La Problemoj de Esperanto
Nathaniel Ament-Stone
I may have to post in either English or mangled Esperanto.
As I said, I used to study Esperanto and I supported it as "la lingvo
internacia". Until I started seeing its flaws. The first is phonology.
Here is a phoneme chart of Esperanto (I'm not very knowledgeable in
linguistics, so forgive me if my chart is inaccurate):
Labial Velar Glottal Dental Palatal
Stop P B K G T D
Fricative F V HH H S Z SH JH
Affricates C DZ CH GH
Nasals M NG N
Liquids L R
Glides W Y
Ever since I discovered some flaws in Esperanto, I started work on my
own conlang. I discovered that you can create a functional language on
only the 10 most widely used sounds: A I K L M N P S T U, which is
exactly what I'm doing with my own conlang. Why use 18 more sounds
than necessary? Many of Zamenhof's sounds are hard for non-Europeans.
If you don't believe me, try to get a Thai to say scii or transskribi.
They will say [sasi] or [taranasakaribi]. I know several native Thai
speakers, and none of them can even pronounce "snack", they say
[senek], so how can we expect them to say ektransskribi, for example?
The vocabulary is so unbelievably 19th century biased it's not even
funny. A humongous portion of the words are from Latin, French and
German (total: 200 million speakers). The rest is from English,
Italian, Greek, Russian and Polish (total: 700-750 million speakers).
Even if we go liberally and add 750 to 200, we get 900 million, less
than the amount of Mandarin Chinese speakers.
With a little vocabulary from Mandarin (over 900 million speakers) or
other Chinese dialects (totaling a good 150 million speakers),
Hindi-Urdu (400-odd million speakers), Bengali (190-odd million
speakers), Arabic (215 or more million speakers), Malay-Indonesian
(about 140 million speakers) or Japanese (125 million speakers),
Esperanto would be quite a bit more international, wouldn't it?
Add the Eurocentric 900 million of above to the 2,670 million of the
other major languages in the top 12 or so, and you'd have a language
giving recognizable words to 3,570 million, well over half of the
world's population! So why such a European perspective?
The other problem I see in vocabulary is the amount of roots. 9,000
roots is about 9 times more than you need. 9,000 is about the number
of Kanji a Japanese high school graduate knows! According to several
major studies (the names escape me right now), 1,000 roots is
sufficient for a completely workable language. And why have three
different words for edit (redakt-, redakci- and redaktor-) when one
will do, or for prison for that matter (malliberejo, karcer- and
prizon-)? Lojban has a little over 1000 roots I think, which is even
more than I think is sufficient. I'm trying to create a language with
less than 1000.
Also, I find Esperanto's grammar to be surprisingly difficult and
inconsistent. The correlatives are a brilliant idea that could have
been refined further and been derived from existing Esperanto roots.
For example, why isn't kiam something like kia tempo, or why isn't
kiel something like kia maniero? Why, the Japanese correlative system
is about as simple as Esperanto's, so how much better is Esperanto in
that respect? And by the way, KIU always confused me. Does it mean
what person (kia homo) or what thing (kia ajho)? I've seen it used
both ways. Which is which?
And how can a language claim to be neutral when it places men above
women? How is a sister a female-brother, a woman a female-man or a
daughter a female-son? Beyond the sexist aspect of this, it just
causes more ambiguity. Does FILO mean child or son? Does VIRO mean
person or man? Does PATRO mean parent or father? In Mandarin, for
example, the root is neutral. Nan- marks the masculine and Nu- the
feminine, so that REN is a person, but NANREN is a man and NUREN is a
woman. Why not a similar system in Esperanto? I'm sure many more women
would speak Esperanto if it were less sexist (and I might be more
inclined as well).
Also, experience has demonstrated that the article, case,
prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs and even adjectives can all be
absent in a simplistic language. Articles don't exist in Hungarian,
Finnish, most Slavic languages (including Russian and Polish!), Latin,
Chinese, Japanese, and many more I can't think of. Case is absent in
most isolating languages (such as Chinese again), prepositions are
marked in Japanese by noun constructions (so that "on top of" is
"summit"), conjunctions are often replaced by verbs in certain
languages (so that "and/with/also/plus" is "accompany" - if Esperanto
had a word like this, it would save it at least three or four extra
words for the same concept).
Adverbs are nonexistent in German, Dutch and I think Vietnamese, and
adjectives are often replaced in languages by verbs (as in Chinese:
hao can mean either good or is-good). Also, most Asian languages, like
Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese or Thai do not have obligatory
tense or plurals. "MA" can mean horse or horses (and by the way, MA is
a word that has entered most East Asian languages almost unchanged to
mean horse - a much more international word then CHEVAL, PFERD or
HORSE), and PAO can mean run, running, ran, has run, will run, will
have run, etc. etc. etc.
In other words, after all this ranting (and leaving out a lot of other
problems I see such as the accusative and truncations like FULMO), my
point is that I see Esperanto as leaving much room for improvement.
How simple is a language that is harder than some natural languages?
Paul Ebermann
> I'm sorry, I used to be fluent and have forgotten much vocabulary. So
> I may have to post in either English or mangled Esperanto.
Cxe mi estas inverse - tial mi preferas
skribi en Esperanto.
> As I said, I used to study Esperanto and I supported it as "la lingvo
> internacia". Until I started seeing its flaws. The first is phonology.
> Here is a phoneme chart of Esperanto (I'm not very knowledgeable in
> linguistics, so forgive me if my chart is inaccurate):
>
> Labial Velar Glottal Dental Palatal
> Stop P B K G T D
> Fricative F V HH H S Z SH JH
> Affricates C DZ CH GH
> Nasals M NG N
> Liquids L R
> Glides W Y
Vi forgesis la vokaloj :-)
La sono "NG" oficiale ne ekzistas, W sxajne estas
U kun supersigno, Y estas J.
Pri la angla nomo de la sonklasoj mi ne scias,
ankaux kelkaj tagoj mi trovis la jenan:
http://www.bertilow.com/pmeg/skribo_elparolo/elparolo/bazaj_reguloj.php#i-n4b
> Ever since I discovered some flaws in Esperanto, I started work on my
> own conlang. I discovered that you can create a functional language on
> only the 10 most widely used sounds: A I K L M N P S T U, which is
> exactly what I'm doing with my own conlang. [...]
> [...] I'm trying to create a language with
> less than 1000.
Cxu vi konas Toki-Ponon?
Pauxlo
Christopher TESSONE
I think you'll find that Esperanto, while not perfect, is good enough
for its purposes.
Also, you're really missing a key concern in general: you suggest ways
of making Esperanto the *most* international and *most* simple
language. Esperanto is *an* international language, and sacrifices
some simplicity for the ability to express the full range of human
thought. "Kiel" and "en kia manero" mean somewhat different things.
Also, keep in mind that the number of roots or words you can find in
some dictionary, somewhere, is not necessarily the same as the number
of official roots. Some writers and users of the language are
fastidious about using only official roots and keeping Esperanto
minimal: Anna Lowenstein is a good example. Others are not so
fastidious. The faults of some writers are not to be attributed to
the whole language.
>>>>> "Nathaniel" == Nathaniel Ament-Stone <nat...@linkline.com> writes:
Nathaniel> will say [sasi] or [taranasakaribi]. I know several
Nathaniel> native Thai speakers, and none of them can even
Nathaniel> pronounce "snack", they say [senek], so how can we
Nathaniel> expect them to say ektransskribi, for example?
You're basing your criticism on "several native Thai speakers" you
know. Have you looked at how many Asian speakers of Esperanto there
are? The number of English-speaking Esperantists is stagnant or
dropping, but growth is being achieved in Asia. Just because a
person's native language does not embrace a certain phonological
feature doesn't mean that person cannot learn.
Also, while Esperanto works quite fine (while we might disagree on how
many speakers it has, I think it's clear the number is at least 1
million), are there any data available on languages with only the ten
sounds you suggest?
Nathaniel> The vocabulary is so unbelievably 19th century biased
Nathaniel> it's not even funny. A humongous portion of the words
Nathaniel> are from Latin, French and German (total: 200 million
Nathaniel> speakers). The rest is from English, Italian, Greek,
Nathaniel> Russian and Polish (total: 700-750 million speakers).
Nathaniel> Even if we go liberally and add 750 to 200, we get 900
Nathaniel> million, less than the amount of Mandarin Chinese
Nathaniel> speakers.
Again, while this is a valid concern with Esperanto, it hasn't yet
hindered the spread of Esperanto throughout cultures with little to no
contact with these languages. Look at the hot spots for
Esperanto--Eastern Europe (as a Russian speaker, I can tell you
knowing Slavic languages doesn't help with Esperanto; I've studied
Hungarian, and it doesn't help either) and Asia. So while the
language probably will, naturally, acquire more Slavic, Sinic, Altaic,
Indic, etc. roots, it's not a pressing concern. Certainly not a large
enough concern to abandon Esperanto's large base of speakers to start
a new language.
Nathaniel> Add the Eurocentric 900 million of above to the 2,670
Nathaniel> million of the other major languages in the top 12 or
Nathaniel> so, and you'd have a language giving recognizable words
Nathaniel> to 3,570 million, well over half of the world's
Nathaniel> population! So why such a European perspective?
Because Zamenhof didn't know Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Urdu, and
Hindi. He built the language on the basis of what he knew. But just
because the language began in Europe and has a European base doesn't
mean it's worthless. Even Asians find it a great deal easier to learn
Esperanto than to learn English.
Nathaniel> matter (malliberejo, karcer- and prizon-)? Lojban has a
Nathaniel> little over 1000 roots I think, which is even more than
Nathaniel> I think is sufficient. I'm trying to create a language
Nathaniel> with less than 1000.
I'm sorry, but I'm laughing. LOJBAN? How many speakers does Lojban
have these days?
Again, Esperanto has its imperfections. But it has a lot of
speakers. Have fun creating a new language, but don't expect it to
find wide acceptance as an alternative to Esperanto. We have a lot of
momentum, an original literature, tons of translated literature, and a
lot of appeal. You'd be better of developing your ability in
Esperanto and helping to make it more international from within.
Nathaniel> Also, I find Esperanto's grammar to be surprisingly
Nathaniel> difficult and inconsistent. The correlatives are a
No language is a snap to learn. The thing is, Esperanto is easy to
get started in. Getting to an intermediate ability level in Esperanto
is way easier than getting to that level in any other national
language. Personally, I am a languages person. My head may spin in
physics and econ classes, but I do really, really well at learning
languages. Maybe you're such a person, too. But not everyone is.
I've met so many people, both in person and online, who have said
things like, "I really sucked at French, but Esperanto really hooked
me. I'm actually making progress!" The key is that even people who
find languages tough can progress in Esperanto.
Getting past that intermediate level is always hard_er_ in a
language. You got to a certain level in Esperanto fast and were
discouraged that getting above that level required you to read and
talk to people, gaining experience, rather than just reading a grammar
or a website. That doesn't mean Esperanto is flawed; it means that
the ways we humans express ourselves are complicated, sometimes
contradictory, and it takes time to get used to these structures in
foreign languages. Look at any language spoken by a lot of people and
these structures will always crop up. You can't get rid of them.
Nathaniel> why isn't kiel something like kia maniero? Why, the
Nathaniel> Japanese correlative system is about as simple as
Nathaniel> Esperanto's, so how much better is Esperanto in that
Nathaniel> respect?
Esperanto doesn't purport to be significantly better than every other
language in every respect. It only says the whole package is
significantly easier than almost all national languages. Japanese is
damn hard to learn; obviously its correlatives system doesn't make it
automatically superior to Esperanto in every way.
Also, and this is important, Esperanto is not intended to replace all
national languages. It's a *second language for everyone*. And for
many, it's a springboard to studying a third language. That's really
powerful. I've never seen Esperanto dampen a person's interest in
learning about the world, only push it further.
Nathaniel> And by the way, KIU always confused me. Does
Nathaniel> it mean what person (kia homo) or what thing (kia
Nathaniel> ajho)? I've seen it used both ways. Which is which?
It doesn't mean either "kia homo" or "kia ajxo". "Kia" refers to a
general type. "Kian libron vi deziras?" means "What kind of book do
you want?" "Kiun libron vi deziras?" means "Which book do you want?"
The answer to the first question would be "A book by Tolstoy" or "A
mystery novel", whereas the answer to the second would be a specific
title. So "kiu" refers to a specific thing or a specific person --
"which one". This is a nice dichotomy to have:
"Kia estas li?" -- asking what type of person he is
"Kiu estas li?" -- asking for specific details about him, like a name
Nathaniel> And how can a language claim to be neutral when it
Nathaniel> places men above women? How is a sister a
Nathaniel> female-brother, a woman a female-man or a daughter a
Nathaniel> female-son? Beyond the sexist aspect of this, it just
Nathaniel> causes more ambiguity. Does FILO mean child or son?
Nathaniel> Does VIRO mean person or man? Does PATRO mean parent or
Nathaniel> father? In Mandarin, for example, the root is
Nathaniel> neutral. Nan- marks the masculine and Nu- the feminine,
Nathaniel> so that REN is a person, but NANREN is a man and NUREN
Nathaniel> is a woman. Why not a similar system in Esperanto? I'm
Nathaniel> sure many more women would speak Esperanto if it were
Nathaniel> less sexist (and I might be more inclined as well).
I'll admit this is a concern. However, there's a lot wrapped up in
this, and you're putting the emphasis in the wrong place in a number
of situations.
First, it's nonsense to suggest that this aspect of Esperanto keeps
women from speaking it. American English is one of the few languages
in the world that has worked to purge this male-centeredness, and in
some parts of the country this process has barely made any headway at
all, and in others it's gone way too far. The fact is, while language
does affect the way people think, this is a zero-importance issue in
the world right now. With people dying and starving all over the
world, do you really think the abstract work of making every language
in the world to become gender neutral is more important than doing
significant work to actually improve the conditions real women live
in?
Also, your example does you an injustice. Think of all the Chinese
ideograms that are very misogynistic. What does the ideogram WOMAN +
CHILD mean again?
Nathaniel> Also, experience has demonstrated that the article,
Nathaniel> case, prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs and even
Nathaniel> adjectives can all be absent in a simplistic
Nathaniel> language. Articles don't exist in Hungarian, Finnish,
Nathaniel> most Slavic languages (including Russian and Polish!),
Nathaniel> Latin, Chinese, Japanese, and many more I can't think
Nathaniel> of.
Yup, it is. And that permits some really interesting things to happen
when the definiteness of some construction is left ambiguous. But
this is not *better* than languages that have articles, only
different. Zamenhof decided he wanted the ability to make a noun
phrase definite with "la", and he did the smart thing and didn't
provide an indefinite article, since that would be obvious in a
definite/indefinite dichotomy.
How do you think removing "la" from Esperanto would make it easier?
That's far from the hardest thing to learn in the language, and if you
make mistakes with it, it's not that big a deal. It's not a huge
barrier to understanding.
Nathaniel> Case is absent in most isolating languages (such as
Nathaniel> Chinese again), prepositions are marked in Japanese by
Nathaniel> noun constructions (so that "on top of" is "summit"),
Nathaniel> conjunctions are often replaced by verbs in certain
Nathaniel> languages (so that "and/with/also/plus" is "accompany"
Nathaniel> - if Esperanto had a word like this, it would save it
Nathaniel> at least three or four extra words for the same
Nathaniel> concept).
But case is really, really important in Esperanto. The languages you
keep mentioning (Chinese, especially) have a defined word order.
Esperanto has word order that is nearly as free as Russian (which has
six cases) and it only has three cases, with only one of them marked
distinctly! That's pretty damned cool if you ask me.
I'm not sure what your Japanese examples are supposed to show. Most
Esperanto prepositions can also be used as adverbs and other things
that mean slightly different things from "equivalent" words. As for
your "and/with/also/plus" example, "kune" (together, literally
with-ly) means something different from "ankaux" (also). So if
Esperanto followed your advise, we'd have to come up with a different,
less intuitive word to express "together" and explain to all the
people who speak languages that _have_ different words for "and",
"with", and so on that Esperanto doesn't have separate words for them.
You keep suggesting ways to make Esperanto minimal without concern for
how hard it would be to wean people from their habits in non-minimal
languages or whether it makes the language harder, then you propose
ways of making the language easier without regard for other concerns.
Zamenhof has eliminated obvious extra stuff without sacrificing
expressiveness very much, and the language is pretty easy to learn
as-is.
Nathaniel> Adverbs are nonexistent in German, Dutch and I think
Nathaniel> Vietnamese, and adjectives are often replaced in
I'm sorry, but you're absolutely wrong here. You need to either study
those languages more or learn some linguistics, I don't know where in
you got this idea. "Er rennt schnell" == "He runs quickly". If you
think there are no adverbs simply because adverbs don't *look*
different, that nonsense.
Anyhow, I can't conceive of a language without adverbs. How would you
express anything? You couldn't modify adjectives or verbs in any way!
Why even have adjectives, then?
Nathaniel> languages by verbs (as in Chinese: hao can mean either
Nathaniel> good or is-good).
Right, and Esperanto has this too. "bona" is good, "boni" is to be
good. Esperanto makes the part of speech explicit (which makes things
easier for humans) while still allowing one to reuse vocabulary.
Nathaniel> Also, most Asian languages, like Chinese, Japanese,
Nathaniel> Korean, Vietnamese or Thai do not have obligatory tense
Nathaniel> or plurals. "MA" can mean horse or horses (and by the
Nathaniel> way, MA is a word that has entered most East Asian
Nathaniel> languages almost unchanged to mean horse - a much more
Nathaniel> international word then CHEVAL, PFERD or HORSE), and
Nathaniel> PAO can mean run, running, ran, has run, will run, will
Nathaniel> have run, etc. etc. etc.
Again, this doesn't make those languages *better* than Esperanto, it
just makes them slightly different. There are probably things you can
express in Chinese, not being required to distinguish tense or number,
that you cannot express in a language that requires those things. But
I would also suspect there are things you can express in languages
that have explicit tense and number that you can't express easily in
Chinese. This is a situation where diversity is a good thing. People
should learn other languages and enjoy these effects, not try to make
all languages like one particular language they happen to like.
Nathaniel> In other words, after all this ranting (and leaving out
Nathaniel> a lot of other problems I see such as the accusative
Nathaniel> and truncations like FULMO), my point is that I see
Nathaniel> Esperanto as leaving much room for improvement. How
Nathaniel> simple is a language that is harder than some natural
Nathaniel> languages?
Name _one_ natural language that is taken as a whole easier to learn
than Esperanto. You've shown some aspects of some languages that are
easier than the comparable aspect of Esperanto, but I am positive you
will not find a language that is easier over all.
What is FULMO? Something laux mia opinio? Acronyms and things are
just something some people do and others don't, not a problem with the
language per se. I don't like it that people write "k" instead of
"kaj" in emails, but that's an issue with individual speakers, not the
language, and I'm not leaving Esperanto because of it.
As for the accusative, people get frustrated by it, but mostly those
people come from languages with fixed word order. Eliminate the
accusative, and lots of English speakers will be happy, but you'll
have a lot of Russians, Hungarians, and so forth having a little
trouble remembering a fixed word order. Both are theoretically very
simple things but somewhat more difficult in practice.
Every language has things about it that are unique and provide
benefits other languages simply don't have. The Chinese written
language is a good example. Speakers of several very distinct spoken
languages can communicate textually because they use ideograms that
are only loosely connected to the actual sounds of the language (I'm
referring to meaning-rhyme compound characters). It's probably even a
comparable task for an American to learn to read Chinese as for a
Mandarin speaker to learn Esperanto (comparable, not identical).
However, once the American is done, he can only read Chinese. The
Chinese can speak with other Esperantists, read books and websites,
write letters to other speakers of Esperanto, take part in an
Esperanto culture as an equal, maybe even marry someone from another
culture and raise Esperanto-speaking children. Those benefits are
also unique to Esperanto--the likelihood that a Lojban speaker or an
Idist can do those things is much, much lower.
Personally, I like Esperanto a lot. I don't like it *more* than the
other languages I speak, but it definitely serves its purpose. Most
importantly, it has a following that can't merely be shrugged off. If
you don't like Esperanto, that's your prerogative. But it's still
easier to learn than any natural language and more expressive than
more minimal constructed ones. It's the best currently-available
auxiliary language for those with goals similar to its speakers', and
the best way for you to make it better is from inside, as an
Esperantist. Esperantists are not averse to making the language
better, but those efforts should not deny its speakers the ability to
express things they can currently express. I think that's reasonable.
Yours,
Chris
P.S. If you would like to discuss any of these ideas further, feel
free to email me.
--
Christopher A. Tessone
Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois
BA Student, Russian and Mathematics
http://www.polyglut.net/
Donald J. HARLOW
>"Nathaniel Ament-Stone" skribis:
>
> > As I said, I used to study Esperanto and I supported it as "la lingvo
> > internacia". Until I started seeing its flaws. The first is phonology.
> > Here is a phoneme chart of Esperanto (I'm not very knowledgeable in
> > linguistics, so forgive me if my chart is inaccurate):
> >
> > Labial Velar Glottal Dental Palatal
> > Stop P B K G T D
> > Fricative F V HH H S Z SH JH
> > Affricates C DZ CH GH
> > Nasals M NG N
> > Liquids L R
> > Glides W Y
>
>
>La sono "NG" oficiale ne ekzistas, W sxajne estas
>U kun supersigno, Y estas J.
Gxi ofte estas auxdebla kiel variajxo de /n/ antaux /g/ aux /k/, sed
kontribuas nenion al la gramatiko aux semantiko de la lingvo, do estas
"alofonia". Gxi ne devas trovigxi en la supera listo. Simile 'DZ', kiu
povas foje auxdigxi kiel variajxo de /d/ en la malmultaj vortoj, en kiuj
'D' trovigxas antaux 'Z' (ekz-e "haladzo", "edzo" -- rimarku, ke cxiam la
literoj 'd' kaj 'z' trovigxas en malsamaj silaboj).
-- Don HARLOW
http://www.webcom.com/~donh/don/don.html
Pasis longa voj'
Iri ći tien de for;
Pasis longa temp',
Sed alvenas mia hor' ...
LiteraturaĽoj: http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/Literaturo
Donald J. Harlow
news:jjkn0ee...@cs.brown.edu...
>
> >>>>> "Nathaniel" == Nathaniel Ament-Stone <nat...@linkline.com> writes:
>
> Nathaniel> In other words, after all this ranting (and leaving out
> Nathaniel> a lot of other problems I see such as the accusative
> Nathaniel> and truncations like FULMO), my point is that I see
> Nathaniel> Esperanto as leaving much room for improvement. How
> Nathaniel> simple is a language that is harder than some natural
> Nathaniel> languages?
>
> just something some people do and others don't, not a problem with the
> language per se. I don't like it that people write "k" instead of
> "kaj" in emails, but that's an issue with individual speakers, not the
> language, and I'm not leaving Esperanto because of it.
>
original word, in Latin, was "fulmen" -- very similar to the Esperanto
"fulmo" -- the genitive was "fulminis", and it was from this that other
languages in Western Europe took their forms, e.g. the English "to
fulminate" (which, however, almost no English speaker will associate with
the original or Esperanto meanings of the root, since its common English
meaning is vocal rather than visual). Nathaniel would probably prefer
"fulmino" (hence his use of the word "truncations"). (*) A similar word
(about which I've seen a similar complaint from other quarters) is "fulgo"
(soot), which derives from the Latin "fuligo, fuliginis". That Zamenhof (and
later Esperanto speakers) have had a tendency to truncate unnecessary
syllables, whose utility is strictly etymological, seems to be
incomprehensible to some, Zipf's Law notwithstanding. (**) Similarly,
Zamenhofian nouns in -CIO borrowed from the Latin 3rd declension tend to end
up truncated into rather simpler verb roots (not too surprising, since the
Latin -TIO/-TIONIS was originally nothing but a suffix to convert a verb
into a noun, for which one doesn't need a special suffix in Esperanto); and
the common -IC- suffix of Latin adjectives also tends to get truncated in
Esperanto. (***)
---
(*) Demando: mi vidis la vorton "fulmi" uzata -- kaj mem uzas gxin -- por la
... nu, la _fulmilo_ de fotilo. Cxu tiu uzado okazas ankaux en aliaj
lingvoj?
(**) In both these cases, one reason for dropping the unnecessary -IN-
syllable would seem to be to avoid confusion with the suffix -IN-. However,
it's probably not the only reason, since Zamenhof, in some words, tended
simply to change an etymological -IN- to an Esperanto -EN-. For both these
words, Ido, Occidental and Interlingua all retain the extra syllable;
presumably their creators preferred etymological similitude to convenience
of learning and use.
(***) Amusingly, according to NPIV "auxtentika" is official while "auxtenta"
is not; but the examples indicate that "auxtenta" is Zamenhofian while
"auxtentika" is at best less so.
--
-- Don HARLOW
http://www.webcom.com/~donh/don/don.html
Jardar Eggesbø Abrahamsen
skreiv Christopher TESSONE <tes...@polyglut.net>:
> Because Zamenhof didn't know Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Urdu, and
> Hindi. He built the language on the basis of what he knew.
Ofte mirigas min ke oni cxiam (prave) parolas pri la eůropeco de la
Esperanta vortprovizo, dum oni neniam uzas tiun argumenton kontraů la uzo
de la angla kiel internacia lingvo.
> Nathaniel> Also, experience has demonstrated that the article,
> Nathaniel> case, prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs and even
> Nathaniel> adjectives can all be absent in a simplistic
> Nathaniel> language. Articles don't exist in Hungarian, Finnish,
> Nathaniel> most Slavic languages (including Russian and Polish!),
> Nathaniel> Latin, Chinese, Japanese, and many more I can't think
> Nathaniel> of.
>
> Yup, it is. And that permits some really interesting things to happen
> when the definiteness of some construction is left ambiguous. But
> this is not *better* than languages that have articles, only
> different. Zamenhof decided he wanted the ability to make a noun
> phrase definite with "la", and he did the smart thing and didn't
> provide an indefinite article, since that would be obvious in a
> definite/indefinite dichotomy.
Fakte, la Esperanta artikolo-sistemo estas iu meza sistemo (do kvazaů
kompromiso) inter la du ekstremoj, kaj versxajne Zamenhof ecx ne sciis
tion.
Aldone al lingvoj kiuj ne havas artikolojn, ekzistas lingvoj kiuj havas
referencan-difinitan formon, referencan-nedifinitan formon kaj
nereferencan-nedifinitan formon. Se mi bone memoras, kaj la albana kaj la
havaj-kreola estas tiaj lingvoj.
La difinitaj formoj egalas al "la" en Esperanto.
La nedifinitaj formoj povas aů havi referencon aů ne havi. Ekzemple, se mi
vagus tra la oficejaro de la universitato kaj oni demandus min "saluton,
Jardar, kion vi faras?" -- mi povus respondi "mi sercxas sekretarion".
Sed cxu mi sercxas specifan sekretarion, aů cxu mi simple sercxas iun ajn
personon kiu estas sekretario?
Ekzistas lingvoj kiuj utiligas nedifinitan artikolon tiel, ke nedifinita
artikolo implicas ke mi sercxas specifan sekretarion (ne "la sekretarion",
simple "(iun specifan) sekretarion kies nomon kaj oficejon mi konas, sed
li/sxi damne ne estas en sia oficejo"). Foresto de nedifinita artikolo
implicus ke mi kontentus trovi iun ajn sekretarion.
Jardar
tnhryk
9,000
> roots is about 9 times more than you need. 9,000 is about the
number
> of Kanji a Japanese high school graduate knows!
Japanoj, ne nur studentoj sed ech lingvokapablaj verkistoj, neniel
scias tiom multajn Kanji (Chinliterojn) kiom 9000! Oni scias
meznombre 2000, plej mutle 3000. 2000 sufichas por legi modernajn
japanajn tekstojn.
9000 estas nombro, kiom da Kanji oni bezonas por legi chinajn
klasikajhojn SEN vortaro! Ech chinaj intelektuloj, krom esceptaj
fakuloj, ne posedas tiom.
1,000 roots is
> sufficient for a completely workable language. And why have
three
> different words for edit (redakt-, redakci- and redaktor-) when
one
> will do, or for prison for that matter (malliberejo, karcer- and
> prizon-)? Lojban has a little over 1000 roots I think, which is
even
> more than I think is sufficient. I'm trying to create a language
with
> less than 1000.
Vi pravas koncerne "redakt, redakci, dedaktor". Esperanto parte ja
havas nenecesajn redundancojn.
Sed malmulteco de radikoj ne chiam signifas plifacilecon de la
lingvo. Foje estas pli facile lerni unu novan mallongan redikon ol
lerni malsimplan kunmetajhon kun ties reguloj. Ekz-e, "spageto"
estas pli facile lernebla ol "italmaldiklongpashtajho".
Tani Hiroyuki, jp
Gerard van Wilgen
"Nathaniel Ament-Stone" <nat...@linkline.com> wrote in message
news:4e14a02d.03081...@posting.google.com...
> I'm sorry, I used to be fluent and have forgotten much vocabulary. So
> I may have to post in either English or mangled Esperanto.
>
> As I said, I used to study Esperanto and I supported it as "la lingvo
> internacia". Until I started seeing its flaws. The first is phonology.
> Here is a phoneme chart of Esperanto (I'm not very knowledgeable in
> linguistics, so forgive me if my chart is inaccurate):
>
> Labial Velar Glottal Dental Palatal
> Stop P B K G T D
> Fricative F V HH H S Z SH JH
> Affricates C DZ CH GH
> Nasals M NG N
> Liquids L R
> Glides W Y
>
> Ever since I discovered some flaws in Esperanto, I started work on my
> own conlang. I discovered that you can create a functional language on
> only the 10 most widely used sounds: A I K L M N P S T U, which is
> exactly what I'm doing with my own conlang. Why use 18 more sounds
> than necessary?
A good reason is that you need longer words if you have fewer phonemes,
unless you do not mind having a lot of homonyms in your language.
> Many of Zamenhof's sounds are hard for non-Europeans.
> If you don't believe me, try to get a Thai to say scii or transskribi.
> They will say [sasi] or [taranasakaribi]. I know several native Thai
> speakers, and none of them can even pronounce "snack", they say
> [senek], so how can we expect them to say ektransskribi, for example?
>
Words like "stsii", "ektranssklipi" or "snak" are all possible in the sound
system that you plan to use for your own language, and those words do not
seem to be easier for a Thai speaker than "scii", "ektransskribi" and
"snack". Or did you create addional rules that forbid certain difficult
combinations such as "tr"?
> The vocabulary is so unbelievably 19th century biased it's not even
> funny. A humongous portion of the words are from Latin, French and
> German (total: 200 million speakers). The rest is from English,
> Italian, Greek, Russian and Polish (total: 700-750 million speakers).
> Even if we go liberally and add 750 to 200, we get 900 million, less
> than the amount of Mandarin Chinese speakers.
>
> With a little vocabulary from Mandarin (over 900 million speakers) or
> other Chinese dialects (totaling a good 150 million speakers),
> Hindi-Urdu (400-odd million speakers), Bengali (190-odd million
> speakers), Arabic (215 or more million speakers), Malay-Indonesian
> (about 140 million speakers) or Japanese (125 million speakers),
> Esperanto would be quite a bit more international, wouldn't it?
I suppose so, but it would not make the language much more easier to learn
for speakers of those languages. In the first place because, unlike the
languages of Europe, these languages (with the exception of Hindi-Urdu and
Bengali) have very few words in common. In the second place, because of the
restriction that you put on the number of phonemes (and probably on the
number of possible combinations as well), most words would be
unrecognizable. For instance, Japanese "geisha" would become something like
"kesa" and Arabic "qahwa" (coffee) something like "kapa".
So, such a language would be much more difficult to learn for speakers of
most European languages, but not significantly easier to learn for the rest
of the world. I think that is a high price to pay for being more
international.
>
> Add the Eurocentric 900 million of above to the 2,670 million of the
> other major languages in the top 12 or so, and you'd have a language
> giving recognizable words to 3,570 million, well over half of the
> world's population! So why such a European perspective?
Because European languages are the geographically most widely-spread group
and because they share a relatively large common vocabulary. It makes
Esperanto easier for speakers of those languages without making it much
harder for the rest.
>
> The other problem I see in vocabulary is the amount of roots. 9,000
> roots is about 9 times more than you need. 9,000 is about the number
> of Kanji a Japanese high school graduate knows! According to several
> major studies (the names escape me right now), 1,000 roots is
> sufficient for a completely workable language.
In theory yes, but you would have to use a lot of fairly long compound words
or descriptions. In practice a language with only 1,000 roots would be
almost useless for many purposes. Imagine that you had to write an book
about chemistry in such a language. There are about 100 different chemical
elements, and if each one would have its own root name, they alone would
take up 10% of the available 1,000 roots. But it would obviously very
cumbersome if you would have to refer to hydrogen as
"element-with-atomic-number-1" , to nitrogen as
"element-with-atomic-number-7", etc. (assuming there are roots for
"elements" and "atom" and that you do not need to describe those words as
well).
> And why have three
> different words for edit (redakt-, redakci- and redaktor-) when one
> will do, or for prison for that matter (malliberejo, karcer- and
> prizon-)?
No need at all, but I am curious about how you are going to prevent users of
your language to invent their own words. Are you going to kill them if they
use words that are not in the dictionary that you published? As soon as your
language really gets used by people, you lose control over it.
> Lojban has a little over 1000 roots I think, which is even
> more than I think is sufficient. I'm trying to create a language with
> less than 1000.
I think that all fluent speakers of Lojban will comfortably fit into a
single room. And it would probably be a very tiresome experience for them if
they wanted to talk about really interesting subjects.
>
> Also, I find Esperanto's grammar to be surprisingly difficult and
> inconsistent. The correlatives are a brilliant idea that could have
> been refined further and been derived from existing Esperanto roots.
> For example, why isn't kiam something like kia tempo, or why isn't
> kiel something like kia maniero? Why, the Japanese correlative system
> is about as simple as Esperanto's, so how much better is Esperanto in
> that respect? And by the way, KIU always confused me. Does it mean
> what person (kia homo) or what thing (kia ajho)? I've seen it used
> both ways. Which is which?
"kiu homo" means "which person" and "kia homo" means "what kind of a
person".
> And how can a language claim to be neutral when it places men above
> women?
Does it? Females do have their own sex-suffix in Esperanto, while men are
apparently placed in the same category as things and animals of unknown or
unspecified sex. Now, who is being treated worse?
>Beyond the sexist aspect of this, it just
> causes more ambiguity.
> Does FILO mean child or son? Does VIRO mean
> person or man? Does PATRO mean parent or father? In Mandarin, for
> example, the root is neutral. Nan- marks the masculine and Nu- the
> feminine, so that REN is a person, but NANREN is a man and NUREN is a
> woman. Why not a similar system in Esperanto? I'm sure many more women
> would speak Esperanto if it were less sexist (and I might be more
> inclined as well).
Well, here you do have a point. You have to learn the sex (male or
unspecified) of each root that describes a living being. I should have
designed Esperanto differently in this respect, but the problem is in my
opinion not serious enough to justify a radical reform.
> Also, experience has demonstrated that the article, case,
> prepositions, conjunctions, adverbs and even adjectives can all be
> absent in a simplistic language. Articles don't exist in Hungarian,
> Finnish, most Slavic languages (including Russian and Polish!), Latin,
> Chinese, Japanese, and many more I can't think of.
True, but the functionality of those features exists in those languages
nevertheless. It is just that they use other means, for example a fixed word
order or particles instead of case endings.
>Case is absent in
> most isolating languages (such as Chinese again), prepositions are
> marked in Japanese by noun constructions (so that "on top of" is
> "summit"), conjunctions are often replaced by verbs in certain
> languages (so that "and/with/also/plus" is "accompany" - if Esperanto
> had a word like this, it would save it at least three or four extra
> words for the same concept).
But probably not in your language with its restricted sound system.
> Adverbs are nonexistent in German, Dutch
Certainly not! It is just that many adverbs are identical in form to
undeclined adjectives. And this can sometimes lead to ambiguity, as in Dutch
"een mooi gelakt tafeltje" which can either mean "a beautifully varnished
table" (the table was varnished beautifully) or "a beautiful varnished
table" (the beautiful table was varnished).
Even if you allow the possibility of ambiguity, you cannot use the same word
for an adverb and an adjective in Esperanto because in this language
adjectives can be used as nouns (e.g. "Pri la domoj. Chu vi vidis la novajn?
= About the houses. Did you see the new ones?"), and it is therefore
reasonable that they have to behave like nouns (i.e. they must show number
and case.)
> and I think Vietnamese, and
> adjectives are often replaced in languages by verbs (as in Chinese:
> hao can mean either good or is-good).
And sometimes Esperanto verbs are equivalent to a combination of an
adjective and a verb in other languages, for example "mi malsatas = I am
hungry", "Tio eblas = That is possible". Is there a reason to assume that
one method is better than the other?
> Also, most Asian languages, like
> Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese or Thai do not have obligatory
> tense or plurals.
But Chinese and Thai have a complicated system of classifiers instead. I do
in fact know of no language that does not have some means of indicating
plurality, even if it is not always obligatory to do so (But deciding when
to mark plurality and when not, might require rather complex rules).
>"MA" can mean horse or horses (and by the way, MA is
> a word that has entered most East Asian languages almost unchanged to
> mean horse - a much more international word then CHEVAL, PFERD or
> HORSE), and PAO can mean run, running, ran, has run, will run, will
> have run, etc. etc. etc.
"Ma" has other meanings as well if you ignore the differences in tone. In
Mandarin Chinese "ma" with a high-level pitch means "mother", "ma" with a
rising pitch starting at mid-range means "hemp", "ma" with a high-falling
pitch means "to scold" and finally, "ma" meaning "horse" starts below
mid-range, dips to the lowest pitch and then rises to mid-range or above. In
Thai the word for "ma" meaning "horse" has a different pitch (a high pitch)
than the Mandarin word for "horse". Other Thai words sounding like "ma" are
"ma" with a mid-range pitch (to come) and "ma" with a rising pitch (dog).
It would not be very helpful for either speakers of Mandarin or Thai if you
included a word "ma" in your language that could be interpreted as "horse",
mother", "scold", and "hemp" by the first group and as "horse", "come" or
"dog" by the second group. And since there are a lot of homonyms in Chinese
it is also very likely that several of the four "ma words" have more than
one meaning.
> In other words, after all this ranting (and leaving out a lot of other
> problems I see such as the accusative and truncations like FULMO), my
> point is that I see Esperanto as leaving much room for improvement.
> How simple is a language that is harder than some natural languages?
Such as? Do you actually speak Chinese, Thai, Japanese, etc.?
Well, when you seriously start designing your own language you will at some
point find out that simplifying one aspect of your language will make
something else more complicated, and in the end you will be forced to make a
lot of arbitrary choices.
Gerard van Wilgen
--
www.majstro.com (On-line translation dictionary / Enreta tradukvortaro)
www.travlang.com/Ergane (Free translation dictionary for Windows / Senpaga
tradukvortaro por Windows)
Nathaniel Ament-Stone
> of making Esperanto the *most* international and *most* simple
> language. Esperanto is *an* international language, and sacrifices
> some simplicity for the ability to express the full range of human
> thought. "Kiel" and "en kia manero" mean somewhat different things.
Jeez. Somehow part of my message is missing. I had a whole section on
top of why I DO like Esperanto. What happened there? Has Google ever
deleted part of your message? I wrote about all the good things about
Esperanto, and then I said something like, "but while I do think no
language has outdone Esperanto yet in terms of simplicity, I have some
ideas of how to simplify it to the max", or something like that. Just
so you know, I love Esperanto in many ways, but I think it leaves much
room for improvement.
> You're basing your criticism on "several native Thai speakers" you
> know. Have you looked at how many Asian speakers of Esperanto there
> are? The number of English-speaking Esperantists is stagnant or
> dropping, but growth is being achieved in Asia. Just because a
> person's native language does not embrace a certain phonological
> feature doesn't mean that person cannot learn.
I've heard conflicting things. According to proponents of Esperanto, a
huge majority of its speakers are in Asia, according to others, its
Asian speakers are nonexistent. I wonder how many there really are.
> Also, while Esperanto works quite fine (while we might disagree on how
> many speakers it has, I think it's clear the number is at least 1
> million), are there any data available on languages with only the ten
> sounds you suggest?
I believe Esperanto has about 2 million, doesn't it? Its detractors
claim less than 100 thousand, its major proponents several million,
but I heard 2 million quoted a lot. And no, I believe the only
languages with around ten sounds are Rotokas (Papua New Guinea) and
certain Iroquoian languages. But those ten sounds are the most
widespread, and I do believe that Esperanto has an overly rich
phonology, even for European languages, especially since many people
(the Germans and Russians included, in fact) sometimes have trouble
discerning between voiced and unvoiced in parts of words. I reference
"und" in German (pronounced /unt/), and "vsye" in Russian (pronounced
/fsye/.
> Again, while this is a valid concern with Esperanto, it hasn't yet
> hindered the spread of Esperanto throughout cultures with little to no
> contact with these languages. Look at the hot spots for
> Esperanto--Eastern Europe (as a Russian speaker, I can tell you
> knowing Slavic languages doesn't help with Esperanto; I've studied
> Hungarian, and it doesn't help either) and Asia. So while the
> language probably will, naturally, acquire more Slavic, Sinic, Altaic,
> Indic, etc. roots, it's not a pressing concern. Certainly not a large
> enough concern to abandon Esperanto's large base of speakers to start
> a new language.
I can't argue, since I don't know the amount of Esperanto speakers in
Eastern Europe and Asia. Do you have figures? I'm quite curious.
> Because Zamenhof didn't know Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Urdu, and
> Hindi. He built the language on the basis of what he knew. But just
> because the language began in Europe and has a European base doesn't
> mean it's worthless. Even Asians find it a great deal easier to learn
> Esperanto than to learn English.
I don't believe that a Eurocentric language is worthless, only that
it's Eurocentric. I wouldn't complain about this if Esperanto didn't
claim to be "international". How can something which is based on a
small region be international? In other words, the problem I have with
Esperanto's vocabulary here is that it claims to be from
internationally selected roots, roots from "the major languages of
Western civilization", I think Zamenhof said. But are they
international to an Arabic speaker? A Polynesian? An African? No, they
are international to an Indo-European speaker, which is all well and
good, but why not call a spade a spade? My point is, if Esperanto is
so international, it should have some non-European input. And of
course Esperanto is easier than English. EVERYTHING'S EASIER THAN
ENGLISH. I do think Esperanto is one of the easiest languages I've
found. BUT THERE IS ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT, I think.
> I'm sorry, but I'm laughing. LOJBAN? How many speakers does Lojban
> have these days?
No idea. Don't get me wrong, I am not a Lojban supporter. I find it a
bit inelegant and mangled. But I am citing the fact that it has many
less roots than Esperanto does.
> Again, Esperanto has its imperfections. But it has a lot of
> speakers. Have fun creating a new language, but don't expect it to
> find wide acceptance as an alternative to Esperanto. We have a lot of
> momentum, an original literature, tons of translated literature, and a
> lot of appeal. You'd be better of developing your ability in
> Esperanto and helping to make it more international from within.
I don't expect my language to gain wide acceptance as an alternative
to Esperanto. Until all 2 million Esperanto speakers stop, Esperanto
will be the most famous. In fact, I'm not trying to give you
propaganda at all. If I'm doing that, forgive me. I am actually
creating my language as an experiment in how simplistic a language can
be before it fails. If somebody likes the idea, I will encourage them
to take part, but I think it is wholly unrealistic to expect any
modern conlang to rival Esperanto because of the huge momentum the
Esperantists have given it.
> No language is a snap to learn. The thing is, Esperanto is easy to
> get started in. Getting to an intermediate ability level in Esperanto
> is way easier than getting to that level in any other national
> language. Personally, I am a languages person. My head may spin in
> physics and econ classes, but I do really, really well at learning
> languages. Maybe you're such a person, too. But not everyone is.
> I've met so many people, both in person and online, who have said
> things like, "I really sucked at French, but Esperanto really hooked
> me. I'm actually making progress!" The key is that even people who
> find languages tough can progress in Esperanto.
Believe me, Esperanto has helped me leaps and bounds with my French
studies, which is what I wrote at the top of my message before that
part disappeared (!). Esperanto is quite helpful in linguistic
development. It's the inner structure of it that I am questioning.
> Esperanto doesn't purport to be significantly better than every other
> language in every respect. It only says the whole package is
> significantly easier than almost all national languages. Japanese is
> damn hard to learn; obviously its correlatives system doesn't make it
> automatically superior to Esperanto in every way.
It doesn't purport that? I once corresponded with an Esperantist. This
is what she said on the matter of Esperanto's superiority:
> I don't know what you're talking about. Esperanto is the best language that was ever created, a feat in linguistic achievement. How dare you question the internacia lingvo. Nothing is better than Esperanto. I dare you to find a better language on earth! It's the easiest, prettiest, most widely spoken conlang there is! So stop whining and learn some!
Unfortunately, this was my introduction to fellow Esperantists when I
was first questioning the language. Not at all a rational person like
you or Don Harlow.
> Also, and this is important, Esperanto is not intended to replace all
> national languages. It's a *second language for everyone*. And for
> many, it's a springboard to studying a third language. That's really
> powerful. I've never seen Esperanto dampen a person's interest in
> learning about the world, only push it further.
Esperanto has helped me a lot. I'm grateful for the experience, as I
wrote above. It's a flawed language and I don't appreciate people
calling it perfect, but it is a good attempt and worthy of
recognition. I still think, however, that any competent language
creator can simplify it further.
> It doesn't mean either "kia homo" or "kia ajxo". "Kia" refers to a
> general type. "Kian libron vi deziras?" means "What kind of book do
> you want?" "Kiun libron vi deziras?" means "Which book do you want?"
> The answer to the first question would be "A book by Tolstoy" or "A
> mystery novel", whereas the answer to the second would be a specific
> title. So "kiu" refers to a specific thing or a specific person --
> "which one". This is a nice dichotomy to have:
>
> "Kia estas li?" -- asking what type of person he is
> "Kiu estas li?" -- asking for specific details about him, like a name
Oh, I must have meant why not KIO HOMO or KIO AJXO. But you didn't
answer my question. Does KIU refer to humans or things?
> First, it's nonsense to suggest that this aspect of Esperanto keeps
> women from speaking it. American English is one of the few languages
> in the world that has worked to purge this male-centeredness, and in
> some parts of the country this process has barely made any headway at
> all, and in others it's gone way too far. The fact is, while language
> does affect the way people think, this is a zero-importance issue in
> the world right now. With people dying and starving all over the
> world, do you really think the abstract work of making every language
> in the world to become gender neutral is more important than doing
> significant work to actually improve the conditions real women live
> in?
I don't claim that it keeps women from speaking it. There are plenty
who do speak it. But I know of several who quit because of the sexism
factor. And no, I don't think it's more important to make a language
non-sexist than to help real people. But you are getting off track, my
friend. This is a language group, not a social issues group. I know
what you say better than you might think. I'm sponsoring a Siberian
tiger and everything. But this is a group about language, not about
social conditions. If you like, I can go on and on about politics, but
that's for another group and another time.
> Also, your example does you an injustice. Think of all the Chinese
> ideograms that are very misogynistic. What does the ideogram WOMAN +
> CHILD mean again?
I believe it means GOOD. And yes, Chinese is in many ways sexist, but
not in the one respect I noted. I never claimed Chinese was better
than Esperanto, only that in that one instance it is less sexist.
> Yup, it is. And that permits some really interesting things to happen
> when the definiteness of some construction is left ambiguous. But
> this is not *better* than languages that have articles, only
> different. Zamenhof decided he wanted the ability to make a noun
> phrase definite with "la", and he did the smart thing and didn't
> provide an indefinite article, since that would be obvious in a
> definite/indefinite dichotomy.
It is not BETTER to not have articles, but it does save remembering a
new grammatical feature for most people. The majority of the earth
does not use articles. This is mostly an Indo-European feature, and
not even all Indo-Europeans use articles (most Slavs don't).
> How do you think removing "la" from Esperanto would make it easier?
> That's far from the hardest thing to learn in the language, and if you
> make mistakes with it, it's not that big a deal. It's not a huge
> barrier to understanding.
It's not a huge barrier, it's a little one. But it's still something
that many people aren't used to. I thought Esperanto was supposed to
be THE BEST. Read the Esperantist's message above.
> But case is really, really important in Esperanto. The languages you
> keep mentioning (Chinese, especially) have a defined word order.
> Esperanto has word order that is nearly as free as Russian (which has
> six cases) and it only has three cases, with only one of them marked
> distinctly! That's pretty damned cool if you ask me.
There's nothing wrong with case, but I can tell you as an English and
French speaker that it screws me up a lot. I also speak Russian, BTW,
so I do know the way it is used in Russian. But the way it is used in
Esperanto is highly irregular. I don't get it. You use it normally in
phrases like MI AMAS VIN and VI AMAS MIN, but why in TAGON POST
TAGO???
> I'm sorry, but you're absolutely wrong here. You need to either study
> those languages more or learn some linguistics, I don't know where in
> you got this idea. "Er rennt schnell" == "He runs quickly". If you
> think there are no adverbs simply because adverbs don't *look*
> different, that nonsense.
But to me, since they don't make the distinction (SCHNELL means both
fast and quickly), the distinction is nonexistent in their minds.
Remember how in English many lazy speakers say "I did good" or, using
your example, "He runs fast". More and more derived adverbs are dying
out in English.
> Again, this doesn't make those languages *better* than Esperanto, it
> just makes them slightly different.
Once again, I NEVER SAID THEY'RE BETTER, just that they're simpler in
these respects.
> Name _one_ natural language that is taken as a whole easier to learn
> than Esperanto. You've shown some aspects of some languages that are
> easier than the comparable aspect of Esperanto, but I am positive you
> will not find a language that is easier over all.
No, you are absolutely right. Esperanto is simpler (overall) than any
natural language (except maybe some pidgins and creoles I can think
of), but that doesn't make it the easiest possible.
> What is FULMO? Something laux mia opinio?
I think FULMO means lightning, a funny truncation. Look up the word
for lightning in European languages. FULMO is completely contrived.
Where the hell does it come from? Is it a mutilation of Italian
fulmine??? Here are the words for lightning in the Romance languages:
French: eclair
Spanish: relampago
Italian: fulmine
Portuguese: relampago
Romanian: fulger
It seems to me Zamenhof found fulmine and chomped off the last three
letters so that FULMINO could mean "female lightning" - HUH??? Why not
take RELAMPAGO unchanged and not hack off two syllables that Italians
are used to?
> As for the accusative, people get frustrated by it, but mostly those
> people come from languages with fixed word order. Eliminate the
> accusative, and lots of English speakers will be happy, but you'll
> have a lot of Russians, Hungarians, and so forth having a little
> trouble remembering a fixed word order. Both are theoretically very
> simple things but somewhat more difficult in practice.
Russians are used to free word order, but usually they speak in SVO,
as in English, Chinese, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Malay-Indonesian
and many others. For example, JA LIUBLIU RIBU. In that sentence, RIBA
does take the accusative, RIBU, but the order is still SVO. And
remember, it is only in feminine nouns in Russian that the accusative
is marked. JA LIUBLIU RIBU but JA LIUBLIU SIR. Being a Russian
speaker, you know what I'm talking about.
> Personally, I like Esperanto a lot. I don't like it *more* than the
> other languages I speak, but it definitely serves its purpose. Most
> importantly, it has a following that can't merely be shrugged off. If
> you don't like Esperanto, that's your prerogative. But it's still
> easier to learn than any natural language and more expressive than
> more minimal constructed ones. It's the best currently-available
> auxiliary language for those with goals similar to its speakers', and
> the best way for you to make it better is from inside, as an
> Esperantist. Esperantists are not averse to making the language
> better, but those efforts should not deny its speakers the ability to
> express things they can currently express. I think that's reasonable.
I like Esperanto a lot too, but I think my criticisms are fair. I
never touted the superiority of Chinese, I only pointed out where I
find Esperanto weak. I think that there is much simplification to be
done with la internacia lingvo.
Wishing that Google kept my pro-Esperanto beginning of the message,
Nathaniel
Lee Miller
news:4e14a02d.03081...@posting.google.com...
> so you know, I love Esperanto in many ways, but I think it leaves much
> room for improvement.
Ek de la komenco de Esperanto, kelkaj homoj opiniis simile kaj tuj komencis
fari reform-proponojn, el kiuj neniu vere sukcesis. Kaj fakte ne eblas
"plibonigi" Esperanton. Gxi estas viva lingvo sen "reganto", kaj sxangxoj
okazas nur per uzado kaj natura disvolvigxo.
> I've heard conflicting things. According to proponents of Esperanto, a
> huge majority of its speakers are in Asia, according to others, its
> Asian speakers are nonexistent. I wonder how many there really are.
La Esperantistoj en Japanio estas tre aktivaj, sed numerojn mi ne havas. Mi
scias ke la grupo en Jokohamo proponas la urbon por la UK en 2007, kaj
venontjare (2004) la UK estos en Pekino.
> Believe me, Esperanto has helped me leaps and bounds with my French
> studies, which is what I wrote at the top of my message before that
> part disappeared (!). Esperanto is quite helpful in linguistic
> development. It's the inner structure of it that I am questioning.
Se vi jam havas tiun pruvon de sukceso, eble la strukturo jam estas suficxe
bona . . .
> Esperanto has helped me a lot. I'm grateful for the experience, as I
> wrote above. It's a flawed language and I don't appreciate people
> calling it perfect, but it is a good attempt and worthy of
> recognition. I still think, however, that any competent language
> creator can simplify it further.
Neniu gxis nun sukcesis . . .
> I think FULMO means lightning, a funny truncation. Look up the word
> for lightning in European languages. FULMO is completely contrived.
> Where the hell does it come from? Is it a mutilation of Italian
> fulmine??? Here are the words for lightning in the Romance languages:
Zamenhof elektis el diversaj fontoj, kaj faris sxangxojn laux la bezonoj de
la nova lingvo. Tamen, "fulmo" devenas de la latina "fulmen/fulminis", kaj
gxi estas tute tauxga, bona vorto en Esperanto. Estas neutile kritiki
specifajn vortojn tiel. Kial ekzemple li elektis "kaj" el la greka, kaj ne
"et" el la latina? Oni povus foruzi la tutan vivon pri tiaj demandoj.
Zamenhof elektis, la lingvo vivas kaj funkcias, jen suficxo.
Amike,
Lee
Ensjo
> (**) In both these cases, one reason for dropping the unnecessary -IN-
> syllable would seem to be to avoid confusion with the suffix -IN-. However,
> it's probably not the only reason, since Zamenhof, in some words, tended
> simply to change an etymological -IN- to an Esperanto -EN-. For both these
> words, Ido, Occidental and Interlingua all retain the extra syllable;
> presumably their creators preferred etymological similitude to convenience
> of learning and use.
The maintenance of the "-in-" part (and many others) in Interlingua
has to do with the derivational series:
"fulmine" --> "fulminar"
"femina" --> "feminin"
"vertigine" --> "vertiginose"
etc.
Ensjo.
http://www.ensjo.net/
Donald J. Harlow
news:4e14a02d.03081...@posting.google.com...
>
> I've heard conflicting things. According to proponents of Esperanto, a
> huge majority of its speakers are in Asia, according to others, its
> Asian speakers are nonexistent. I wonder how many there really are.
>
mostly young, in Shanghai. Since I didn't speak with all (or even many) of
them, I don't know how many could actually _speak_ Esperanto; however, none
of them took the opportunity of the 20-minute pause between talks to sneak
out of the building, so the signs are good that they _understood_ it.
(Later, on the same journey, I had the opportunity to meet, under more
intimate conditions, groups of a dozen speakers in Nanjing and 30-40 each in
Suzhou and Shanghai.)
(2) In 1988, a friend of mine in Shanghai was writing me a letter when her
son alerted her to the radio, which was playing an hour of music with lyrics
in Esperanto. During a break between pieces, the announcer advised listeners
that there were roughly a million Esperanto speakers in China. (Actually,
according to an L.A. Times article early in the eighties, ten thousand or so
people in one of China's southern provinces were scammed out of five or ten
dollars each by a confidence trickster who took advantage of their
enthusiasm for Esperanto by signing them up for a non-existent Esperanto
correspondence course.)
(3) The same friend, teaching Esperanto at Huadong University in the 80s,
was distressed at the start of each semester because she had to turn away
students from the class -- there were seats for only 45 people, and around
80 would usually turn out for the course. (When she later moved to the
United States and taught Esperanto at U.C. Berkeley, she was _terribly_
disappointed by the tiny turnouts compared to what she was accustomed to at
home.)
(4) The annual Japanese national Esperanto Congress usually turns out
300-600 people. Compare this with the U.S. (population more than double that
of Japan), which usually gets <100.
> > I'm sorry, but I'm laughing. LOJBAN? How many speakers does Lojban
> > have these days?
>
> No idea. Don't get me wrong, I am not a Lojban supporter. I find it a
> bit inelegant and mangled. But I am citing the fact that it has many
> less roots than Esperanto does.
>
(1) Somebody said that the number of fluent Lojban speakers could fit into a
small room. From what I've heard, the number of fluent Lojban speakers could
fit into Fibber McGee's closet.
(2) The paucity of roots in Lojban is probably a function of the paucity of
speakers. Zamenhof started off with a few hundred ("Unua Libro").
Unfortunately, the language then fell into the trap of having actual
speakers ...
> > What is FULMO? Something laux mia opinio?
>
> I think FULMO means lightning, a funny truncation. Look up the word
> for lightning in European languages. FULMO is completely contrived.
> Where the hell does it come from? Is it a mutilation of Italian
> fulmine??? Here are the words for lightning in the Romance languages:
>
> French: eclair
> Spanish: relampago
> Italian: fulmine
> Portuguese: relampago
> Romanian: fulger
>
> It seems to me Zamenhof found fulmine and chomped off the last three
> letters so that FULMINO could mean "female lightning" - HUH??? Why not
> take RELAMPAGO unchanged and not hack off two syllables that Italians
> are used to?
>
I think I addressed this in an earlier message. "Fulmo" is the Latin
"fulmen/fulminis", supported by the Italian "fulmine" and the French
"fulminer" = to explode (also, I suppose, English "fulminate"; Vilborg adds
a comparison to the Spanish "fulminar", but does not emphasize it since
Spanish played no role in the creation of early Esperanto). The -IN- was
removed partly for the reason you mention, though also since Z apparently
felt the extra syllable contributed nothing to the word. This appears to be
a fairly standard process in linguistic evolution, standard enough that
there is a word for it -- "syncope".
Marko Rauhamaa
> Je 06.56 ptm 2003.08.12 +0200, Paul EBERMANN skribis
> >La sono "NG" oficiale ne ekzistas, W sxajne estas
> >U kun supersigno, Y estas J.
>
> Gxi ofte estas auxdebla kiel variajxo de /n/ antaux /g/ aux /k/, sed
> kontribuas nenion al la gramatiko aux semantiko de la lingvo, do estas
> "alofonia".
Mi malaprobas tian alofonion chefe, char analoga alofonio ne funkcias
alie: /np/ -> /mp/, /md/ -> /nd/.
Sekvas, ke vortoj kiel "lingvuzo" nepre prononcighas /lin'gvu-zo/, char
esperanta silabo ne povas finighi per "ng" sed ja bone povas per "gv".
> Gxi ne devas trovigxi en la supera listo. Simile 'DZ', kiu povas foje
> auxdigxi kiel variajxo de /d/ en la malmultaj vortoj, en kiuj 'D'
> trovigxas antaux 'Z' (ekz-e "haladzo", "edzo" -- rimarku, ke cxiam la
> literoj 'd' kaj 'z' trovigxas en malsamaj silaboj).
Chu chiam la literoj 't' kaj 'r' estas en malsamaj silaboj? Chu "patro"
estas /'pat-ro/ chu /'pa-tro/? Mi diras, ke ambau prononcoj estas eblaj.
Simile "mi trinkas" povas esti au /mi'trin-kas/ au /mit'rin-kas/.
Marko
--
Marko Rauhamaa mailto:ma...@pacujo.net http://pacujo.net/marko/
Raymond S. Wise
news:4e14a02d.03081...@posting.google.com...
["Donald J. HARLOW" <do...@donh.best.vwh.net> wrote]
[...]
> > Also, while Esperanto works quite fine (while we might disagree on how
> > many speakers it has, I think it's clear the number is at least 1
> > million), are there any data available on languages with only the ten
> > sounds you suggest?
>
> I believe Esperanto has about 2 million, doesn't it? Its detractors
> claim less than 100 thousand, its major proponents several million,
> but I heard 2 million quoted a lot. And no, I believe the only
> languages with around ten sounds are Rotokas (Papua New Guinea) and
> certain Iroquoian languages. But those ten sounds are the most
According to one interpretation, women who speak Mura-Puraha use 9 phonemes,
men use 10. According to another interpretation, the language has 11
phonemes.
See
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pirah%E3_language
If you count the long and short versions of its vowels as belonging the same
phoneme, differing only in length, then Hawaiian has 13 phonemes, 5 vowels
and 8 consonants.
There appears to be no advantage to basing the vocabulary of a conlang on a
larger selection of languages if the desired goal is internationality _and_
ease of learning. Increase the internationality by including more words from
non-Indo-European languages, and you decrease the ease of learning the
language for most people--and consequently actually _decrease_ the
internationality. It wouldn't much help a Chinese person if, say, ten
percent of Esperanto consisted of Chinese roots. Among other things, to be
fair you would have to change some of roots which had been adopted from the
international scientific vocabulary (including zoological taxonomic terms),
and that would make things more difficult for those Chinese who had been
educated with terms from that international scientific vocabulary. And how
do you decide what is a "fair" mix of roots? Linguist Mario Pei said
something to the effect that "Of what benefit is it to a speaker of Thai if
an international language contains one or two roots from his language? (See
Pei's "One Language for the World," which should have the actual quote.)
[...]
> It doesn't purport that? I once corresponded with an Esperantist. This
> is what she said on the matter of Esperanto's superiority:
>
> > I don't know what you're talking about. Esperanto is the best language
that was ever created, a feat in linguistic achievement. How dare you
question the internacia lingvo. Nothing is better than Esperanto. I dare you
to find a better language on earth! It's the easiest, prettiest, most widely
spoken conlang there is! So stop whining and learn some!
>
> Unfortunately, this was my introduction to fellow Esperantists when I
> was first questioning the language. Not at all a rational person like
> you or Don Harlow.
There are some Esperantists who believe that, but they must be a tiny
minority and/or they haven't thought the matter out very well. Zamenhof
evidently did _not_ believe that "Esperanto is the best language that was
ever created." Among the creators of conlangs, most[1] of those who created
_a priori_ languages (languages created from scratch) intended to create
"the best language," some even intended to create a language in which, for
example, it was impossible to lie. Some of their ideas are interesting to
compare with those which are behind computer languages[2], but they are of
no use in creating a language which humans can actually speak and use in
everyday life.
Esperanto, like the other _a posteriori_ languages (languages borrowing
grammatical forms and vocabulary from other languages), was created with the
intention of its being used as an auxiliary language. This means that it was
not thought to be superior in any sense except in ease of learning--where
the "logical" aspect comes in handy for word-creation and memorization of
the grammar and vocabulary. If it had been otherwise, if Esperanto was
intended to be a "logical" language in some more powerful sense, Zamenhof
would have logically argued for the replacement of the national languages
with Esperanto, which he emphatically did not!
[...]
> I don't claim that it keeps women from speaking it. There are plenty
> who do speak it. But I know of several who quit because of the sexism
> factor. And no, I don't think it's more important to make a language
> non-sexist than to help real people. But you are getting off track, my
> friend. This is a language group, not a social issues group. I know
> what you say better than you might think. I'm sponsoring a Siberian
> tiger and everything. But this is a group about language, not about
> social conditions. If you like, I can go on and on about politics, but
> that's for another group and another time.
[...]
There are at least two ways in which the "sexism" issue may be
treated--besides simply ignoring it, of course. One is to adopt the English
model of replacing some female-marked words with non-marked words. I know
an Esperantist, for example, who would speak of a person as being an
"instruisto" ( = "teacher" ) even if the person in question is female--I
referred to an "Esperantist," but in Esperanto that would in principle be
"Esperantistino," because the Esperantist in question is female. The other
solution that has been proposed is to add a male-marked suffix, "-ic," so
that "patro" would mean "parent," "patrico" would mean "father," and
"patrino" would mean "mother." I lean towards the first practice. Of the
second, it should be kept in mind when and if Esperanto is chosen by the UN
or some other international organization as the international auxiliary
language. Zamenhof intended for the fundamentals of Esperanto to be changed
_only_ when that happened. (If any substantial changes were actually made in
such a case, I think you'd find a lot of unhappy Esperantists, but I hope
that you would find a lot more Esperantists who would be delighted that the
language had been officially declared the international auxiliary language,
no matter what changes were subsequently made to it, as long as the "ideo"
in "samideano" were adhered to.)
As for the question of politics, _Esperanto is all about politics!_ The
adoption of Esperanto as an international auxiliary language would be a
major political decision of the world's governments. The addition of a root
to the list of official roots is a political act of members of the Esperanto
Academy. _The very idea that people of the world should be brought into a
sort of equality by having each person be able to speak with any other
person via the auxiliary language is itself a political idea._
Notes:
[1] The only _a priori_ language which I know was not intended to be an
improved vehicle of communication is Klingon. In fact, it was a sort of
experiment in avoiding the "linguistic universals" which had been previously
identified.
[2] Did any designer of computer languages actually take a close look at the
_a priori_ languages, I wonder?
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis (Minesoto) Usono
mplsray @ yahoo . com
MJ Ray
> I believe Esperanto has about 2 million, doesn't it? Its detractors
That figure comes from a study and reflects a certain level of
proficiency. ISTR that links from rano.org will lead you to details.
It's a popular figure, as there seem to be few detailed studies.
> [...] How can something which is based on a
> small region be international?
It clearly meets the first definition from WordNet (r) 1.7 [wn]:
international
adj 1: concerning or belonging to all or at least two or more
nations; "international affairs"; "an international
agreement"; "international waters" [ant: {national}]
Any regional bias is a result of history. We have to live with
history in all fields, including languages. Those who do not learn
from history are doomed to repeat it. "This will not be another
Vianetta."
> [...] BUT THERE IS ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT, I think.
Think what revisions and instability do to native languages, let alone
constructed ones.
> No idea. Don't get me wrong, I am not a Lojban supporter. I find it a
> bit inelegant and mangled. But I am citing the fact that it has many
> less roots than Esperanto does.
Your message takes a number of facts in isolation with no regard for
the overview. Any language can be claimed "too complicated" in some way
but we don't learn only one aspect of a language. We learn the language
as a whole.
[...]
> But to me, since they don't make the distinction (SCHNELL means both
> fast and quickly), the distinction is nonexistent in their minds.
Yow! Support for the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis?! I never expected to
see that here... Next, the Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax?
--
MJR/slef My Opinion Only and possibly not of any group I know.
http://mjr.towers.org.uk/ jabber://sl...@jabber.at
Creative copyleft computing services via http://www.ttllp.co.uk/
Thought: Edwin A Abbott wrote about trouble with Windows in 1884
felice
> Does it? Females do have their own sex-suffix in Esperanto, while men are
> apparently placed in the same category as things and animals of unknown or
> unspecified sex. Now, who is being treated worse?
Ne gravas kiu. Estas stulta, unu au^ la alia.
> > I'm sure many more women
> > would speak Esperanto if it were less sexist (and I might be more
> > inclined as well).
Mi akordas.
> Well, here you do have a point. You have to learn the sex (male or
> unspecified) of each root that describes a living being. I should have
> designed Esperanto differently in this respect, but the problem is in my
> opinion not serious enough to justify a radical reform.
Radikalan reformon ne bezonatas. Nur uzu "-ic^" por vira, kaj "-in"
por ina. Oni ec^ ne devas s^ang^i radikvortajn signifojn, se oni c^iam
uzus "ge-" kaj neniam uzus senmodifitajn radikvortojn.
felnjo
LEE Sau Dan
tnhryk> Japanoj, ne nur studentoj sed ech lingvokapablaj
tnhryk> verkistoj, neniel scias tiom multajn Kanji (Chinliterojn)
tnhryk> kiom 9000! Oni scias meznombre 2000, plej mutle
tnhryk> 3000. 2000 sufichas por legi modernajn japanajn tekstojn.
tnhryk> 9000 estas nombro, kiom da Kanji oni bezonas por legi
tnhryk> chinajn klasikajhojn SEN vortaro! Ech chinaj intelektuloj,
tnhryk> krom esceptaj fakuloj, ne posedas tiom.
Normala ĉino scipovas ĉirkaŭ 3000.
tnhryk> Vi pravas koncerne "redakt, redakci, dedaktor". Esperanto
tnhryk> parte ja havas nenecesajn redundancojn.
Ĉiam pro ĝia Eŭropeco. Multfoje pro la malbela desegno.
--
Lee Sau Dan
E-mail: dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
Gerard van Wilgen
"Nathaniel Ament-Stone" <nat...@linkline.com> wrote in message
news:4e14a02d.03081...@posting.google.com...
>
> it's Eurocentric. I wouldn't complain about this if Esperanto didn't
> claim to be "international". How can something which is based on a
> small region be international?
If a system in used internationally it is "international". Take for example
the international system of units, which is used everywhere in the world
(except in the USA where the British system is still generally preferred for
everyday purposes). But all the names of the prefixes and units (kilo-,
micro-, milli-, metre, second, newton, joule, ohm, etc.) are derived from
Greek and Latin words or from the names of European scientists.
And HTML is an "international" mark-up language, even though all the names
for tags and attributes are derived from English words.
> There's nothing wrong with case, but I can tell you as an English and
> French speaker that it screws me up a lot. I also speak Russian, BTW,
> so I do know the way it is used in Russian. But the way it is used in
> Esperanto is highly irregular. I don't get it. You use it normally in
> phrases like MI AMAS VIN and VI AMAS MIN, but why in TAGON POST
> TAGO???
Because using the accusative is one possible method for expressing units (in
this case a unit of time). Another possibility would be "je tago post
tago"..
> But to me, since they don't make the distinction (SCHNELL means both
> fast and quickly), the distinction is nonexistent in their minds.
But that distinction does in fact exist in their minds. Why would a speaker
of German say "Es is ein gut geschriebenes Buch" instead of "Es ist ein
gutes geschriebenes Buch" if in his mind "gut" and "geschrieben" were not
different parts of speech?
LEE Sau Dan
>> With a little vocabulary from Mandarin (over 900 million
>> speakers) or other Chinese dialects (totaling a good 150
>> million speakers), Hindi-Urdu (400-odd million speakers),
>> Bengali (190-odd million speakers), Arabic (215 or more million
>> speakers), Malay-Indonesian (about 140 million speakers) or
>> Japanese (125 million speakers), Esperanto would be quite a bit
>> more international, wouldn't it?
Gerard> I suppose so, but it would not make the language much more
Gerard> easier to learn for speakers of those languages.
At least fairer, because that would make it equally difficult
(i.e. equally easy) for all speakers to learn. No advantage taken for
granted by the Europeans.
Gerard> In the first place because, unlike the languages of
Gerard> Europe, these languages (with the exception of Hindi-Urdu
Gerard> and Bengali) have very few words in common. In the second
Gerard> place, because of the restriction that you put on the
Gerard> number of phonemes (and probably on the number of possible
Gerard> combinations as well), most words would be
Gerard> unrecognizable. For instance, Japanese "geisha" would
Gerard> become something like "kesa" and Arabic "qahwa" (coffee)
Gerard> something like "kapa".
Esperanto's phoneme system is Eurocentric in the first place.
Gerard> So, such a language would be much more difficult to learn
Gerard> for speakers of most European languages, but not
Gerard> significantly easier to learn for the rest of the world.
Making it FAIRer.
If fairness is no concern, then why not speak English? Why Esperanto?
Gerard> I think that is a high price to pay for being more
Gerard> international.
FAIRNESS is what you get in return. It's not a high price if you
value FAIRNESS as something super-important and invaluable.
Gerard> Because European languages are the geographically most
Gerard> widely-spread group and because they share a relatively
Gerard> large common vocabulary.
Chinese is also geographically widely-spread, if not more. Name some
big cities where you can find no Chinese community!
The sharing of common vocabulary among Chinese languages (or dialects,
if you want to call them "dialects") is even higher than among
European languages.
Gerard> It makes Esperanto easier for speakers of those languages
Gerard> without making it much harder for the rest.
Chinese is easier for billions of people.
If you want to drop the FAIRNESS requirement for Esperanto, and weigh
"ease for most" more importantly, then perhaps you should consider
Chinese.
Gerard> In theory yes, but you would have to use a lot of fairly
Gerard> long compound words or descriptions. In practice a
Gerard> language with only 1,000 roots would be almost useless for
Gerard> many purposes. Imagine that you had to write an book about
Gerard> chemistry in such a language. There are about 100
Gerard> different chemical elements, and if each one would have
Gerard> its own root name, they alone would take up 10% of the
Gerard> available 1,000 roots. But it would obviously very
Gerard> cumbersome if you would have to refer to hydrogen as
Gerard> "element-with-atomic-number-1" , to nitrogen as
Gerard> "element-with-atomic-number-7", etc. (assuming there are
Gerard> roots for "elements" and "atom" and that you do not need
Gerard> to describe those words as well).
The chemists do have a systematic nomenclature. They do understand
something like "1,2,3-trichloropropane". Having to invent a name for
each separate compound rather than naming them systematically would
mean you need to invent millions or billions of such names. That's
unreasonable. A systematic naming scheme is THE approach.
>> And why have three different words for edit (redakt-, redakci-
>> and redaktor-) when one will do, or for prison for that matter
>> (malliberejo, karcer- and prizon-)?
Gerard> No need at all, but I am curious about how you are going
Gerard> to prevent users of your language to invent their own
Gerard> words.
I believe that "prizon-" is not an invention of word. It's just a
blind borrowing. Again, the Europeans are taking this for granted.
When they don't know an Esperanto word for something, they simply
Esperantize a word from their own language, taking it for granted that
this is good Esperanto. If the Asians were all speaking Esperanto in
this manner, imagine what would happen.
Fairness? Where is it?
Gerard> Are you going to kill them if they use words that are not
Gerard> in the dictionary that you published? As soon as your
Gerard> language really gets used by people, you lose control over
Gerard> it.
And Esperanto's Eurocentricity only accelerates this. Chinese has
been more reluctant to this kind of blind borrowing. We only compose
longer words out of Chinese roots. Lojban seems to have such a
tendency, too. Rather than "borrowing" a foreign word to 'pollute'
the language, the trend is to make up a new word from existing roots.
>> Also, I find Esperanto's grammar to be surprisingly difficult
>> and inconsistent. The correlatives are a brilliant idea that
>> could have been refined further and been derived from existing
>> Esperanto roots. For example, why isn't kiam something like
>> kia tempo, or why isn't kiel something like kia maniero? Why,
>> the Japanese correlative system is about as simple as
>> Esperanto's, so how much better is Esperanto in that respect?
Esperanto is even worse: "kio" has two meanings: as a correlative, and
as a question word. These 2 roles are UNFORTUNATELY overloaded on a
single word, merely out of its Eurocentricity.
And because of this design flaw, you HAVE TO being a (non-yes-no)
question with a "k-" word. Otherwise, it would be easily mistaken for
a correlative. "Free word order"? That's a myth. (I like the
Japanese/Chinese way of asking questions: simply stuff the question
word into the place as in a normal question. No need to shuffle any
words around.)
>> And by the way, KIU always confused me. Does it mean what
>> person (kia homo) or what thing (kia ajho)? I've seen it used
>> both ways. Which is which?
Another design flaw that comes from plagiarising European grammar:
When "kiu" or and adjective stands on its own without an attached
noun, the noun is IMPLICITY "homo". So, "kiu" alone means "kiu homo".
(However, when the adjective is related to a race/culture, the IMPLIED
nouns is "lingvo": "la japana" ==> "la japana lingvo".) Again, the
Europeans take these rules for granted.
>> And how can a language claim to be neutral when it places men
>> above women?
Esperanto is never meant to be gender-neutral.
Gerard> Does it? Females do have their own sex-suffix in
Gerard> Esperanto, while men are apparently placed in the same
Gerard> category as things and animals of unknown or unspecified
Gerard> sex. Now, who is being treated worse?
What are the words for "man" and "woman", please?
>> Beyond the sexist aspect of this, it just causes more
>> ambiguity. Does FILO mean child or son?
Only "son". There is "gefiloj" which means "children". And curiously
(i.e. IRREGULARLY), there is no singular form for this word. So,
there is no simply way to say "child". You have to say "filo aŭ
filino".
Some people do attempt to use "gefilo" for "child", but many
Esperantists still consider this bad Esperanto, because Zamenhof (the
God) and the various grammar books (the Bible(s)) don't say this is
allowed.
>> Case is absent in most isolating languages (such as Chinese
>> again),
Not most, but "all". That's a part of the definition, I suppose.
>> prepositions are marked in Japanese by noun
>> constructions (so that "on top of" is "summit"),
There are no prepositions in Japanese. Only POST-positions are found.
>> conjunctions are often replaced by verbs in certain languages
>> (so that "and/with/also/plus" is "accompany" - if Esperanto had
>> a word like this, it would save it at least three or four extra
>> words for the same concept).
In Chinese and Vietnamese, these words seem to have derived from verbs.
>> Adverbs are nonexistent in German, Dutch
Well... there are adverbs in German (deshalb, infolgedessen, etc.).
These often have no equivalent adjectives. You must have meant the
distinction between adjectives and adverbs DERIVED FROM adjectives.
You're right. Adjectives can be used in German as adverbs directly,
without modifications.
>> Also, most Asian languages, like Chinese, Japanese, Korean,
>> Vietnamese or Thai do not have obligatory tense or plurals.
Gerard> But Chinese and Thai have a complicated system of
Gerard> classifiers instead.
So, don't copy the features in a wholesale manner.
DO copy the non-obligatory tense/plural marking from Chinese/Thai/Vietnamese.
DO copy the non-obligatory classifiers from European languages.
DON'T copy the obligatory tense/plural marking from European languages.
DON'T copy the classifier system from Chinese and Thai and Vietnamese.
DON'T copy the irregularly inflected classifier system from Japanese.
Gerard> I do in fact know of no language that does not have some
Gerard> means of indicating plurality, even if it is not always
Gerard> obligatory to do so (But deciding when to mark plurality
Gerard> and when not, might require rather complex rules).
The point is not whether it can be expressed, but whether the
expression of these irrelevant information is OBLIGATORY.
Every language can express the colour of objects, right? So, why not
make the marking of colours obligatory in Esperanto?
Gerard> Well, when you seriously start designing your own language
Gerard> you will at some point find out that simplifying one
Gerard> aspect of your language will make something else more
Gerard> complicated, and in the end you will be forced to make a
Gerard> lot of arbitrary choices.
But Esperanto is hardly optimal in any sense. It's simply Eurocentric.
Klivo
> > Well, here you do have a point. You have to learn the sex (male or
> > unspecified) of each root that describes a living being. I should have
> > designed Esperanto differently in this respect, but the problem is in my
> > opinion not serious enough to justify a radical reform.
>
> Radikalan reformon ne bezonatas. Nur uzu "-ic^" por vira, kaj "-in"
> por ina. Oni ec^ ne devas s^ang^i radikvortajn signifojn, se oni c^iam
> uzus "ge-" kaj neniam uzus senmodifitajn radikvortojn.
>
> felnjo
Mi bedauras ke vi ne donis ekzemplojn. Estus pli klare tiel.
Lau mia opinio, oni uzu -in malofte.
Oni ne devas indiki sekson por profesioj. Kelkaj chiam skribas
'prezidentino', 'sekretariino' ktp, sed lau mi, 'Shi estas
sekretario' estas normala. Kiam oni legas dungreklamon por
'sekretario', oni ne plendu pri seksismo.
Oni ne devas chiam uzi -in por femalaj bestoj. Kiam oni diras
'kato' mi ne automate supozas ke temas pri maskla kato.
'La kato jhus naskis' ne shokas mian lingvosenton.
Se oni tamen volas indiki sekson, oni tradicia diras 'virkato'
kaj 'katino'. Por tiuj kiu ne shatas chi tiun malsimetrion,
mi proponas 'li-kato' kaj 'shi-kato'.
Mi ankau emas ne uzi 'in' post 'ul'. Mi skribus 'Shi
estas richulo' anstatau 'Shi estas richulino.'
Oni tamen devas uzi 'in' por manpleno da vortoj pri familiaj
rilatoj: patro/patrino, frato/fratino, ktp. (En vortoj kiel
regxo kaj regxino, ankau enestas familia rilato.) En chi tiuj
malmultaj vortoj, estas 'problemo', nur se oni konsideras
malsimetrion problemo.
Pri pronomoj: kiam mi ne scias au ne volas indiki sekson,
mi preferas li/shi. Ekz: 'Kiam li/shi venos?'
Klivo
LEE Sau Dan
Donald> (1) In 1986 I gave two talks in Esperanto to a group of
Donald> about 400 people, mostly young, in Shanghai. Since I
Donald> didn't speak with all (or even many) of them, I don't know
Donald> how many could actually _speak_ Esperanto; however, none
Donald> of them took the opportunity of the 20-minute pause
Donald> between talks to sneak out of the building, so the signs
Donald> are good that they _understood_ it.
Maybe, they're ordered to stay there?
Are you sure nobody sneaked out, not even for the washroom?
Donald> (Later, on the same journey, I had the opportunity to
Donald> meet, under more intimate conditions, groups of a dozen
Donald> speakers in Nanjing and 30-40 each in Suzhou and
Donald> Shanghai.)
A few questions for you. You may not have exact figures to support
your answers, but the answer -- a rough guess -- shouldn't be
difficult:
1) How many people in Shanghai can speak French? How many can speak
Esperanto?
2) You're talking about a group of 400 people. And that's out of a
population of 16 million! That's just .0025%. So, Esperanto is
successful?
3) Even if ALL Esperanto were Chinese, and we take the highest
estimate of 5 million of Esperantists (not all of them must speak
Esperanto) worldwide, it's still less than .5% of Chinese who have
even heard of Esperanto. And Esperanto is "successful" or
"popular" in China?
Donald> (2) In 1988, a friend of mine in Shanghai was writing me a
Donald> letter when her son alerted her to the radio, which was
Donald> playing an hour of music with lyrics in Esperanto. During
Donald> a break between pieces, the announcer advised listeners
Donald> that there were roughly a million Esperanto speakers in
Donald> China.
1 million out of 1.2 (or now 1.3?) billion is 1/1200 < 0.1%. Is that
significant?
And then how many speakers of German, French, Russian, Japanese,
Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, Malay are there in China?
Donald> (3) The same friend, teaching Esperanto at Huadong
Donald> University in the 80s, was distressed at the start of each
Donald> semester because she had to turn away students from the
Donald> class -- there were seats for only 45 people, and around
Donald> 80 would usually turn out for the course. (When she later
Donald> moved to the United States and taught Esperanto at
Donald> U.C. Berkeley, she was _terribly_ disappointed by the tiny
Donald> turnouts compared to what she was accustomed to at home.)
Perhaps, the "Esperanto much easier than English" slogan works. Who
at U.C. Berkeley would need an excuse to escape learning English?
Donald> (4) The annual Japanese national Esperanto Congress
Donald> usually turns out 300-600 people. Compare this with the
Donald> U.S. (population more than double that of Japan), which
Donald> usually gets <100.
Could that be again the way to avoid learning English? Turn to
something that is said to be easier than English?
--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)
LEE Sau Dan
Raymond> It wouldn't much help a Chinese person if, say, ten
Raymond> percent of Esperanto consisted of Chinese roots.
It would if the top 10%, ranked by frequency of occurrence, of
Esperanto words were based on Chinese.
Raymond> Among other things, to be fair you would have to change
Raymond> some of roots which had been adopted from the
Raymond> international scientific vocabulary (including zoological
Raymond> taxonomic terms), and that would make things more
Raymond> difficult for those Chinese who had been educated with
Raymond> terms from that international scientific vocabulary.
But they actually learn those terms in Chinese.
Nathaniel Ament-Stone
> system that you plan to use for your own language, and those words do not
> seem to be easier for a Thai speaker than "scii", "ektransskribi" and
> "snack". Or did you create addional rules that forbid certain difficult
> combinations such as "tr"?
I don't use any consonant clusters, so no.
> I suppose so, but it would not make the language much more easier to learn
> for speakers of those languages. In the first place because, unlike the
> languages of Europe, these languages (with the exception of Hindi-Urdu and
> Bengali) have very few words in common. In the second place, because of the
> restriction that you put on the number of phonemes (and probably on the
> number of possible combinations as well), most words would be
> unrecognizable. For instance, Japanese "geisha" would become something like
> "kesa" and Arabic "qahwa" (coffee) something like "kapa".
They have plenty of words in common. Hindi-Urdu, Bengali and
Malay-Indonesian have all borrowed ad nauseam from Arabic. Think of
Malay-Indonesian "kamus" or "kitabu" from Arabic qamus and kitab or
all the thousands of words in Hindi that are pure Arabic: qamus,
kitab, qamar, jamal, etc. Hindi has about the number of words borrowed
from Arabic that we have from Latin and French. It's a huge amount.
And I wouldn't use words that would be unrecognizable. I wouldn't use
geisha because I would have to distort it to kisa, which I already
have from Arabic and Hindi meaning story. And I would borrow Arabic
qahwa (kafi/kofi/kafe/kafei in many languages) as kaua or maybe, for
more internationality, kaui. And compare Arabic maut to Indonesian
mati, Hindi mrit, Spanish muerto, Russian miort, English death
(mortuary), Mandarin mo...
> Because European languages are the geographically most widely-spread group
> and because they share a relatively large common vocabulary. It makes
> Esperanto easier for speakers of those languages without making it much
> harder for the rest.
Geographically the most widespread? No. Geographically the most
widespread would be all the Asian languages. Don't forget, all the
Indic and Iranian languages are counted as European, and they're over
in Asia. Plus there's all the East Asian (Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese,
Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, Burmese,
Tibetan...) and many Altaic languages (Mongolian, some say Turkish,
all the other Altaic languages I don't know the names of...) and many
more I can't think of right now.
> In theory yes, but you would have to use a lot of fairly long compound words
> or descriptions. In practice a language with only 1,000 roots would be
> almost useless for many purposes. Imagine that you had to write an book
> about chemistry in such a language. There are about 100 different chemical
> elements, and if each one would have its own root name, they alone would
> take up 10% of the available 1,000 roots. But it would obviously very
> cumbersome if you would have to refer to hydrogen as
> "element-with-atomic-number-1" , to nitrogen as
> "element-with-atomic-number-7", etc. (assuming there are roots for
> "elements" and "atom" and that you do not need to describe those words as
> well).'
Who said I would have compound words anyway? I was planning to be more
isolating than that, to have words separated in space but connected by
the absence of a separator particle. You're assuming on the basis of
agglutination. But my language is isolating. And no, I wouldn't have
specific roots for these elements because normal people don't talk
about the elements much. I'd have, instead of the outrageously long
"element-with-atomic-number" format, "element" and then the number.
Nitrogen - Element One
Mercury (if my school chemistry doesn't escape me) - Element 80
> No need at all, but I am curious about how you are going to prevent users of
> your language to invent their own words. Are you going to kill them if they
> use words that are not in the dictionary that you published? As soon as your
> language really gets used by people, you lose control over it.
Exactly. I think there's nothing wrong with that. I'm hoping my
language will become sort of pidginized and become even simpler than
I'm trying to make it, the best it can be. The reason I'm so rigidly
starting with a minimum vocabulary is to leave room for users to add
vocabulary without making an overly rich language in vocabulary.
> I think that all fluent speakers of Lojban will comfortably fit into a
> single room. And it would probably be a very tiresome experience for them if
> they wanted to talk about really interesting subjects.
That's why I say, I'm not a Lojban proponent. I do, however, think
it's possible to do anything. I believe you can still make a full
language out of several hundred or 1,000 roots by cleverly combining
roots logically.
> "kiu homo" means "which person" and "kia homo" means "what kind of a
> person".
> Does it? Females do have their own sex-suffix in Esperanto, while men are
> apparently placed in the same category as things and animals of unknown or
> unspecified sex. Now, who is being treated worse?
I've thought about that. There are two ways to interpret this: men
being treated worse because they don't get a suffix but are placed
with things, and women being treated worse because men are default and
they are secondary. I believe it is the second for one simple reason:
the roots Zamenhof used (patro, viro, frato - from pater, vir and
frater in Latin) are masculine in Latin. The feminines would have been
mater, femina / mulier and soror. Instead of using parento for a
parent, homo for a person (which he ALSO had - quite wasteful), and
some word for sibling, he used the masculine words and then suffixed
them feminine.
> True, but the functionality of those features exists in those languages
> nevertheless. It is just that they use other means, for example a fixed word
> order or particles instead of case endings.
> And sometimes Esperanto verbs are equivalent to a combination of an
> adjective and a verb in other languages, for example "mi malsatas = I am
> hungry", "Tio eblas = That is possible". Is there a reason to assume that
> one method is better than the other?
I never said it's a better method, as I keep reminding people. I said
that it was once again more minimalist, which I thought is what
Esperanto was supposed to be about: minimalism. Well, Zamenhof set
himself up, I think, because it's close to impossible to create a
minimalist language when your only guide is European languages, which
are notorious for their grammars.
> "Ma" has other meanings as well if you ignore the differences in tone. In
> Mandarin Chinese "ma" with a high-level pitch means "mother", "ma" with a
> rising pitch starting at mid-range means "hemp", "ma" with a high-falling
> pitch means "to scold" and finally, "ma" meaning "horse" starts below
> mid-range, dips to the lowest pitch and then rises to mid-range or above. In
> Thai the word for "ma" meaning "horse" has a different pitch (a high pitch)
> than the Mandarin word for "horse". Other Thai words sounding like "ma" are
> "ma" with a mid-range pitch (to come) and "ma" with a rising pitch (dog).
I know that. That has nothing to do with my point. I realize that tone
differentiates meaning, but that was not what I was talking about. My
point is that most East Asian languages agree on one MA in particular
- the MA meaning horse, and that it is thus more international.
Especially if you consider that at least 1,320,000,000 people will
recognize it (if my 1999 statistics are at all close to the most
recent). Kind of puts chevalo to shame, don't you think?
> It would not be very helpful for either speakers of Mandarin or Thai if you
> included a word "ma" in your language that could be interpreted as "horse",
> mother", "scold", and "hemp" by the first group and as "horse", "come" or
> "dog" by the second group. And since there are a lot of homonyms in Chinese
> it is also very likely that several of the four "ma words" have more than
> one meaning.
Yes, that is a good point, but they would BOTH interpret ma as horse.
They both agree on it. They'd learn that there is one single ma in the
language: the one that they both know - horse. Same as an English
speaker seeing flata in Esperanto would have to learn that it means
flattering and not flat. It's the same burden, except that the Chinese
and/or Thai speaker would already know the word meaning horse, while
we'd have to learn that Esperanto hacks off the -ering that we have.
> Such as? Do you actually speak Chinese, Thai, Japanese, etc.?
I don't believe it. I actually wrote blasphemy. I said that Esperanto
is harder than some natural languages. What I mean is that it is
harder in certain structures than some natural languages, and I
believe it can be much simplified. And BTW, I am not fluent at all,
but I speak a little Chinese, a little Thai because of my Thai friends
and a little Japanese because of my Japanese friend.
> Well, when you seriously start designing your own language you will at some
> point find out that simplifying one aspect of your language will make
> something else more complicated, and in the end you will be forced to make a
> lot of arbitrary choices.
Maybe. It's worth a try though, don't you think?
Donald J. Harlow
"Raymond S. Wise" <illinoi...@mninter.net> skribis en mesagxo
news:vjjn5vf...@corp.supernews.com...
> "Nathaniel Ament-Stone" <nat...@linkline.com> wrote in message
> news:4e14a02d.03081...@posting.google.com...
>
> ["Donald J. HARLOW" <do...@donh.best.vwh.net> wrote]
>
Raymond S. Wise
news:7Xs_a.135501$o%2.58525@sccrnsc02...
>
> "Raymond S. Wise" <illinoi...@mninter.net> skribis en mesagxo
> news:vjjn5vf...@corp.supernews.com...
> > "Nathaniel Ament-Stone" <nat...@linkline.com> wrote in message
> > news:4e14a02d.03081...@posting.google.com...
> >
> > ["Donald J. HARLOW" <do...@donh.best.vwh.net> wrote]
> >
> Pardonon, Raymond, sed nenion en tiu mesagxo mi skribis ...
Vi pravas. La mesagho de Nathaniel, al kiu mi respondis, ne enhavis la
nomon, de la persono al kiu li respondis. Mi fushe aldonis vian nomon
anstatau la taugan nomon, "Christopher TESSONE" <tes...@polyglut.net>.
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minesoto Usono
Raymond S. Wise
news:bhd6i2$e58$3...@reader08.wxs.nl...
>
> "Nathaniel Ament-Stone" <nat...@linkline.com> wrote in message
> news:4e14a02d.03081...@posting.google.com...
> >
> > I don't believe that a Eurocentric language is worthless, only that
> > it's Eurocentric. I wouldn't complain about this if Esperanto didn't
> > claim to be "international". How can something which is based on a
> > small region be international?
>
> If a system in used internationally it is "international". Take for
example
> the international system of units, which is used everywhere in the world
> (except in the USA where the British system is still generally preferred
for
> everyday purposes). But all the names of the prefixes and units (kilo-,
It's better to call the US system the "US Customary System of Measurement,"
since it differs from the British Imperial System, with some units having
the same name but different values. In fact, according to the _Columbia
Encyclopedia,_ 6th ed., at
http://www.bartleby.com/65/en/Englsh-u.html
"Since the Mendenhall Order of 1893, the U.S. yard and pound and all other
units derived from them have been defined in terms of the metric units of
length and mass, the meter and the kilogram; thus, there is no longer any
direct relationship between American units and British units of the same
name."
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com
LEE Sau Dan
Nathaniel> Nitrogen - Element One Mercury (if my school chemistry
Nathaniel> doesn't escape me) - Element 80
Element One is Hydrogen. Nitrogen is Element Seven.
>> "kiu homo" means "which person" and "kia homo" means "what kind
>> of a person".
Haha... When asking "Kiu homo ...?", does one expect the answer to be
a lady?
LEE Sau Dan
Gerard> If a system in used internationally it is
Gerard> "international". Take for example the international system
Gerard> of units, which is used everywhere in the world (except in
Gerard> the USA where the British system is still generally
Gerard> preferred for everyday purposes). But all the names of the
Gerard> prefixes and units (kilo-, micro-, milli-, metre, second,
Gerard> newton, joule, ohm, etc.) are derived from Greek and Latin
Gerard> words or from the names of European scientists.
This is WRONG.
It is not so in Japan and China. There, the names of the units and
the prefixes have been translated into Japanese and Chinese. In the
latter case (not sure for Japanese), Chinese word roots are used.
Yes, the units are the same, but the names of the units aren't.
>> MI AMAS VIN and VI AMAS MIN, but why in TAGON POST TAGO???
Gerard> Because using the accusative is one possible method for
Gerard> expressing units (in this case a unit of time). Another
Gerard> possibility would be "je tago post tago"..
So complicated.
LEE Sau Dan
>> [...] How can something which is based on a small region be
>> international?
MJ> It clearly meets the first definition from WordNet (r) 1.7
MJ> [wn]:
MJ> international adj 1: concerning or belonging to all or at
MJ> least two or more nations; "international affairs"; "an
MJ> international agreement"; "international waters" [ant:
MJ> {national}]
So, Chinese is undoubtedly an international language, too!
MJ> Any regional bias is a result of history. We have to live
MJ> with history in all fields, including languages. Those who do
MJ> not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. "This will
MJ> not be another Vianetta."
No. We can do something to fix it.
MJ Ray
> MJ> Any regional bias is a result of history. We have to live
> MJ> with history in all fields, including languages. Those who do
> MJ> not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. "This will
> MJ> not be another Vianetta."
> No. We can do something to fix it.
You don't have to live with history? Wow! In that case:
YES! Please rush me my FREE 20-page guide on "How to Erase History"
so that I can astonish my friends, make my enemies forget why they hate
me and impress people at parties! I enclose the small sum of $19.99
to cover postage and packing for this marvellous pamphlet and will be
interested to receive your next 197 on a no-obligation basis.
And ditch the supercite, please.
Paul Ebermann
> >> Beyond the sexist aspect of this, it just causes more
> >> ambiguity. Does FILO mean child or son?
>
> Only "son". There is "gefiloj" which means "children". And curiously
> (i.e. IRREGULARLY), there is no singular form for this word. So,
> there is no simply way to say "child". You have to say "filo aŭ
> filino".
Kiel vi tradukus "infano" anglen?
Paul
sebastian.hartwig
> "LEE Sau Dan" skribis:
>
> > >> Beyond the sexist aspect of this, it just causes more
> > >> ambiguity. Does FILO mean child or son?
> >
> > Only "son". There is "gefiloj" which means "children". And curiously
> > (i.e. IRREGULARLY), there is no singular form for this word. So,
> > there is no simply way to say "child". You have to say "filo aý
> > filino".
La problemo estas, ke Sau Dan ne komprenas Esperanton: ge- signifis
origine "paro el individuoj vira k virina". Tiu signifo intertempe
plivastighis al "grupo el individuoj viraj k virinaj". Char ge- do chiam
implicas "grupon", "pli ol unu", tute regule ne povas ekzisti singularo
por tiaj vortoj.
Oni ja povas multon kritiki che Esperanto, sed oni bv. resti ene de la
limoj de honesteco.
Das Problem ist, dass Sau Dan Esperanto nicht versteht: ge- hieß
ursprünglich "ein Paar aus Frau und Mann". Diese Bedeutung hat sich in der
Zwischenzeit verbreitert zu "eine Gruppe aus weiblichen und männlichen
Individuen". Weil ge- also stets eine "Gruppe", "mehr als einer"
impliziert, kann es ganz regelmäßig keine Einzahlform für solche Wörter
geben.
Man kann am Esperamto ja viel kritisieren, aber dann doch bitte ehrlich
und nicht mit falschen Argumenten
Sebastian/o
Gerard van Wilgen
"Klivo" <ind...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:f25544d.03081...@posting.google.com...
> felic...@randomstatic.net (felice) wrote in message
news:<oEo_a.11241$9f7.1...@news02.tsnz.net>...
>
>
> mi preferas li/shi. Ekz: 'Kiam li/shi venos?'
Kial vi ne simple uzas "ghin" se vi ne volas au povas specifi la sekson?
Gerard van Wilgen
>
> They have plenty of words in common. Hindi-Urdu, Bengali and
> Malay-Indonesian have all borrowed ad nauseam from Arabic. Think of
> Malay-Indonesian "kamus" or "kitabu" from Arabic qamus and kitab or
> all the thousands of words in Hindi that are pure Arabic: qamus,
> kitab, qamar, jamal, etc. Hindi has about the number of words borrowed
> from Arabic that we have from Latin and French. It's a huge amount.
I think that depends on the dialect. I am not an expert in this field but I
have heard that Urdu uses a lot of words from Arabic and Persian while Hindi
tends to use Indic words instead (either true Hindi or borrowings from
Sanskrit).
> > Because European languages are the geographically most widely-spread
group
> > and because they share a relatively large common vocabulary. It makes
> > Esperanto easier for speakers of those languages without making it much
> > harder for the rest.
>
> Geographically the most widespread? No. Geographically the most
> widespread would be all the Asian languages. Don't forget, all the
> Indic and Iranian languages are counted as European, and they're over
> in Asia. Plus there's all the East Asian (Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese,
> Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, Burmese,
> Tibetan...) and many Altaic languages (Mongolian, some say Turkish,
> all the other Altaic languages I don't know the names of...) and many
> more I can't think of right now.
Yes, but you forget that almost all European languages belong to the
Indo-European language family, and most of them have borrowed heavily from
Latin and Greek. The Asian languages on the other hand form a much less
homogenous group. The ones you mentioned belong to 8 different families and
some have borrowed many words from Chinese while others have borrowed many
words from Arabic (but none has borrowed many words from both Chinese and
Arabic).
>
> > In theory yes, but you would have to use a lot of fairly long compound
words
> > or descriptions. In practice a language with only 1,000 roots would be
> > almost useless for many purposes. Imagine that you had to write an book
> > about chemistry in such a language. There are about 100 different
chemical
> > elements, and if each one would have its own root name, they alone would
> > take up 10% of the available 1,000 roots. But it would obviously very
> > cumbersome if you would have to refer to hydrogen as
> > "element-with-atomic-number-1" , to nitrogen as
> > "element-with-atomic-number-7", etc. (assuming there are roots for
> > "elements" and "atom" and that you do not need to describe those words
as
> > well).'
>
> Who said I would have compound words anyway? I was planning to be more
> isolating than that, to have words separated in space but connected by
> the absence of a separator particle. You're assuming on the basis of
> agglutination. But my language is isolating.
Hm, I suspect that the difference between an agglutinating and an isolating
language is often just a matter of spelling convention. If your language is
really isolating it is not enough to separate elements with spaces. Suppose
you have a word "ata" and a plural indicator "ok" and that the plural
indicator is always placed immediately after the noun that is pluralized.
You can than write "ata ok", "ata-ok" or "ataok", but these are mere
spelling conventions. It would still be more logical to consider "ok" a
suffix like English "-s" than a particle.
> And no, I wouldn't have
> specific roots for these elements because normal people don't talk
> about the elements much. I'd have, instead of the outrageously long
> "element-with-atomic-number" format, "element" and then the number.
>
> Nitrogen - Element One
> Mercury (if my school chemistry doesn't escape me) - Element 80
For most people it is easier to remember names than numbers, even if the
names are numbers in disguise, such as "hexane" or "pentanol".
And what are you going to do with the names of the millions of living
organisms? Are you going to spell out the characteristic parts of their
DNA-sequences? :-)
>
> > No need at all, but I am curious about how you are going to prevent
users of
> > your language to invent their own words. Are you going to kill them if
they
> > use words that are not in the dictionary that you published? As soon as
your
> > language really gets used by people, you lose control over it.
>
> Exactly. I think there's nothing wrong with that. I'm hoping my
> language will become sort of pidginized and become even simpler than
> I'm trying to make it, the best it can be. The reason I'm so rigidly
> starting with a minimum vocabulary is to leave room for users to add
> vocabulary without making an overly rich language in vocabulary.
Sure, but what will prevent those users from simply borrowing words from
other languages instead of constructing long and cumbersome combinations
from a limited set of roots?
> > I think that all fluent speakers of Lojban will comfortably fit into a
> > single room. And it would probably be a very tiresome experience for
them if
> > they wanted to talk about really interesting subjects.
>
> That's why I say, I'm not a Lojban proponent. I do, however, think
> it's possible to do anything. I believe you can still make a full
> language out of several hundred or 1,000 roots by cleverly combining
> roots logically.
That I find difficult to imagine. How would you for example distinguish an
apple-tree from a pear-tree? I assume you have a root for "tree", but if you
start to invent root words for all the fruits that grow on trees, you will
need a lot of them.
> > "kiu homo" means "which person" and "kia homo" means "what kind of a
> > person".
>
> > Does it? Females do have their own sex-suffix in Esperanto, while men
are
> > apparently placed in the same category as things and animals of unknown
or
> > unspecified sex. Now, who is being treated worse?
>
> I've thought about that. There are two ways to interpret this: men
> being treated worse because they don't get a suffix but are placed
> with things, and women being treated worse because men are default and
> they are secondary. I believe it is the second for one simple reason:
I believe it is totally irrelevant. If men or women feel treated badly by a
language it is because they have made the decision to feel that way. It is
their problem, not the language's problem.
>
> I know that. That has nothing to do with my point. I realize that tone
> differentiates meaning, but that was not what I was talking about. My
> point is that most East Asian languages agree on one MA in particular
> - the MA meaning horse, and that it is thus more international.
> Especially if you consider that at least 1,320,000,000 people will
> recognize it (if my 1999 statistics are at all close to the most
> recent). Kind of puts chevalo to shame, don't you think?
Almost all languages have "ma" or a similar word meaning "mother". In this
case it would be more sensible to assign the meaning "mother" to "ma". And
maybe you had better use a generic root word for "horse" (like Esperanto
"ekvo") that can be used for other horse-like animals too, such as asses
(long-eared horses) and zebras (striped horses).
> > It would not be very helpful for either speakers of Mandarin or Thai if
you
> > included a word "ma" in your language that could be interpreted as
"horse",
> > mother", "scold", and "hemp" by the first group and as "horse", "come"
or
> > "dog" by the second group. And since there are a lot of homonyms in
Chinese
> > it is also very likely that several of the four "ma words" have more
than
> > one meaning.
>
> Yes, that is a good point, but they would BOTH interpret ma as horse.
> They both agree on it. They'd learn that there is one single ma in the
> language: the one that they both know - horse. Same as an English
> speaker seeing flata in Esperanto would have to learn that it means
> flattering and not flat. It's the same burden, except that the Chinese
> and/or Thai speaker would already know the word meaning horse, while
> we'd have to learn that Esperanto hacks off the -ering that we have.
Well, for me that would be "-erend", but I see you point. Still, since the
Asian languages are such a heterogenous group the percentage of "easy to
remember words for a lot of people", would be much smaller than in
Esperanto, unless you would heavily favour Chinese (but that would cause
problems with homonyms).
> > Such as? Do you actually speak Chinese, Thai, Japanese, etc.?
>
> I don't believe it. I actually wrote blasphemy. I said that Esperanto
> is harder than some natural languages. What I mean is that it is
> harder in certain structures than some natural languages, and I
> believe it can be much simplified. And BTW, I am not fluent at all,
> but I speak a little Chinese, a little Thai because of my Thai friends
> and a little Japanese because of my Japanese friend.
>
> > Well, when you seriously start designing your own language you will at
some
> > point find out that simplifying one aspect of your language will make
> > something else more complicated, and in the end you will be forced to
make a
> > lot of arbitrary choices.
>
> Maybe. It's worth a try though, don't you think?
It is your time that you are wasting :-) Well, maybe it will not be a
complete waste if it makes you appreciate the difficulties that the designer
of an international auxiliary language will encounter.
Gerard van Wilgen
"LEE Sau Dan" <dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote in message
news:m34r0ll...@mika.informatik.uni-freiburg.de...
> >>>>> "Gerard" == Gerard van Wilgen <gvanw...@planet.nl> writes:
>
> Gerard> I suppose so, but it would not make the language much more
> Gerard> easier to learn for speakers of those languages.
>
> At least fairer, because that would make it equally difficult
> (i.e. equally easy) for all speakers to learn. No advantage taken for
> granted by the Europeans.
Good point, but when Zamenhof created Esperanto Europe was the centre of the
world and for this and other reasons the obvious place for a world language
to start its expansion. If he had chosen to include a large number of words
from "exotic" languages like Chinese, Hindustani, Japanese and Arabic we
would not be discussing Esperanto now, because most of us would never have
heard of this language. In the cultural climate of Zamenhof's time such a
language would simply have failed to attract a significant number of
followers.
Today we live in a different world, but I fear that a new international
language that is "fairer" than Esperanto would still have no more success
than it would have had a century ago. I think that the advantage of the
Esperanto vocabulary being relatively easy to acquire by most people in
Europe, the Americas, and large parts of Africa and Oceania still weighs
heavier than the "fairness" of a hypothetical new language.
> Gerard> In the first place because, unlike the languages of
> Gerard> Europe, these languages (with the exception of Hindi-Urdu
> Gerard> and Bengali) have very few words in common. In the second
> Gerard> place, because of the restriction that you put on the
> Gerard> number of phonemes (and probably on the number of possible
> Gerard> combinations as well), most words would be
> Gerard> unrecognizable. For instance, Japanese "geisha" would
> Gerard> become something like "kesa" and Arabic "qahwa" (coffee)
> Gerard> something like "kapa".
>
> Esperanto's phoneme system is Eurocentric in the first place.
To a certain extend yes, though there are of course non-European languages
with a similar system. But what is the alternative? If you simply reduce the
number of phonemes and the number of possible combinations of vowels and
consonants, you will get a language with a large number of long words for
everyday concepts. Or do you want to make the language Sinocentric with a
limited number of consonants and vowels that are identical except for tonal
differences? Or maybe something that is Semiticentric with few vowels and
many consonants, resulting in words like "tkmir" and "gba'dzhur"?
> Gerard> So, such a language would be much more difficult to learn
> Gerard> for speakers of most European languages, but not
> Gerard> significantly easier to learn for the rest of the world.
>
> Making it FAIRer.
>
> If fairness is no concern, then why not speak English? Why Esperanto?
>
Even idealists have to be practical, and sometimes they must compromise.
English would be much to unfair. Besides, English has even more phonemes
than Esperanto and its grammar is much more complicated than Esperanto's.
Esperanto is unfair too, but since there is no better alternative pointing
out the flaws in Esperanto and declaring it unsuitable as international
language, is rather futile.
> Gerard> I think that is a high price to pay for being more
> Gerard> international.
>
> FAIRNESS is what you get in return. It's not a high price if you
> value FAIRNESS as something super-important and invaluable.
There you hit the nail on the head. If fairness were something
super-important and invaluable for most people, we would be living in an
entirely different world. But I am pretty sure that in this case fairness
would have a negligible effect on the success of the still hypothetical
alternative for Esperanto.
>
> Gerard> Because European languages are the geographically most
> Gerard> widely-spread group and because they share a relatively
> Gerard> large common vocabulary.
>
> Chinese is also geographically widely-spread, if not more. Name some
> big cities where you can find no Chinese community!
With "geographically widely spread" I do not mean 95% in China and the rest
scattered around the globe (the percentage may be different but you know
what I am trying to say). Also important is the fact that non-Europeans who
speak a European language are very numerous, while non-Chinese who speak
Chinese are quite rare, especially outside East Asia.
> The sharing of common vocabulary among Chinese languages (or dialects,
> if you want to call them "dialects") is even higher than among
> European languages.
>
Undoubtedly, and it would have been possible to base an international
language on Chinese instead of European languages. But then explain to me
why a Sinocentric international language would be better than a Eurocentric
one.
>
> Gerard> It makes Esperanto easier for speakers of those languages
> Gerard> without making it much harder for the rest.
>
> Chinese is easier for billions of people.
Do you mean American or British billions? Obviously Chinese would be easier
for the one thousand million plus who already speak it as their native
language, but what about the others? Vietnamese, Burmese and Thai are tonal
languages too, with a similar structure as Chinese, but only Burmese belongs
to the same language family (I do not know to what degree it is related to
Chinese), but with the exception of Chinese loanwords the Vietnamese and
Thai vocabularies are different from the Chinese vocabulary. Apparently
there are many Chinese words in Vietnamese, but I do not know to what degree
they have been assimilated and become unrecognizable for laymen. As for
Thai, its loanwords are mainly from Cambodian and from the Indic languages.
Korean and Japanese have a lot of Chinese loanwords (probably most of them
assimilated to a very strong degree due to the significant differences
between the phoneme system of Chinese and those of Japanese and Korean. As
for grammar, Korean and Japanese are both aggutinating languages and
therefore very different from Chinese.
>
> If you want to drop the FAIRNESS requirement for Esperanto, and weigh
> "ease for most" more importantly, then perhaps you should consider
> Chinese.
>
Well, I think that for a speaker of Japanese or Korean Chinese would be just
as difficult to learn as for a speaker of English or Hungarian. Speakers of
Thai might have less difficulty with the Chinese tones than a European might
have (though Thai does not use the same set of tones as Mandarin), and the
pronounciation might be easier, but the vocabulary would still be a problem.
I do not know about the Vietnamese and the Burmese; Chinese would probably
be easier for them than Esperanto. but if you exclude the Chinese
themselves, how many people are there for whom Chinese would be easier to
learn than Esperanto?
>
> Gerard> In theory yes, but you would have to use a lot of fairly
> Gerard> long compound words or descriptions. In practice a
> Gerard> language with only 1,000 roots would be almost useless for
> Gerard> many purposes. Imagine that you had to write an book about
> Gerard> chemistry in such a language. There are about 100
> Gerard> different chemical elements, and if each one would have
> Gerard> its own root name, they alone would take up 10% of the
> Gerard> available 1,000 roots. But it would obviously very
> Gerard> cumbersome if you would have to refer to hydrogen as
> Gerard> "element-with-atomic-number-1" , to nitrogen as
> Gerard> "element-with-atomic-number-7", etc. (assuming there are
> Gerard> roots for "elements" and "atom" and that you do not need
> Gerard> to describe those words as well).
>
> The chemists do have a systematic nomenclature. They do understand
> something like "1,2,3-trichloropropane". Having to invent a name for
> each separate compound rather than naming them systematically would
> mean you need to invent millions or billions of such names. That's
> unreasonable. A systematic naming scheme is THE approach.
Yes, but there are still hundreds of roots necessary to construct those
systematic names. "1,2,3-trichloropropane" contains four roots (tri-,
chlor-, prop- and -ane", though the root "prop-" is in fact unnecessary
because it could be replaced by "tri-").
>
> Gerard> No need at all, but I am curious about how you are going
> Gerard> to prevent users of your language to invent their own
> Gerard> words.
>
> I believe that "prizon-" is not an invention of word. It's just a
> blind borrowing. Again, the Europeans are taking this for granted.
> When they don't know an Esperanto word for something, they simply
> Esperantize a word from their own language, taking it for granted that
> this is good Esperanto. If the Asians were all speaking Esperanto in
> this manner, imagine what would happen.
Yes, a deplorable situation. But it is a fault of the speakers of Esperanto,
not of the language itself. Suppose that Esperanto were based on Chinese.
Would not Chinese ("Asians" also speak Russian, Arabic, Hindustani,
Japanese and other languages that bear little resemblance to Chinese) do the
same if they did not know the Esperanto word for something?
But such things are inevitable. You cannot have a language that is spoken by
thousands of speakers without losing control of it.
> Fairness? Where is it?
Not in this world. Sometimes we need to compromise in order to achieve the
fairest solution that is achievable.
>
> Gerard> Are you going to kill them if they use words that are not
> Gerard> in the dictionary that you published? As soon as your
> Gerard> language really gets used by people, you lose control over
> Gerard> it.
>
> And Esperanto's Eurocentricity only accelerates this. Chinese has
> been more reluctant to this kind of blind borrowing. We only compose
> longer words out of Chinese roots. Lojban seems to have such a
> tendency, too. Rather than "borrowing" a foreign word to 'pollute'
> the language, the trend is to make up a new word from existing roots.
The technique of composing longer words is not uncommon in many European
languages. Examples are Finnish and German, but also (to a lesser extent)
English. On the other hand, some East Asian languages have borrowed a huge
amount of Chinese words, so how can you say that there is a relation between
Eurocentricity and borrowing words?
> Esperanto is even worse: "kio" has two meanings: as a correlative, and
> as a question word. These 2 roles are UNFORTUNATELY overloaded on a
> single word, merely out of its Eurocentricity.
So, what is the problem with overloading? Overloading of grammatical
functions is not a typical European phenomenon. In Japanese and Thai verbs
and adjectives are overloaded, so why is it unfortunate that Esperanto
overloads pronouns so that they can function both as interrogative and
correlative pronouns?
> And because of this design flaw, you HAVE TO being a (non-yes-no)
> question with a "k-" word. Otherwise, it would be easily mistaken for
> a correlative. "Free word order"? That's a myth. (I like the
> Japanese/Chinese way of asking questions: simply stuff the question
> word into the place as in a normal question. No need to shuffle any
> words around.)
"Vi vidis kiun?"
"Li donis la florojn al kiu?"
"Shin vidis kiu en la ghardeno?
None of these questions starts with a "k-word", but nowhere can "kiu" be
mistaken for a correlative. Of course even in Esperanto the word order is
not totally free. I think that "En vidis la kiu ghardeno shin?" would be
unintelligible to most people.
>
>
> >> And by the way, KIU always confused me. Does it mean what
> >> person (kia homo) or what thing (kia ajho)? I've seen it used
> >> both ways. Which is which?
>
> Another design flaw that comes from plagiarising European grammar:
> When "kiu" or and adjective stands on its own without an attached
> noun, the noun is IMPLICITY "homo". So, "kiu" alone means "kiu homo".
No, it does not. If I ask someone "Kiu estas George Bush?", "kiu" obviously
means "kiu homo". But if I present two apples to him and ask "Kiu estas la
plej granda?" then "kiu" means "kiu pomo".
> (However, when the adjective is related to a race/culture, the IMPLIED
> nouns is "lingvo": "la japana" ==> "la japana lingvo".) Again, the
> Europeans take these rules for granted.
Again, no. The implied noun can be anything. If I ask "Chu vi parolas la
japanan?" there can be little doubt that I mean "la japana lingvo". However,
if I point to an English and a Japanese book and ask "Chu vi legis la anglan
au la japanan?" it is obvious that "la japanan" means "la japanan libron".
>
> Esperanto is never meant to be gender-neutral.
>
>
> Gerard> Does it? Females do have their own sex-suffix in
> Gerard> Esperanto, while men are apparently placed in the same
> Gerard> category as things and animals of unknown or unspecified
> Gerard> sex. Now, who is being treated worse?
>
> What are the words for "man" and "woman", please?
"viro" (poor suffix-less thing) and "virino".
>
> >> Beyond the sexist aspect of this, it just causes more
> >> ambiguity. Does FILO mean child or son?
>
> Only "son". There is "gefiloj" which means "children". And curiously
> (i.e. IRREGULARLY), there is no singular form for this word. So,
> there is no simply way to say "child". You have to say "filo aŭ
> filino".
>
> Some people do attempt to use "gefilo" for "child", but many
> Esperantists still consider this bad Esperanto, because Zamenhof (the
> God) and the various grammar books (the Bible(s)) don't say this is
> allowed.
He did not say that it is not allowed either, so it must be allowed. I
regularly use words like "gepatro", "gefilo", "gefrato" myself and I have
never been told that I should not do so.
> >> prepositions are marked in Japanese by noun
> >> constructions (so that "on top of" is "summit"),
>
> There are no prepositions in Japanese. Only POST-positions are found.
In spite of their apparent meaning prepositions are sometimes used after
nouns, as in German "meiner Meinung NACH" and Dutch "ik liep het bos IN".
But it is true that it is better to speak of postpositions if they are
usually used after nouns.
>
> >> conjunctions are often replaced by verbs in certain languages
> >> (so that "and/with/also/plus" is "accompany" - if Esperanto had
> >> a word like this, it would save it at least three or four extra
> >> words for the same concept).
>
> In Chinese and Vietnamese, these words seem to have derived from verbs.
What, no complaints about overloading?
> So, don't copy the features in a wholesale manner.
>
> DO copy the non-obligatory tense/plural marking from
Chinese/Thai/Vietnamese.
> DO copy the non-obligatory classifiers from European languages.
>
> DON'T copy the obligatory tense/plural marking from European languages.
> DON'T copy the classifier system from Chinese and Thai and Vietnamese.
> DON'T copy the irregularly inflected classifier system from Japanese.
>
>
> Gerard> I do in fact know of no language that does not have some
> Gerard> means of indicating plurality, even if it is not always
> Gerard> obligatory to do so (But deciding when to mark plurality
> Gerard> and when not, might require rather complex rules).
>
> The point is not whether it can be expressed, but whether the
> expression of these irrelevant information is OBLIGATORY.
>
> Every language can express the colour of objects, right? So, why not
> make the marking of colours obligatory in Esperanto?
Ah, but in a culture that for some reason would be preoccupied with colours
it would not be unreasonable to expect that the language reflects this
preoccupation. In such a culture the marking of colours might well be
obligatory. Now, apparently European culture is somewhat preoccupied with
time and number. Does that make a language "Eurocentric" if expressing time
of action or state and number of objects is mandatory in that language.
The answer must be "no", because several non-European language families
share the same features, for instance the Bantu languages of Africa. Maybe
such languages are "with-time-and-number-preoccupied-culture-centric", but
certainly not "Eurocentric".
If expressing time and number would not be mandatory in an international
language, that language could then be called a
"preoccupied-with-something-else-than-time-and-number-culture-centric"
language, which would be equally biased.
Lee, when are you going to design an alternative for Esperanto? You have
made me really curious about such a language!
Klivo
> "Klivo" <ind...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:f25544d.03081...@posting.google.com...
> > felic...@randomstatic.net (felice) wrote in message
> news:<oEo_a.11241$9f7.1...@news02.tsnz.net>...
> >
> >
> > Pri pronomoj: kiam mi ne scias au ne volas indiki sekson,
> > mi preferas li/shi. Ekz: 'Kiam li/shi venos?'
>
> Kial vi ne simple uzas "ghin" se vi ne volas au povas specifi la sekson?
>
> Gerard van Wilgen
'Ghi' por nespecifa sekso estas bona ideo, sed shajnas al mi ke
tiu solvo ne estas populara. Multaj ne volas uzi 'ghi' por homo.
Klivo
felice
> Lau mia opinio, oni uzu -in malofte.
Jes, sed oni uzu -ic^ egale malofte, ne pli malofte.
> Oni ne devas indiki sekson por profesioj
Jes, sed oni ne povas simile indiki ic^an sekson. Se iu ja indikas
inecon per "-in", si ofte uzas vorton sen "-in" indiki ic^econ.
> Se oni tamen volas indiki sekson, oni tradicia diras 'virkato'
> kaj 'katino'.
"Vir-" tute maltau^gas. G^i povas signifi kaj ic^eco kaj homeco kaj
plenag^eco - tro da signifoj!
> Oni tamen devas uzi 'in' por manpleno da vortoj pri familiaj
> rilatoj: patro/patrino, frato/fratino, ktp. En chi tiuj
> malmultaj vortoj, estas 'problemo', nur se oni konsideras
> malsimetrion problemo.
Malsimetrio ja estas problemo, sed pli grava problemo estas ke la
radiko estas ic^a. "Virpatro kaj patrino" ankau^ estus malsimetriaj,
sed ne estus seksisma (kvankam ne estus bona pro aliaj kialoj).
> Pri pronomoj: kiam mi ne scias au ne volas indiki sekson,
> mi preferas li/shi. Ekz: 'Kiam li/shi venos?'
Tio estas tre maleleganta. Senindiko de sekson devus esti norma, ne
malfacila.
felnjo
Gerard van Wilgen
"Raymond S. Wise" <illinoi...@mninter.net> wrote in message
news:vjkt6qg...@corp.supernews.com...
> "Gerard van Wilgen" <gvanw...@planet.nl> wrote in message
> news:bhd6i2$e58$3...@reader08.wxs.nl...
> >
> > "Nathaniel Ament-Stone" <nat...@linkline.com> wrote in message
> > news:4e14a02d.03081...@posting.google.com...
> > >
> > > I don't believe that a Eurocentric language is worthless, only that
> > > it's Eurocentric. I wouldn't complain about this if Esperanto didn't
> > > claim to be "international". How can something which is based on a
> > > small region be international?
> >
> > If a system in used internationally it is "international". Take for
> example
> > the international system of units, which is used everywhere in the world
> > (except in the USA where the British system is still generally preferred
> for
> > everyday purposes). But all the names of the prefixes and units (kilo-,
>
>
> It's better to call the US system the "US Customary System of
Measurement,"
> since it differs from the British Imperial System, with some units having
> the same name but different values. In fact, according to the _Columbia
> Encyclopedia,_ 6th ed., at
Teknike vi evidente pravas, sed "Usona Kutima Mezursistemo" estas tia longa
esprimo (ech pli longa en la angla).
Gerard van Wilgen
> >>>>> "Gerard" == Gerard van Wilgen <gvanw...@planet.nl> writes:
>
> Gerard> If a system in used internationally it is
> Gerard> "international". Take for example the international system
> Gerard> of units, which is used everywhere in the world (except in
> Gerard> the USA where the British system is still generally
> Gerard> preferred for everyday purposes). But all the names of the
> Gerard> prefixes and units (kilo-, micro-, milli-, metre, second,
> Gerard> newton, joule, ohm, etc.) are derived from Greek and Latin
> Gerard> words or from the names of European scientists.
>
> This is WRONG.
>
> It is not so in Japan and China. There, the names of the units and
> the prefixes have been translated into Japanese and Chinese. In the
> latter case (not sure for Japanese), Chinese word roots are used.
>
> Yes, the units are the same, but the names of the units aren't.
Tio estas interesa. Mi ne sciis tion. Kiuj estas tiam la chinaj nomoj de la
unuoj kaj prefiksoj?
LEE Sau Dan
Gerard> For most people it is easier to remember names than
Gerard> numbers, even if the names are numbers in disguise, such
Gerard> as "hexane" or "pentanol".
Is that an excuse for using names (instead of just numbers) for the
twelve months of the year in Esperanto? And the 7 days of the week?
Sorry, I don't find those names anything easier than numbers. I'd
rather call today the 14th day of the 8th month, rather than "la 14a
Auxgusto". This name "Auxgusto" is too ugly for me. (And then, these
names are Eurocentric.)
Gerard> Still, since the Asian languages are such a
Gerard> heterogenous group the percentage of "easy to remember
Gerard> words for a lot of people", would be much smaller than in
Gerard> Esperanto, unless you would heavily favour Chinese (but
Gerard> that would cause problems with homonyms).
That's not an excuse for Esperanto to be based mainly on European word
roots.
LEE Sau Dan
Gerard> I suppose so, but it would not make the language much more
Gerard> easier to learn for speakers of those languages.
>> At least fairer, because that would make it equally difficult
>> (i.e. equally easy) for all speakers to learn. No advantage
>> taken for granted by the Europeans.
Gerard> Good point, but when Zamenhof created Esperanto Europe was
Gerard> the centre of the world
No. It was just the centre of YOUR world.
Gerard> If he had chosen to include a large number of words from
Gerard> "exotic" languages like Chinese, Hindustani, Japanese and
Gerard> Arabic we would not be discussing Esperanto now, because
Gerard> most of us would never have heard of this language.
Not even heard of Chinese? Or Japanese? (Many Japanese have made
study trips to Europe by that time.) Then, they're really ignorant.
And you want to rely on a language designed by some ignorant people?
Gerard> In the cultural climate of Zamenhof's time such
Gerard> a language would simply have failed to attract a
Gerard> significant number of followers.
It _could_ be different from what you assumed. Nobody can prove or
disprove it.
Gerard> Today we live in a different world, but I fear that a new
Gerard> international language that is "fairer" than Esperanto
Gerard> would still have no more success than it would have had a
Gerard> century ago.
Because few people nowadays believe in the myth of "universal
language". People have realized that one size can't fit all.
Gerard> I think that the advantage of the Esperanto
Gerard> vocabulary being relatively easy to acquire by most people
Gerard> in Europe, the Americas, and large parts of Africa and
Gerard> Oceania still weighs heavier than the "fairness" of a
Gerard> hypothetical new language.
How many peoplea are there altogether? And how many peoplea are there
in Asia?
>> Esperanto's phoneme system is Eurocentric in the first place.
Gerard> To a certain extend yes, though there are of course
Gerard> non-European languages with a similar system. But what is
Gerard> the alternative?
A less Eurocentric one. Take a look at Klingon and Lojban.
Gerard> If you simply reduce the number of phonemes and the number
Gerard> of possible combinations of vowels and consonants, you
Gerard> will get a language with a large number of long words for
Gerard> everyday concepts.
If the Japanese and Hawaiians can cope with this, why can't the
"billiant" Europeans?
Gerard> Or do you want to make the language Sinocentric with a
Gerard> limited number of consonants and vowels that are identical
Gerard> except for tonal differences?
What's the difference to a phonological system with no tonal (i.e. a
limited number) differences, but a large number of vowels and
consonants and consonant clusters.
Gerard> Or maybe something that is Semiticentric with few vowels
Gerard> and many consonants, resulting in words like "tkmir" and
Gerard> "gba'dzhur"?
How is it worse?
Gerard> So, such a language would be much more difficult to learn
Gerard> for speakers of most European languages, but not
Gerard> significantly easier to learn for the rest of the world.
>> Making it FAIRer.
>>
>> If fairness is no concern, then why not speak English? Why
>> Esperanto?
Gerard> Even idealists have to be practical, and sometimes they
Gerard> must compromise.
To be practical, learn and use English.
Gerard> English would be much to unfair.
I said: if fairness is not a concern...
You want fairness? Then you shouldn't go for Esperanto. It's simply
Eurocentric, i.e. unfair.
Gerard> Besides, English has even more phonemes than Esperanto and
But it doesn't have those difficult clusters like "kv", "kn".
Gerard> its grammar is much more complicated than Esperanto's.
Not more complicated than Esperantos' vaguely expressed, never
complete grammar. Those 16 grammar rules are just a joke.
Gerard> Esperanto is unfair too, but since there is no better
Gerard> alternative pointing out the flaws in Esperanto and
Gerard> declaring it unsuitable as international language, is
Gerard> rather futile.
No alternative is not an excuse.
Gerard> Because European languages are the geographically most
Gerard> widely-spread group and because they share a relatively
Gerard> large common vocabulary.
>> Chinese is also geographically widely-spread, if not more.
>> Name some big cities where you can find no Chinese community!
Gerard> With "geographically widely spread" I do not mean 95% in
Gerard> China and the rest scattered around the globe (the
Gerard> percentage may be different but you know what I am trying
Gerard> to say).
I know. So, please name a big city (around the globe) where you can
find no Chinese community.
Gerard> Also important is the fact that non-Europeans who
Gerard> speak a European language are very numerous,
That means the plauge of Eurocentrism has spread very widely.
Esperanto will only make it more severe. It's not a cure at all.
Gerard> while non-Chinese who speak Chinese are quite rare,
Simply because China is poor since the frequent contacts with the West.
Gerard> especially outside East Asia.
Find a Westerner who has learnt Chinese, and ask him if he find
Chinese really that difficult as you (or he once) imagine(d).
Gerard> Undoubtedly, and it would have been possible to base an
Gerard> international language on Chinese instead of European
Gerard> languages. But then explain to me why a Sinocentric
Gerard> international language would be better than a Eurocentric
Gerard> one.
Explain to me why it would be worse.
Gerard> Korean and Japanese have a lot of Chinese loanwords
Gerard> (probably most of them assimilated to a very strong degree
Gerard> due to the significant differences between the phoneme
Gerard> system of Chinese and those of Japanese and Korean. As for
Gerard> grammar, Korean and Japanese are both aggutinating
Gerard> languages and therefore very different from Chinese.
The word roots and compounds are the same.
Gerard> Well, I think that for a speaker of Japanese or Korean
Gerard> Chinese would be just as difficult to learn as for a
Gerard> speaker of English or Hungarian.
Just YOUR guess. Any evidences? Any grounds for your guess?
The fact that they already know many words makes a lot of difference,
esp. for a Japanese, who can already read/write most of the roots.
Gerard> Speakers of Thai might
Gerard> have less difficulty with the Chinese tones than a
Gerard> European might have (though Thai does not use the same set
Gerard> of tones as Mandarin), and the pronounciation might be
Gerard> easier, but the vocabulary would still be a problem. I do
Gerard> not know about the Vietnamese and the Burmese; Chinese
Gerard> would probably be easier for them than Esperanto.
Sure. No more nightmares of plurals, cases, tenses, etc.
Gerard> but if you exclude the Chinese themselves, how many people
Gerard> are there for whom Chinese would be easier to learn than
Gerard> Esperanto?
Who knows?
I did meet 2 Americans who have learnt both Mandarin and Japanese. I
met them separately. But coincidently, they independently told me
that they found Mandarin a lot easier than Japanese. They both found
Mandarin to be very easy -- when they don't care about
writing/reading. Well... could that be merely coincidence?
Gerard> Yes, but there are still hundreds of roots necessary to
Gerard> construct those systematic names. "1,2,3-trichloropropane"
Gerard> contains four roots (tri-, chlor-, prop- and -ane", though
Gerard> the root "prop-" is in fact unnecessary because it could
Gerard> be replaced by "tri-").
Yeah. This is a complication in English. Many roots for the same
thing: "chlor-" vs. "chrom-", "tri-" vs. "prop-", "mono-" vs. "uni-",
etc.
Gerard> Yes, a deplorable situation. But it is a fault of the
Gerard> speakers of Esperanto, not of the language itself.
It is! The language is so designed that it invites such blind
borrowings.
Look at Chinese. It is inherently difficult to do the same in
Chinese. So, we have established a culture of translating (or
inventing) words instead of blindingly borrowing from a foreign
language.
Some computer programming (sub)languages are described as
"error-prone". i.e. they invite errors easily. Yes, you can always
blame the programmer for writing erroneous code. But does that make
the designer of an "error-prone" language not "guilty"?
Suppose you design an electrical appliance. And the design is so
stupid that the users will get an electric shock easily when not
following the instruction manual strictly. So, when a user gets a
shock, is it merely THEIR fault? Is it not a design flaw?
Gerard> Suppose that Esperanto were based on Chinese. Would not
Gerard> Chinese ("Asians" also speak Russian, Arabic, Hindustani,
Gerard> Japanese and other languages that bear little resemblance
Gerard> to Chinese) do the same if they did not know the Esperanto
Gerard> word for something?
Maybe, or maybe not. Hypothetical questions deserve hypothetical answers.
Gerard> But such things are inevitable. You cannot have a language
Gerard> that is spoken by thousands of speakers without losing
Gerard> control of it.
Chinese. Spoken by a billion.
>> And Esperanto's Eurocentricity only accelerates this. Chinese
>> has been more reluctant to this kind of blind borrowing. We
>> only compose longer words out of Chinese roots. Lojban seems
>> to have such a tendency, too. Rather than "borrowing" a
>> foreign word to 'pollute' the language, the trend is to make up
>> a new word from existing roots.
Gerard> The technique of composing longer words is not uncommon in
Gerard> many European languages. Examples are Finnish and German,
Gerard> but also (to a lesser extent) English.
Even German doesn't do it as extensively as Chinese. (And Japanese
has followed Chinese.)
Gerard> On the other hand, some East Asian languages have borrowed
Gerard> a huge amount of Chinese words, so how can you say that
Gerard> there is a relation between Eurocentricity and borrowing
Gerard> words?
Borrowing tons of words directly from European languages results in
Eurocentricity. The use of the Latin alphabet for Esperanto simply
accelerates this.
>> Esperanto is even worse: "kio" has two meanings: as a
>> correlative, and as a question word. These 2 roles are
>> UNFORTUNATELY overloaded on a single word, merely out of its
>> Eurocentricity.
Gerard> So, what is the problem with overloading?
You cannot easily tell whether it is a question word, or a
correlative. You need to rely on grammatical rules. For people not
yet familiar with such rules (esp. non Europeans), this is a
difficulty. An difficulty that could have been avoided if those words
are not overloaded.
Gerard> Overloading of grammatical functions is not a typical
Gerard> European phenomenon.
I'm talking about this precise instance, which I consider a big flaw
in the otherwise elegant design of the correlatives in Esperanto.
Gerard> In Japanese and Thai verbs and adjectives are overloaded,
No. They aren't overloaded. They simply don't distinguish between
verbs and adjectives. (Have to learn the distinction when they learn
Esperanto is another difficulty.)
Gerard> so why is it unfortunate that Esperanto overloads pronouns
Gerard> so that they can function both as interrogative and
Gerard> correlative pronouns?
But it's a design flaw, and people suffer from this flaw.
>> And because of this design flaw, you HAVE TO being a
>> (non-yes-no) question with a "k-" word. Otherwise, it would be
>> easily mistaken for a correlative. "Free word order"? That's
>> a myth. (I like the Japanese/Chinese way of asking questions:
>> simply stuff the question word into the place as in a normal
>> question. No need to shuffle any words around.)
Gerard> "Vi vidis kiun?" "Li donis la florojn al kiu?" "Shin
Gerard> vidis kiu en la ghardeno?
These are _strictly speaking_ ungrammatical.
Gerard> None of these questions starts with a "k-word",
None of them are strictly grammatical. Like the English sentence "You
know what?"
>> Esperanto is never meant to be gender-neutral.
Gerard> Does it? Females do have their own sex-suffix in
Gerard> Esperanto, while men are apparently placed in the same
Gerard> category as things and animals of unknown or unspecified
Gerard> sex. Now, who is being treated worse?
>> What are the words for "man" and "woman", please?
Gerard> "viro" (poor suffix-less thing) and "virino".
So, that's sexist.
Gerard> He did not say that it is not allowed either, so it must
Gerard> be allowed. I regularly use words like "gepatro",
Gerard> "gefilo", "gefrato" myself and I have never been told that
Gerard> I should not do so.
That you use it doesn't make it grammatical (to others).
I also speak broken German and my friends are not complaining about
it. So, those broken sentences becomes grammatical merely because I
use them and get no complaints?
>> >> prepositions are marked in Japanese by noun >> constructions
>> (so that "on top of" is "summit"),
>>
>> There are no prepositions in Japanese. Only POST-positions are
>> found.
Gerard> In spite of their apparent meaning prepositions are
Gerard> sometimes used after nouns, as in German "meiner Meinung
Gerard> NACH" and Dutch "ik liep het bos IN".
That's a misnomer. They copied the bad name from Latin grammarians.
Gerard> But it is true that it is better to speak of postpositions
Gerard> if they are usually used after nouns.
Always. In Japanese, they're *consistently* always placed after the
nouns. (That's where I like the Japanese grammar. So regular. Much
better than Esperanto's mixture of case and preposition systems.)
>> In Chinese and Vietnamese, these words seem to have derived
>> from verbs.
Gerard> What, no complaints about overloading?
Derive != overloading.
Gerard> Ah, but in a culture that for some reason would be
Gerard> preoccupied with colours it would not be unreasonable to
Gerard> expect that the language reflects this preoccupation. In
Gerard> such a culture the marking of colours might well be
Gerard> obligatory. Now, apparently European culture is somewhat
Gerard> preoccupied with time and number.
And bringing this baggage into the design of Esperanto is Eurocentric.
Gerard> Does that make a language "Eurocentric" if expressing time
Gerard> of action or state and number of objects is mandatory in
Gerard> that language.
Yes, together with the *style* (not the precise endings) in which
words are inflected for these things. e.g. why not inflect nouns for
time? Why not inflect verbs for case (e.g. "mi ne volas trinki-n")?
Gerard> The answer must be "no", because several non-European
Gerard> language families share the same features, for instance
Gerard> the Bantu languages of Africa.
But not in the same style.
Gerard> Lee, when are you going to design an alternative for
Gerard> Esperanto?
I don't believe in the slogan of "one universal language for all".
Gerard> You have made me really curious about such a language!
Studying Lojban, then.
--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)
E-mail: dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
LEE Sau Dan
>> It is not so in Japan and China. There, the names of the units
>> and the prefixes have been translated into Japanese and
>> Chinese. In the latter case (not sure for Japanese), Chinese
>> word roots are used.
>>
>> Yes, the units are the same, but the names of the units aren't.
Gerard> Tio estas interesa. Mi ne sciis tion.
Ĉar vi eŭropeca estas.
Gerard> Kiuj estas tiam la chinaj nomoj de la unuoj kaj
Gerard> prefiksoj?
Laŭ mandarenlingvo:
Unuoj:
metre ==> <gong1 che4> (plimalnove: <mi3>)
litre ==> <gong1 sheng1>
gram ==> <ke1>
kilogram ==> <gong1 jin1> (aŭ: <qian1ke1>)
<che4>, <jin1> kaj <sheng1> estas la malnovaj, ĉinaj unoj.
Prefiksigataj de "<gong1>" (universala), ili estas SI units.
Prefiksoj:
centi ==> <li2>
milli ==> <hao2>
micro ==> <wei4>
kilo ==> <qian1>
mega ==> <zhao4>
tera ==> <jing1>
<li2> estas la vorto por "procento". Oni uzas <li2> ankaŭ por "bank
interest rate". <hao3> kaj <wei4> signifas "malgranda",
"malmalgranda". <qian1> estas simple "1000". <zhao4> kaj <jing1>
signifas "multege", "multegege".
LEE Sau Dan
Paul> "LEE Sau Dan" skribis:
>> >> Beyond the sexist aspect of this, it just causes more >>
>> ambiguity. Does FILO mean child or son?
>>
>> Only "son". There is "gefiloj" which means "children". And
>> curiously (i.e. IRREGULARLY), there is no singular form for
>> this word. So, there is no simply way to say "child". You
>> have to say "filo aŭ filino".
Paul> Kiel vi tradukus "infano" anglen?
Unu pli vorto por lerni? NE!
Infano? Infanino? Infaniĉo? Virinfano?
Kial "infano"? Kial ne "haizio"?
LEE Sau Dan
sebastian> La problemo estas, ke Sau Dan ne komprenas Esperanton:
sebastian> ge- signifis origine "paro el individuoj vira k
sebastian> virina". Tiu signifo intertempe plivastighis al "grupo
sebastian> el individuoj viraj k virinaj". Char ge- do chiam
sebastian> implicas "grupon", "pli ol unu", tute regule ne povas
sebastian> ekzisti singularo por tiaj vortoj.
La vera problemo estas, ke Esperanto estas stulta desegno. Ĝi ne
ebliĝas, esti neŭtrala je la sekso kiam la aĵo unua estas.
sebastian> Das Problem ist, dass Sau Dan Esperanto nicht versteht:
sebastian> ge- hieß ursprünglich "ein Paar aus Frau und
sebastian> Mann". Diese Bedeutung hat sich in der Zwischenzeit
sebastian> verbreitert zu "eine Gruppe aus weiblichen und
sebastian> männlichen Individuen". Weil ge- also stets eine
sebastian> "Gruppe", "mehr als einer" impliziert, kann es ganz
sebastian> regelmäßig keine Einzahlform für solche Wörter geben.
Das echte Problem ist, dass Esperanto schlect geplant wurde. Auf
Esperanto (als auch auf Deutsch) ist es einfach UNmöglich, bei einem
singularen Substantiv geschlectlos zu bleiben.
--
Lee Sau Dan 李守敦(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)
E-mail: dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee
LEE Sau Dan
>> Kial vi ne simple uzas "ghin" se vi ne volas au povas specifi
>> la sekson?
Klivo> 'Ghi' por nespecifa sekso estas bona ideo, sed shajnas al
Klivo> mi ke tiu solvo ne estas populara. Multaj ne volas uzi
Klivo> 'ghi' por homo.
Kial? Pro anglecismo?
Andrew McIntosh
>
> Gerard> If a system in used internationally it is
> Gerard> "international". Take for example the international system
> Gerard> of units, which is used everywhere in the world (except in
> Gerard> the USA where the British system is still generally
> Gerard> preferred for everyday purposes). But all the names of the
> Gerard> prefixes and units (kilo-, micro-, milli-, metre, second,
> Gerard> newton, joule, ohm, etc.) are derived from Greek and Latin
> Gerard> words or from the names of European scientists.
>
> This is WRONG.
>
> It is not so in Japan and China. There, the names of the units and
> the prefixes have been translated into Japanese and Chinese. In the
> latter case (not sure for Japanese), Chinese word roots are used.
>
> Yes, the units are the same, but the names of the units aren't.
Ummm...in Japanese the names of the units are only "translated" to fit
Japanese phonotactics:
metre ========== meetoru
kilogram ======= kiroguramu
millilitre ===== miriritoru
and they are written m, kg, mL, in roman letters, even in an otherwise
all-kanji-and-kana text (note that "L" in mL, despite the fact that
normal romanisation of Japanese would require an "r").
It's true that other prefixes exist (in kanji!), but I have yet to see
them used myself in real life.
Malte Milatz
> Haha... When asking "Kiu homo ...?", does one expect the answer to be
> a lady?
--
Malte Milatz, konvinkita esperantisto kaj linuks-uzanto.
sebastian.hartwig
> Kial "infano"? Kial ne "haizio"?
Trol-alarmo!
Sebastiano
PS: Trolu vin! *lol*
Dario Rodriguez
"I'm sorry, I used to be fluent and have forgotten much vocabulary. So
I may have to post in either English or mangled Esperanto."
Poste li aperigis longegan anglalingvan artikolon pri tiuj "problemoj de
Esperanto", nura frazo en nia lingvo kiun li uzis, almenau por la
temlinio.
Siaflanke, multaj sce-anoj lerte respondis al la duboj de s-ro.
Ament-Stone, kompreneble en lia propra lingvo, kvankam kelkaj estis tiel
afablaj aldoni esperantajn komentojn por tiuj malfelichuloj kiuj ne
majstras la amindan lingvon de Shakespeare.
Mi perfekte scias ke same s-ro. Ament-Stone kiel la afablaj respondantoj
akordas kun la charto de sce, kiu ebligas uzi iun ajn lingvon kondiche ke
la mesagho temu pri Esperanto.
Tamen, mi preghas kaj petegas al la Dioj de Olimpo kaj Walhalla ke s-ro.
Ament-Stone profitu el la bonegaj retaj kaj paperaj kursoj anglalingvaj
pri Esperanto por refreshigi sian iaman bonan scion de nia lingvo, kaj ke,
en la futuro li regalu nin, legantojn de sce, per saghaj artikoloj pri la
problemoj de Esperanto, en Esperanto.
Same rilate al profesoro Lee, kiu malgrau lia senduba lingvistika lerteco,
ne sukcesas finfine majstri nian lingvon kaj regali nin per esperantaj
artikoloj. Tio estas io vere negativa por lia "curriculum vitae". Mi
sugestas ke li skribu chine en chi forumo, se li ne kapablas uzi
Esperanton.
Cetere, neanglalingvanoj povus imiti nian karan Sebastianon kaj respondi
(kiel li faris germanlingve) en sia propra lingvo chi fadenon. Mi pensis
skribi hispane, sed hodiau mi ne havas sufichan tempon.
Dario Rodriguez
Christopher TESSONE
Nathaniel> I believe Esperanto has about 2 million, doesn't it?
That number is bandied about a lot. The safest number I've seen is 1
million; the 10 million number is probably a nonsense. *shrug* The
point is, it has a following several orders of magnitude above
everyone else. :-)
Nathaniel> languages, especially since many people (the Germans
Nathaniel> and Russians included, in fact) sometimes have trouble
Nathaniel> discerning between voiced and unvoiced in parts of
Nathaniel> words. I reference "und" in German (pronounced /unt/),
Nathaniel> and "vsye" in Russian (pronounced /fsye/.
You're confusing concepts. Just because Russian and German (like many
Indo-European languages, incidentally) have word-final devoicing and
devoicing/voicing in a few other circumstances doesn't mean speakers
of those languages can't tell voiced and devoiced consonants apart.
They can. Otherwise they'd hear no difference between "fotka" and
"votka". The thing is, they don't seriously impact meaning. There's
a difference.
I don't deny that the Esperanto phonology occasionally presents some
problems. There's the character of "Sunflolo" in Julio Baghy's "La
Verda Koro", there's Esperantists from all over the world picking
whatever "r" they want and confusing others. :-D But I don't think
it's too big a deal.
Nathaniel> I can't argue, since I don't know the amount of
Nathaniel> Esperanto speakers in Eastern Europe and Asia. Do you
Nathaniel> have figures? I'm quite curious.
I don't think anyone has good figures. Esperanto is spread too thinly
across the globe, with too few speakers members of formal
organizations, to get reliable numbers. And it's not the kind of
thing that's asked on censuses. :-)
Nathaniel> "international". How can something which is based on a
Nathaniel> small region be international? In other words, the
It's international because it doesn't belong to anyone. Because it's
politically neutral. Because, honestly, Esperantists say it is and
use it that way. Its international nature isn't inherent in the
language, it's found in the way we as Esperantists use the language.
This is, IMHO, one of the biggest reasons for *not* advocating
Esperanto as a working language for the EU. We'd lose control of it,
it would become a pan-European lingua franca. If we're serious about
keeping Esperanto international and neutral, we won't let that happen.
Nathaniel> problem I have with Esperanto's vocabulary here is that
Nathaniel> it claims to be from internationally selected roots,
Nathaniel> roots from "the major languages of Western
Nathaniel> civilization", I think Zamenhof said. But are they
Nathaniel> international to an Arabic speaker? A Polynesian? An
Yes, they are international to those people. International doesn't
mean "coming from all nations", it means, well, "of or relating to
more than one nation". There are "international" organizations that
have members only in Canada and the US.
Esperanto is not as easy for a Chinese as for a French person.
Given. But there's really no optimal solution, unless it's to
completely make up the entire vocabulary. If you make it an
egalitarian mix of all languages, you get only one or two words per
language. After all, why disadvantage a Cherokee or an Armenian by
including more Chinese words than words from their language?
But then the language wouldn't have "second-nature" words for anyone.
I would rather see a simplified version of Chinese or a language from
the Indian subcontinent be used than something truly transnational
like that.
Nathaniel> No idea. Don't get me wrong, I am not a Lojban
Nathaniel> supporter. I find it a bit inelegant and mangled. But I
Nathaniel> am citing the fact that it has many less roots than
Nathaniel> Esperanto does.
Right, and I'm saying it comes at a cost. If your interest is in
trying to find where the breaking point is, where "minimal" becomes
"too minimal to express myself", that's fine, it's an interesting
project. But I don't think that's necessarily where Esperanto should
be headed.
Nathaniel> It doesn't purport that? I once corresponded with an
Nathaniel> Esperantist. This is what she said on the matter of
Nathaniel> Esperanto's superiority:
>> I don't know what you're talking about. Esperanto is the best
>> language that was ever created, a feat in linguistic
>> achievement. How dare you question the internacia
>> lingvo. Nothing is better than Esperanto. I dare you to find a
>> better language on earth! It's the easiest, prettiest, most
>> widely spoken conlang there is! So stop whining and learn some!
Well, that's not the attitude of any Esperantists I know. :-)
Esperanto is good. Very good, even. But it's not perfect. I agree
on that, and I think most every reasonable Esperantist does, too.
Nathaniel> Esperanto has helped me a lot. I'm grateful for the
Nathaniel> experience, as I wrote above. It's a flawed language
Nathaniel> and I don't appreciate people calling it perfect, but
Nathaniel> it is a good attempt and worthy of recognition. I still
Nathaniel> think, however, that any competent language creator can
Nathaniel> simplify it further.
Well, all languages are flawed. :-) However, I don't think
simplifications (they've been proposed, almost since day one) really
make a significant improvement on Esperanto. Ido, for instance,
removed the accusative. Get that damned thing out of here! But even
when there wasn't a million-speaker momento behind Esperanto, people
kept learning it instead of Ido, taking the extra time to get
accustomed to the accusative.
Nathaniel> Oh, I must have meant why not KIO HOMO or KIO AJXO. But
Nathaniel> you didn't answer my question. Does KIU refer to humans
Nathaniel> or things?
It refers to both, as I said. "Kia" refers to a type of thing or
person. "Li estas tia homo." (He's _that_ kind of person.) Whereas
"kiu" refers to a specific person or thing. "Li estas tiu homo."
(He's that person, the one right there.) More examples:
Tio estas la auxto, kiun mia patro donis al mi. (This is the car that
my father gave to me.)
Kiu estas tiu? (Who is that person?)
Kiun libron vi deziras? (Which (specific) book do you want?)
Nathaniel> I don't claim that it keeps women from speaking
Nathaniel> it. There are plenty who do speak it. But I know of
Nathaniel> several who quit because of the sexism factor. And no,
Well, I think that's a little thin-skinned. That's saying they care
more about an abstract grammatical nuance of a language which does not
bear much on its speakers (Esperantists are some of the most
egalitarian people I know, much more so than average English speakers)
than on having real contact throughout the world. Have they quit
speaking English because it's sexist, too? Honestly, as I've said,
your best bet to change just about any institution, whether it's a
language, or a religious group, or a club, or an academic field, is to
stick with it and change it by reasonable arguments from the inside.
Unless that institution is not worth fixing in the first place; I
think Esperanto is definitely worth it.
I think it might be reasonable to have a "male suffix" in addition to
the "female suffix" -in-. So "patro" would be parent, and you'd have
to add a suffix to make it father or mother. I don't know how other
Esperantists feel about it, though I think I remember reading that
someone had come up with such a suffix. Become a writer! Use the
suffix in your writing! If people like it, it may take. But if a
culture isn't ready for some change, trying to force it on them or
leaving the culture usually postpones the adoption of the change, it
doesn't hasten it.
Nathaniel> I don't think it's more important to make a language
Nathaniel> non-sexist than to help real people. But you are
This I'll admit. Sorry for using what was a pretty weak argument to
justify something which, by all rights, probably ought to change. But
I don't think it's worth expending *too* much effort. It's the kind
of thing people should work on slowly in their everyday lives, IMHO,
not crusade for and kabei over.
Nathaniel> It is not BETTER to not have articles, but it does save
Nathaniel> remembering a new grammatical feature for most
Nathaniel> people. The majority of the earth does not use
Nathaniel> articles. This is mostly an Indo-European feature, and
Nathaniel> not even all Indo-Europeans use articles (most Slavs
Nathaniel> don't).
Again, I realize this, but I don't think it's a problem. If Esperanto
removed all elements not shared by every language, it would probably
be a pretty difficult language to express yourself in. In fact, it
couldn't be written, because for some people in the world, reading and
writing is something they've never done. It's my opinion that
Esperanto should have a low enough entrance barrier such that just
about anyone can learn it, but after a while, they have to start
speaking Esperanto, not just a clever way of disguising their own
native language.
The language has taken a lot of steps toward the language learner to
make things easy, but the language learner always has to take quite a
few steps, too.
Nathaniel> There's nothing wrong with case, but I can tell you as
Nathaniel> an English and French speaker that it screws me up a
Nathaniel> lot. I also speak Russian, BTW, so I do know the way it
Nathaniel> is used in Russian. But the way it is used in Esperanto
Nathaniel> is highly irregular. I don't get it. You use it
Nathaniel> normally in phrases like MI AMAS VIN and VI AMAS MIN,
Nathaniel> but why in TAGON POST TAGO???
Because time uses accusative. Most other languages with strong cases
have the same construction. (Russian does, for instance.)
Nathaniel> But to me, since they don't make the distinction
Nathaniel> (SCHNELL means both fast and quickly), the distinction
Nathaniel> is nonexistent in their minds. Remember how in English
Nathaniel> many lazy speakers say "I did good" or, using your
Nathaniel> example, "He runs fast". More and more derived adverbs
Nathaniel> are dying out in English.
The distinction isn't non-existent in their minds. You can't let the
surface muddle things too much. Yes, they look the same. Yes, a lot
of Americans drop "ly" and say "You done good." But they still
understand that when I say, "I run fast", "fast" is modifying the verb
"run". This is the definition of an adverb--something that modifies
verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs. Even if Esperanto got rid of all
outward markers for this and said "Mi kur rapid", if "rapid" modifies
"kur", it's an adverb by its function.
Nathaniel> It seems to me Zamenhof found fulmine and chomped off
Nathaniel> the last three letters so that FULMINO could mean
Nathaniel> "female lightning" - HUH??? Why not take RELAMPAGO
Nathaniel> unchanged and not hack off two syllables that Italians
Nathaniel> are used to?
Sorry for miscomprehending this earlier, but Don explained it before
your post. I had noticed this, too, but didn't recognize the problem
because I thought FULMO was an acronym.
The thing is, Esperanto isn't Italian. Or English. Or French. As I
said, it makes some steps toward the learner so it's easier. But
sooner or later you reach the point where Esperanto isn't just reading
English or French or Italian through a funny filter with little hats
on the letters. Esperanto is *different*, and it takes some learning.
It is simply not possible to create a language that anyone can learn
effortlessly; the trick is making the beginning pretty easy and
hooking them early.
Personally, I'm happy Zamenhof did what he did, and I don't think the
reason you suggest is it. If the word had been "fulmino", then
"fulminino" could mean female lightning. The thing is, Zamenhof
probably realized that for a long time Esperanto learners would take
words apart as they read them. And if you saw the word "fulmino",
you'd automatically think "fulm-in-o", root "fulm", feminine noun.
Then you'd go to the dictionary, and you wouldn't find "fulmo", and
you'd be frustrated.
Could he have done "fulmeno" like in other instances of "in"?
Probably. But why add Latin grammatical suffixes and word-building
forms to a language that isn't Latin?
Russian does this when adopting Greek words, and I think it makes
sense. -OS is just a plain masc. sing. noun ending in Greek, but we
Englishes just suck it up and have "castratos", for instance. (Sorry
for the morbid example, but it's in a translation I did recently.) In
Russian, the word is "kastrat", dropping the unnecessary Greek
ending. This isn't ubiquitous, however--Russian still has "kosmos".
Nathaniel> Russians are used to free word order, but usually they
Nathaniel> speak in SVO, as in English, Chinese, Spanish, French,
Nathaniel> Portuguese, Malay-Indonesian and many others. For
Nathaniel> example, JA LIUBLIU RIBU. In that sentence, RIBA does
Nathaniel> take the accusative, RIBU, but the order is still
Nathaniel> SVO. And remember, it is only in feminine nouns in
Nathaniel> Russian that the accusative is marked. JA LIUBLIU RIBU
Nathaniel> but JA LIUBLIU SIR. Being a Russian speaker, you know
Nathaniel> what I'm talking about.
You're showing that you don't know much Russian or haven't lived
there. :-) Russian is what's called a discourse-oriented language.
If there are three constituents in a sentence, there are six possible
orders: SVO, VSO, SOV, OSV, OVS, VOS. New information in a sentence
shifts to the end. So even though a Russian speaker might translate
"I love fish" as "Ja ljublju rybu" out of context, how that phrase
will come out in the context of a conversation or a writing sample
depends entirely on the surrounding sentences. The six cases of
Russian allow really, really complex constructions that would be
absolutely impossible without the cases, and as a translator, lemme
tell ya, sometimes I wish English still had cases.
Nathaniel> I like Esperanto a lot too, but I think my criticisms
Nathaniel> are fair. I never touted the superiority of Chinese, I
Nathaniel> only pointed out where I find Esperanto weak. I think
Nathaniel> that there is much simplification to be done with la
Nathaniel> internacia lingvo.
Definitely they're fair. Perhaps if Google hadn't eaten part of it,
your message would have seemed a little less negative. But I don't
honestly think the simplification you suggest is actually going to
draw more speakers to Esperanto or make things easier on them. It may
seem aesthetically more pleasing to you that way, but I guarantee you,
the loss in expressiveness would far outway a few minor gains in
simplicity. After all, Esperanto is not just a language you can order
a burger in, it's a language you can make love in, write poetry in,
fight in, polemicize in, in short, express anything you want to in.
Cheers,
Chris
--
Christopher A. Tessone
Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois
BA Student, Russian and Mathematics
http://www.polyglut.net/
Gerard van Wilgen
> >>>>> "Gerard" == Gerard van Wilgen <gvanw...@planet.nl> writes:
>
> >> It is not so in Japan and China. There, the names of the units
> >> and the prefixes have been translated into Japanese and
> >> Chinese. In the latter case (not sure for Japanese), Chinese
> >> word roots are used.
> >>
> >> Yes, the units are the same, but the names of the units aren't.
>
> Gerard> Tio estas interesa. Mi ne sciis tion.
>
> Ĉar vi eŭropeca estas.
Nu, neniu estas perfekta.
> Gerard> Kiuj estas tiam la chinaj nomoj de la unuoj kaj
> Gerard> prefiksoj?
>
> Laŭ mandarenlingvo:
>
> Unuoj:
> metre ==> <gong1 che4> (plimalnove: <mi3>)
> litre ==> <gong1 sheng1>
> gram ==> <ke1>
> kilogram ==> <gong1 jin1> (aŭ: <qian1ke1>)
Fakte mi pensis precipe pri la nomoj kiuj devenas de nomoj de europaj
sciencistoj, nome:
neutono (N)
jhulo (J)
volto (V)
ampero (A)
omo (Ω)
kelvino (K)
henrio (H)
farado (F)
kulombo (C)
uato (W)
paskalo (Pa)
grejo (Gy)
herco (Hz)
simenso (S)
teslo (T)
vebero (Wb)
bekerelo (Bq)
Kaj pri la prefiksoj, chu ekzistas ankau chinaj tradukoj por:
deka- (da)
hekto- (h)
giga- (G)
peta- (P)
eksa- (E)
zeta- (Z)
jota- (Y)
deci- (d)
nano- (n)
piko- (p)
femto- (f)
ato- (a)
zepto- (z)
jokto- (y)
Gerard van Wilgen
> >>>>> "Gerard" == Gerard van Wilgen <gvanw...@planet.nl> writes:
>
> Gerard> I suppose so, but it would not make the language much more
> Gerard> easier to learn for speakers of those languages.
> >> At least fairer, because that would make it equally difficult
> >> (i.e. equally easy) for all speakers to learn. No advantage
> >> taken for granted by the Europeans.
>
> Gerard> Good point, but when Zamenhof created Esperanto Europe was
> Gerard> the centre of the world
>
> No. It was just the centre of YOUR world.
Actually it is I who am the centre of the world, even from the entire
universe. But in terms of power and influence 19th century Europe was the
centre of the world. And that is what counts.
> Gerard> If he had chosen to include a large number of words from
> Gerard> "exotic" languages like Chinese, Hindustani, Japanese and
> Gerard> Arabic we would not be discussing Esperanto now, because
> Gerard> most of us would never have heard of this language.
>
> Not even heard of Chinese? Or Japanese? (Many Japanese have made
> study trips to Europe by that time.) Then, they're really ignorant.
> And you want to rely on a language designed by some ignorant people?
>
>
"This language" refers not to "exotic languages" but to "Esperanto".
Otherwise I should have written "these languages". This shows you how
important the mandatory marking of singular and plural is in a language that
is not your native one. Even though the context should have been enough to
interpret my text correctly, you still misinterpreted it because you
apparently ignored the plural markers.
> Gerard> In the cultural climate of Zamenhof's time such
> Gerard> a language would simply have failed to attract a
> Gerard> significant number of followers.
>
> It _could_ be different from what you assumed. Nobody can prove or
> disprove it.
I cannot prove it, but based upon what I know of the cultural climate of the
Western world in the 19th century, I think that it is a very reasonable
assumption.
>
> Gerard> Today we live in a different world, but I fear that a new
> Gerard> international language that is "fairer" than Esperanto
> Gerard> would still have no more success than it would have had a
> Gerard> century ago.
>
> Because few people nowadays believe in the myth of "universal
> language". People have realized that one size can't fit all.
> Gerard> I think that the advantage of the Esperanto
> Gerard> vocabulary being relatively easy to acquire by most people
> Gerard> in Europe, the Americas, and large parts of Africa and
> Gerard> Oceania still weighs heavier than the "fairness" of a
> Gerard> hypothetical new language.
>
> How many peoplea are there altogether? And how many peoplea are there
> in Asia?
A lot, but since adding a fair share of Asian words to an international
language would not make the language much easier for them. I still believe
that easy learnability for the greater part of the rest of the world weighs
heavier.
And remember, several important Asian languages are Indo-European and share
many of the characteristics that you dislike so much, with the majority of
European languages.
>
> >> Esperanto's phoneme system is Eurocentric in the first place.
>
> Gerard> To a certain extend yes, though there are of course
> Gerard> non-European languages with a similar system. But what is
> Gerard> the alternative?
>
> A less Eurocentric one. Take a look at Klingon and Lojban.
>
Klingon was purposely designed to look as little as possible to a human
language. I do not know if Okrand succeeded in that, but Klingon has about
the same number of phonemes (26) as Esperanto and its phonotactics seem to
me more like that of Germanic or Slavic languages than that of Chinese or
Japanese.
As for Lojban, I have looked at some specimens of Lojban and I see no reason
to assume that its sound system is less "Eurocentric" than that of the
average European language. Now that I come to think of it, what do you mean
with "Eurocentric" in this respect. The phonotactics of English differ very
much from the phonotactics of Polish, and both differ very much from the
Italian phonotactics. What is in your opinion the common element of the
sound system of European languages that distinguishes them as a group from
Chinese, Japanese, Arabic, Malay and Swahili?
>
> Gerard> If you simply reduce the number of phonemes and the number
> Gerard> of possible combinations of vowels and consonants, you
> Gerard> will get a language with a large number of long words for
> Gerard> everyday concepts.
>
> If the Japanese and Hawaiians can cope with this, why can't the
> "billiant" Europeans?
This is a matter of personal opinion, but I think that Japanese and Hawaiian
are extremes on one end of the scale, while languages like English and
Russian are extremes on the other end. Esperanto is somewhere in the middle,
which seems to me the appropriate position for a world language.
>
> Gerard> Or do you want to make the language Sinocentric with a
> Gerard> limited number of consonants and vowels that are identical
> Gerard> except for tonal differences?
>
> What's the difference to a phonological system with no tonal (i.e. a
> limited number) differences, but a large number of vowels and
> consonants and consonant clusters.
>
>
> Gerard> Or maybe something that is Semiticentric with few vowels
> Gerard> and many consonants, resulting in words like "tkmir" and
> Gerard> "gba'dzhur"?
>
> How is it worse?
>
It is not, but you do not want an international language to be
"Eurocentric", yet you seem to have no objection to it being "Sinocentric"
or "Semitocentric".
> Gerard> So, such a language would be much more difficult to learn
> Gerard> for speakers of most European languages, but not
> Gerard> significantly easier to learn for the rest of the world.
> >> Making it FAIRer.
> >>
> >> If fairness is no concern, then why not speak English? Why
> >> Esperanto?
>
> Gerard> Even idealists have to be practical, and sometimes they
> Gerard> must compromise.
>
> To be practical, learn and use English.
That is where the idealist stops being an idealist and becomes a pragmatist.
> Gerard> English would be much to unfair.
>
> I said: if fairness is not a concern...
>
>
> You want fairness? Then you shouldn't go for Esperanto. It's simply
> Eurocentric, i.e. unfair.
First of all I want something that is better suited than English, and
currently there is no realistic alternative for Esperanto.
> Gerard> Besides, English has even more phonemes than Esperanto and
>
> But it doesn't have those difficult clusters like "kv", "kn".
>
It does have "qu" which only differs from "kv" in the amount of
lip-rounding. And it is true that English does not have "kn" anymore, but it
has many other clusters to compensate for the loss, like "zmz" (prisms),
"dn" (hidden), "tlz" (bottles), "dhz" (clothes), "kshnz" (actions), "shnd"
(fashioned).
> Gerard> its grammar is much more complicated than Esperanto's.
>
> Not more complicated than Esperantos' vaguely expressed, never
> complete grammar. Those 16 grammar rules are just a joke.
Every grammar can only be expressed vaguely, otherwise grammar would be an
exact science. And as for English, have you ever seriously studied the rules
that govern the use of English correlatives, or the ones that describe where
in a sentence an adverb can appear? Those rules are really quite complex.
> Gerard> Esperanto is unfair too, but since there is no better
> Gerard> alternative pointing out the flaws in Esperanto and
> Gerard> declaring it unsuitable as international language, is
> Gerard> rather futile.
>
> No alternative is not an excuse.
>
You must have a very difficult life.
>
>
> Gerard> Because European languages are the geographically most
> Gerard> widely-spread group and because they share a relatively
> Gerard> large common vocabulary.
> >> Chinese is also geographically widely-spread, if not more.
> >> Name some big cities where you can find no Chinese community!
>
> Gerard> With "geographically widely spread" I do not mean 95% in
> Gerard> China and the rest scattered around the globe (the
> Gerard> percentage may be different but you know what I am trying
> Gerard> to say).
>
> I know. So, please name a big city (around the globe) where you can
> find no Chinese community.
So what, if on average 1 to 5% of the population of every big city outside
China is ethnically Chinese?
>
>
> Gerard> Also important is the fact that non-Europeans who
> Gerard> speak a European language are very numerous,
>
> That means the plauge of Eurocentrism has spread very widely.
> Esperanto will only make it more severe. It's not a cure at all.
>
But for the designer of a succesful world language circumstances as they
are, are much more important than circumstances as they ought to be.
> Gerard> while non-Chinese who speak Chinese are quite rare,
>
> Simply because China is poor since the frequent contacts with the West.
>
Whatever the cause, the result is a reality that cannot be ignored.
> Gerard> especially outside East Asia.
>
> Find a Westerner who has learnt Chinese, and ask him if he find
> Chinese really that difficult as you (or he once) imagine(d).
>
>
>
> Gerard> Undoubtedly, and it would have been possible to base an
> Gerard> international language on Chinese instead of European
> Gerard> languages. But then explain to me why a Sinocentric
> Gerard> international language would be better than a Eurocentric
> Gerard> one.
>
> Explain to me why it would be worse.
>
It would not be, but for Esperanto the choice has been made. If things had
gone differently there would now possibly be Europeans complaining about the
fact that the international language were "Sinocentric".
>
> Gerard> Korean and Japanese have a lot of Chinese loanwords
> Gerard> (probably most of them assimilated to a very strong degree
> Gerard> due to the significant differences between the phoneme
> Gerard> system of Chinese and those of Japanese and Korean. As for
> Gerard> grammar, Korean and Japanese are both aggutinating
> Gerard> languages and therefore very different from Chinese.
>
> The word roots and compounds are the same.
Hardly, since neither Korean nor Japanese use tonal differences to
distinguish vowels that are otherwise identical. Consequently many words
that are different in Chinese must map to the same word in Korean and
Japanese.
>
> Gerard> Well, I think that for a speaker of Japanese or Korean
> Gerard> Chinese would be just as difficult to learn as for a
> Gerard> speaker of English or Hungarian.
>
> Just YOUR guess. Any evidences? Any grounds for your guess?
Just a guess, yes? So what? You are not in a habit to provide hard evidence
either.
> The fact that they already know many words makes a lot of difference,
> esp. for a Japanese, who can already read/write most of the roots.
>
>
> Gerard> Speakers of Thai might
> Gerard> have less difficulty with the Chinese tones than a
> Gerard> European might have (though Thai does not use the same set
> Gerard> of tones as Mandarin), and the pronounciation might be
> Gerard> easier, but the vocabulary would still be a problem. I do
> Gerard> not know about the Vietnamese and the Burmese; Chinese
> Gerard> would probably be easier for them than Esperanto.
>
> Sure. No more nightmares of plurals, cases, tenses, etc.
>
>
> Gerard> but if you exclude the Chinese themselves, how many people
> Gerard> are there for whom Chinese would be easier to learn than
> Gerard> Esperanto?
>
> Who knows?
>
> I did meet 2 Americans who have learnt both Mandarin and Japanese. I
> met them separately. But coincidently, they independently told me
> that they found Mandarin a lot easier than Japanese. They both found
> Mandarin to be very easy -- when they don't care about
> writing/reading. Well... could that be merely coincidence?
>
The question was not "is Mandarin easier to learn for Americans than
Japanese?"
> Gerard> Yes, a deplorable situation. But it is a fault of the
> Gerard> speakers of Esperanto, not of the language itself.
>
> It is! The language is so designed that it invites such blind
> borrowings.
What is there in Lojban that prevents a user from borrowing a word from
another language and add it to the set of Lojban roots (or whatever they are
called)?
Read the last paragraph of http://people.fix.no/arj/lojban/anti-lojban.html
> Look at Chinese. It is inherently difficult to do the same in
> Chinese.
The Chinese script and the very restrictive Mandarin phonotactics make
borrowing from other languages indeed problematic. Still, Japanese has very
restrictive phonotactics too, but modern Japanese uses a lot of loanwords
from English. I think it is mainly the ideographic script (together with a
long tradition of isolationism) that has limited the number of foreign loans
in Chinese. But it seems to me that using an ideographic script for an
international language would not be such a smart idea.
> So, we have established a culture of translating (or
> inventing) words instead of blindingly borrowing from a foreign
> language.
But a culture is not something that you can as easily create as an
artificial language.
>
> Gerard> But such things are inevitable. You cannot have a language
> Gerard> that is spoken by thousands of speakers without losing
> Gerard> control of it.
>
> Chinese. Spoken by a billion.
But there is not a central command that controls the Chinese language. When
for instance the Chinese like the Japanese and the Thai, decide that it is
more fashionable to borrow English words than composing new ones from
existing roots, they will do so and there is nothing built-in in the Chinese
language that can prevent such a thing from happening.
>
> >> And Esperanto's Eurocentricity only accelerates this. Chinese
> >> has been more reluctant to this kind of blind borrowing. We
> >> only compose longer words out of Chinese roots. Lojban seems
> >> to have such a tendency, too. Rather than "borrowing" a
> >> foreign word to 'pollute' the language, the trend is to make up
> >> a new word from existing roots.
>
> Gerard> The technique of composing longer words is not uncommon in
> Gerard> many European languages. Examples are Finnish and German,
> Gerard> but also (to a lesser extent) English.
>
> Even German doesn't do it as extensively as Chinese. (And Japanese
> has followed Chinese.)
>
>
> Gerard> On the other hand, some East Asian languages have borrowed
> Gerard> a huge amount of Chinese words, so how can you say that
> Gerard> there is a relation between Eurocentricity and borrowing
> Gerard> words?
>
> Borrowing tons of words directly from European languages results in
> Eurocentricity. The use of the Latin alphabet for Esperanto simply
> accelerates this.
Lojban also uses the Latin alphabet. Ideally a world language should be
written in a unique script. But such a requirement is of course an utterly
unrealistic one.
>
> >> Esperanto is even worse: "kio" has two meanings: as a
> >> correlative, and as a question word. These 2 roles are
> >> UNFORTUNATELY overloaded on a single word, merely out of its
> >> Eurocentricity.
>
> Gerard> So, what is the problem with overloading?
>
> You cannot easily tell whether it is a question word, or a
> correlative. You need to rely on grammatical rules. For people not
> yet familiar with such rules (esp. non Europeans), this is a
> difficulty. An difficulty that could have been avoided if those words
> are not overloaded.
>
>
> Gerard> Overloading of grammatical functions is not a typical
> Gerard> European phenomenon.
>
> I'm talking about this precise instance, which I consider a big flaw
> in the otherwise elegant design of the correlatives in Esperanto.
>
>
> Gerard> In Japanese and Thai verbs and adjectives are overloaded,
>
> No. They aren't overloaded. They simply don't distinguish between
> verbs and adjectives. (Have to learn the distinction when they learn
> Esperanto is another difficulty.)
Okay, then Esperanto does not distinguish between correlative and
interrogative pronouns. No overloading. Problem solved.
>
>
> Gerard> so why is it unfortunate that Esperanto overloads pronouns
> Gerard> so that they can function both as interrogative and
> Gerard> correlative pronouns?
>
> But it's a design flaw, and people suffer from this flaw.
>
>
> >> And because of this design flaw, you HAVE TO being a
> >> (non-yes-no) question with a "k-" word. Otherwise, it would be
> >> easily mistaken for a correlative. "Free word order"? That's
> >> a myth. (I like the Japanese/Chinese way of asking questions:
> >> simply stuff the question word into the place as in a normal
> >> question. No need to shuffle any words around.)
>
> Gerard> "Vi vidis kiun?" "Li donis la florojn al kiu?" "Shin
> Gerard> vidis kiu en la ghardeno?
>
> These are _strictly speaking_ ungrammatical.
I disagree. There is nothing in the Esperanto grammar that forbids me to use
"kiu" at the end of a sentence, or even in the middle.
>
> Gerard> None of these questions starts with a "k-word",
>
> None of them are strictly grammatical. Like the English sentence "You
> know what?"
There is nothing wrong with that either.
> >> Esperanto is never meant to be gender-neutral.
>
> Gerard> Does it? Females do have their own sex-suffix in
> Gerard> Esperanto, while men are apparently placed in the same
> Gerard> category as things and animals of unknown or unspecified
> Gerard> sex. Now, who is being treated worse?
> >> What are the words for "man" and "woman", please?
>
> Gerard> "viro" (poor suffix-less thing) and "virino".
>
> So, that's sexist.
Okay, so what? I am a sexist too, and damn proud of it!
> Gerard> He did not say that it is not allowed either, so it must
> Gerard> be allowed. I regularly use words like "gepatro",
> Gerard> "gefilo", "gefrato" myself and I have never been told that
> Gerard> I should not do so.
>
> That you use it doesn't make it grammatical (to others).
Well, others can declare anything I say or write "ungrammatical", but that
only means they speak another kind of language than I do.
> I also speak broken German and my friends are not complaining about
> it. So, those broken sentences becomes grammatical merely because I
> use them and get no complaints?
There is a difference between speaking differently from others because you
do not know the rules well enough and between speaking differently because
you have chosen to use other rules.
> Gerard> But it is true that it is better to speak of postpositions
> Gerard> if they are usually used after nouns.
>
> Always. In Japanese, they're *consistently* always placed after the
> nouns. (That's where I like the Japanese grammar. So regular. Much
> better than Esperanto's mixture of case and preposition systems.)
If Japanese postpositions are always placed after the nouns, you might also
call them "case endings" :-)
>
> And bringing this baggage into the design of Esperanto is Eurocentric.
>
>
> Gerard> Does that make a language "Eurocentric" if expressing time
> Gerard> of action or state and number of objects is mandatory in
> Gerard> that language.
>
> Yes, together with the *style* (not the precise endings) in which
> words are inflected for these things. e.g. why not inflect nouns for
> time? Why not inflect verbs for case (e.g. "mi ne volas trinki-n")?
Why not, but what is wrong with copying an already widely used system?
>
> Gerard> The answer must be "no", because several non-European
> Gerard> language families share the same features, for instance
> Gerard> the Bantu languages of Africa.
>
> But not in the same style.
Bantu languages use prefixes to indicate plurality, Semitic languages change
the root vowel, Indo-European languages generally uses affixes, or sometimes
change the root vowel (with or without addition of a plural ending), Turkic
and Ugric languages also use affixes. Why should the style be so important?
To me it is all the same.
>
>
>
> Gerard> Lee, when are you going to design an alternative for
> Gerard> Esperanto?
>
> I don't believe in the slogan of "one universal language for all".
If you do not believe in a universal language, that is okay. But what is
your problem with Esperantists? What harm have they done to you?
> Gerard> You have made me really curious about such a language!
>
> Studying Lojban, then.
Maybe I shall do that. But do you speak it yourself?
Gerard van Wilgen
> >>>>> "Gerard" == Gerard van Wilgen <gvanw...@planet.nl> writes:
>
> Gerard> For most people it is easier to remember names than
> Gerard> numbers, even if the names are numbers in disguise, such
> Gerard> as "hexane" or "pentanol".
>
> Is that an excuse for using names (instead of just numbers) for the
> twelve months of the year in Esperanto? And the 7 days of the week?
Ha, that would really cause problems with cultural neutrality. Sunday used
to be considered the first day of the week in Western culture, though
nowadays people tend see Monday as the first day of the week. I think that
the Arabs also call Sunday the first day of the week, but in Swahili Friday
is the first day.
So, who is going to decide which day should be number 1? Or shall we start
with day 0?
>
> Sorry, I don't find those names anything easier than numbers. I'd
> rather call today the 14th day of the 8th month, rather than "la 14a
> Auxgusto". This name "Auxgusto" is too ugly for me. (And then, these
> names are Eurocentric.)
Well, we are talking about a European calender, are we not? There are many
other calenders available, Jewish, Japanese, several Islamic and Buddhist
ones, probably a Chinese calender as well. Feel free to use anyone that you
like.
tnhryk
Sunday used
> to be considered the first day of the week in Western culture,
though
> nowadays people tend see Monday as the first day of the week. I
think that
> the Arabs also call Sunday the first day of the week, but in
Swahili Friday
> is the first day.
> So, who is going to decide which day should be number 1? Or
shall we start
> with day 0?
> Well, we are talking about a European calender, are we not?
There are many
> other calenders available, Jewish, Japanese, several Islamic and
Buddhist
> ones, probably a Chinese calender as well. Feel free to use
anyone that you
> like.
Se ni parolas pri la europa kalendaro kiel vi diras, kial do ni ne
fiksu la unuan tagon de la semajno lau la plej majoritata EUROPA
Kalendaro, senkonsidere chu la unua samajntago estas vendredo en
islamaj landoj, chu ghi estas dimancho en Japanio sed lundo en
Chinio?
Kaj en preskau chiu kalendaro, la unua monato de jaro estas
januaro.
Vi parolas pri "cultural neutrality". Se vi vere emas neutralecon,
chu ne indas konsideri alinomi monatojn kaj semajntagojn per
numerado, simile kiel ni jam nomas la monat-tagojn kaj jarojn per
numeroj.
Bv. scii, ke en la japana, la semajntagoj havas proprajn nomojn
malkiel en la china. Sed mi volonte cedus al pli neutralaj nomoj.
Tani Hiroyuki, jp
Klivo
> ind...@yahoo.com (Klivo) skribis:
> > Lau mia opinio, oni uzu -in malofte.
>
> Jes, sed oni uzu -ic^ egale malofte, ne pli malofte.
>
> > Oni ne devas indiki sekson por profesioj
>
> Jes, sed oni ne povas simile indiki ic^an sekson. Se iu ja indikas
> inecon per "-in", si ofte uzas vorton sen "-in" indiki ic^econ.
>
> > Se oni tamen volas indiki sekson, oni tradicia diras 'virkato'
> > kaj 'katino'.
>
> "Vir-" tute maltau^gas. G^i povas signifi kaj ic^eco kaj homeco kaj
> plenag^eco - tro da signifoj!
'Vir' estas iom stranga, sed 'tute maltaugas' shajnas al mi troigo.
Chiukaze, mi jam sugestis alternativon: li.
Mi opinias ke uzado de vira sufikso 'ich', por vortoj kiuj ne
jam signifas viron, estas bona ideo, kvankam mi hezitas mem
uzi ghin. (Mi atendas por vidi chu la revolucio venkos :-)
> > Oni tamen devas uzi 'in' por manpleno da vortoj pri familiaj
> > rilatoj: patro/patrino, frato/fratino, ktp. En chi tiuj
> > malmultaj vortoj, estas 'problemo', nur se oni konsideras
> > malsimetrion problemo.
>
> Malsimetrio ja estas problemo, sed pli grava problemo estas ke la
> radiko estas ic^a. "Virpatro kaj patrino" ankau^ estus malsimetriaj,
> sed ne estus seksisma (kvankam ne estus bona pro aliaj kialoj).
Vi emfaze diras ke malsimetrio estas problemo, sen klarigo, kvazau
ghi estus memevidenta afero. Sed ghi ne estas evidenta al mi.
Bonvolu klarigi kial malsimetrio estas problemo.
Pri seksismo: Kiu estas la viktimo kaj kio estas la damagho?
Oni ne povas trovi solvon al la 'problemo' kiu kontentigos al
chiuj. Se multaj Esperantistoj decidus chiam uzi radikojn
neutrale, kaj aldoni sufikson por indiki sekson (patro, patricho,
patrino, frato, fraticho, fratino, ktp) tio plachus al tiuj
kiuj obsedighas pri simetrio, sed aliaj plendus, "La radikoj
'patro' kaj 'frato' havas viran signifon en la plejo da
Europaj lingvoj. Necesas uzi neutralajn radikojn." Oni proponus
solvon al tiu problemo per malpli konataj radikoj, eble 'parento'
kaj 'siblingo'. Aliaj pendus ke 'parento' estas konfuzebla kun
'parenco' kaj 'siblingo' ne estas internacia. Tiuj kiuj insistas
pri internacieco proponus 'patro, matro, frato, sororo' ktp.
Sed tiu solvo ne estas simetria, kaj ghi plipeziga la lernadon
por tiuj kiuj ne parolas Latinidan lingvon.
Bonvolu proponi solvon kiun oni ne povas kritiki.
> > Pri pronomoj: kiam mi ne scias au ne volas indiki sekson,
> > mi preferas li/shi. Ekz: 'Kiam li/shi venos?'
>
> Tio estas tre maleleganta.
Au tre eleganta, lau aliaj.
> Senindiko de sekson devus esti norma, ne malfacila.
Nu, se vi insistas.
> felnjo
Klichjo
Klivo
> Gerard> "international". Take for example the international system
> Gerard> of units, which is used everywhere in the world (except in
> Gerard> the USA where the British system is still generally
> Gerard> preferred for everyday purposes). But all the names of the
> Gerard> prefixes and units (kilo-, micro-, milli-, metre, second,
> Gerard> newton, joule, ohm, etc.) are derived from Greek and Latin
> Gerard> words or from the names of European scientists.
>
> This is WRONG.
Oh really.
> It is not so in Japan and China. There, the names of the units and
> the prefixes have been translated into Japanese and Chinese. In the
> latter case (not sure for Japanese), Chinese word roots are used.
The Japanese language generally uses international prefixes and unit names.
The pronunciation is a little different.
La japana lingvo kutime uzas internaciajn prefiksojn kaj nomojn de unuoj.
La prononco estas iom shanghita.
English/angla Japanese/japana
kilo- kiro-
micro- maikuro-
milli- miri-
metre meetoru
second byou (Chinese origin/ china origino)
newton ?
joule juuru
ohm oomu
Klivo
Jardar Eggesbø Abrahamsen
skreiv Christopher TESSONE <tes...@polyglut.net>:
> That number is bandied about a lot. The safest number I've seen is 1
> million;
The problem is that most of them are passive, they don't buy books, the
don't go to club meetings or congresses, they simply don't use the
language, and we don't even know where they are.
What we _do_ know, is that about 20 000 persons are members in some kind
of E-organization. There exist esperantsits who are not members anywhere.
But there are also members who don't even know how to say "bonan tagon, mi
estas eterna komencanto".
> the 10 million number is probably a nonsense.
Povas esti ke dum 116 jaroj 10 milionoj da homoj partoprenis kursojn.
Almenaů se oni nombras plurfoje tiujn kiuj partoprenis plurajn kursojn...
(Sed ja ofte ankaů estas tiel ke nur malmultaj kursanoj uzas la lingvoj
post la kurso.)
> I don't deny that the Esperanto phonology occasionally presents some
> problems. There's the character of "Sunflolo" in Julio Baghy's "La
> Verda Koro", there's Esperantists from all over the world picking
> whatever "r" they want and confusing others. :-D But I don't think
> it's too big a deal.
This happens also when people speak English, but English is not very often
criticized for it...
It was never the intention to make Esperanto "perfect". It is only meant
to be a little easier to learn.
> Yes, they are international to those people. International doesn't
> mean "coming from all nations", it means, well, "of or relating to
> more than one nation". There are "international" organizations that
> have members only in Canada and the US.
Of course, if Japanese became the most widely used ethnolanguage, it would
also quite naturally become the most important source of new words in
Esperanto. Esperanto is quite "natural" in this sense, and works like any
other language.
> Nathaniel> Oh, I must have meant why not KIO HOMO or KIO AJXO. But
> Nathaniel> you didn't answer my question. Does KIU refer to humans
> Nathaniel> or things?
kio/tio = what/that (the kind is unknown or irrelevant)
kiu/tiu = which one/that one (the kind is presupposed)
kio estas tio? = what is that?
kiu estas tiu? = which one is that one?
> Nathaniel> normally in phrases like MI AMAS VIN and VI AMAS MIN,
> Nathaniel> but why in TAGON POST TAGO???
>
> Because time uses accusative. Most other languages with strong cases
> have the same construction. (Russian does, for instance.)
In Esperanto, the "rule" is to use nominative in subjects, after
prepositions (when the preposition is used according to its motional/local
semantics) and in predicatives. Elsewhere accusative is used.
Jardar
LEE Sau Dan
Malte> LEE Sau Dan skribis:
>> Haha... When asking "Kiu homo ...?", does one expect the answer
>> to be a lady?
Malte> Why?
Homino ne estas homo.
Andrew McIntosh
> >>>>> "Malte" == Malte Milatz <malt...@gmx.net> writes:
>
> Malte> LEE Sau Dan skribis:
> >> Haha... When asking "Kiu homo ...?", does one expect the answer
> >> to be a lady?
>
> Malte> Why?
>
> Homino ne estas homo.
Nu, mi lernis Esperanton en Japanio, do eble tial la vorto homo
sxajnas al mi neuxtrala. Mi lernis ke "homo" = "hito", kiu estas tute
sekse neuxtrala vorto en la japana. Cxu oni iam uzas la vorton
"homino"?
Gerard van Wilgen
"LEE Sau Dan" <dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote in message
news:m3brusm...@mika.informatik.uni-freiburg.de...
> >>>>> "Malte" == Malte Milatz <malt...@gmx.net> writes:
>
> Malte> LEE Sau Dan skribis:
> >> Haha... When asking "Kiu homo ...?", does one expect the answer
> >> to be a lady?
>
> Malte> Why?
>
> Homino ne estas homo.
"Homino" estas ina homo, "virhomo" estas vira homo. La vortoj "viro" kaj
"virino" ne necese indikas anojn de "Homo sapiens", kvankam kutime ili faras
tion.
"Virino" povus ankau esti ekzemple feino, elfino, nimfo au alia imaga
estajho.
sebastian.hartwig
Vi jhus uzis. Kelkfoje oni povas vidi ghin ie k tie. Tamen homo
kompreneble estas sekse neutra.
Rilate al Sau Dan Lee: 'Don't feed the trolls!' :)
Sebastiano
Malte Milatz
> LEE Sau Dan:
>> Malte Milatz:
>>> LEE Sau Dan:
>>>> Haha... When asking "Kiu homo ...?", does one expect the answer
>>>> to be a lady?
>>> Why?
>> Homino ne estas homo.
> Nu, mi lernis Esperanton en Japanio, do eble tial la vorto homo
> sxajnas al mi neuxtrala. Mi lernis ke "homo" = "hito", kiu estas tute
> sekse neuxtrala vorto en la japana. Cxu oni iam uzas la vorton
> "homino"?
Laů mi, la vorto "homino" estas malghusta, kaj pri la neůtraleco vi tute
pravas. Se oni volas distingi, eble direndus: ina homo kaj vira homo.
Sed normala ja estus viro/virino/knabo/knabino.
Donald J. HARLOW
>LEE Sau Dan <dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote in message
>news:<m3brusm...@mika.informatik.uni-freiburg.de>...
> > >>>>> "Malte" == Malte Milatz <malt...@gmx.net> writes:
> >
> > Malte> LEE Sau Dan skribis:
> > >> to be a lady?
> >
> >
> > Homino ne estas homo.
>
>Nu, mi lernis Esperanton en Japanio, do eble tial la vorto homo
>sxajnas al mi neuxtrala. Mi lernis ke "homo" = "hito", kiu estas tute
>sekse neuxtrala vorto en la japana. Cxu oni iam uzas la vorton
>"homino"?
Prave. "Homo" estas tute neuxtrala vorto, ne sinonimo de "viro". Se oni
uzus la vorton "homino" (kiu ja estas formale kreebla en Esperanto, same
kiel "martelino" aux "sxtonino"), oni farus tion supozeble sxerce.
-- Don HARLOW
http://www.webcom.com/~donh/don/don.html
Pasis longa voj'
Iri ći tien de for;
Pasis longa temp',
Sed alvenas mia hor' ...
LiteraturaĽoj: http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/Literaturo
Arnold Victor
Donald J. HARLOW wrote:
> [...]
>
> Prave. "Homo" estas tute neuxtrala vorto, ne sinonimo de "viro". Se oni
> uzus la vorton "homino" (kiu ja estas formale kreebla en Esperanto, same
> kiel "martelino" aux "sxtonino"), oni farus tion supozeble sxerce.
>
Kaj beletre. Karolo Picx uzas la vorton "busxino" por virina seksorgano.
--
++====+=====+=====+=====+=====+====+====+=====+=====+=====+=====+====++
||Arnold VICTOR, New York City, i. e., <arvi...@Wearthlink.net> ||
||Arnoldo VIKTORO, Nov-jorkurbo, t. e., <arvi...@Wearthlink.net> ||
||Remove capital letters from e-mail address for correct address/ ||
|| Forigu majusklajn literojn el e-poshta adreso por ghusta adreso ||
++====+=====+=====+=====+=====+====+====+=====+=====+=====+=====+====++
Andrew McIntosh
Raymond S. Wise
news:16874cb.03081...@posting.google.com...
> Do, kial oni ne kutimas diri "ino" anstataux "virino"?
Eble pro la sama kialo ke oni plejofte parolas de inaj homoj en la angla
kiel "women" anstatau "females" : Oni povas uzi la anglan vorton "female"
kaj la Esperantan vorton "ino" kiam oni parolas pri bestoj. Tio ne estas
vera pri "virino".
Rimarku ankau kiel la Esperanta praktiko diferencigas homojn kaj bestojn:
Plenkreskita ina birdo estas "birdino", plenkreskita ina bizono estas
"bizonino", tamen plenkreskita ina homo estas "virino".
--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minesoto Usono
mplsray @ yahoo . com
Raymond S. Wise
news:vjjn5vf...@corp.supernews.com...
[...]
> There are at least two ways in which the "sexism" issue may be
> treated--besides simply ignoring it, of course. One is to adopt the
English
> model of replacing some female-marked words with non-marked words. I know
> an Esperantist, for example, who would speak of a person as being an
> "instruisto" ( = "teacher" ) even if the person in question is female--I
> referred to an "Esperantist," but in Esperanto that would in principle be
> "Esperantistino," because the Esperantist in question is female. The other
> solution that has been proposed is to add a male-marked suffix, "-ic," so
> that "patro" would mean "parent," "patrico" would mean "father," and
> "patrino" would mean "mother." I lean towards the first practice. Of the
> second, it should be kept in mind when and if Esperanto is chosen by the
UN
> or some other international organization as the international auxiliary
> language. Zamenhof intended for the fundamentals of Esperanto to be
changed
> _only_ when that happened. (If any substantial changes were actually made
in
> such a case, I think you'd find a lot of unhappy Esperantists, but I hope
> that you would find a lot more Esperantists who would be delighted that
the
> language had been officially declared the international auxiliary
language,
> no matter what changes were subsequently made to it, as long as the "ideo"
> in "samideano" were adhered to.)
I was wrong about the proposed suffix for distinguishing the male of a
male/female pair of words. The suffix used in the Esperanto reform proposal
called "riismo" is "-ich," so that "father/mother" would be not
*"patrico/patrino" but "patricho/patrino." The "ri" in "riismo" is the
pronoun proposed as a generic third person singular.
Marko Rauhamaa
> Eble pro la sama kialo ke oni plejofte parolas de inaj homoj en la
> angla kiel "women" anstatau "females" : Oni povas uzi la anglan vorton
> "female" kaj la Esperantan vorton "ino" kiam oni parolas pri bestoj.
> Tio ne estas vera pri "virino".
Nu, "virino" signifas ankau "female, cow", ghuste kiel "viro" signifas
ankau "male, bull":
Nia alkochaso fiaskis; ni akcidente mortigis gravedan virinon kaj
devis pagi punmonon.
Marko
--
Marko Rauhamaa mailto:ma...@pacujo.net http://pacujo.net/marko/
Mireille Corobu
>> Donald J. HARLOW wrote:
>> [...]
>> Prave. "Homo" estas tute neuxtrala vorto, ne sinonimo de
>> "viro". Se oni uzus la vorton "homino" (kiu ja estas formale
>> kreebla en Esperanto, same kiel "martelino" aux "sxtonino"),
>> oni farus tion supozeble sxerce.
> Kaj beletre. Karolo Picx uzas la vorton "busxino" por virina
> seksorgano.
Cxu estus beletre uzi "virnazo" por vira seksorgano?
Mireja
Mireille Corobu
>> LEE Sau Dan <dan...@informatik.uni-freiburg.de> wrote in
>> message
>> news:<m3brusm...@mika.informatik.uni-freiburg.de>...
>>>>>>>> "Malte" == Malte Milatz <malt...@gmx.net> writes:
>>> Malte> LEE Sau Dan skribis:
>>>>> Haha... When asking "Kiu homo ...?", does one expect the
>>>>> answer to be a lady?
>>> Malte> Why?
>>> Homino ne estas homo.
>> Nu, mi lernis Esperanton en Japanio, do eble tial la vorto homo
>> sxajnas al mi neuxtrala. Mi lernis ke "homo" = "hito", kiu
>> estas tute sekse neuxtrala vorto en la japana. Cxu oni iam uzas
>> la vorton "homino"?
> Don:
> Prave. "Homo" estas tute neuxtrala vorto, ne sinonimo de "viro". Se
>oni uzus la vorton "homino" (kiu ja estas formale kreebla en
> Esperanto, same kiel "martelino" aux "sxtonino"), oni farus tion
> supozeble sxerce.
Saluton al cxiuj,
reveninta nur por la tago mi superfluge legis la multajn afisxojn kaj
rapide respondas pro manko da tempo.
Se iu dirus al mi "homino" mi ne aprezus, ricevus gxin kvazaux sercxon
aux insulton: dependas de la parolanto kompreneble ;-)
Mireja
Aux insulte :-/
ORIELO
>remember, it is only in feminine nouns in Russian that the accusative
>is marked. JA LIUBLIU RIBU but JA LIUBLIU SIR. Being a Russian
>speaker, you know what I'm talking about.
Don't forget the masculine animates: CHELOVEK ZDES' but JA VIZHU
CHELOVEKA.......yes I know that looks like the genitive, but the fact remains
that the accusative function is set apart from the nominative by a different
form.
dimo
Orienta Iowa Esperanto-Ligo
ORIELO
>about chemistry in such a language. There are about 100 different chemical
>elements, and if each one would have its own root name, they alone would
>take up 10% of the available 1,000 roots. But it would obviously very
>cumbersome if you would have to refer to hydrogen as
>"element-with-atomic-number-1" , to nitrogen as
>"element-with-atomic-number-7", etc. (assuming there are roots for
>"elements" and "atom" and that you do not need to describe those words as
>well).
One could calque them as do German and I'm sure Chinese (Sau Dan?): "element" =
lem; apa, water and kan, sour: apalem - hydrogen and kanlem - oxygen,
etc........
Orienta Iowa Esperanto-Ligo
ORIELO
>> and because they share a relatively large common vocabulary. It makes
>> Esperanto easier for speakers of those languages without making it much
>> harder for the rest.
>
>Geographically the most widespread? No. Geographically the most
>widespread would be all the Asian languages. Don't forget, all the
>Indic and Iranian languages are counted as European, and they're over
>in Asia. Plus there's all the East Asian (Mandarin, Wu, Cantonese,
>Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Lao, Burmese,
>Tibetan...) and many Altaic languages (Mongolian, some say Turkish,
>all the other Altaic languages I don't know the names of...) and many
>more I can't think of right now.
>
Sorry, Nathaniel, but your analogy is a bit flawed here: European languages
(with 3 relatively minor exceptions) all belong to the same family. The "Asian
languages" belong to more than 4 (IE, Sino-Tibetan, Altaic. Malayopolynesian,
and a few others I'm not sure of the names for).
Orienta Iowa Esperanto-Ligo
Dario Rodriguez
español, claro está, para aclarar los graves problemas que presenta el
Esperanto.
No comprendo cómo existiendo tantos excelentes libros para aprender
Esperanto en la respetada lengua de Shakespeare, que pueden obtenerse en
Esperanto-Ligo de Norda Ameriko ELNA, o bien en la red, tenemos que
soportar tan tremendas tabarras en dicho admirado idioma los que no lo
dominamos bien. Estamos más que hartos. ¡ A ver si aprendeis Esperanto,
coño!
Dario Rodriguez
sebastian.hartwig
> One could calque them as do German and I'm sure Chinese (Sau Dan?): "element" =
> lem; apa, water and kan, sour: apalem - hydrogen and kanlem - oxygen,
> etc........
"Apalem" k "kanlem" sonis por mi preskau volapukaj, sed Volapuko en tiu
rilato ne estas tre inventema: Hidrogeno estas hidrin, oksigeno loxin. La
finajho "-in" signas elementojn, sed hidr- k lox- per si mem ja jam estas
elementoj.
Sed en la origina Volapuko estis alie: vat - akvo; z"ud -- acido: vatin -
hidrogeno; z"udin -- oksigeno. Sed tio estis evidente pauso el la germana.
Sebastiano
Nathaniel Ament-Stone
say. It's good to know I'm not the only one who believes Esperanto is
Eurocentric. And Gerard, Asian languages DO share a lot of common
vocabulary. I reference numerals 1-10 in Chinese, Korean, Japanese,
Thai and Vietnamese:
Mand. Cant. Hakka Thai Jap. Kor. Viet.
yi yan yt neung ichi il nhat
er yi ni saung ni i nhi
san sam sam sam san sam tam
si sei si si shi sa tu
wu ng ng ha go o ngu
liu lok liuk hok roku yuk luc
qi chat chit jet shichi chil that
ba baat pat paet hachi pal bat
jiu gao kiu kao ku ku cu
shi sap ship sip ju sip thap
That's almost 1.4 billion people Esperanto is completely ignoring.
Plus Lao, Khmer, and other East Asian languages that are heavily
influenced by Chinese. Tell me, Lee, if I am inaccurate.
Lee, can I email you? You being Chinese and me wanting my own language
to be heavily Mandarin-based (about 35% Mandarin vocabulary and about
50% of the grammar Mandarin-based), you may be able to help me a lot
with the development of my language. So can I enlist your help in some
areas?
Nathaniel
Nathaniel Ament-Stone
Go get him, Lee! Sorry, Gerard. Just having a little fun there. Europe
has never been the center of the world. According to GeoHive, even
back in 1750 Asia had 440,000,000 people more than Europe. By 2050,
Asia will have approximately 4,240,000,000 more people than Europe, or
almost 10 times the population it had in 1750. And even Africa,
plagued with AIDS, limited resources and despotic dictators, had 20
million more than Europe as of 1998. By 2050, this will have increased
to 1.14 billion more! Remember, Europe is LOSING population...
> Gerard> If he had chosen to include a large number of words from
> Gerard> "exotic" languages like Chinese, Hindustani, Japanese and
> Gerard> Arabic we would not be discussing Esperanto now, because
> Gerard> most of us would never have heard of this language.
>
> Not even heard of Chinese? Or Japanese? (Many Japanese have made
> study trips to Europe by that time.) Then, they're really ignorant.
> And you want to rely on a language designed by some ignorant people?
And also, Gerard, "exotic"? Is it just me or does that sound a little
chauvinistic?
> Gerard> In the cultural climate of Zamenhof's time such
> Gerard> a language would simply have failed to attract a
> Gerard> significant number of followers.
>
> It _could_ be different from what you assumed. Nobody can prove or
> disprove it.
And Gerard, since that was never tried (and could have been), we will
never know what the public response would be. Remember, Volapuk uses a
lot of mutilated and a priori roots, and is in my opinion one of the
least elegant languages ever, and it attracted a huge following.
> Gerard> I think that the advantage of the Esperanto
> Gerard> vocabulary being relatively easy to acquire by most people
> Gerard> in Europe, the Americas, and large parts of Africa and
> Gerard> Oceania still weighs heavier than the "fairness" of a
> Gerard> hypothetical new language.
>
> How many peoplea are there altogether? And how many peoplea are there
> in Asia?
In the world: 6,302,309,691 people as of July 1, 2003. In Asia as of
1998: 3,585,000,000 people, which was at the time about 60%. So, now
Asia probably has 3,781,385,814 or so.
> A less Eurocentric one. Take a look at Klingon and Lojban.
What I did was find the 10 most widely used phonemes: A I K L M N P S
T U. Easily 90-95% of the world uses these phonemes. Think of
Esperanto: A B C CH D E F G GH H HH I J JH K L M N O P R S SH T U W (u
breve) V Z. That's 28 letters. If Zamenhof had eliminated even the 7
least widespread sounds on earth (such as R, V, Z, CH, SH, JH and GH),
he would have simplified significantly. If he'd gotten rid of the
voiced/unvoiced distinction (which many languages don't make), he'd
get down to about 16 phonemes. If he got rid of the two harder vowels
(E and O), he'd get down to 14. By now he'd have a system almost as
minimal as Hawaiian!!
> If the Japanese and Hawaiians can cope with this, why can't the
> "billiant" Europeans?
Exactly. And Gerard, what's so scary about long words?
> Gerard> Or do you want to make the language Sinocentric with a
> Gerard> limited number of consonants and vowels that are identical
> Gerard> except for tonal differences?
>
> What's the difference to a phonological system with no tonal (i.e. a
> limited number) differences, but a large number of vowels and
> consonants and consonant clusters.
Right. Each system is as bad. So I would propose neither. No tonal
distinctions AND a very minimal phoneme array. Or neither, as in
(sometimes) English - and yes, English DOES have tones upon occasion.
> Gerard> Or maybe something that is Semiticentric with few vowels
> Gerard> and many consonants, resulting in words like "tkmir" and
> Gerard> "gba'dzhur"?
>
> How is it worse?
How is that worse than "EKTRANSSKRIBI", "VIBRNOMBRO", "LINGVGVIDO",
"AKVSTRATO" etc.? Besides, I don't know about Hebrew, but Arabic does
not allow many consonant clusters. Such as the rule that no word in
Arabic (also in Hungarian, Turkish and Finnish) can begin with a
consonant cluster. Arabic, by the way, is simpler than Esperanto in
many ways, i.e. three word classes rather than eight.
> Gerard> Besides, English has even more phonemes than Esperanto and
>
> But it doesn't have those difficult clusters like "kv", "kn".
Nor do MANY non-Slavic and non-Germanic languages.
> Gerard> Esperanto is unfair too, but since there is no better
> Gerard> alternative pointing out the flaws in Esperanto and
> Gerard> declaring it unsuitable as international language, is
> Gerard> rather futile.
>
> No alternative is not an excuse.
RIGHT!
> Gerard> Because European languages are the geographically most
> Gerard> widely-spread group and because they share a relatively
> Gerard> large common vocabulary.
> >> Chinese is also geographically widely-spread, if not more.
> >> Name some big cities where you can find no Chinese community!
>
> Gerard> With "geographically widely spread" I do not mean 95% in
> Gerard> China and the rest scattered around the globe (the
> Gerard> percentage may be different but you know what I am trying
> Gerard> to say).
>
> I know. So, please name a big city (around the globe) where you can
> find no Chinese community.
It's impossible, Gerard. You CAN'T name a city without a large Chinese
community. If you go into a cafe in Southern California, you will find
several racial groups dominate: white, black, Hispanic and Asian
(especially Chinese).
> That means the plauge of Eurocentrism has spread very widely.
> Esperanto will only make it more severe. It's not a cure at all.
You are more brave than I, Lee. That is exactly what I was thinking
but I was afraid to point it out. Esperanto is HELPING the PROBLEM of
European domination. Tell me Gerard, why are the French, English or
Italians superior to the Chinese, Indians or Arabs?
> Gerard> while non-Chinese who speak Chinese are quite rare,
>
> Simply because China is poor since the frequent contacts with the West.
Actually that is not true, what Gerard said. I know at least a dozen
people in my city alone who speak Chinese and have no Chinese heritage
whatsoever. In just my city! Plus there's all the Chinese immigrants
who teach their AMERICAN children the mother language. I know several
families of children who were born in America and have never been to
"Zhongguo" and yet know the Putonghua, not English.
> Gerard> especially outside East Asia.
>
> Find a Westerner who has learnt Chinese, and ask him if he find
> Chinese really that difficult as you (or he once) imagine(d).
Chinese writing is hard, I grant that, but grammatically I find it 10
times simpler than any other language except in some ways Arabic and
Spanish.
> Gerard> Undoubtedly, and it would have been possible to base an
> Gerard> international language on Chinese instead of European
> Gerard> languages. But then explain to me why a Sinocentric
> Gerard> international language would be better than a Eurocentric
> Gerard> one.
>
> Explain to me why it would be worse.
Especially since, I remind you, China alone has 30-40% more people
than ALL OF EUROPE!
> Gerard> Speakers of Thai might
> Gerard> have less difficulty with the Chinese tones than a
> Gerard> European might have (though Thai does not use the same set
> Gerard> of tones as Mandarin), and the pronounciation might be
> Gerard> easier, but the vocabulary would still be a problem. I do
> Gerard> not know about the Vietnamese and the Burmese; Chinese
> Gerard> would probably be easier for them than Esperanto.
>
> Sure. No more nightmares of plurals, cases, tenses, etc.
Right!
> I did meet 2 Americans who have learnt both Mandarin and Japanese. I
> met them separately. But coincidently, they independently told me
> that they found Mandarin a lot easier than Japanese. They both found
> Mandarin to be very easy -- when they don't care about
> writing/reading. Well... could that be merely coincidence?
I am one who believes Mandarin is extremely simple grammatically.
> Look at Chinese. It is inherently difficult to do the same in
> Chinese. So, we have established a culture of translating (or
> inventing) words instead of blindingly borrowing from a foreign
> language.
Which is why Chinese has so few words that English has. I can only
name two, KAFEI and SELA for coffee and salad, and also MO which has
turned up around the globe in one form or another (muerto, mort, mrit,
maut, mati, mate, mout) as death. This can be good, though, as many
international words are actually Chinese (especially the word for
'tea'). Esperanto blindly takes European words rather than thinking of
a logical way to piece the meaning together. That is why the
vocabulary is so inflated.
> Borrowing tons of words directly from European languages results in
> Eurocentricity. The use of the Latin alphabet for Esperanto simply
> accelerates this.
My feelings exactly! Esperanto is not helping, but accelerating, the
Eurocentricism problem. So in my language the option is to write in
Latin, Cyrillic, Greek, Devanagari, Hangul, Arabic, Katakana,
Hiragana, Thai, Tamil, Kannada or any other script...even Hanzi!
> Gerard> In Japanese and Thai verbs and adjectives are overloaded,
>
> No. They aren't overloaded. They simply don't distinguish between
> verbs and adjectives. (Have to learn the distinction when they learn
> Esperanto is another difficulty.)
In my language, adjectives ARE verbs. There is no word for "good", but
there is one for "to be good". With this trick, I've been able to
eliminate the verb "to be", a verb which many people aren't accostomed
to. Once again, the Chinese say "hao ren" - good man, but "ren hao" -
the man is good. They do have a "to be" verb, but I don't think it's
used often. Is it, Lee?
> >> Esperanto is never meant to be gender-neutral.
>
> Gerard> Does it? Females do have their own sex-suffix in
> Gerard> Esperanto, while men are apparently placed in the same
> Gerard> category as things and animals of unknown or unspecified
> Gerard> sex. Now, who is being treated worse?
> >> What are the words for "man" and "woman", please?
>
> Gerard> "viro" (poor suffix-less thing) and "virino".
>
> So, that's sexist.
Extremely sexist. Especially since "vir" was Latin for MAN! Why not
use the already-present "homo" for person, "homicxo" or something for
man and "homino" for woman? It would be symmetrical. Esperanto is just
plain sexist.
> Always. In Japanese, they're *consistently* always placed after the
> nouns. (That's where I like the Japanese grammar. So regular. Much
> better than Esperanto's mixture of case and preposition systems.)
I agree.
> And bringing this baggage into the design of Esperanto is Eurocentric.
Once again, I completely agree. Why can't Esperanto just be fair? Why
does it have to be so terribly Eurocentric even when it puts a huge
majority of the world at a disadvantage?
Thank you so much for posting, Lee. I am glad to know I am not the
only person who finds Esperanto terribly unfair.
Nathaniel
sebastian.hartwig
> Lee, can I email you? You being Chinese and me wanting my own language
> to be heavily Mandarin-based (about 35% Mandarin vocabulary and about
> 50% of the grammar Mandarin-based), you may be able to help me a lot
> with the development of my language. So can I enlist your help in some
> areas?
rotfl
Sebastiano
--
Die Dummen sterben nie aus.
Lee Miller
personoj . . . Do, kiam temas pri "Lee" oni devus precizigi, pri kiu oni
parolas . . .
Lee
"sebastian.hartwig" <h044...@interlingue2003.org (sen ciferoj)> wrote in
message
news:Pine.GSO.4.44.030816...@amor.rz.hu-berlin.de...
Raymond S. Wise
news:m3znia9...@lumo.pacujo.net...
> "Raymond S. Wise" <illinoi...@mninter.net>:
>
> > Eble pro la sama kialo ke oni plejofte parolas de inaj homoj en la
> > angla kiel "women" anstatau "females" : Oni povas uzi la anglan vorton
> > "female" kaj la Esperantan vorton "ino" kiam oni parolas pri bestoj.
> > Tio ne estas vera pri "virino".
>
> Nu, "virino" signifas ankau "female, cow", ghuste kiel "viro" signifas
> ankau "male, bull":
>
> Nia alkochaso fiaskis; ni akcidente mortigis gravedan virinon kaj
> devis pagi punmonon.
Mi rimarkas, ke la Reta Vortaro al
http://purl.org/NET/voko/revo/
sub la kapvorto "vir/o", ne havas tiun sencon, kiun vi donas por "virino" :
en tiu senco, ghi havas nur "ino". Mi ankau rimarkas, ke en la difinoj sub
la kapvorto "vir/o" on uzas kaj "virhomo" por "vira homo" kaj "homino" por
"ina homo". Ekzemple, oni difinas "virino" kiel "1. Homino, kontraste kun
virhomo" kaj "2. Maturagha homino, kontrastre kun infano."
Gerard van Wilgen
"Nathaniel Ament-Stone" <nat...@linkline.com> wrote in message
news:4e14a02d.03081...@posting.google.com...
> > No. It was just the centre of YOUR world.
>
> Go get him, Lee! Sorry, Gerard. Just having a little fun there. Europe
> has never been the center of the world. According to GeoHive, even
> back in 1750 Asia had 440,000,000 people more than Europe.
Nombroj da homoj ne estas tre gravaj. Ekonomia kaj armea povo kaj kultura
influo estas la gravaj faktoroj por fiksi la "centron de la mondo". Lau tiuj
kriterioj Usono estas nuntempe la mondcentro, kaj en la 19a jarcento
Okcidenteuropa estis la mondcentro.
> And also, Gerard, "exotic"? Is it just me or does that sound a little
> chauvinistic?
Chu vi ne rimarkis la citilojn?
Nathaniel Ament-Stone
> kriterioj Usono estas nuntempe la mondcentro, kaj en la 19a jarcento
> Okcidenteuropa estis la mondcentro.
USONO NE ESTAS LA MONDCENTRO. NE ESTAS UNU MONDCENTRO. ESTAS SOLE LA
MONDO KE NI CXIUJ LOGXAS EN. FINO. Forgive me if my Esperanto is poor,
I haven't studied in a long time and have no intention to.
Nathaniel
dmitri
Well,yes, Sebastian, that was my general idea......apalem and kanlem
aren't Volapuk....."apa" is the romanian word for water; the other two
i just pulled out of the air on the spur of the moment.....but my
point remains......just calque them, and problem is solved.
dimo
aka ORIELO
Gerard van Wilgen
Ne estas necese krii!
Via opinio estas "politike ghusta", sed ne realisma.
sebastian.hartwig
> USONO NE ESTAS LA MONDCENTRO. NE ESTAS UNU MONDCENTRO. ESTAS SOLE LA
> MONDO KE NI CXIUJ LOGXAS EN.
. . . kun usona umbiliko.
Bv. ne krii tiel laute.
Sebastiano
PS: Ke Usono ja estas fakta mondcentro, estas videble ekz-e per tio, ke
kara Natano pausas la anglan sintakson. ;)
sebastian.hartwig
> Well,yes, Sebastian, that was my general idea......apalem and kanlem
> aren't Volapuk
Eh, jes. Ili nur ghenerale rememorigis al mi Volapukon k tial mi rigardis,
kiujn vortoj Vp uzas. Mi fakte tute ne intencis malkonsenti kun via
aserto. Temis pri pli iu flanka babilado . . .
Sebastiano
Dario Rodriguez
traduko estas de L.L. Zamenhof kun aldonoj de D. Rodriguez.
............................................................
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
To bother in sce in English or in Esperanto?
Better in English: Fuck you, if you don't speak it.
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
But I remember now that Esperanto-League
of North America has a lot a very good books
to learn Esperanto; there are also good courses
in the web.
Rosencrantz: urgently, call to ELNA:
1 (800) 377-3726 !
Guildenstern: urgently, search in Internet:
http://www.esperanto-usa.org/ !
Never more I will to fuck the unfortunate
members of sce who don't know the language
of my immortal author Willy!
The end
*************
Cxu esti au ne esti, - tiel staras
Nun la demando:
Cxu cxagreni en sce angle au esperante?
Pli bone angle. Fiku vin, se vi ne gxin parolas.
Cxu pli noble estas
Elporti cxiujn batojn, cxiujn sagojn
De la kolera sorto, au sin armi
Kontrau la tuta maro da mizeroj
Kaj per la kontraustaro ilin fini?
Formorti - dormi, kaj nenio plu!
Kaj scii, ke la dormo tute finis
Doloron de la koro, la mil batojn,
Heredon de la korpo, tio estas
Tre dezirinda celo. Morti - dormi
Trankvile dormi! Jes, sed ankau songxi!
Jen estas la barilo! Kiaj songxoj
Viziti povas nian mortan dormon
Post la forjxeto de la teraj zorgoj,-
Jen tio nin haltigas; tio faras,
Ke la mizeroj teraj longe dauras:
Alie kiu volus elportadi
La mokon kaj la batojn de la tempo,
La premon de l'potencaj, la ofendojn
De la fieraj, falson de la jugxoj,
Turmentojn de la amo rifuzita,
La malestimon, kiun seninduloj
Regalas al merito efektiva,-
Jes, kiu volus tion elportadi
Se mem, per unu pusxo de ponardo,
Li povus sin de cxio liberigi?
Kaj kiu do en sxvito kaj en gxemoj
La sxargxon de la vivo volus porti,
Se ne la tim' de io post la morto,
De tiu nekonata land', el kiu
Neniu plu revenas. Kaj pro tio
Plivolas ni elporti cxion teran,
Ol flugi al mizeroj nekonataj.
La konscienco faras nin timuloj;
Al la koloro hela de decido
Aligxas la paleco de l' pensado;
Kaj plej kuragxa, forta entrepreno
Per tiu kauzo haltas sendecide,
Kaj cxio restas penso, sed ne faro ...
Sed mi memoras nun ke Esperanto-Ligo
de Norda Ameriko havas stokon da vere
bonaj libroj por lerni Esperanton.
Rosencrantz: urgxe, alvoku al ELNA
1 (800) 377-3726 !
Guildenstern: sercxu en la Reto
http://www.esperanto-usa.org/ !
Neniam plu mi fikos la malfelicxajn
membrojn de sce kiuj ne konas la lingvon
de mia senmorta autoro Vilcjo!
FINO
........
Arnold Victor
Mireille Corobu wrote:
Jugxi beletron estas afero de gusto. Sen kunteksto, mi ne havas opinion
pri "virnazo." La kunteksto de "bushino' de Karolo Picx estas erotika,
do, la uzo de tia vorto ja estas ricxe elvoka de ideoj kiaj sucxo, kiso,
k. t. p.
--
++====+=====+=====+=====+=====+====+====+=====+=====+=====+=====+====++
||Arnold VICTOR, New York City, i. e., <arvi...@Wearthlink.net> ||
||Arnoldo VIKTORO, Nov-jorkurbo, t. e., <arvi...@Wearthlink.net> ||
||Remove capital letters from e-mail address for correct address/ ||
|| Forigu majusklajn literojn el e-poŝta adreso por ĝusta adreso ||
++====+=====+=====+=====+=====+====+====+=====+=====+=====+=====+====++
Robert Weemeyer
> Haha... When asking "Kiu homo ...?", does one expect the answer to be
> a lady?
Why not?
Robert Weemeyer, Berlin
Robert Weemeyer
> Se ni parolas pri la europa kalendaro kiel vi diras, kial do ni ne
> fiksu la unuan tagon de la semajno lau la plej majoritata EUROPA
> Kalendaro [...]?
Pregxo en katolikaj diversoj enhavas la vortojn "dimancxo, la unua
tago de la semajno". Laux via propono oni devus traduki: "la sepa
tago, la unua tago de la semajno" ...
Robert Weemeyer, Berlin
Paul Ebermann
> Pregxo en katolikaj diversoj enhavas la vortojn [...]
Kio estas "diversoj"?
Cxu versoj de dio?
Cxu versoj pri dio?
> Robert Weemeyer, Berlin
Pauxlo, ankaux Berlino
Kristian Belin
"Dario Rodriguez" <dariorodr...@wanadoo.es> a écrit dans le message de
news: bhp1nf$1og1v$1...@ID-160587.news.uni-berlin.de...
> HAMLET 2003, by William Shakespeare and Dario Rodriguez. La esperanta
> traduko estas de L.L. Zamenhof kun aldonoj de D. Rodriguez.
> ............................................................
>
> To be, or not to be: that is the question:
> To bother in sce in English or in Esperanto?
> