is not perfectly logical and that it does not have the
simplest conceivable grammar and that it does have some inconsistencies. I
never claimed that it was perfectly logical or that it had the simplest
conceivable grammar or that it was one hundred per cent without
inconsistencies.
Lee took exception to my pointing out only positive examples of people using
Esperanto. He claimed, quite correctly, that some people have found it too
difficult and have given up after trying to learn it.
I never suggested that everyone who tried to learn Esperanto mastered it. I
only claimed that it was _relatively_ easy to learn.
He pointed out that <<writers of Esperanto lose the freedom of omiting the
"-n".>>
He is quite correct. He does not think this is an advantage.
It is a matter of a trade-off. It’s a matter of the cost-benefit ratio of using
the accusative ending.
If you have the -n (accusative) ending you gain a lot of flexibility in word
order. But you lose the freedom of omitting the -n. And, more to the point,
(something that Lee did not mention) it takes practice to learn how to use this
ending.
Is the trade-off worth it or not? People make different judgments on this. I
happen to think it is. Lee happens to think it isn’t.
Lee also pointed out that although speakers of Esperanto have freedom to
combine word elements to create new words <<they have no freedom concerning
the rule of adjective-noun concord. They don't have to freedom to omit
the tense markers, case
markers and plural markers.>>
He is correct. Esperanto does not get rid of all possible rules. Those who want
to learn a language which does not have this set of rules will select some
other language with some other set of rules. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Then Lee pointed out that many more people read English than Esperanto. Of
course, he is right. Nobody has ever claimed otherwise.
Then he says that "Esperanto is too Eurocentric to be an IAL."
In my original posting I made no claims whatsoever for Esperanto regarding its
suitability as an IAL. Nowhere in this thread have I pushed for Esperanto’s use
as an IAL. So Lee is not answering my posting here.
I was simply criticizing those who claim that Esperanto is not really a living
language and I was criticizing someone who claimed that Esperanto is not a real
language. I indicated Piron’s essay to suggest why many Esperantists have
strong feelings about the language.
Lee himself introduced the IAL theme into this thread.
In responding to Lee I wrote that I was not criticizing Chinese, that "I was
showing a way in which Esperanto works better than English."
Notice that I said "a way".
Padraic Brown wrote <<It doesn't "work better" than English; just differently.
Such 'better than the common muck' attitudes tend to turn many against E-o and
its adherents. . .>
I did not say that Esperanto worked better than English. I said that there was
"a way" in which Esperanto worked better than English. I made no exaggerated
claims for Esperanto. I simply pointed out that it is much safer to generalize
while learning Esperanto than while learning English and that Esperanto is
_relatively_ easy to learn (compared, say, to English.)
I believe that some of the criticisms that people made have very little to do
with what I wrote or claimed in my postings in this thread.
(I guess Esperanto strikes a nerve. I made a posting defending Esperanto
against claims that were made in this newsgroup that it is not a real living
language and a sizable discussion ensues.)
Antonio
> When's the last time you saw someone rag on Klingon or Quenya in
> this newsgroup?
Right to the point :)
> Laebn un laebn lassi, gel?
Is that Wienese? What is _gel_?
--
@NtOnju mArkS
Plant Systematics & Evolution
Padraic Brown
: In responding to Lee I wrote that I was not criticizing Chinese, that "I was
: showing a way in which Esperanto works better than English."
: Notice that I said "a way".
I did: my problem, however, is with "better" and not "a way".
: Padraic Brown wrote <<It doesn't "work better" than English; just
: differently. Such 'better than the common muck' attitudes tend to turn
: many against E-o and its adherents. . .>
: I did not say that Esperanto worked better than English. I said that there was
: "a way" in which Esperanto worked better than English.
Then "better than English" has two separate meanings for us! I don't have
a problem your clever wording (are you an attorney?): "a way in which". It
keeps you out of the pit, while leaving you at the rim. I _do_ have a
problem with the concept of "better"; which implies imperfections or
faults in one language and superiority of some sort in another. People
often feel the same way about creoles, or about dialect. Your implication
is that there is some sort of substantive hierarchy of languages where
there really is none. That's solely where my problem with your whole post
lies.
: I made no exaggerated claims for Esperanto.
I never said you did. I only wish to curb arguments in favor of
superiority (regardless of how large or small). I'd do no differently if
someone got up a thread about the superiority of Italian or Swahili.
: (I guess Esperanto strikes a nerve. I made a posting defending Esperanto
: against claims that were made in this newsgroup that it is not a real living
: language and a sizable discussion ensues.)
Perhaps you should have kept the defense to that one point? If that had
been the case, the ensuing discussion probably would have died much
sooner; or might have evolved into a longwinded chat on what constitutes
"living" and "real" languages. I agree that E-o is a language, the full
_equal_ of any other; but I do also believe that nerves are tweaked by
Esperantists who make unwarranted claims about their tongue. And I see
the above as one such; though rather mild in comparison to others I've
seen; and one which many others have proposed with respect to the language
of their choice. Unfortunately, this amorphous group of others have given
the rest of you a bit of a sour reputation.
Padraic Brown.
: Sylvan Zaft (syl...@aol.comREMOVE)
Peter T. Daniels
> That's the same thing with "I run/I runned." They don't know it has a
> different form until they listen to their mom or dad say it. And when they
> do know, they probably won't make the mistake again. It will be more
> "natural-sounding" to them when they're older to hear "I ran" ...
That isn't, in fact, how children are observed to learn irregular forms,
but I don't want to have anything to do with yet another Esperanto
debate.
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@worldnet.att.net
Antonio
> This thread began when I answered two criticisms of Esperanto.
> These criticisms were made in the thread "Should an international
> language have a more modest goal?"
That's very nice, Sylvan, but do you always behave like this in
Usenet? Do you always rewind then play all the discussions again and
again?
> Then he says that "Esperanto is too Eurocentric to be an IAL."
One word about Eurocentrism. I don't (as many do) think that
Esperanto is Eurocentric in what regards its internal properties. I
don't think that its mainly western european lexicon is really that
eurocentric - for that matter, a lexicon would be needed, and
building one from scratch seems little better. Neither is its
grammar that eurocentric, if we take into account one or two of its
features. Those wouldn't be real problems, and surely not the ones
to complain about. Esperanto is eurocentric in its *design*.
It is exactly what a 19th century Enlightment-loving eastern
european would come up with. The reasoning behind its words, the
reasoning behind its grammar, the reasoning behind its philosophy is
typically eurocentric.
> In my original posting I made no claims whatsoever for Esperanto
> regarding its suitability as an IAL. Nowhere in this thread have
> I pushed for Esperanto’s use as an IAL. So Lee is not answering
> my posting here.
If the point isn't defending Esperanto as an IL, then there is
simply no point. Noone would tamper with the linguistic-only
exercise of esperantism! Noone needs to defend Esperanto for the
sake of defending it, because noone attacks Esperanto for the sake
of attacking it. So, your comment above is devoid of sense.
> I was simply criticizing those who claim that Esperanto is not
> really a living language
And it isn't. It is less alive than Latin. Latin has fine
literature, still being written, is used in all the Arts, in
international meetings, trials, etc. And it evolves! You change
Latin a little bit, and it keeps being Latin. You change Esperanto
and it turns into Ido & Company.
> and I was criticizing someone who claimed that Esperanto is not
> a real language.
And it isn't. Who do people resort to in learning Esperanto? To
Esperanto-speakers or to the Fundamento _et al._? Which is the final
authority? What if a subset of Esperanto-speakers decides to
smoothen [what they think are] some wrinkles in Esperanto, will they
be speaking _correctly_? For any langauge (except French Almighty),
they will. For Esperanto, no.
> I indicated Piron’s essay to suggest why many Esperantists have
> strong feelings about the language.
Well, but do you intend us to take Piron's written word as the
UltimateTruthe(tm)?
> Padraic Brown wrote <<It doesn't "work better" than English; just
> differently. Such 'better than the common muck' attitudes tend to
> turn many against E-o and its adherents. . .>
>
> I did not say that Esperanto worked better than English. I said
> that there was "a way" in which Esperanto worked better than
> English (...)
But that wasn't his point. His point was directed to *that* 'one way
that...'
> I believe that some of the criticisms that people made have very
> little to do with what I wrote or claimed in my postings in this
> thread.
No, I do think that it is you who (as people do so often) aren't
interested in discussing and just try to tackle anything that is
said against your assumptions without really thinking whether it is
right or not. Any somewhat objective reading of the discussion would
reveal two people saying always the same things, a bunch of others
objecting, and then you restating your beliefs, seemingly ignoring
everything. In shorter words, your 'answers to criticism' have
little to do with the criticisms that have been made here.
> (I guess Esperanto strikes a nerve. I made a posting defending
> Esperanto against claims that were made in this newsgroup that it
> is not a real living language and a sizable discussion ensues.)
Should you try to replace 'Esperanto' by 'Mayan', you would get
exactly the same discussion. Convince yourself: people *aren't*
against Esperanto. People aren't against anything. They just aren't
interested in it at all and get tired of the propaganda, just as
they grow tired of vaccum-cleaner sellers or JWs.
(With my apologies to all the JWs and to the 'quiet' Esperantists)
A bigger discussion has developed around the origins of the word
_Blitzkrieg_, another around Duenkirchen...
SylvanZ
<Do you always rewind then play all the discussions again and again?>
No. But when I say one thing and people criticize me for saying something else,
a summary of what I said and did not say is in order.
<If the point isn't defending Esperanto as an IL, then there is simply no
point.>
There is a difference between Esperanto being used as an IL, which it is, and
as a universal IAL, which it isn't. I understand IL to mean a language whose
customary use is for communication between people who do not know or who are
not comfortable using each other's native language.
<<Noone needs to defend Esperanto for the
sake of defending it, because noone attacks Esperanto for the sake of attacking
it. So, your comment above is devoid of sense.>>
I was not defending Esperanto for the sake of defending it. I was responding to
a reported slur and clarifying an error. When people say that Esperanto is
"The Language That Can't Live But Won't Die" or that "esperanto is not a
language" this is an attack on Esperanto. This is promulgating negative myths
about Esperanto. Clarification is clearly called for.
<< It is less alive than Latin. Latin has fine literature, still being written,
is used in all the Arts, in international meetings, trials, etc. And it
evolves! >>
I was not criticizing Latin. I was not talking about the relative "aliveness"
of different languages.
If we are going to use the "alive" metaphor for languages, it should certainly
be applied to Esperanto. Esperanto has and is evolving. The vocabulary has
certainly evolved. The use of affixes like "eg" and "et" and "ajh" to form
free-standing words like "ege" and "ajho" is a simple example of the
development of the language. There has been a rich development of the language
within the framework of the fundamentals of the language.
<<Who do people resort to in learning Esperanto? To Esperanto-speakers or to
the Fundamento _et al._? Which is the final
authority?>>
Good question. Both. For certain few basics of the language, the Fundamento
(the book that lays out the few basic rules of Esperanto.) Beyond that the
community of users. For instance, that nouns end in -o, the Fundamento. For
adopting new roots and new affixes and new pronouns, the community of users.
(http://members.aol.com/sylvanz/gv3.htm)
<<Well, but do you intend us to take Piron's written word as the
UltimateTruthe(tm)?>>
Of course not. His essay is pertinent to a point that Bill Taylor brought up
about the psychology of Esperantists and as such is worth reading and
considering.
<<Any somewhat objective reading of the discussion would reveal two people
saying always the same things, a bunch of others
objecting, and then you restating your beliefs, seemingly ignoring
everything.>>
I don't think that is the case here. I have commented point-by-point to
specific objections to and misreadings of what I wrote.
I restated some of my assertions to indicate specifically how they had been
misread.
<<They just aren't interested in it at all>>
Then no one would have responded to my original posting (which would have been
fine because I was simply correcting some errors.)
<<and get tired of the propaganda>>
I don't like propaganda either. I have argued strongly against it.
(http://members.aol.com/sylvanz/gv21.htm)
Correcting errors and criticizing negative myths is not engaging in
propaganda. I agreed with some of Lee's points and even strengthened one of
them (about the ending -n). A propagandist does not strengthen a point made by
a critic. Someone interested in the truth does.
<<A bigger discussion has developed around the origins of the word
_Blitzkrieg_, another around Duenkirchen...>>
Of course!
I was not trying to start a big discussion. I was simply trying to correct
misleading wrong statements about Esperanto. For some reason I'm tired of them.
Peter T. Daniels
>
> On 1/29/98 Antonio wrote:
>
> <Do you always rewind then play all the discussions again and again?>
>
> No. But when I say one thing and people criticize me for saying something else,
> a summary of what I said and did not say is in order.
No it isn't.
These incessant fights over Esperanto are stupid and pointless. Why
don't you-all get yourselves a new newsgroup? I'm sure everyone else
here would be *thrilled* to see ALL pro- and anti- Esperanto fights
banished to it forever.
Jens S. Larsen
> SylvanZ wrote:
[...]
> > In my original posting I made no claims whatsoever for
> > Esperanto regarding its suitability as an IAL. Nowhere
> > in this thread have I pushed for Esperanto=92s use as
> > an IAL. So Lee is not answering my posting here.
> If the point isn't defending Esperanto as an IL, then there is
> simply no point. Noone would tamper with the linguistic-only
> exercise of esperantism! Noone needs to defend Esperanto for
> the sake of defending it, because noone attacks Esperanto for
> the sake of attacking it. So, your comment above is devoid of
> sense.
Oh, so that's why the Salazar regime had that zigzag policy of
prohibiting and then re-permitting Esperanto-activities in Portugal:
they had nothing against Esperanto, as long as people just didn't use
it in practice to communicate with foreigners!
> > I was simply criticizing those who claim that
> > Esperanto is not really a living language
> And it isn't. It is less alive than Latin. Latin has fine
> literature, still being written, is used in all the Arts, in
> international meetings, trials, etc.
And you can say exactly the same about Esperanto -- except for the
trials, perhaps.
> And it evolves!
Doesn't it rather develop?
> You change Latin a little bit, and it keeps
> being Latin. You change Esperanto and it turns into Ido &
> Company.
But Latin doesn't have the problem of people tinkering with it and
then marketing the change as an improvement. Latin doesn't have
the problems with copyright violations that Esperanto has.
> > and I was criticizing someone who claimed that
> > Esperanto is not a real language.
> And it isn't. Who do people resort to in learning Esperanto?
> To Esperanto-speakers or to the Fundamento _et al._? Which is
> the final authority?
In practice most people learn the language from those who teach them.
