Defending Esperanto...
timo pelkonen
>Surely one of the most useless things about Esperanto is the lack of
>works which use the language's inherent qualities and cultural background
>to create a "work of art".
Well, maybe the idea of Esperanto is to be a means of communication
between people with different native languages -
and not to emulate Shakespeare. A non-native speaker won't
understand all English/etc gimmicks anyway.
follow-up esperanto.
> **Jeremy Henderson <JHend...@uk.ac.ed> <egp...@uk.ac.ed.castle>**
Greetings from inFland - the double price country / timo pelkonen
Philip Brewer
> When was esperanto created? Wouldn't it be easier today to make a
> *better* artificial language based on indo-europeean languages *and*
> languages from other language-families? (terran? :-) that is even
> easier to learn for everyone. Remember that you can't use the
> "because it is already exists" because that is a big argument for
> already existing languages and against esperanto.
Esperanto was created just over 100 years ago. It might be possible to
create a "better" artificial language. In fact, people try to do that
sort of thing all the time. If you're interested, take a look in
sci.lang where people have been discussion lojban recently. Lojban is
an artificial language which is intended to be usable by both humans and
computers.
But, the reason to use Esperanto is that it *works*. We now have 100
years of experience behind the claims of Esperantists that anybody (even
people who have no special skill or talent for learning languages) can
learn Esperanto. And, we know that people can use Esperanto for
communication -- it happens every day.
For example, my brother (who does have some natural ability to learn
languages) learned to read, write and speak Esperanto fluently in about
6 months. Last November he knew no Esperanto, and this summer he went
to a conference that was held entirely in Esperanto. He studied Spanish
for 3 years in high school, 4 years in college, went to Spain to study
for several months, and used Spanish in a couple of his jobs. He
describes his own ability with Spanish as "almost fluent" after all that
study. It took him about 5 months of studying Esperanto to speak
Esperanto better than he had ever spoken Spanish.
I, on the other hand, have no natural skill with foreign languages.
I've been studying Esperanto (strictly on my own, I've never taken a
class and rarely spoken with anyone who already knew Esperanto) for a
couple years now. It only took a few weeks of studying Esperanto before
I knew it better than German (which I'd studied for a year in college).
I'm now at the point where I can read about anything written in
Esperanto, as long as I have ready access to a dictionary and plenty of
time. If I would put a few hours a week into studying my vocabulary and
practicing, I could be fluent in a few months too.
> esperanto is more properly likened to a system of government that has
> never been tried before, and who's advantages will only be effective
> if the whole world adopt it at the same time.
People often say this, but it isn't true. If everyone spoke Esperanto
it would certainly make travel and international communication easier.
But even without that, Esperanto is already useful. There are several
regular magazines published in Esperanto on topics ranging from news and
literature to technology and social science. There is a huge body of
literature in Esperanto, both original and translated from other
languages.
It is almost impossible to describe the feeling when a new Esperantist
suddenly discovers that Esperanto works. Every Esperanto text book
encourages you to get an Esperanto pen pal early on in your studies,
because the authors know that feeling. You start to feel it the first
time you read a letter from Czechoslovakia. It really begins to take
hold when you read a newsletter from Azerbaijan, and realize that most
likely nobody involved in the production of the news letter knows any
language that you speak, except Esperanto. Even if there are only a few
million people who know any Esperanto (and only a few hundred thousand
who are active Esperantists), they come from all over the world.
Learning Esperanto puts you in touch with a much broader range of people
than learning French or Polish (or even, I would claim, English or
Spanish).
--
Philip Brewer pbr...@urbana.mcd.mot.com
Motorola Urbana Design Center ...!uiucuxc!udc!pbrewer
Nur diru "ne" je deviga droga testado.
Philip Brewer
> Surely one of the most useless things about Esperanto is the lack of
> literature in that language - I don't mean translations - I mean works
> which use the language's inherent qualities and cultural background to
> create a "work of art".
There is a huge body of original literature and poetry written in
Esperanto. Don't forget, Esperanto has been around for a hundred years.
Not only is a lot of current literature being published every year, but
all the important issues of the last hundred years were discussed in
Esperanto. The language's inherent qualities make it accessible to
people from all parts of the world. The language's cultural background
allows authors can put important human issues into the context of the
whole world.
If you're interested, I would be glad to post some information on
Esperanto literature.
--
Philip Brewer pbr...@urbana.mcd.mot.com
Motorola Urbana Design Center ...!uiucuxc!udc!pbrewer
Kio ni havas ^ci tie estas malsukceso komuniki.
Nick Nicholas
>egp...@castle.ed.ac.uk (JHenderson) writes:
>>Surely one of the most useless things about Esperanto is the lack of
>>works which use the language's inherent qualities and cultural background
>>to create a "work of art".
Jen ankorauxfoja anglalingvano, bagataletliganta *a priori* lingvon, kiun
li neniel konas, sed pri kiu li certas, ke gxi ne kapablas subteni literaturon.
Dirlididi, ulo, se 'La infana raso', 'Memkritiko' kaj 'Duonvocxe' ne estas
gxuste tiaj verkoj, nu, mi ne estas Nicxjo!
Mi tamen bonvenigus de timo indikon de la kunteksto, kie la cxi-suprajxo
eldirigxis...
[Here's yet another anglo-speaker, belittling *a priori* a language which he
knows nothing about, but of which he's certain, that it cannot sustain
literature. Codswallop, dude! (?) If the masterworks of Auld, Sadler and
Waringhien/Maura aren't precisely such works of art, well, I'm no Nick!
Though I would welcome an indication from timo of the context, in which the
above utterance was made... ]
>Well, maybe the idea of Esperanto is to be a means of communication
>between people with different native languages -
>and not to emulate Shakespeare. A non-native speaker won't
>understand all English/etc gimmicks anyway.
Mi ne samopinias. La 'ideo' de Esperanto ests ekskluzive tio, kion postulas
gxia komunumo. Se literaturon gxi postulas, literaturon gxi havu. Kaj mi
opinias, ke oni faris plurajn bonegajn tradukojn de Sxekspiro nialingven!
[I don't agree. The 'idea' of Esperanto is exclusively what its community
demands. If literature is what it demands, literature is what it should get.
And I reckon there've been several excellent translations of Shakespeare
into our language.]
>> **Jeremy Henderson <JHend...@uk.ac.ed> <egp...@uk.ac.ed.castle>**
Grrr %^)
>Greetings from inFland - the double price country / timo pelkonen
?!
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Nicxjo (Nick) Nicholas n...@mullian.ee.mu.oz.AU
Fakoj de Komputscienco kaj Elektronika Ingxenieriko
Universitato de Melburno, Auxstralio. "Dirlididi!" - piv
timo pelkonen
>Though I would welcome an indication from timo of the context, in which the
>above utterance was made... ]
Just take a look in s.c.nordic...
>>Well, maybe the idea of Esperanto is to be a means of communication
>>and not to emulate Shakespeare.
>And I reckon there've been several excellent translations of Shakespeare
>into our language.]
I didn't say that it was impossible - just that
you don't need translations of Shakespeare to use a language.
BTW how many Esperantists (?) are there in the world?
>>Greetings from inFland - the double price country / timo pelkonen
>
>?!
Just a little bit expensive to live here.
>Nicxjo (Nick) Nicholas n...@mullian.ee.mu.oz.AU
Michael Urban
> *pelkonen@BLOOM-BEAC (830)*
> In article <57...@munnari.oz.au> n...@mullian.ee.mu.OZ.AU (Nick Nicholas)
> writes:
> >Though I would welcome an indication from timo of the context, in which the
> >above utterance was made... ]
> Just take a look in s.c.nordic...
Well, thanks for the pointer. That was an eye-opener. Sometimes the actively
hostile, or at least rudely contemptuous, reactions of non-Esperantists is
truly surprising. To summarize for those who do not get Usenet groups, Paul
Brown at the University of New Mexico suggested, following a discussion of
Finns using English (hesitantly) to communicate with Swedes, that Esperanto
would be a more effective solution. Ensued a low-temperature flamefest that
began with a glib `artificial languages are for artificial persons' from one
Swede. He expanded on this later with the usual `English is the de facto world
language' arguments. There were side arguments on the learnability of
Esperanto versus English for non-Europeans, and some irrelevencies about `is
Esperanto LL(1)?'
It would probably be considered inappropriate for those of us who do not read
soc.culture.nordic regularly to jump in there just for the Esperanto discussion
(which is not particularly relevent to the group anyway).
A couple of comments are irresistible, though.
Bertil writes:
> When was esperanto created? Wouldn't it be easier today to make a *better*
> artificial language based on indo-european languages *and* languages from
> other language-families? (terran? :-) that is even easier to learn for
> everyone. Remember that you can't use the "because it already exists"
> because that is a big argument for already existing languages and against
> esperanto.
My answer to this one is to forget, for the moment, Esperanto. The questions
you have to answer first: do you consider the idea of an international language
valuable? Should this language be politically and economically neutral?
Should it be grammatically simpler and more regular than natural languages? If
you do not answer `yes' to these questions, then arguing about the *particular*
merits or deficiencies of Esperanto is merely a red herring, a distraction. So
first, we should decide why a Swede finds it politically and culturally
satisfactory to carry on a discussion with a Finn using the Americans'
language, having had to spend years to master that language.
Once you have a language that satisfies these *minimum* requirements for an
interlanguage, the question of whether or not that language is `established'
becomes much more important than any particular questions of grammar,
machine-parsibility, international vocabulary, or whatever. There is not, can
not be, and never will be, a Perfectly Wrought Ideal Universal Language, and it
is a waste of energy to pursue one. Esperanto finished with its `linguistic
tinkerers' eighty years ago, and is the stronger for it. If the language that
were in the *position* of Esperanto today were identical to Ido, or
Interlingua, I would probably be speaking those languages (although Interlingua
is perhaps *too* irregular and Eurocentric to satisfy the minimum interlanguage
requirements). I do not think Esperanto would have even one more speaker today
if, say, the circumflexes had never been part of the language, or if a hundred
Chinese roots were part of the Fundamento.
Bertil also writes, responding to the observation that *all* languages are, in
some sense, artificial,
> Some languages develop during the interaction between humans. I call those
> natural, some languages are made by a single human, for entertainment value
> or as yet another effort to create the world language. I call those latter
> languages artificial.
An interesting distinction, but a distinction without a difference.
Anti-Esperantists often raise this issue of `artificiality' without ever making
clear just what it is about this `artificiality' that makes Esperanto
unsuitable. As I said, Bertil's `artificial languages are for artificial
persons' is glib, but meaningless; I hope that Bertil does not feel that way
about Electronic Mail (I am not yet an electronic person).>
> >>Well, maybe the idea of Esperanto is to be a means of communication
> >>and not to emulate Shakespeare.
> >And I reckon there've been several excellent translations of Shakespeare
> >into our language.]
> I didn't say that it was impossible - just that
> you don't need translations of Shakespeare to use a language.
> BTW how many Esperantists (?) are there in the world?
Well, I would say that it *is* important that Esperanto have a `cultural' or
`aesthetic' aspect. It would be little more than a fancy `code' without these,
and a much simpler if less articulate `code' than Esperanto could certainly be
devised. Esperanto has a surprising amount of original literature and poetry
for a language that is only a hundred years old. Should we expect to have
already found our own Shakespeare in that time?
How many speakers? I dunno; how many chess-players are there in the world?
How do you count? The World Almanac gives a figure on the order of one
million; I seem to recall that this puts Esperanto on a par with a Nordic
language like Icelandic.
Mike
Daniel Chung
Mi pripensas, c^u aboni al "Tutmondaj Sciencoj kaj Teknikoj" el C^inlando.
C^u iu retano (ano = anic^o au' anino) abonas al tio kaj povus priparoli
pri tio? Dankon.
*Zhueng* Qi-Iao (:G^uen C^i-Jau'), sabaton en Usono
Lars Henrik Mathiesen
Railroads has an explanation of all the weird little signs and symbols
in five languages: Danish, English, French, German and Esperanto. Of
course, it's most useful if you don't know any of the first four :-).
--
Lars Mathiesen, DIKU, U of Copenhagen, Denmark [uunet!]mcsun!diku!thorinn
Institute of Datalogy -- we're scientists, not engineers. tho...@diku.dk
Philip Brewer
>>s29...@taltta.hut.fi (timo pelkonen) writes:
>> Well, maybe the idea of Esperanto is to be a means of communication
>> between people with different native languages - and not to emulate
>> Shakespeare. A non-native speaker won't understand all English/etc
>> gimmicks anyway.
> Mi ne samopinias. La 'ideo' de Esperanto ests ekskluzive tio, kion postulas
> gxia komunumo. Se literaturon gxi postulas, literaturon gxi havu. Kaj mi
> opinias, ke oni faris plurajn bonegajn tradukojn de Sxekspiro nialingven!
> [I don't agree. The 'idea' of Esperanto is exclusively what its
> community demands. If literature is what it demands, literature is
> what it should get. And I reckon there've been several excellent
> translations of Shakespeare into our language.]
Mi pensas, ke vi ne devus kritiki timo pelkonen-on jen. Li tute pravas:
Esperanto inventi^gis precise faciligi komunikadon inter malsamlingvaj
parolantoj. La fakto, ke anka~u oni povas scribi belan poeton
esperante, estas a~utomata ^car ^gi estas vera lingvo, kaj oni povas
diri ion, kion oni povas diri alilingve.
Kaj, jes. Estas multaj tradukoj de ^Sekspir. Zamenhof mem skribis
traduko de Hamleto.
[I wouldn't be so quick to jump on timo pelkonen here. He is exactly
right: Esperanto was invented specifically to allow communication
between speakers of different languages. The fact that you can also
write beautiful poetry in it comes along for free because it's a real
language, and you can say anything in it that you can say in any other
language.
And, yes. There are many translations of Shakespeare. Zamenhof himself
wrote a translation of Hamlet.]
--
Philip Brewer pbr...@urbana.mcd.mot.com
Motorola Urbana Design Center ...!uiucuxc!udc!pbrewer
Tom Fawcett
>
>If you're interested, I would be glad to post some information on
>Esperanto literature.
I, for one, would be very interested in seeing this.
Nick Nicholas
prinordena novajxgrupo, cxi tiun novajxgrupon probable eklegas pluraj
gojoj %^) ]
faw...@unix1.cs.umass.edu (Tom Fawcett) writes:
>pbr...@urbana.mcd.mot.com (Philip Brewer) writes:
>>If you're interested, I would be glad to post some information on
>>Esperanto literature.
>I, for one, would be very interested in seeing this.
My god, man, where to start? Even if we limit ourselves to poetry (still
the dominant literary artform in Espo.), what gets first mention?! The
ideological significance that Zamenhof's own works (Russia) have had for the
Esp. community? The way in which Kalocsay (Hungary) created a full poetics
for the language, tracing five centuries worth of development in two
years (in what awsn't even his best poetry collection!) The way in which
his contemporary Mikhalski (Soviet) duplicated Mayakovsky with unprecedentedly
inventive and creative use of language? Auld's (Scotland) similar
contribution to modernism a generation later? Do we talk about the
tendency to miniaturism in Esperanto? If so, whose works do we look at?
Kurzens'? (Latvia) Urbanova's? (Czechoslovakia) Waringhien's? (France)
Lister's? (UK) Sadler's? (UK) Do we mention the tryhard symbolism of
Ragnurson (Iceland) or the wondrous command of imagery of De Kock? (S. Africa)
The sonority of Adamson? (Estonia) The sentimentality of Baghy? (Hungary)
The ardour of Boulton? (UK) The detachment of Miyamoto? (Japan)
And there's more. It's a complicated filed to investigate, and given the
death of all other newsgroups I subscribe to, I'd welcome some traffic.
A coupla comments before the games begin:
1) The fact that Esperanto is a second-language community admittedly restricts
the scope of poetry some. There are a lot more slogans and goodnatured
humanism in our poerty than in that of ethnic languages. The assertion,
however, that Esp. is incapable of sustaining poetry due to its so-called
'artificiality' is bullshit, total bullshit, absolute bullshit, nepre
malvere kaj malice, and a display of ignorance not to be shoved down the
throat of any subscriber here.
2) Poets enjoy a rare prestige in the Esperanto movt. It is a safe bet that
more people have heard of Auld or Ragnurrson than of the various presidents
of the Universal Esperanto Association.
3) In discussion, let's not overdo praising 'La infana raso', ok? The work
is seminal, true, but, I fear, more respected than read. There is a
neurotic feeling in the community that 'finfine ni havas propran epopeon!'
Folks, Kalocsay is more readable, and a better defence of our poetics.
(Flame war mode ON)
Nu, ek al diskuto. Kaj ne hezitu dum viaj diskutoj profiti de la jxus establita
'LINGVA SERVO'!
Gxis baldaux,