The final authority is the "Universala Kongreso" (UK) which is held in
a new country each year. It was the first UK in Boulogne-sur-Mer,
France 1905, that decided that the International language should be
considered the one that was put forth by Zamenhof in Warsaw in 1887
and used by the UK itself; till now, no-one has been mad enough to try
and change that. The documents selected from Esperanto's first 18
years was limited to a few basic materials in order not to inhibit the
linguistic development unnecessarily.
> What if a subset of Esperanto-speakers decides to smoothen
> [what they think are] some wrinkles in Esperanto, will they be
> speaking _correctly_? For any langauge (except French
> Almighty), they will. For Esperanto, no.
That has nothing to do with violations of the Fundamento at all,
for smoothing out wrinkles happens all the time, in Esperanto as in
all other languages. It's only when the subset of speakers define,
describe and market their smoothing as something new and better, that
the hammer falls and the question arises if this or that feature
should be considered part of Esperanto or not. Normal, "natural"
development is not tampered with.
> > I indicated Piron=92s essay to suggest why many
> > Esperantists have strong feelings about the language.
> Well, but do you intend us to take Piron's written word as the
> UltimateTruthe(tm)?
No, he just expects you to read it, if you're interested.
SylvanZ
<<Then "better than English" has two separate meanings for us! I don't have a
problem your clever wording (are you an attorney?): "a way in which". It keeps
you out of the pit, while leaving you at the rim. I _do_ have a problem with
the concept of "better"; which implies imperfections or faults in one language
and superiority of some sort in another. People often feel the same way about
creoles, or about dialect. Your implication is that there is some sort of
substantive hierarchy of languages where there really is none. That's solely
where my problem with your whole post lies.>>
No, I am not an attorney. I was not trying to be clever. I was trying to be
accurate.
I do not believe that one language is better than another in any absolute
sense. I very much appreciate your criticism. It will help me avoid being
inadvertently misleading in the future.
I do think that some languages are better than others for some specific,
clearly defined purposes, according to some specific criteria.
For example I think that English may be better than Esperanto in providing for
more subtle patterns of stresses in poetry. Because the stress in different
words falls on different syllables, the English poet can get certain effects
that the Esperanto poet does not. The English poet can vary vowel sounds more
delicately than the Esperanto poet because there are more vowel sounds in
English than in Esperanto.
(Please note: I am not saying that Esperanto is not a fine language in which to
write poetry. I am only speaking about these particular features of poetry.)
I think that learning Esperanto as a second language is easier than learning
English in that the student of Esperanto knows that the stress always falls on
the next-to-the-last syllable whereas the student of English has to learn where
the stress falls in different words. I think that learning Esperanto as a
second language is easier than learning English in that the Esperanto student
only has to learn how to pronounce five widely-spaced vowel sounds whereas the
student of English has to learn how to pronounce a larger number of vowel
sounds, many of which are very closely spaced. (For example: the vowels in bit,
bet, but.)
There are obviously tradeoffs here.
What makes a language more suitable for one purpose may make it less suitable
for another.
I think that English is better than many other languages when it comes to
concision of expression due to the large number of monosyllabic words.
I think that French is better than English when it comes to mandatory clarity
of meaning, avoiding ambiguity.
There may be a tradeoff here too.
I think that English is more suitable for discussions in many technical areas
because it has a larger vocabulary in those areas, a vocabulary that has been
well established by usage.
I think that learning English or Esperanto as a second language is easier than
learning French or German as a second language when it is a matter of learning
the gender of nouns.
And so on.
But I do not at all hold that any language is better than any other language in
any absolute way or that there is any absolute hierarchy of languages, and I
regret very much having given you the impression that I do.
The wonderful, magical thing is that we have language and that the users of
each of the different languages can do so much with them!
Antonio
>>> In my original posting I made no claims whatsoever for
>>> Esperanto regarding its suitability as an IAL. Nowhere
>>> in this thread have I pushed for Esperanto=92s use as
>>> an IAL. So Lee is not answering my posting here.
>
>> If the point isn't defending Esperanto as an IL, then there is
>> simply no point. Noone would tamper with the linguistic-only
>> exercise of esperantism! Noone needs to defend Esperanto for
>> the sake of defending it, because noone attacks Esperanto for
>> the sake of attacking it. So, your comment above is devoid of
>> sense.
>
> Oh, so that's why the Salazar regime had that zigzag policy of
> prohibiting and then re-permitting Esperanto-activities in
> Portugal: they had nothing against Esperanto, as long as people
> just didn't use it in practice to communicate with foreigners!
Nonsense. Salazar is just as relevant here as your aunt Sue.
>>> I was simply criticizing those who claim that
>>> Esperanto is not really a living language
>
> > And it isn't. It is less alive than Latin. Latin has fine
> > literature, still being written, is used in all the Arts, in
> > international meetings, trials, etc.
>
> And you can say exactly the same about Esperanto -- except for the
> trials, perhaps.
Try to read, PLEASE. Latin isn't what many people would call a
living language, and noone gets mad when it is called a dead one.
So, in deciding whether Esperanto is alive or not, the fine
literature and the international meetings (brought in by Sylvan)
aren't the issue. Get it? Or do we need to go through it again?
>> And it evolves!
>
> Doesn't it rather develop?
No, it evolves. It evolved since the Antiquity until the
'Renaissance', when it had evolved so much that the enlightened
renaissancers decided it was not 'real' Latin anymore; then they
decided Latin had to be rebuilt upon the ancient canons and... they
killed it.
>> You change Latin a little bit, and it keeps
>> being Latin. You change Esperanto and it turns into Ido &
>> Company.
>
> But Latin doesn't have the problem of people tinkering with it and
> then marketing the change as an improvement. Latin doesn't have
> the problems with copyright violations that Esperanto has.
You have it: your 'but' is mischosen, it should be 'and' or 'plus'
or 'in addition', etc.
>>> and I was criticizing someone who claimed that
>>> Esperanto is not a real language.
>
>> And it isn't. Who do people resort to in learning Esperanto?
>> To Esperanto-speakers or to the Fundamento _et al._? Which is
>> the final authority?
>
> In practice most people learn the language from those who teach
> them. The final authority is the "Universala Kongreso" (UK) which
> is held in a new country each year. It was the first UK in
> Boulogne-sur-Mer, France 1905, that decided that the International
> language should be considered the one that was put forth by
> Zamenhof in Warsaw in 1887 and used by the UK itself; till now,
> no-one has been mad enough to try and change that. The documents
> selected from Esperanto's first 18 years was limited to a few
> basic materials in order not to inhibit the linguistic development
> unnecessarily.
I appreciate the good reply, but (as happens with the one from
Sylvan, which literally says nothing to which I will reply because I
already have before, once again Sylvan just tacked the words the
possible way instead of paying any attention to them) it happens
that a 'language' whose Ultimate Authority is a Kongreso isn't a
language: it is a *communications protocol*, that's what I said
before. 'Communications' refers to communicating and 'protocol'
refers to a set of rules and procedures (within the frame of which I
believe that Esperanto allows for most the interesting frredom of
exercise). No 'real' language is a protocol, and that seems to me as
the most important thing about it.
>> What if a subset of Esperanto-speakers decides to smoothen
>> [what they think are] some wrinkles in Esperanto, will they be
>> speaking _correctly_? For any langauge (except French
>> Almighty), they will. For Esperanto, no.
>
> That has nothing to do with violations of the Fundamento at all,
> for smoothing out wrinkles happens all the time, in Esperanto as
> in all other languages. It's only when the subset of speakers
> define, describe and market their smoothing as something new and
> better, that the hammer falls and the question arises if this or
> that feature should be considered part of Esperanto or not.
> Normal, "natural" development is not tampered with.
So, if the infinitive was to become 'naturally' -in, the -o marker
of masculine nouns was dropped, while the -ino of feminine remained
in order not to mix with the new infinitive, there would be no
problem at all. Jens, the problem is that, in 'real' languages (you
find a better term, if you wish to keep the 'language' status for
Esperanto, which seems to be important for You), in real languages,
said I, there are no debates and no questions arise if new features
are to be considered part mof it or not. In Esperanto this happens
because the density of speakers is so low. *If* each Esperantist had
the possibility of changing (not simply facelifting) Esperanto and
the outcome still be 'Esperanto', then I'm positive it would be a
'true' language. But this doesn't happen because there is nowhere
*one* authoritarive base of speakers that do all their life in
Esperanto, except for some meetings, of course. Portuguese are two
languages because they are continuously created by a linguistic
community in Brazil and another in Portugal (a few more exist, but
let's not complicate matters). Those two are similar enough so that
they can be considered the same language, slightly different
standards. Thus you have brazilian portuguese, american english,
parisian french, austrian german, church latin, moscovite russian,
slovene slovenian, irish english, and so on. But you don't have
danish esperanto, polish esperanto, american esperanto nor chinese
esperanto: you have 'esperanto', which is the abstraction all the
small-sized communities (some made of one individual!) aim to reach.
>>> I indicated Piron=92s essay to suggest why many
>>> Esperantists have strong feelings about the language.
>
>> Well, but do you intend us to take Piron's written word as the
>> UltimateTruthe(tm)?
>
> No, he just expects you to read it, if you're interested.
Then there is no need to mention it a dozen of times. The first had
sufficed.
If I kept the thread going, it's because some issues in it seemed to
me to be less-debated ones in comparison to the standard Esperanto
quarrels.
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
SylvanZ> Therefore the Esperanto student can more quickly progress
SylvanZ> to the point where he or she is speaking naturally, not
SylvanZ> worrying about exceptions, and can reach the point where
SylvanZ> it is as natural to engage in a conversation in Esperanto
SylvanZ> as it is in his or her native language.
This is completely a myth. Yes, Esperanto has got rid of many
exceptions, but it still has many. The design is also inconsistent.
Moreover, the Esperanto cult has developed many many "kutimajxoj"
(usage habits) which are based on Eurocentric philosophies as well as
traditions. These are no less difficult than grammatical exception
rules for a learner from a non-European background.
SylvanZ> Speaking Esperanto becomes so natural that it can easily
SylvanZ> become part of one's identity.
This is simply a false statement to me and to many East Asians, whose
native languages are so different from the European languages.
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
SylvanZ> Chinese is easier than Esperanto or English in this
SylvanZ> particular way.
So, if Mr. Zamenhof did study Chinese before he designed Esperanto,
Esperanto might be tenseless, and much easier! Zamenhof's design is
simply too Eurocentric, to the point that it has inherited also the
difficult parts of the European languages.
SylvanZ> Learning to speak in tones (for foreign students)
SylvanZ> presents a special challenge for students of Chinese.
No easiers are the Esperanto sounds "r", "kv", "kn", "sc", etc. These
sounds are just too challenging to a bilingual in Chinese and English
(the 2 mostly spoken languages in the world as of 1997).
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
>"D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff" wrote:
>
>> When's the last time you saw someone rag on Klingon or Quenya in
>> this newsgroup?
>
>Right to the point :)
>
>> Laebn un laebn lassi, gel?
N"o, Alemannisch. The Weanerisch would be similar, only with close e's
and dark l's. I'm also not sure that they use 'gel'; the Bavarians I knew
used something that sounded more like 'ge?'.
> What is _gel_?
'gel?' is a tag question deriving from the verb 'gelten'. The Castilian
'vale?' is an exact equivalent.
Here's an example of Weanerisch (from the translation of Asterix _Le
devin_):
"Huach zua, Schottiga! Uns hod no nia wea glesen, und es wiad uns a nia
wea lesen!"
There's a brilliant learner's page on the web. I don't recall the URL
offhand, but a search on "weanerisch" will turn it up in no time.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
<pricer...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
>In article <F6Bzp...@midway.uchicago.edu>,
> de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote:
>(snip)
>
>
>However, there are many reasons why it is unlikely. For one thing, most
>Esperantists are not trained linguists. When we appear in this forum, we are
>quite likely to make elementary gaffes and blunders which are irritating or
>annoying to professionals... just like any non-Esperantist who, having read,
>say Pinker's book, or some old book by Mario Pei, wanders into sci.lang and
>asks some damfool question for the Nth time.
And are they given an easier time here than the average ignorant Esperant-
ist? I don't think so. Is it fair to blame the Esperanto movement as a
whole for the ignorance of individual adherents? As long as a substantial
number of people involved in it continue to make linguistically unsound
arguments for its promotion, I think so.
>And for us to enjoy the "international culture" you speak of,
>it _is_ necessary for us to recruit new speakers _somewhere_ (not necessarily
>sci.lang), unless we want the whole thing to stagnate and die
[snip]
Either there's a false dichotomy here or we have different concepts of
"recruitment". In your opinion, do all conlangs "recruit" new speakers?
>Even
>just including a URL for a website in ones .sig, which seems to me about as
>low-key as one can get, evokes the most bizarre reactions from some people.
>And even if we chose to not recruit at all, there's no way we can
>"un-publish" all the material, ranging from out-dated elementary textbooks to
>outlandish propaganda brochures, which are out there.
That can't be helped, but there's no reason to add to the misinformation.
>My take on
>"Esperanto-bashing"is that most such flamewars are provoked by someone who
>has (1) encountered some of the aforementioned propaganda somewhere (2)
>learned _a little bit_ of Esperanto (3) decided to enlighten the world.
>Perhaps you recall "sinjoro DONKON" who has appeared under various aliases
>and posts in all caps with "?" replacing "!". "The Esperantists" include
>him, at least the way most people would use the term "the Esperantists"...
>and we have absolutely no control whatsoever over him and his ilk.
I don't recall him at all, but then I mostly delete Esperanto flamewars
unread. The closest we come to him here is Lee Sau Dan, whose criticisms
are reasonable (if repeated ad nauseum) and who is reactive rather than
proactive. At least, I don't recall seeing him go out of his way to pick
fights with Esperantists.
>Similarly, "the linguists" have no way of keeping someone who, though
>otherwise a sane and pleasant person, has some irrational and uncontrollable
>animus against Esperanto, from making some parenthetic slur against the
>language or its adherents in a post. I may eventually learn to refrain
>myself from reacting in any way, but can there be some sort of guarantee that
>no one else will?
On Usenet? Rather the opposite!
I don't see linguists spreading misinformation about Esperanto in the same
way I see Esperantists spreading misinformation about linguistics. That's
why the burden of cleaning house seems, to me, to be on the latter.
>George, hoping it's not as cold in Chicago as it is in Alaska today
Not at all. So what *is* -40 like? I've only experienced it as "wind
chill", which I don't think counts for anything.
Chris Borillo
discussion, but what the hey...)
SylvanZ wrote:
>
> Chris S. wrote:
[snipping for brevity]
> Piron's point is that Esperanto is a more natural language to learn than, for
> instance, English
"More natural"?
I read throughout your article to find some EMPIRICAL evidence that
supports that broad statement of yours and still haven't found any. All
I could see was your mentioning that Esperanto lacks many of the
irregularities that characterize the English verbal system.
But that doesn't mean you've proven that Esperanto is "a more natural
language to learn". How, after all, do you define "natural" when
speaking about language acquisition?
> The Esperanto-speaking child learns how to trust his or her generalizing
> powers, powers that naturally develop in the human brain. In this way Esperanto
> fits the human brain.
Waitaminnit. Are you implying that Chinese, English, Arabic, French,
etc somehow don't fit the brain that Esperanto does? On what scientific
evidence do you base this statement on?
And if this isn't what you mean, then what's the purpose of this
statement?
> The English-speaking child cannot trust his or her genralizing powers because
> of the many thousands of special rules that create exceptions.
I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that there were psychological studies that
suggested that English-speaking children exhibit some sort of distrust
during the process of language acquisition. Can you please cite your
sources that point out to this lack of trust?
> When it comes to learning most second languages most of the work goes into
> learning the exceptions.
>
> When it comes to learning Esperanto an enormous amount of this extra work is
> simply not necessary.
>
> Therefore the Esperanto student can more quickly progress to the point where he
> or she is speaking naturally, not worrying about exceptions, and can reach the
> point where it is as natural to engage in a conversation in Esperanto as it is
> in his or her native language.
I'm not sure how you can make such a global statement that it will
become equally "natural" for a person to engage in Esperanto as in their
native language. It's been awhile since I've read about language
acquisition in my cognitive psychology courses, but I do recall that
language acquisition is fundamentally different among children from
adults. Namely, children tend to learn the grammatical rules of a
language more quickly than adults, and that children are generally more
successful in adopting the native accent of the target language whereas
adults seldom succeed in this attempt.
Am I somehow mistaken?
> Speaking Esperanto becomes so natural that it can easily become part of one's
> identity.
How does this differ from dedicated students of other languages?
Sounds like you're going for the sales pitch...
-- Chris
------------------------------------------------------------------
Discourage inbreeding. Outlaw country music.
For every moral absolute there's a qualification.
To reply by email, remove the 'd' from my address.
------------------------------------------------------------------
Padraic Brown
: Padraic Brown wrote:
: I do not believe that one language is better than another in any absolute
: sense. I very much appreciate your criticism. It will help me avoid being
: inadvertently misleading in the future.
: I do think that some languages are better than others for some specific,
: clearly defined purposes, according to some specific criteria.
You say it better below: "What makes a language more suitable..." It
might be best to steer clear from 'loaded' terms like better; which you
use again in the sentence above, just after saying no one lang. is better
than another. A small change in terminology can make a very big
difference!
I think you are correct in talking suitability: learning Dutch will
probably not help much on a trip to Beijing; E-o would be a more suitable
quick fix, while Mandarin would be most suitable. Incorrect in talking
better or worse.
: What makes a language more suitable for one purpose may make it less suitable
: for another.
: But I do not at all hold that any language is better than any other
: language in any absolute way or that there is any absolute hierarchy of
: languages, and I regret very much having given you the impression that I
: do.
No problem!
: The wonderful, magical thing is that we have language and that the users of
: each of the different languages can do so much with them!
Indeed.
Padraic.
: Sylvan Zaft (syl...@aol.comREMOVE)
C R Culver
<<This is simply a false statement to me and to many East Asians, whose native
languages are so different from the European languages.>>
Lee, I don't think you understand the Esperanto situation in Asia. The
Esperantists of Asia never complain about the "Eurocentric" nature of
Esperanto, and they are just as enthusiastic (if not more so) about the
Esperanto movement and its culture as Europeans.
Christopher R. Culver <crcu...@aol.com>
President Pro-Tempore of USEJ
Prezidanto Dumtempa de USEJ
--------------------------------------------------
http://ttt.esperanto.org/usej/
sir...@hotmail.com
>
> So, if Mr. Zamenhof did study Chinese before he designed Esperanto,
> Esperanto might be tenseless, and much easier!
Sau Dan, WHY do you keep harping on these points?!?! Chinese has tense
markings just like Esperanto: just that in Chinese the markings are what to
most Europeans see as separate words....(before you go shrieking that they
arent obligatory in Chinese, my answer is SO?!?!?! the fact that the option
of tense marking exists in Chinese would seem to indicate that you know how
to use a spoken method of differentiating tense, so JUST DO IT!!) Zamenhof's
design is
> simply too Eurocentric, to the point that it has inherited also the
> difficult parts of the European languages.
>
> SylvanZ> Learning to speak in tones (for foreign students)
> SylvanZ> presents a special challenge for students of Chinese.
>
> No easiers are the Esperanto sounds "r", "kv", "kn", "sc", etc. These
> sounds are just too challenging to a bilingual in Chinese and English
> (the 2 mostly spoken languages in the world as of 1997).
>
Well, as for this red herring, I would submit that putting a schwa sound
between the kv and the kn, etc. will NOT cause a person to say a different
word
> --
dmitri
iowa city, ia, usa
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
> and dark l's. I'm also not sure that they use 'gel'; the Bavarians I knew
> used something that sounded more like 'ge?'.
I'd write "gej?" as it's a diphthong. As a native speaker of Bavarian,
I can assure you that it sounds very much like English "gay?" It rhymes
with "Mej" (Standard German _Mehl_) and "Hej" (Hölle).
--
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
Editor & Publisher, MALEDICTA
Santa Rosa, CA 95402, USA
http://www.sonic.net/maledicta/
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
C> Lee Sau Dan said <<This is simply a false statement to me and
C> to many East Asians, whose native languages are so different
C> from the European languages.>>
C> Lee, I don't think you understand the Esperanto situation in
C> Asia. The Esperantists of Asia never complain about the
C> "Eurocentric" nature of Esperanto, and they are just as
C> enthusiastic (if not more so) about the Esperanto movement and
C> its culture as Europeans.
What you say is true for the Asian **Esperantists**, because they are
already Esperantists. Very often, these people are Westernphilic or
Europhilic. Similarly, I've never seen any Christians who would claim
that Jesus is NOT the savior. Does that imply there are no people in
the world who would claim so? (Don't forget the Judaists and the
Jews!)
Have you ever surveyed average Asians about Esperanto? Have you ever
contacted those Asians who once learnt Esperanto and eventually gave
up because they find it too Eurocentric? Have you ever asked them
their opinion on Esperanto? You'll never see this side of the world
if you just ask the "jam Esperantigxintoj".
You've made a big mistake in trying to conclude about the general fact
from a BIASED sample.
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
siringa> Sau Dan, WHY do you keep harping on these points?!?!
siringa> Chinese has tense markings just like Esperanto: just that
siringa> in Chinese the markings are what to most Europeans see as
siringa> separate words....(before you go shrieking that they
siringa> arent obligatory in Chinese, my answer is SO?!?!?! the
siringa> fact that the option of tense marking exists in Chinese
siringa> would seem to indicate that you know how to use a spoken
siringa> method of differentiating tense, so JUST DO IT!!)
siringa> Zamenhof's design is
No. Chinese has NO tense marking at all. What Chinese has is
"temporal aspect" marking. Evidently, you've confused these 2 things.
Temporal aspect is considered to be a kind of language universals,
while tense is not.
BTW, temporal-aspect markers in Chinese are completely OPTIONAL, thus
giving the speaker more freedom. A speaker can choose to be vague
about temporal aspect by not using the markers. He can also choose to
make the aspect more precise by using the markers. This is the
freedom. How about Esperanto? Like many European languages, its
tense markers are OBLIGATORY. You're considered wrong whenever you
try to omit them. That's lack of freedom. That's a disadvantage that
Esperanto has blindly copied from European languages.
>> simply too Eurocentric, to the point that it has inherited also
>> the difficult parts of the European languages.
>>
SylvanZ> Learning to speak in tones (for foreign students)
SylvanZ> presents a special challenge for students of Chinese.
>> No easiers are the Esperanto sounds "r", "kv", "kn", "sc",
>> etc. These sounds are just too challenging to a bilingual in
>> Chinese and English (the 2 mostly spoken languages in the world
>> as of 1997).
>>
siringa> Well, as for this red herring, I would submit that
siringa> putting a schwa sound between the kv and the kn,
siringa> etc. will NOT cause a person to say a different word
Please also note my sentence "No easier are ...". I've deliberately
used a non-usual word order here. It servers 2 purpose. First, it
emphasizes that the difficulty of Esperanto sounds. Secondly, it
demonstrates that word order is not as rigid as may Esperanto claims
when they argue for the design of having case marking in Esperanto.
Jens S. Larsen
> "Jens S. Larsen" wrote:
[...]
> > > And it isn't. It is less alive than Latin. Latin has fine
> > > literature, still being written, is used in all the Arts, in
> > > international meetings, trials, etc.
> > And you can say exactly the same about Esperanto -- except for the
> > trials, perhaps.
> Try to read, PLEASE. Latin isn't what many people would call a
> living language, and noone gets mad when it is called a dead one.
> So, in deciding whether Esperanto is alive or not, the fine
> literature and the international meetings (brought in by Sylvan)
> aren't the issue. Get it?
No.
> Or do we need to go through it again?
Yes.
> >> And it evolves!
> > Doesn't it rather develop?
> No, it evolves. It evolved since the Antiquity until the
> 'Renaissance', when it had evolved so much that the enlightened
> renaissancers decided it was not 'real' Latin anymore; then they
> decided Latin had to be rebuilt upon the ancient canons and... they
> killed it.
I rather doubt if that corpus planning had any such effect. The
problem was that there was no central European authority to provide a
model for contemporary usage of Latin. So gradually the prestige role
of being used in international relationships passed from Latin to
French, the language of the strongest West European kingdom most of
the time between the Middle Ages and now.
[...]
> So, if the infinitive was to become 'naturally' -in, the -o marker
> of masculine nouns was dropped, while the -ino of feminine remained
> in order not to mix with the new infinitive, there would be no
> problem at all. Jens, the problem is that, in 'real' languages (you
> find a better term, if you wish to keep the 'language' status for
> Esperanto, which seems to be important for You), in real languages,
> said I, there are no debates and no questions arise if new features
> are to be considered part mof it or not.
Sure there is. It's just that most linguists are wise enough to keep
a low profile in them.
> In Esperanto this happens because the density of speakers is so low.
Well, if you speak Esperanto you are less dense than you'd otherwise
be, so much is sure. :)
> *If* each Esperantist had the possibility of changing (not
> simply facelifting) Esperanto and the outcome still be
> 'Esperanto', then I'm positive it would be a 'true' language.
> But this doesn't happen because there is nowhere *one*
> authoritarive base of speakers that do all their life in
> Esperanto, except for some meetings, of course.
Unless, of course, we choose to consider the earth as one place. And
as for that "do all their life" stuff: do you consider yourself exempt
from the authoritative base of Portuguese speakers from the day you
spoke a word of any other language to somebody?
> Portuguese are two languages because they are continuously
> created by a linguistic community in Brazil and another in
> Portugal (a few more exist, but let's not complicate matters).
> Those two are similar enough so that they can be considered
> the same language, slightly different standards. Thus you have
> brazilian portuguese, american english, parisian french,
> austrian german, church latin, moscovite russian, slovene
> slovenian, irish english, and so on. But you don't have danish
> esperanto, polish esperanto, american esperanto nor chinese
> esperanto: you have 'esperanto', which is the abstraction all
> the small-sized communities (some made of one individual!) aim
> to reach.
I still don't see the difference between Esperanto and Portuguese in
this, but that may be because I don't know enough about Portuguese.
Let's take British and American English in stead: there is a number of
simplified spellings that are used in American, but not in British.
However, none of the simplifications refer to any difference in
pronunciation between the two standard languages; all they do is to
mark American and British texts as different, they have no linguistic
value. IOW, there are two political communities, but any number from
one upward of linguistic communities, depending on which isoglosses
you want to look at as important. Few want Britain to be the 51st
state of the USA, but some make a point in considering it as such --
and many want the isoglosses between Esperanto-speakers to prove
something, which is why Esperantists tend to deny that they exist.
--
Jens S. Larsen
sir...@hotmail.com
>
> No. Chinese has NO tense marking at all. What Chinese has is
> "temporal aspect" marking. Evidently, you've confused these 2 things.
> Temporal aspect is considered to be a kind of language universals,
> while tense is not.
>
OK...you got me there; my bad. BUT: in Russian and the other Slavic
languages the aspect markers are very important as well........OMYGOD!!!
Chinese is a Slavophilic language! GASP!! (In case you missed my point with
that last tirade, its called *sarcasm*)
> BTW, temporal-aspect markers in Chinese are completely OPTIONAL, thus
> giving the speaker more freedom. A speaker can choose to be vague
> about temporal aspect by not using the markers. He can also choose to
> make the aspect more precise by using the markers. This is the
> freedom. How about Esperanto? Like many European languages, its
> tense markers are OBLIGATORY. You're considered wrong whenever you
> try to omit them. That's lack of freedom. That's a disadvantage that
> Esperanto has blindly copied from European languages.
The fact that tense marking is obligatory in E-o is not the point. You always
bitch and moan about how difficult it makes E-o for Chinese speakers. You
recognize (and if you wish to) can make such distinctions in Chinese.
>
> SylvanZ> Learning to speak in tones (for foreign students)
> SylvanZ> presents a special challenge for students of Chinese.
> >> No easiers are the Esperanto sounds "r", "kv", "kn", "sc",
> >> etc. These sounds are just too challenging to a bilingual in
> >> Chinese and English (the 2 mostly spoken languages in the world
> >> as of 1997).
> >>
>
> siringa> Well, as for this red herring, I would submit that
> siringa> putting a schwa sound between the kv and the kn,
> siringa> etc. will NOT cause a person to say a different word
>
> Please also note my sentence "No easier are ...". I've deliberately
> used a non-usual word order here. It servers 2 purpose. First, it
> emphasizes that the difficulty of Esperanto sounds. Secondly, it
> demonstrates that word order is not as rigid as may Esperanto claims
> when they argue for the design of having case marking in Esperanto.
Sigh. Here, as usual, you miss (on purpose?) my entire point, and then
inject into the conversation something that was not even addressed in the
statement that I replied to! This exchange (before you joined in) had
nothing to do with word order. Any my original proposition still stands:
learning to use tones is much harder for a Westerner than a FEW difficult
consonent combinations are for Asians.....the fact that there are human
beings who CAN pronounce these combinations illustrates that it just takes
practice.....and if one makes a mistake and inserts a schwa, no big
deal....no harm done. ON THE CONTRARY, tones in Chinese have a semantic role
*for every syllable* and it takes a hell of a lot more work to use them
correctly PLUS the added problem that if you use the wrong tone, one ends up
sounding like an idiot, or at worst, insulting someone. dmitri
C R Culver
from a BIASED sample.>>
No, Lee Sau Dan, while you're complaining about little, relatively unimportant
aspects to impede learning, Asians have actually gone ahead and learned the
language. It isn't impossible, nor terrible difficult, as all Asian
Esperantists can't be geniuses.
Christopher R. Culver <crcu...@aol.com>
President Pro-Tempore of USEJ
Prezidanto Dumtempa de USEJ
-------------------------------------------------------------
http://ttt.esperanto.org/usej/
sir...@hotmail.com
>
> If the point isn't defending Esperanto as an IL, then there is
> simply no point. Noone would tamper with the linguistic-only
> exercise of esperantism! Noone needs to defend Esperanto for the
> sake of defending it, because noone attacks Esperanto for the sake
> of attacking it. So, your comment above is devoid of sense.
Ah, Sinjoro Antonio, I beg to differ! I cannot recall how many times upon
describing E-o to some self-styled linguist or whatever, only to be told:
<<Oh, that is a stupid language>> when the idea of it being an IAL never
came up. And even in this very newsgroup, I have seen postings with the same
attitude.....I will research them and email them to you/post them if that is
what you would like. dmitri iowa city, ia, usa
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Reinhold (Rey) Aman <am...@sonic.net> wrote:
>D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff wrote:
>
>> >> Laebn un laebn lassi, gel?
>
>> N"o, Alemannisch. The Weanerisch would be similar, only with close e's
>> and dark l's. I'm also not sure that they use 'gel'; the Bavarians I knew
>> used something that sounded more like 'ge?'.
>
>I'd write "gej?" as it's a diphthong. As a native speaker of Bavarian,
>I can assure you that it sounds very much like English "gay?" It rhymes
>with "Mej" (Standard German _Mehl_) and "Hej" (Hölle).
Danke, Rej.
I had an odd encountre last night (outside a REAL gay bar full of REAL gay
men talking REAL gay English). I was chewing out my fatter half (using
REAL gay German) when a passing stranger overheard me say "bissle".
"Bisschen!" he chided.
"Bissle!" I responded.
"BISSCHEN!" he called back, now from nearly half a block away.
"FISCHKOPF! FISCHKOPF!" I yelled. "Des isch kei Norddeitsch, des isch
Owadeitsch!"
"ICH BIN AUS BAYERN!" he yelled back.
"DENN SOG HOIT 'BISSERL'!"
"BISSSSSSCHHHHHHENNN!"
And then we turned the corner. Bloeder bayrischer Besserwisser!
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
>
>>
>> No. Chinese has NO tense marking at all. What Chinese has is
>> "temporal aspect" marking. Evidently, you've confused these 2 things.
>> Temporal aspect is considered to be a kind of language universals,
>> while tense is not.
>>
>
>OK...you got me there; my bad. BUT: in Russian and the other Slavic
>languages the aspect markers are very important as well........OMYGOD!!!
>Chinese is a Slavophilic language! GASP!! (In case you missed my point with
>that last tirade, its called *sarcasm*)
It's also called "Missing the point." I'm not sure what Mr. Lee means by
"temporal aspect", but aspect is definitely a linguistic universal where-
as tense is not. All the European languages I'm familiar with explicitly
mark both (though obviously not in a consistent, transparent fashion), but
quite a few of the world's languages (Chinese and its neighbours, creoles,
etc.) lack tense markings altogether.
Antonio
>> If the point isn't defending Esperanto as an IL, then there is
>> simply no point. Noone would tamper with the linguistic-only
>> exercise of esperantism! Noone needs to defend Esperanto for the
>> sake of defending it, because noone attacks Esperanto for the
>> sake of attacking it. So, your comment above is devoid of sense.
>
> Ah, Sinjoro Antonio, I beg to differ! I cannot recall how many
> times upon describing E-o to some self-styled linguist or
> whatever, only to be told: <<Oh, that is a stupid language>>
> when the idea of it being an IAL never came up. And even in this
> very newsgroup, I have seen postings with the same attitude.....
> I will research them and email them to you/post them if that is
> what you would like. dmitri iowa city, ia, usa
No, I decline the mail, thank you, and you may post whatever you
like. But I can't understand why on earth were you describing
Esperanto to anyone who would then just reply that; why hear the
explanation?, why not just begin by saying the thing was stupid?
And if you were not promoting it as an IL, why were you describing
it? When one describes a 'language', common reasons are 1) promoting
it or 2) showing how a paricular community of people speaking it
found a solution to a linguistic 'problem'. Esperanto doesn't fit
2), and passing it off that way can trigger such a reaction. Even
from not-all-that-stupid people.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
I'm really baffled by this reaction. Antonio, why are you trying to so
hard to explain away examples of pure Esperanto-bashing? People have com-
pletely irrational prejudices involving skin colour, religion, ethnic or
regional origin, vegetables, textile patterns--why should language be any
different? Surely you've heard people volunteer criticisms of various
natural languages (and their speakers) that are completely unfounded (be-
lieve me, as a German-speaker, I've heard more than my share). Why
shouldn't you expect the same regarding constructed languages?
The only controversy regarding this point should be what proportion of at-
tacks on Esperanto are the result of pure prejudice, what proportion are a
response to the attitudes of some of its proponents, and what proportion
are well-founded criticisms of its design. And just because there's a
controversy doesn't mean it's one worth debating.
Antonio
>> ... Esperanto doesn't fit 2), and passing it off that way can
>> trigger such a reaction. Even from not-all-that-stupid people.
>
> I'm really baffled by this reaction. Antonio, why are you trying
> to so hard to explain away examples of pure Esperanto-bashing?
> People have completely irrational prejudices involving skin
> colour, religion, ethnic or regional origin, vegetables, textile
> patterns--why should language be any different? Surely you've
> heard people volunteer criticisms of various natural languages
> (and their speakers) that are completely unfounded (believe me,
> as a German-speaker, I've heard more than my share). Why
> shouldn't you expect the same regarding constructed languages?(..)
Well, I pretty much agree with you. And I know I've been playing the
unreasonable guy in this thread, somewhat against my will. Heck, I
even got as far as denying such things as 'Esperanto strikes some
nerve'. It just hasn't been nice. So, in a few lines,
a) I have nothing against Esperanto. Really, I even got interested
in it, but then I just couldn't swallow its treatment of feminines.
And I abhor that -o ending (which reads [u] in my language), but
this one is just aesthetical preference.
b) For the distanced observer, the cares, worries and joys of the
Esperantist (as opposed to the mere Esperantophile) look quite poor,
and I regret but I just had to express that.
c) As a corollary, that a thread appears called 'criticisms of
Esperanto' is as silly as if it were 'criticisms of German' or
something like that. And, as you say, people have the most
irrational prejudices. So, Why should anyone try to explain the
'prejudices' against Esperanto on a rational basis? Moreover, as I
said before, Esperantists seem to think that, if one hasn't sound
arguments against Esperanto, then one *must* like it. That is quite
annoying.
d) Surely much (maybe 80%?) of the distaste for esperanto is stupid.
Just bashing Esperanto for no reason, and especially when one knows
nothing about it save the name, is something that irritates me. But
I don't think that is the case here.
And when people just decide German is 'horrible', knowing nothing
about it, what do you do? You don't try to refute them, do you?
Well, save for special situations, of course. When Someone writes
about 'The Awful German Language', it's something I can read and
enjoy. Just because it makes fun of German (and being quite horrid
sometimes!), I, as someone who happens to like the thing, won't be
offended by it.
e) I am not nice. I try to be agreeable to people, but then I only
react to aggression with more aggression (in the Usenet, of course.
In real life it's almost the opposite). That isn't good. I somehow
feel that the other party may 'learn' more swiftly by being hurt,
but that is stupid from me. As ye sow so shall ye reap, and I don't
think amity may grow out of anything other than amity, but the few
instances I tried to be nice ended in nothing. Still, I resent every
harsh idea I express, against Yuri or Karras or Varonos or etc and
others. But what shall I do?
Well, I shall be going away for quite a while. Twas a nice week, 'll
come back anytime.
Domotran
>like. But I can't understand why on earth were you describing
>Esperanto to anyone who would then just reply that; why hear the
>explanation?, why not just begin by saying the thing was stupid?
>And if you were not promoting it as an IL, why were you describing
>it? When one describes a 'language', common reasons are 1) promoting
>it or 2) showing how a paricular community of people speaking it
>2), and passing it off that way can trigger such a reaction. Even
>from not-all-that-stupid people.
>
actually, Antonio, the snide comment from other people I alluded to above came,
many times, after I simply stated the fact that I spoke Esperanto.......it's
either stupid or "not really a language".......either assertation, I of course
disagree with.--
Reinhold (Rey) Aman
> >
> >> N"o, Alemannisch. The Weanerisch would be similar, only with close e's
> >> and dark l's. I'm also not sure that they use 'gel'; the Bavarians I knew
> >> used something that sounded more like 'ge?'.
> >I'd write "gej?" as it's a diphthong. As a native speaker of Bavarian,
> >I can assure you that it sounds very much like English "gay?" It rhymes
> >with "Mej" (Standard German _Mehl_) and "Hej" (Hölle).
> Danke, Rej.
> I had an odd encountre last night (outside a REAL gay bar full of REAL gay
> men talking REAL gay English). I was chewing out my fatter half (using
> REAL gay German) when a passing stranger overheard me say "bissle".
>
> "Bisschen!" he chided.
>
> "Bissle!" I responded.
>
> "BISSCHEN!" he called back, now from nearly half a block away.
>
> "FISCHKOPF! FISCHKOPF!" I yelled. "Des isch kei Norddeitsch, des isch
> Owadeitsch!"
>
> "ICH BIN AUS BAYERN!" he yelled back.
>
> "DENN SOG HOIT 'BISSERL'!"
>
> "BISSSSSSCHHHHHHENNN!"
>
> And then we turned the corner. Bloeder bayrischer Besserwisser!
Whoa, easy. That was no *real* Bavarian. No true Bavarian proud of
his/her language would say "bisschen / bißchen," only "bissl" or
"bissal" (spelled in newspapers and books _bisserl_, as you correctly
did).
His "Ich bin aus Bayern!" is another proof that he wasn't a real
Bavarian. I would have yelled "I bin fo Bayan!" or "I bin a Baya!"
That fellow wasn't a "bloeder bayrischer Besserwisser" but a "bloeder
Besserwisser."
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
>>> trigger such a reaction. Even from not-all-that-stupid people.
>>
>> to so hard to explain away examples of pure Esperanto-bashing?
>> People have completely irrational prejudices involving skin
>> colour, religion, ethnic or regional origin, vegetables, textile
>> patterns--why should language be any different? Surely you've
>> heard people volunteer criticisms of various natural languages
>> (and their speakers) that are completely unfounded (believe me,
>> as a German-speaker, I've heard more than my share). Why
>> shouldn't you expect the same regarding constructed languages?(..)
>
>Well, I pretty much agree with you. And I know I've been playing the
>unreasonable guy in this thread, somewhat against my will. Heck, I
>even got as far as denying such things as 'Esperanto strikes some
>nerve'. It just hasn't been nice. So, in a few lines,
>
>a) I have nothing against Esperanto. Really, I even got interested
>in it, but then I just couldn't swallow its treatment of feminines.
>And I abhor that -o ending (which reads [u] in my language), but
>this one is just aesthetical preference.
One I share, actually. I prefer Catalan to Spanish partly for that
reason.
>b) For the distanced observer, the cares, worries and joys of the
>Esperantist (as opposed to the mere Esperantophile) look quite poor,
>and I regret but I just had to express that.
For *a* distanced observer. I'm not sure you can speak for anyone else in
this regard.
>c) As a corollary, that a thread appears called 'criticisms of
>Esperanto' is as silly as if it were 'criticisms of German' or
>something like that.
Not at all. German wasn't exactly designed with the same goals in mind.
And, in fact, to the extant it is a constructed AL (or "planned language",
to use someone else's term), I think it can be criticised. There certain-
ly could be debate on whether the "Luthersches E" should have become part
of Modern Standard German and whether it should be retained today.
>And, as you say, people have the most
>irrational prejudices. So, Why should anyone try to explain the
>'prejudices' against Esperanto on a rational basis?
Because there are prejudices and there are criticisms. Esperanto was de-
signed as a vehicle for attaining a certain goal. It's quite valid to
criticise this goal, its attainability, and the suitability of various
features in Esperanto--much as one would the U.S. Constitution or fax
machines.
>Moreover, as I said before, Esperantists seem to think that, if one
>hasn't sound arguments against Esperanto, then one *must* like it. That
>is quite annoying.
I don't get that impression. More like, "If you haven't sound arguments
against it, admit that your problems with it are basically personal and
stop carping." That seems reaonable to me.
>d) Surely much (maybe 80%?) of the distaste for esperanto is stupid.
>Just bashing Esperanto for no reason, and especially when one knows
>nothing about it save the name, is something that irritates me. But
>I don't think that is the case here.
What do you mean "here"? In your posts? In this thread? Certainly,
sci.lang is not poor in examples of simple bashing.
>And when people just decide German is 'horrible', knowing nothing
>about it, what do you do? You don't try to refute them, do you?
Of course I do! For example, when someone complains that German is "so
gutteral", I respond with "No more so than French". I can't convince them
to like it. My goals are like those of the Esperantists: To get them to
admit that their prejudices are based on ignorance. At least then there's
the hope they'll try to overcome them.
>Well, save for special situations, of course. When Someone writes
>about 'The Awful German Language', it's something I can read and
>enjoy. Just because it makes fun of German (and being quite horrid
>sometimes!), I, as someone who happens to like the thing, won't be
>offended by it.
Because it's not ignorant--it's funny because it's true. It was writ-
ten by someone with a good knowledge of German and--dare I say--a good
knowledge of German is necessary to really appreciate it. Much as with a
satire on a piece of literature or music.
>e) I am not nice. I try to be agreeable to people, but then I only
>react to aggression with more aggression (in the Usenet, of course.
>In real life it's almost the opposite). That isn't good. I somehow
>feel that the other party may 'learn' more swiftly by being hurt,
>but that is stupid from me. As ye sow so shall ye reap, and I don't
>think amity may grow out of anything other than amity, but the few
>instances I tried to be nice ended in nothing. Still, I resent every
>harsh idea I express, against Yuri or Karras or Varonos or etc and
>others. But what shall I do?
You can always not post! Is there a Portuguese equivalent to the maxim
most of us learned at our mother's knee: "If you can't say something
nice, don't say anything at all."? If I can't find anything constructive
in my response to a poster, I try to refrain from posting it. That, and I
always ask myself, "What would Mark Rosenfelder say in a situation like
this?" ^_^
>Well, I shall be going away for quite a while. Twas a nice week, 'll
>come back anytime.
Please do! Ate logo!
Chris S.
sd...@faith.csis.hku.hk (Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}) wrote:
> Have you ever surveyed average Asians about Esperanto? Have you ever
> contacted those Asians who once learnt Esperanto and eventually gave
> up because they find it too Eurocentric? Have you ever asked them
> their opinion on Esperanto? You'll never see this side of the world
> if you just ask the "jam Esperantigxintoj".
Ok, I'll bite... I'm Asian, and I gave up on Esperanto since I've never met
someone who speaks it and other reasons I posted two or three months ago. I
didn't give up because it was Eurocentric, you know... I knew it was
Eurocentric when I did learn it...
--Chris
--
* Mabuhay, sti! * ;)
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
siringa> The fact that tense marking is obligatory in E-o is not
siringa> the point.
It does matter, as it makes the language much much more difficult. It
takes away the freedom of choosing to omit such markers from the
speaker's flow of thought. That not only makes the language difficult
to speak, but also makes it difficult to think fluently in it for
those who are used to such a freedom.
siringa> You always bitch and moan about how difficult
siringa> it makes E-o for Chinese speakers. You recognize (and if
siringa> you wish to) can make such distinctions in Chinese.
Yes, such distinctions are always possible in any languages. The
difference is that they are NOT COMPULSORY in Chinese. That is
freedom of thought and speech. When I speak and think in English,
French, Esperanto, etc., my thought is bound by the tense markers and
plural markers, which tend to disturb my thinking process. I feel
much more freedom when I think in Chinese.
siringa> ON THE CONTRARY, tones in Chinese have a
siringa> semantic role *for every syllable* and it takes a hell of
siringa> a lot more work to use them correctly PLUS the added
siringa> problem that if you use the wrong tone, one ends up
siringa> sounding like an idiot, or at worst, insulting
siringa> someone. dmitri
Why are tones so difficult, if you could distinguish "Yes?" from
"Yes."? You do make yourself like an idiot.
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
C> No, Lee Sau Dan, while you're complaining about little,
C> relatively unimportant aspects to impede learning, Asians have
C> actually gone ahead and learned the language. It isn't
C> impossible, nor terrible difficult, as all Asian Esperantists
C> can't be geniuses.
How many Asians have learnt Esperanto? No more than 0.5% of all the
Asians have learnt it without giving up. Is that a large number?
On the other hand, many many Westerners have learnt Chinese. Learning
Chinese isn't impossible, nor tierribly difficult, as all Westerners
can't be geniuses.
So, what's your conclusion now?
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
Antonio> c) As a corollary, that a thread appears called
Antonio> 'criticisms of Esperanto' is as silly as if it were
Antonio> 'criticisms of German' or something like that.
What if someone now proposes that the whole world use German as an IAL?
Treating Esperanto as a standalone language, criticisms against it are
meaningless, esp. when the criticisms are made in Esperanto. However,
when many many people blindly promote such a Eurocentric language to
be an IAL without good justifications, criticisms against it
absolutely make much sense. Criticisms in Esperanto against Esperanto
can even show that the criticizers are not criticizing on no grounds.
They are actually using the language, and hence know the language.
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
C> No, Lee Sau Dan, while you're complaining about little,
C> relatively unimportant aspects to impede learning, Asians have
C> actually gone ahead and learned the language. It isn't
C> impossible, nor terrible difficult, as all Asian Esperantists
C> can't be geniuses.
Again, a wrong conclusion draw from a BIASED sample.
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
Chris> Ok, I'll bite... I'm Asian, and I gave up on Esperanto
Chris> since I've never met someone who speaks it and other
Chris> reasons I posted two or three months ago. I didn't give up
Chris> because it was Eurocentric, you know... I knew it was
Chris> Eurocentric when I did learn it...
OK... We've got one response from an Asian who has given up Esperanto
(for whatever reason).
Any more? We need more samples in order to draw a confident
statistical conclusion.
(BTW, Chris, you may practise Esperanto reading and writing by
subscribing soc.culture.esperanto.)
Domotran
>French, Esperanto, etc., my thought is bound by the tense markers and
>plural markers, which tend to disturb my thinking process.
Oh, well, then! E-o gives the great Lee Sau Dan a problem so let us just chuck
the entire thing! (And all it takes to use tense markers correctly is to
practice them.......you are apparently too busy to be bothered.)
(snip)
> siringa> ON THE CONTRARY, tones in Chinese have a
> siringa> semantic role *for every syllable* and it takes a hell of
> siringa> a lot more work to use them correctly PLUS the added
> siringa> problem that if you use the wrong tone, one ends up
> siringa> sounding like an idiot, or at worst, insulting
> siringa> someone. dmitri
>
>Why are tones so difficult, if you could distinguish "Yes?" from
>"Yes."? You do make yourself like an idiot.
>
>But, dear Sau Dan, Yes? and Yes. *lexically* mean the same thing! The same is
most emphatically NOT true of the Chinese syllable pronounced (in pu3tong1hua4)
"ma", as well as *every other syllable* in Chinese.
And, BTW, you are the one who sounds less than rational when you continually
respond to arguments that are not even made, and sometimes say the very same
thing as the person you are arguing against. That is a sign of the common
communication problem of not listening to what the other person is saying,
because you are too busy thinking of YOUR next point. Very rude.
>--
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~} <sd...@faith.csis.hku.hk> wrote:
>>>>>> "Chris" == Chris S <van...@my-dejanews.com> writes:
>
>
> Chris> Ok, I'll bite... I'm Asian, and I gave up on Esperanto
> Chris> since I've never met someone who speaks it and other
> Chris> reasons I posted two or three months ago. I didn't give up
> Chris> because it was Eurocentric, you know... I knew it was
> Chris> Eurocentric when I did learn it...
>
>OK... We've got one response from an Asian who has given up Esperanto
>(for whatever reason).
>
>Any more? We need more samples in order to draw a confident
>statistical conclusion.
No. In order to draw a confident statistical conclusion, you need to use
a scientific sampling method. A self-selecting sample of people who hap-
pen to see this thread and happen to post to it is statistically worth-
less.
C R Culver
<<How many Asians have learnt Esperanto? No more than 0.5% of all the
Asians have learnt it without giving up.>>
You have no evidence that many people outside of the 0.5% have learned it, as
you imply here.
The problem with a small percentage of speakers in Asia lies in the fact that
UEA has little advertisement there, and few people are going to learn a foreign
language anyway, regardless of geographical status.
<<On the other hand, many many Westerners have learnt Chinese. Learning
Chinese isn't impossible, nor tierribly difficult, as all Westerners
can't be geniuses.
So, what's your conclusion now?>>
My conclusion is that Esperanto should still remain a candidate for the IAL.
Chinese remains meaningless, because it has political and national ties.
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
>> Why are tones so difficult, if you could distinguish "Yes?"
>> from "Yes."? You do make yourself like an idiot.
>>
Domotran> But, dear Sau Dan, Yes? and Yes. *lexically* mean the same
Domotran> thing!
Really? How can 2 one-word sentences be semantically different if
they're lexically identical?
Domotran> The same is most emphatically NOT true of the Chinese syllable
Domotran> pronounced (in pu3tong1hua4) "ma", as well as *every
Domotran> other syllable* in Chinese.
By what acoustic properties do you distinguish "Yes?" from "Yes!"?
By what acoustic properties do we distinguish <ma1> from <ma2>?
No one is tone-deaf if he can distinguish "Yes?" from "Yes!".
Tone-deafness is just an excuse to refuse to learn a remote language
that uses a dimension of acoustic properties of speech in a less
familiar way.
Robin Turner
[cut]
>
> I appreciate the good reply, but (as happens with the one from
> Sylvan, which literally says nothing to which I will reply because I
> already have before, once again Sylvan just tacked the words the
> possible way instead of paying any attention to them) it happens
> that a 'language' whose Ultimate Authority is a Kongreso isn't a
> language: it is a *communications protocol*, that's what I said
> before. 'Communications' refers to communicating and 'protocol'
> refers to a set of rules and procedures (within the frame of which I
> believe that Esperanto allows for most the interesting frredom of
> exercise). No 'real' language is a protocol, and that seems to me as
> the most important thing about it.
This is just another example of linguists trying to define "language" so
as to fit their linguistic theories (Chomsky being one of the worst
offenders!). People speak Esperanto to each other, write letters,
stories and poems in it, and there are even a few native speakers. If
that isn't a language, I don't know what is. I see nothing in any
reasonable definition of language which says it cannot be constructed or
standardised by a committee. Rather than talking about "real languages"
and "communication protocols", it might be more accurate (as well as
polite) to refer to "natural languages" and "constructed languages".
Portuguese is a language. Esperanto is a language. Klingon is a
language. SPX/IPX is a communications protocol.
Robin Turner
(not an Esperantist, by the way)
Mark Rosenfelder
> >> Why are tones so difficult, if you could distinguish "Yes?"
> >> from "Yes."? You do make yourself like an idiot.
> >>
> Domotran> But, dear Sau Dan, Yes? and Yes. *lexically* mean the same
> Domotran> thing!
>
>Really? How can 2 one-word sentences be semantically different if
>they're lexically identical?
Easy as pie, if intonation applies at the sentence level.
Which is a reasonable approach, since "Yes!", "No!", "You're crazy!" and
"With a cigar!" can all be said with the same intonation. It would be a
lot of work, to no clear benefit, to create extra lexical entries for
every word that can fit into this intonation pattern.
robert...@hotmail.com
> So what? People who grow up in Chinese-speaking homes hear
> <wo3><xiao4> and <wo3><xiao4>, <wo3><xue2> and <wo3><xue2>, and they
> don't even have to remember the rules of tense inflections. There is
> simply no room for them to be wrong with tense inflections! Such a
> grammatical error is eliminated.
That's great.
> How about "shovo" and "shovilo", "preso" and "presilo", etc?
>
> Why isn't "la" inflected in the same way adjectives do, if such
> inflectional concord are so "useful"?
>
> There are still too many inconsistencies in Esperanto.
With Every language they will be some illregularites. The best I do is keep
the illregularites as low as possible.
> But they have no freedom concerning the rule of adjective-noun
> concord. They don't have to freedom to omit the tense markers, case
> markers and plural markers.
Yes, That's True. I saw a another Faq about Esperanto and they mention that
Chinese has no verb forms and no plurals. The writting is said to be hard. The
hard thing about Chinese for us Westerners is that Chinese has tones. Western
languages use tones when Asking a Question. Yes! Yes? Yes, That is tonal.
> As long as it makes sense, English writers have as much freedom (but
> different types of freedom) as Esperanto writer. Moreover, English
> writers know that they can reach a larger potential audience DIRECTLY
> understand they writings without the need of translations. How does
> Esperanto compare? (Don't get me wrong. I'm not promoting English as
> an international language. I just don't think Esperanto is in any way
> better than English.)
I agree. You ever showed all the illregularties to English. Esperanto isn't
Perfect.
> Esperanto is even worse (more complicated rules, more inconsistencies,
> less freedom) than some other native languages.
>
> But Esperanto is too Eurocentric to be an IAL. Esperanto may be
> "good" or even "perfect" when judged by Eurocentric criteria, but it
> is definitely "bad" when judged by other criteria.
Esperanto is an Indo European Centric language. My language won't be
Eurocentrism. The Selkwesta language will be 30% of it's words are Chinese.
30% from IE languages. Plurals are from by inserting Kuna in the front. kuna
apal means Apples. You can say mome apal and it means more apple. You can say
mome kuna apple. It means More apples. Kuna isn't need.
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
>> Really? How can 2 one-word sentences be semantically
>> different if they're lexically identical?
Mark> Easy as pie, if intonation applies at the sentence level.
Then, isn't the intonation itself a lexeme (in an orthogonal
dimension)?
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
robertperrett> Yes, That's True. I saw a another Faq about
robertperrett> Esperanto and they mention that Chinese has no verb
robertperrett> forms and no plurals.
Yes. But that's mean it is an incomplete language. You want to
indicate plurality? Yes, you can do so by adding vague numbers
("many", "some", etc.), although most of the time context will make
these redundant. You want to indicate the time of the action?
Simple, just add a temporal adjective ("Yesterday", "Next week", or
even "in the past"), although context often makes these redundant.
robertperrett> The writting is said to be hard.
It's hard not because it is complicated, but because it is unfamiliar
to you. Indeed, I've met smoe Westerners who have overcome the
psychological barrier and devoted time to learn Chinese writing. They
find Chinese writing not as difficult as it is at first glance. They
find this writing system highly structural, systematic and flexible.
Indeed, the present English writing system has something common with
Chinese: both are indeed MNEMONIC systems, where the writing hints on
pronunciations. Note that it is "hints", not descriptions or
transcriptions. For English, you have to memorize the spellings, even
though you know the pronunciations; for Chinese, you have to memorize
the shapes, even if you know how to pronounce the syllables. Both,
however, are phonetic-hinting, so that you can use the pronunciation
to HINT (but not govern) you with the writing.
robertperrett> The hard thing about Chinese for us
robertperrett> Westerners is that Chinese has tones.
This is again unfamiliarity. Indeed, Westerner languages are also
difficult for Orientals because of the monster named "word-stress".
Most Asians cannot defeat this monster, resulting in a strange
(w.r.t. Westerners) accent.
robertperrett> Western
robertperrett> languages use tones when Asking a Question. Yes!
robertperrett> Yes? Yes, That is tonal.
So, no person can claim to be tone-deaf unless he cannot distinguish
"Yes!" from "Yes?". (This is not my own claim. It is what I read in
a book in which the author (a Westerner) tries to teach Commissioners
how to master the language of the targeting villages. He uses this
"Yes?" vs. "Yes!" example to convince the reader that they aren't
tone-deaf, and they therefore have no excuse of refusing to learn a
tone language.)
--
pricer...@my-dejanews.com
de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote:
> If I can't find anything constructive
> in my response to a poster, I try to refrain from posting it. That, and I
> always ask myself, "What would Mark Rosenfelder say in a situation like
> this?" ^_^
That's one of the nicest compliments I've ever seen (in other words, I agree
with you! ;-) ). I hope Mark happens to read it, and it bring a little
sunshine into the chilll of the Midwest winter for him...
George, awaiting another blizzard in Southeast Alaska, where we are having
another weird winter (there was a 95 Fahrenheit degree difference between the
temperature in McGrath and that in Metlakatla this AM!)
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Robin Turner <ro...@bcc.bilkent.edu.tr> wrote:
>Antonio wrote:
>[cut]
>
>>
>> I appreciate the good reply, but (as happens with the one from
>> Sylvan, which literally says nothing to which I will reply because I
>> already have before, once again Sylvan just tacked the words the
>> possible way instead of paying any attention to them) it happens
>> that a 'language' whose Ultimate Authority is a Kongreso isn't a
>> language: it is a *communications protocol*, that's what I said
>> before. 'Communications' refers to communicating and 'protocol'
>> refers to a set of rules and procedures (within the frame of which I
>> believe that Esperanto allows for most the interesting frredom of
>> exercise). No 'real' language is a protocol, and that seems to me as
>> the most important thing about it.
>
>This is just another example of linguists trying to define "language" so
>as to fit their linguistic theories (Chomsky being one of the worst
>offenders!).
>Robin Turner
>(not an Esperantist, by the way)
And for the record (I invite correction on this point), Antonio isn't a
linguist. "real language" is an informal description, not jargon.
Mark Rosenfelder
> >> Really? How can 2 one-word sentences be semantically
> >> different if they're lexically identical?
>
> Mark> Easy as pie, if intonation applies at the sentence level.
>
>Then, isn't the intonation itself a lexeme (in an orthogonal
>dimension)?
That's one way of looking at it. We have a repertoire of common
intonation patterns that each have a meaning-- a pragmatic meaning, but
that's true of many words as well (e.g. 'the').
I wonder if you could fully handle all aspects of intonation this way-- my
intuition is that intonation has some analog features that can't be
handled digitally.
Padraic Brown
: >>>>> "C" == C R Culver <crcu...@aol.com> writes:
: C> No, Lee Sau Dan, while you're complaining about little,
: C> relatively unimportant aspects to impede learning, Asians have
: C> actually gone ahead and learned the language. It isn't
: C> impossible, nor terrible difficult, as all Asian Esperantists
: C> can't be geniuses.
: How many Asians have learnt Esperanto? No more than 0.5% of all the
: Asians have learnt it without giving up. Is that a large number?
We'd been through this before, Lee: half a percent of well over _one
billion_ Asian people is a pretty good sized number. In fact, it is in
excess of 5 millions. That's about as many (give or take) as speak
Quechua. That is a pretty large naumber, and not bad as far as minority
language populations go.
Padraic Brown.
: --
pricer...@my-dejanews.com
pbr...@nova.umuc.edu (Padraic Brown) wrote:
(snip)
> We'd been through this before, Lee: half a percent of well over _one
> billion_ Asian people is a pretty good sized number. In fact, it is in
> excess of 5 millions. That's about as many (give or take) as speak
> Quechua. That is a pretty large naumber, and not bad as far as minority
> language populations go.
This is true as far as it goes, but I'm not sure it says much at all about
Esperanto. Where did LSD get his 0.5%? I've never seen any evidence for
such a figure; I suspect he simply pulled it out of thin air. As an
Esperantist I'd love to believe that that many people have stuck with
Esperanto and attained some reasonable level of competence... but I don't
really believe any such thing. Dr. Culbert came up with 1.6 million for the
whole planet... and Jouko Lindstedt, for whom I have a great deal of respect,
thinks that's an order of magnitude too high, at least. So at this point
you've just persuaded me that LSD tends to pick "facts" out of thin air in
the heat of argument, without even thinking much about whether they even
support his point, something I suspected already.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
<pricer...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
>In article <F6G8s...@midway.uchicago.edu>,
> de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote:
>> in my response to a poster, I try to refrain from posting it. That, and I
>> always ask myself, "What would Mark Rosenfelder say in a situation like
>> this?" ^_^
>
>with you! ;-) ). I hope Mark happens to read it,
He did and, in fact, paid me an equally flattering compliment.
>and it bring a little
>sunshine into the chilll of the Midwest winter for him...
[snip]
George, do they not have national weather reports in Alaska? It was in
the mid- to upper-forties today--almost more spring than winter. I saw
geese returning and daffodils sprouting yesterday. (Yes, they're both
going to be frozen dead before the end of the month, but like me they're
living in the moment.)
Mark Rosenfelder
<pricer...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
> de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote:
>> in my response to a poster, I try to refrain from posting it. That, and I
>> always ask myself, "What would Mark Rosenfelder say in a situation like
>> this?" ^_^
>
>sunshine into the chilll of the Midwest winter for him...
Yeah, it was a nice flash (as they say out in La-La Land).
It was actually pretty warm out today-- over 45 (that's 7 C).
Padraic Brown
: In article <797l14$e7b$1...@nova.umuc.edu>,
: pbr...@nova.umuc.edu (Padraic Brown) wrote:
: (snip)
: > We'd been through this before, Lee: half a percent of well over _one
: > billion_ Asian people is a pretty good sized number. In fact, it is in
: > excess of 5 millions. That's about as many (give or take) as speak
: > Quechua. That is a pretty large naumber, and not bad as far as minority
: > language populations go.
: This is true as far as it goes, but I'm not sure it says much at all about
: Esperanto. Where did LSD get his 0.5%?
LSD: is that lysergic acid diethylamide or pound/shillings/pence? ;-)
Anyway, I have no clue where he gets his facts, nor indeed whether he
makes them up or not. But that's not really the point. The point is:
he's brought up arguments about the number of Asians who speak E-o, saying
that the number is infinitessimal. He always neglects to mention that
there are in excess of one billion people in China and nearly a billion in
India (note: I've no clue how widespread E-o is in India; and must rely on
what others say about E-o in China or Japan). Almost any percentage of the
population of China is a large number: thus if that percentage of China's
population were E-o speakers, they would represent a significant language
community.
: I've never seen any evidence for
: such a figure; I suspect he simply pulled it out of thin air.
Nor have I, and it's entirely possible that it's a rabbit out of the hat.
: As an
: Esperantist I'd love to believe that that many people have stuck with
: Esperanto and attained some reasonable level of competence... but I don't
: really believe any such thing. Dr. Culbert came up with 1.6 million for the
: whole planet... and Jouko Lindstedt, for whom I have a great deal of respect,
: thinks that's an order of magnitude too high, at least.
Well, for a conlang, 160000 adherents is not all that bad! I doubt
Klingon will reach that figure. Well, who knows!?
: So at this point
: you've just persuaded me that LSD tends to pick "facts" out of thin air in
: the heat of argument, without even thinking much about whether they even
: support his point, something I suspected already.
Be that as it may! It's not my intent to persuade you of anything. My
point is directed at Lee's argument that the number of Asian Esperantists
is piddling; while (based entirely on his 'fact') this is not the case at
all.
Padraic.
: -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==----------
Padraic Brown
: |> >George, hoping it's not as cold in Chicago as it is in Alaska today
: |>
: |> Not at all. So what *is* -40 like?
: Wow; -40 ! Is that in Fahrenheit or Celcius?
: (Every time I see the temperature -40 mentioned, I just *gots* to make that
: joke! Feeble, I know, but we mathies are not known for our sparkling wit...)
Ha! :-D Better than -40 deg R; but certainly beats -40 deg F Rankine! ;-)
Padraic Brown.
: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
: Bill Taylor W.Ta...@math.canterbury.ac.nz
: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
: Q: Why are we not immortal?
: A: Nature finds it easier to make new models with clean slates & start again,
: rather than trying to keep patching ever-increasing mess. -- Aaron Sloman
: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Taylor
article, with some rather cool points made:
|> Is it fair to blame the Esperanto movement as a
|> whole for the ignorance of individual adherents? As long as a substantial
|> number of people involved in it continue to make linguistically unsound
|> arguments for its promotion, I think so.
Good point! A bit like christians saying "Oh, but those inquisitors and
these fanatic fundies aren't *us*!" There comes a time when you must accept
being a bit tarred by the brush meant for those you choose to hang out with.
|> Esperanto flamewars...
|> ... The closest we come to him here is Lee Sau Dan, whose criticisms
|> are reasonable (if repeated ad nauseum)
Yes. I don't hold with picking on LSD (!) for his repetitious views - after
all he *has* got a point - and one which is never really answered or admitted,
just slid around. And LSD is always worth reading on other threads, and
very helpful to newbies and genuine inquirers. A good chap.
|> > I may eventually learn to refrain
|> > myself from reacting in any way, but can there be some sort
|> > of guarantee that no one else will?
|>
|> On Usenet? Rather the opposite!
<SNORT> Right on. He was betting a sure loser there!
|> I don't see linguists spreading misinformation about Esperanto in the same
|> way I see Esperantists spreading misinformation about linguistics.
WOW! Now that is a VERY cute aphorism. It goes right into my sig-box.
|> >George, hoping it's not as cold in Chicago as it is in Alaska today
|>
|> Not at all. So what *is* -40 like?
Wow; -40 ! Is that in Fahrenheit or Celcius?
(Every time I see the temperature -40 mentioned, I just *gots* to make that
joke! Feeble, I know, but we mathies are not known for our sparkling wit...)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles
> : This is true as far as it goes, but I'm not sure it says much at all about
> : Esperanto. Where did LSD get his 0.5%?
>
> LSD: is that lysergic acid diethylamide or pound/shillings/pence? ;-)
> Anyway, I have no clue where he gets his facts, nor indeed whether he
> makes them up or not. But that's not really the point.
Ad hominum remarks do not refute anyone's points.
> The point is:
> he's brought up arguments about the number of Asians who speak E-o, saying
> that the number is infinitessimal.
> : I've never seen any evidence for
> : such a figure; I suspect he simply pulled it out of thin air.
>
> Nor have I, and it's entirely possible that it's a rabbit out of the hat.
You could look it up at www.dejanews.com; I remember the argument as
"Not even 0.5% of the Chinese speak Esperanto, so how can it be
considered very popular in China or the Far East?". I suppose that
one must quantify "popularity" for a meaningful discussion.
Padraic Brown
: Padraic Brown wrote:
: > : This is true as far as it goes, but I'm not sure it says much at all about
: > : Esperanto. Where did LSD get his 0.5%?
: >
: > LSD: is that lysergic acid diethylamide or pound/shillings/pence? ;-)
: > Anyway, I have no clue where he gets his facts, nor indeed whether he
: > makes them up or not. But that's not really the point.
: Ad hominum remarks do not refute anyone's points.
!?!?Excuse me!?!? Where do you see an ad hominem, sir? FIRST: I see a
";-)" (aka "winky-smiley") which indicates explicitly marked possibly
sarcastic humour. To wit: a three way pun on the abbreviation "LSD": 1)
the accepted abbreviation for the amide in question, 2) the accepted
abbreviation for the predecimal British (and colonies) monetary system
(consisting of pounds (_l_ibrae), shillings (_s_olidii) and pence
(_d_enarii) 3) an apparent abbreviation for Lee Sau Dan's name. SECOND: I
see an admission that I do not not know what Lee's source of facts is.
THIRD: I see a statement that agrees with the possibility that Lee _may_
make up facts to support the current thesis or argument. FOURTH & LAST: I
see a statement that indicates that the status of Lee's facts is not the
issue at hand.
Kindly and explicitly explain yourself, sir, before making such a rash
accusation. I have been guilty of saying some strong things in this group;
as well as some some batty things. I have never attacked a fellow
sci.lang poster personally. I do not condone ad homines, _neither_ will I
be so accused wrongly. So stand and say your piece! Or kindly keep your
gob firmly in the closed position.
You will prove your point beyond a doubt, for which I were compelled to
apologise to Lee; or recant your libel, for which you must apologise to
me. I impatiently await your swift action, sir.
Padraic Brown.
Peter T. Daniels
It's pretty clear that calling LSD a liar is what Catty Charlie was
objecting to; it's also pretty clear that you're one of the prime
offenders in continually prolonging these perpetual Esperanto wars ad
infinitum. Would you-all PLEASE get yourselves another newsgroup to have
your infantile battles on?
--
Peter T. Daniels gram...@worldnet.att.net
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
pricerbumanto> This is true as far as it goes, but I'm not sure it
pricerbumanto> says much at all about Esperanto. Where did LSD
pricerbumanto> get his 0.5%? I've never seen any evidence for
pricerbumanto> such a figure;
Simple. I've explained a few times in sci.lang about how I get the
0.5%. Here it is.
Assume that the number of Esperanto speakers in the WHOLE world is 5
million (which is an average well accepted by many active
Esperantists). Now, consider China alone, which has 1.2 billion
people. So, 5 million / 1.2 billion = 0.0042 < 0.5%. Note that this
0.5% is already an OVERestimation, because 1) the number of E-o
speakers in Asia is much smaller than 5 million; and 2) the population
of the whole Asia is much more than 1.2 billion (even if you don't
count India).
So, although that 0.5% is just a rough estimation, there is enough
evidence that it is a indeed an OVERestimation. I don't arrive at it
arbitrarily. The accurate number should be well below 0.5%.
pricerbumanto> I suspect he simply pulled it out of
pricerbumanto> thin air.
You're wrong.
pricerbumanto> As an Esperantist I'd love to believe
pricerbumanto> that that many people have stuck with Esperanto and
pricerbumanto> attained some reasonable level of competence... but
pricerbumanto> I don't really believe any such thing. Dr. Culbert
pricerbumanto> came up with 1.6 million for the whole
pricerbumanto> planet...
Your figure quote above is even less that the 5 million that I've used
for my estimation about.
pricerbumanto> and Jouko Lindstedt, for whom I have a
pricerbumanto> great deal of respect, thinks that's an order of
pricerbumanto> magnitude too high, at least.
If 1.6 million is too high, then how about my 5 million? It's
obviously an overestimation!
pricerbumanto> So at this point
pricerbumanto> you've just persuaded me that LSD tends to pick
pricerbumanto> "facts" out of thin air in the heat of argument,
I've already given the explanations on my figure of 0.5% in this forum
many times. If you're a newcomer to this forum, I highly recommend
you read the old articles here a few months back. You may also
consult DejaNews (www.dejanews.com).
pricerbumanto> without even thinking much about whether they even
pricerbumanto> support his point, something I suspected already.
It is you who didn't think much about my figure of 0.5%. Any mature
person can make that estimation, if he's clever enough to learn about
the number of people in different parts of the world.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
Peter T. Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>Padraic Brown wrote:
>
>It's pretty clear that calling LSD a liar is what Catty Charlie was
>objecting to; it's also pretty clear that you're one of the prime
>offenders in continually prolonging these perpetual Esperanto wars ad
>infinitum. Would you-all PLEASE get yourselves another newsgroup to have
>your infantile battles on?
Peter, will you *please* figure out how to use a killfile? Put the word
"Esperanto" in it and you'll never be bothered by these discussions/
flamewars ever again--and we'll never be bothered by your kvetching about
them ever again.
pricer...@my-dejanews.com
Charles <ca...@pxxxnet.net> wrote:
(snip)
> You could look it up at www.dejanews.com; I remember the argument as
> "Not even 0.5% of the Chinese speak Esperanto, so how can it be
> considered very popular in China or the Far East?". I suppose that
> one must quantify "popularity" for a meaningful discussion.
Indeed. In past interchanges someone has said things like "Esperanto is
popular in the Peoples Republic of China", meaning that _relative to the
United States and many other places_, in China more people have heard of it,
books and magazines in Esperanto are more readily obtainable, etc., and Lee
Sau Dan has apparently chosen, presumably for his own rhetorical purposes, to
misinterpret the phrase to mean something like "Great crowds of Chinese are
rushing enthusiastically to learn Esperanto" and heaped ridicule on it. One
could play the same game with a statement like "Megan is a popular name here
in Juneau, Alaska"...
P.S. It's "ad hominem", not "ad hominum"; that's nit-picking, I know, and I
don't really care myself, but sometime in the future _ you_ may care. Who
knows.
pricer...@my-dejanews.com
mat...@math.canterbury.ac.nz (Bill Taylor) wrote:
(snip)
> (Every time I see the temperature -40 mentioned, I just *gots* to make that
> joke! Feeble, I know, but we mathies are not known for our sparkling wit...)
Nor for our spelling, it seems... ;-)
George, who agrees that Lee Sau Dan does have some reasonable points (and in
fact they _have_ been acknowledged by Esperantists, including myself)
pricer...@my-dejanews.com
de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote:
(snip)
> And are they given an easier time here than the average ignorant Esperant-
> ist? I don't think so. Is it fair to blame the Esperanto movement as a
> whole for the ignorance of individual adherents? As long as a substantial
> number of people involved in it continue to make linguistically unsound
> arguments for its promotion, I think so.
I don't know whether they're given an easier time or not... but I doubt it.
But my point is that the _least intelligent and informed_ Esperantist is
probably no _better_ than any other uninformed or misinformed individual, and
"we Esperantists" have no way of enforcing any sort of discipline on
Esperantists on Usenet to keep such folks from posting in sci.lang and
provoking sharp responses from linguists (any more than "The Linguists" are
capable of enforcing such a discipline).
> >And for us to enjoy the "international culture" you speak of,
> >it _is_ necessary for us to recruit new speakers _somewhere_ (not necessarily
> >sci.lang), unless we want the whole thing to stagnate and die
> [snip]
>
> Either there's a false dichotomy here or we have different concepts of
> "recruitment". In your opinion, do all conlangs "recruit" new speakers?
Probably we do have different concepts. I don't know about "all conlangs".
The Idoists, Interlinguists, and Glosist certainly "recruit" in the sense I
mean. Klingonists don't have to; Paramount Studios has taken care of
whatever recruitment is necessary!
(snip)
> >And even if we chose to not recruit at all, there's no way we can
> >"un-publish" all the material, ranging from out-dated elementary textbooks to
> >outlandish propaganda brochures, which are out there.
>
> That can't be helped, but there's no reason to add to the misinformation.
I didn't say there was; but the point is that all that "stuff" continues to
"recruit" whether we like it or not... and in the process spreads lots of
misinformation and out-dated information, which the new "recruits" then
brandish in their new-found enthusiasm ("Esperanto is ten times easier to
learn than any other language!", "Esperanto's grammar is completely regular,
with no exceptions!", etc.). I've done my part, thank you very much; I've
replaced the out-dated textbooks in our public library with Wells and
Richardson; I've tried to direct people with questions to trained linguists
such as Mark Mandel and Howard Aronson and Jouko Lindstedt and John Wells and
Jens Larsen and Mac van Oosterdorp and Probal Dasgupta, et alia. But AFAICS
my efforts are just a drop in the bucket; and just one nut who slips through
is enough to start another flame war (of course sometimes flame wars _are_t
amusing; I still get a kick out of every new post from Peter T. Daniels
telling us that he's posting a message to an Esperanto thread to tell us that
he's tired of Esperanto threads and is never going to post to one again...).
(snip)
> I don't recall him at all, but then I mostly delete Esperanto flamewars
> unread. The closest we come to him here is Lee Sau Dan, whose criticisms
> are reasonable (if repeated ad nauseum) and who is reactive rather than
> proactive. At least, I don't recall seeing him go out of his way to pick
> fights with Esperantists.
That's probably because you don't read Esperanto and don't visit
soc.culture.esperanto, where he has carried on attacks on Esperanto _in_
Esperanto in an Esperanto-speaking forum. I once sent him a private e-mail
saying that I thought he had some important things to say which deserve
discussion, but suggesting that abrasive attacks verging on the ad hominem,
in a forum for Esperantists, just _might_ be counter-productive; he didn't
reply.
>
> >Similarly, "the linguists" have no way of keeping someone who, though
> >otherwise a sane and pleasant person, has some irrational and uncontrollable
> >animus against Esperanto, from making some parenthetic slur against the
> >language or its adherents in a post. I may eventually learn to refrain
> >myself from reacting in any way, but can there be some sort of guarantee that
> >no one else will?
>
> On Usenet? Rather the opposite!
Ah, Usenet! did I really need to add some sort of emoticon to my question to
indicate to you that it was a rhetorical question uttered with an ironic
tone?
>
> I don't see linguists spreading misinformation about Esperanto in the same
> way I see Esperantists spreading misinformation about linguistics. That's
> why the burden of cleaning house seems, to me, to be on the latter.
If you don't then you haven't read some of the things I have. But mostly
what I hear from linguists is a great silence. You don't think "I find this
phenomenon so uninteresting, unimportant, and irrelevant that I haven't
bothered to find out even the most basic of facts about it" is a message that
would be annoying to someone full of enthusiasm about Esperanto? Doesn't
bother me so much, perhaps because I have (I think!) some understanding of
what motivates linguists _qua_ linguists. What I would _like_ to see from
linguists would be more things like
<http://www.euronet.nl/users/oostendo/economy.html>. It's reasonably good
linguistics (as far as I can tell; I'm jsut an amateur, after all), and it's
interesting (to me, anyway).
> Not at all. So what *is* -40 like? I've only experienced it as "wind
> chill", which I don't think counts for anything.
Of course it "counts"! It can kill you, if you're not prepared for it. what
is it like? Well, for one thing, your tires get a flat side to them sitting
all night, so you go lumpety-lumpety-lump down the road for a couple of bocks
before they warm up. And when it warms up to -20F people go around outside
in shirt-sleeves. I kid you not (to use a Queeg-ism).
George, in Southeast Alaska (where we _still_ haven't gotten the snowstorm
we've been warned about for a couple of days)
Padraic Brown
: Padraic Brown wrote:
: > : > Anyway, I have no clue where he gets his facts, nor indeed whether he
: > : > makes them up or not. But that's not really the point.
: It's pretty clear that calling LSD a liar is what Catty Charlie was
: objecting to;
I don't see "liar" in here, Mr Daniels. I honestly don't know where the figure came from;
although Lee does at last explain his method in this thread. Admitting that one does not know
the provenance of another's facts, or admitting the possibility that another makes up facts is
quite a different thing from outrightly calling someone a liar.
: it's also pretty clear that you're one of the prime
: offenders in continually prolonging these perpetual Esperanto wars ad
: infinitum.
Well, in 75 responses on this thread, I've made three well tempered responses to Sylvan Z.
(which had nothing to do with E-o; and which I would have ignored entirely if it weren't for
what I thought was a mistaken notion, and which we've amicably resolved privately); one
regarding Lee's argument, that sparked the present; and one regarding a Mathemetician's
"forty below zero" joke. You, my good man, are not at all lilly-white in this thread either;
having posted twice (apart from the present). You could certainly _ignore_ all E-o related
posts; as this would put you at some ease, I'm sure. And you would be doing much to reduce
your own status as an offender in this group.
I don't really see our combined seven posts out of 75 (2 total of which had anything to do
with E-o) did much to prolong the discussion. I honestly think that blame lies elsewhere.
: Would you-all PLEASE get yourselves another newsgroup to have
: your infantile battles on?
It would seem you'd be one of the first to join; as you invariably peek into every E-o
discussion I've ever looked at.
So get a grip, Peter; and let those who would talk E-o talk E-o. So long as it's a language,
it's going to show its face here; and you can like it or lump it. Or ignore it!
Padraic.
: --
: Peter T. Daniels gram...@worldnet.att.net
Peter T. Daniels
>
> In article <36B835...@worldnet.att.net>,
> Peter T. Daniels <gram...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
> >Padraic Brown wrote:
> >
> >offenders in continually prolonging these perpetual Esperanto wars ad
> >your infantile battles on?
>
> "Esperanto" in it and you'll never be bothered by these discussions/
> flamewars ever again--and we'll never be bothered by your kvetching about
> them ever again.
I've looked in every menu choice in Netscape and find nothing about
killfiles (it doesn't come with a manual).
Peter T. Daniels
> amusing; I still get a kick out of every new post from Peter T. Daniels
> telling us that he's posting a message to an Esperanto thread to tell us that
> he's tired of Esperanto threads and is never going to post to one again...).
I never say that. All I do is ask you to shut up or go away.
> > Not at all. So what *is* -40 like? I've only experienced it as "wind
> > chill", which I don't think counts for anything.
>
> Of course it "counts"! It can kill you, if you're not prepared for it. what
> is it like? Well, for one thing, your tires get a flat side to them sitting
> all night, so you go lumpety-lumpety-lump down the road for a couple of bocks
> before they warm up. And when it warms up to -20F people go around outside
> in shirt-sleeves. I kid you not (to use a Queeg-ism).
Hunh? Jack Paar!
See -- if this had been killfiled, I'd never have seen that!
John Leake
In theory, I think they're supposed to come under 'mail filters', but
they don't seem to work, sadly.
John L.
Peter T. Daniels
> > > Peter, will you *please* figure out how to use a killfile? Put the word
> > > "Esperanto" in it and you'll never be bothered by these discussions/
> > > flamewars ever again--and we'll never be bothered by your kvetching about
> > > them ever again.
> >
> > I've looked in every menu choice in Netscape and find nothing about
> > killfiles (it doesn't come with a manual).
>
> In theory, I think they're supposed to come under 'mail filters', but
> they don't seem to work, sadly.
There's an online "Netscape Handbook," and its Index has no Killfile
under K, or Mail filter (or anything similar) under M.
John Leake
No, it's hopeless, isn't it! It's under /Edit/Mail Filters... but I for
one can't get it to work with newsgroups. That is, it's there under
Netscape 4.03 - I don't know about other browsers.
John L.
Luke
> >>>>> "siringa" == siringa <sir...@hotmail.com> writes:
>
> siringa> The fact that tense marking is obligatory in E-o is not
> siringa> the point.
>
> It does matter, as it makes the language much much more difficult. It
> takes away the freedom of choosing to omit such markers from the
> speaker's flow of thought. That not only makes the language difficult
> to speak, but also makes it difficult to think fluently in it for
> those who are used to such a freedom.
>
> siringa> You always bitch and moan about how difficult
> siringa> it makes E-o for Chinese speakers. You recognize (and if
> siringa> you wish to) can make such distinctions in Chinese.
>
> Yes, such distinctions are always possible in any languages. The
> difference is that they are NOT COMPULSORY in Chinese. That is
> freedom of thought and speech. When I speak and think in English,
> French, Esperanto, etc., my thought is bound by the tense markers and
> plural markers, which tend to disturb my thinking process. I feel
> much more freedom when I think in Chinese.
>
> siringa> ON THE CONTRARY, tones in Chinese have a
> siringa> semantic role *for every syllable* and it takes a hell of
> siringa> a lot more work to use them correctly PLUS the added
> siringa> problem that if you use the wrong tone, one ends up
> siringa> sounding like an idiot, or at worst, insulting
> siringa> someone. dmitri
>
> Why are tones so difficult, if you could distinguish "Yes?" from
> "Yes."? You do make yourself like an idiot.
>
There's a difference here. The rising intonation on the first "yes" doesn't make it
mean "food." For someone who is totally unfamiliar with the concept that different tone
contours change lexicon, it is a huge challenge to learn to deal with it. I haven't
attempted to learn a tone language yet, but i'm sure when I do it'll be very hard, even
though i'm musical by nature. On the other hand, clusters like "kv," once practiced a
bit, are constant and don't make words do funny things. What am I trying to say...I
would count chinese difficult for me to learn because of the tones as i don't understand
them. Also, i haven't figured out how to make the sound "i" which sounds like a cross
between "ee" and "r", but i wouldn't say that would make chinese difficult for me. I'd
just have to figure out how to say it and practice it for a while.
Luke
Luke
> >>>>> "C" == C R Culver <crcu...@aol.com> writes:
>
> C> No, Lee Sau Dan, while you're complaining about little,
> C> relatively unimportant aspects to impede learning, Asians have
> C> actually gone ahead and learned the language. It isn't
> C> impossible, nor terrible difficult, as all Asian Esperantists
> C> can't be geniuses.
>
> How many Asians have learnt Esperanto? No more than 0.5% of all the
> Asians have learnt it without giving up. Is that a large number?
>
> On the other hand, many many Westerners have learnt Chinese. Learning
> Chinese isn't impossible, nor tierribly difficult, as all Westerners
> can't be geniuses.
>
> So, what's your conclusion now?
>
I think you've inadvertently defeated your own point. Westerners can learn unfamiliar
Asian languages, and they're not all geniuses. Thus, Asians can learn unfamiliar western
languages. It's not terribly difficult, etc, etc.
By the way, .5% is a good number...what are there, around 1 billion in China? That makes
about five million Chinese who have learned Esperanto by your estimate...that ain't no
small number.
Luke
Peter T. Daniels
> > > > I've looked in every menu choice in Netscape and find nothing about
> > > > killfiles (it doesn't come with a manual).
> > >
> > > In theory, I think they're supposed to come under 'mail filters', but
> > > they don't seem to work, sadly.
> >
> > There's an online "Netscape Handbook," and its Index has no Killfile
> > under K, or Mail filter (or anything similar) under M.
>
> No, it's hopeless, isn't it! It's under /Edit/Mail Filters... but I for
> one can't get it to work with newsgroups. That is, it's there under
> Netscape 4.03 - I don't know about other browsers.
Ah ... well ... maybe some day I'll upgrade from 3.02. My Edit menu
doesn't have anything like that.
Charles
ditto
ditto
[something about somebody and something deleted]
ditto
ditto
> : Ad hominum remarks do not refute anyone's points.
>
> !?!?Excuse me!?!? Where do you see an ad hominem, sir?
I mis-spelled it, okaaaay?
Since the apparent owners of this newsgroup hate these
discussions of Esperanto, perhaps alt.language.artificial
would be a better place for a dual.
(I meant "duel", of course. In Ido.)
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
>> Why are tones so difficult, if you could distinguish "Yes?"
>> from "Yes."? You do make yourself like an idiot.
Luke> There's a difference here. The rising intonation on the
Luke> first "yes" doesn't make it mean "food."
But it turns the sentence into a question, rather than just a plain
response. The difference in sound frequencies DO make a difference in
meaning, however subtle it is.
Luke> For someone who is
Luke> totally unfamiliar with the concept that different tone
Luke> contours change lexicon, it is a huge challenge to learn to
Luke> deal with it.
Please go and consult those Westerners who have learnt a tone language
before believing the myth spread by those who have never learnt any
tone languages. Tone-deafness is a myth, too, when languages (not
music) are concerned.
Luke> I haven't attempted to learn a tone language
Luke> yet, but i'm sure when I do it'll be very hard, even though
Luke> i'm musical by nature.
Why are you so sure? Any justifications?
Luke> On the other hand, clusters like
Luke> "kv," once practiced a bit, are constant and don't make
Luke> words do funny things.
For the same reasons, tones, once practised a bit, are just pitch
variations which you also have in English (e.g. "Yes?" vs. "Yes.")
and don't make words do funny things either.
Luke> What am I trying to say...I would
Luke> count chinese difficult for me to learn because of the tones
Luke> as i don't understand them.
If you don't understand them, how can you be so SURE that it is
difficult? You're making a judgement without justifications. You're
drawing a conclusion from no evidences.
So, if my friend doesn't understand Esperanto at all, can he conclude
then that Esperanto is very very difficult for him?
Luke> Also, i haven't figured out how
Luke> to make the sound "i" which sounds like a cross between "ee"
Luke> and "r", but i wouldn't say that would make chinese
Luke> difficult for me.
So, once you've figured out how tones work, you might no longer say
that tones would make Chinese difficult for you.
Luke> I'd just have to figure out how to say it
Luke> and practice it for a while.
So, it still too early for you to conclude that tones are difficult.
Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}
Luke> I think you've inadvertently defeated your own point.
Luke> Westerners can learn unfamiliar Asian languages, and they're
Luke> not all geniuses. Thus, Asians can learn unfamiliar western
Luke> languages.
It's not impossible, but difficult.
Luke> It's not terribly difficult, etc, etc.
The level of difficulty that you encounter in trying to learn Chinese
would be similar to the level of difficulty faced by a monolingual
Chinese who is trying to learn Esperanto. To him, both Esperanto and
English are difficult to him, with the former only SLIGHTLY easier.
So, given that he has to spend so much effort anyway, he would better
spend a little bit more effort learning the more useful language.
Luke> By the
Luke> way, .5% is a good number...what are there, around 1 billion
Luke> in China?
1.2 billion in China. Peking alone as 13 million, Shanghai 12
million, Hong Kong: 6.8 million, Taiwan: 21 million, Guangzhou: 8
million, ...... And don't forget the other SE Asian countries: Korea,
Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia,
Indonesia, the Philipines.
Luke> That makes about five million Chinese who have
Luke> learned Esperanto by your estimate...that ain't no small
Luke> number.
0.5% is a only very very small fraction. 5 million may sound a large
number to you, since you're living in a place with a pretty low
population density. However, comparing with 1.2 billion, 5 million is
just a very very tiny bit.
And please don't forget, this 0.5% is already an overestimation, which
can be quite reliably regarded as the upper bound. The actual number
would be much smaller (say 0.25 %). Please refer to my other postings
on how this 0.5% is deduced.
Chris Borillo
>
> >> from "Yes."? You do make yourself like an idiot.
>
> Luke> There's a difference here. The rising intonation on the
> Luke> first "yes" doesn't make it mean "food."
>
> But it turns the sentence into a question, rather than just a plain
> response. The difference in sound frequencies DO make a difference in
> meaning, however subtle it is.
>
> Luke> For someone who is
> Luke> totally unfamiliar with the concept that different tone
> Luke> contours change lexicon, it is a huge challenge to learn to
> Luke> deal with it.
>
> Please go and consult those Westerners who have learnt a tone language
> before believing the myth spread by those who have never learnt any
> tone languages. Tone-deafness is a myth, too, when languages (not
> music) are concerned.
>
> Luke> I haven't attempted to learn a tone language
> Luke> yet, but i'm sure when I do it'll be very hard, even though
> Luke> i'm musical by nature.
>
> Why are you so sure? Any justifications?
I dunno. Maybe it's because he's already biased against tonal languages
in favor of his respective pet language.
-- Chris
--------------------------------------------------------------
Discourage inbreeding. Outlaw country music.
For every moral absolute there's a qualification.
To reply by email, remove the "d" from my address
--------------------------------------------------------------
pricer...@my-dejanews.com
Chris Borillo <cbor...@erols.com> wrote:
(snip)
> I dunno. Maybe it's because he's already biased against tonal languages
> in favor of his respective pet language.
Uhhh..."'respective pet language"? Have I missed something? (probably yes!)
I did a cursory scan through some of Luke's posts on sci.lang, and note a
.sig which includes German, French, and Japanese, and quite a few critical
observations about Esperanto. And no posts to soc.culture.esperanto or any
other Esperanto newsgroup, and nothing that immediately jumped out at me as a
post in, or in support of, Interlingua or Lojban or whatever. If you mean
English, that seems like a curious way of describing it; I'd be more inclined
to say "Mother tongue" or the equivalent, than "pet language".
But like I said, maybe I missed something...
pricer...@my-dejanews.com
>
> > amusing; I still get a kick out of every new post from Peter T. Daniels
> > telling us that he's posting a message to an Esperanto thread to tell us that
> > he's tired of Esperanto threads and is never going to post to one again...).
>
Sorry. The particular statement I was thinking of was:
> Chris S. wrote:
> > That's the same thing with "I run/I runned." They don't know it has a
> > different form until they listen to their mom or dad say it. And when they
> > do know, they probably won't make the mistake again. It will be more
> > "natural-sounding" to them when they're older to hear "I ran" ...
> That isn't, in fact, how children are observed to learn irregular forms,
> but I don't want to have anything to do with yet another Esperanto
> debate.
I'll leave it to others to decide whether "I'm not going to participate
again" was a reasonable interpretation of "I don't want to have anything to
do with yet another E-o debate". If you say that's not what you meant,
though, obviously you're the final judge! :-)
While we're at it, though: How _are_ children observed to learn irregular
forms? Who has done the observing? Can you refer me to some readily available
summary of the literature? (by readily available I suppose I mean something I
can at least get through ILL via the UAS library/WLN... and of course it
would be nice if it were "accessible", in the sense of not requiring a lot of
prior familiarity with technical language, but not necessarily "popularized",
like, say, Pinker's book).
Padraic Brown
: somebody wrote:
: ditto
: ditto
: [something about somebody and something deleted]
: ditto
: ditto
: > : Ad hominum remarks do not refute anyone's points.
: >
: > !?!?Excuse me!?!? Where do you see an ad hominem, sir?
: I mis-spelled it, okaaaay?
I'm not after you for misspelled words. I'm after you for a false
acusation levelled against me. What was actually written (just to remind
you, Charles):
[Someone wrote in reply to me:]
: > : This is true as far as it goes, but I'm not sure it says much at all
: > : about Esperanto. Where did LSD get his 0.5%?
: >
[I wrote:]
: > LSD: is that lysergic acid diethylamide or pound/shillings/pence? ;-)
: > Anyway, I have no clue where he gets his facts, nor indeed whether he
: > makes them up or not. But that's not really the point.
[You (Charles ca...@pxxxnet.net) wrote:]
: Ad hominum remarks do not refute anyone's points.
I don't mind misspellings or typos or whatever. They're easy enough to
make. I have a _very_ big problem when you make an accusation against me
where such accusation is unwarranted. You, Charles, claim that what I
wrote is a personal attack on Lee Sau Dan: an ad hominem attack.
I still await your explanation or apology. Your accusation against me is
serious and I expect some action on your part.
: Since the apparent owners of this newsgroup hate these : discussions of
: Esperanto, perhaps alt.language.artificial would be a better place for a
: dual. (I meant "duel", of course. In Ido.)
They can get stuffed. Usenet is free and open for the use of all as a
forum for the exchange of ideas and the argument of same. Esperanto is a
language; therefore discussions of said language are appropriate here in
this forum. Not everyone here is a veteran sci.langer; certain topics
will resurface again and again at the instigation of newbies (or even old
timers). Believe me, I feel the pain of those self same veterans who must
compell themselves to slog through yet another long thread on Esperanto or
protoGreek or whatever. Frankly, if they don't like the freedom afforded
by Usenet, _they_ can leave and form their own private and moderated
language oriented mailing list, in which they may cancel and prohibit any
kind of post they choose.
Padraic Brown.
D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff
In article <79a2tm$ogf$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>,
<pricer...@my-dejanews.com> wrote:
>In article <F6DxL...@midway.uchicago.edu>,
> de...@midway.uchicago.edu (D. Edward Gund v. Brighoff) wrote:
>(snip)
>> And are they given an easier time here than the average ignorant Esperant-
>> ist? I don't think so. Is it fair to blame the Esperanto movement as a
>> whole for the ignorance of individual adherents? As long as a substantial
>> number of people involved in it continue to make linguistically unsound
>> arguments for its promotion, I think so.
>
>I don't know whether they're given an easier time or not... but I doubt it.
>But my point is that the _least intelligent and informed_ Esperantist is
>probably no _better_ than any other uninformed or misinformed individual, and
>"we Esperantists" have no way of enforcing any sort of discipline on
>Esperantists on Usenet to keep such folks from posting in sci.lang and
>provoking sharp responses from linguists (any more than "The Linguists" are
>capable of enforcing such a discipline).
No, none of us can prevent any individual from posting any damn fool non-
sense here they want to. All that we can do is criticise it intelligently
when it appears. What I would like to see more of are sharp responses
from *Esperantists* to these fool claims about Esperanto. You're a (wel-
come) exception, George. How many of the Esperantists who read sci.lang
responded to Sylvanz when he made clearly false claims about Esperanto?
And how many responded to what they considered false claims about Esper-
anto made by non-Esperantists in posts attacking Sylvanz? I think a more
aggressive response to these "misinformed individuals" would prevent some
of the us-vs.-them mentality that helps prolong these "wars".
>(snip)
>> >And even if we chose to not recruit at all, there's no way we can
>> >"un-publish" all the material, ranging from out-dated elementary textbooks to
>> >outlandish propaganda brochures, which are out there.
>>
>> That can't be helped, but there's no reason to add to the misinformation.
[snip]
>I've done my part, thank you very much;
[snip]
For that, you have my sincere thanks and respect.
[snip]
>and just one nut who slips through is enough to start another flame war
But not to keep it going, as I pointed out above.
>(of course sometimes flame wars _are_t
>amusing; I still get a kick out of every new post from Peter T. Daniels
>telling us that he's posting a message to an Esperanto thread to tell us that
>he's tired of Esperanto threads and is never going to post to one again...).
>(snip)
Peter's an excellent bibliographic resource, but I do sometimes wish he
had less net.cop in him.
>> I don't recall him at all, but then I mostly delete Esperanto flamewars
>> unread.
[snip]
>That's probably because you don't read Esperanto and don't visit
>soc.culture.esperanto
[snip]
True enough.
>> I don't see linguists spreading misinformation about Esperanto in the same
>> way I see Esperantists spreading misinformation about linguistics. That's
>> why the burden of cleaning house seems, to me, to be on the latter.
>
>If you don't then you haven't read some of the things I have. But mostly
>what I hear from linguists is a great silence.
This should tell you something very important!
>You don't think "I find this
>phenomenon so uninteresting, unimportant, and irrelevant that I haven't
>bothered to find out even the most basic of facts about it" is a message that
>would be annoying to someone full of enthusiasm about Esperanto?
I'm sure it does, but I'm afraid I don't have a great deal of sympathy for
those enthusiasts. If you're not resigned to the fact that most people
are not going to have the same love for your pet hobby as you do, you're
in for a lot of disappointment in this life.
>Doesn't
>bother me so much, perhaps because I have (I think!) some understanding of
>what motivates linguists _qua_ linguists. What I would _like_ to see from
>linguists would be more things like
><http://www.euronet.nl/users/oostendo/economy.html>. It's reasonably good
>linguistics (as far as I can tell; I'm jsut an amateur, after all), and it's
>interesting (to me, anyway).
And I'd like to see easy-to-use comparative grammars for the major lan-
guage families of Africa. Unfortunately, there are a limited number of
linguists in the world, each one limited in their abilities and time.
(It is an interesting article; thanks for pointing me to it.)
Peter T. Daniels
> I'll leave it to others to decide whether "I'm not going to participate
> again" was a reasonable interpretation of "I don't want to have anything to
> do with yet another E-o debate". If you say that's not what you meant,
> though, obviously you're the final judge! :-)
I didn't *want* to be involved, but I *had* to be, because of the
misstatement of fact regarding languages in general. I have NEVER said
anything specifically about E-o, pro or con. Only the ceaseless E-o
fights.
> While we're at it, though: How _are_ children observed to learn irregular
> forms? Who has done the observing? Can you refer me to some readily available
> summary of the literature? (by readily available I suppose I mean something I
> can at least get through ILL via the UAS library/WLN... and of course it
> would be nice if it were "accessible", in the sense of not requiring a lot of
> prior familiarity with technical language, but not necessarily "popularized",
> like, say, Pinker's book).
Any book with "psycholinguistics" in the title or subtitle will be
mostly on language acquisition. A classic is Roger Brown, *A First
Language* (Harvard UP, 1973); an overview is the *Handbook of Child
Language*, ed. Fletcher & MacWhinney (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995).
Chris Borillo
>
> In article <36B997...@erols.com>,
> Chris Borillo <cbor...@erols.com> wrote:
> (snip)
> > I dunno. Maybe it's because he's already biased against tonal languages
> > in favor of his respective pet language.
>
> Uhhh..."'respective pet language"? Have I missed something? (probably yes!)
The "respective pet language" I was referring to was Esperanto, in case
I wasn't clear.
> I did a cursory scan through some of Luke's posts on sci.lang, and note a
> .sig which includes German, French, and Japanese, and quite a few critical
^^^^
No such sig in the articles I'm reading from.
> observations about Esperanto. And no posts to soc.culture.esperanto or any
> other Esperanto newsgroup, and nothing that immediately jumped out at me as a
> post in, or in support of, Interlingua or Lojban or whatever. If you mean
I'm not sure where you're getting at. I never mentioned anything about
Interlingua or Lojban. The article I was responding to involved Luke's
unsupported assertions that tonal languages are inherently more
difficult than non-tonal ones, and that somehow Esperanto's consonant
clusters "don't make words do funny things" compared to Chinese tones.
Strange how Luke's comment sounded like tonal languages are somehow
inferior.
-- Chris
------------------------------------------------------------------
Discourage inbreeding. Outlaw country music.
For every moral absolute there's a qualification.
To reply by email, remove the 'd' from my address.
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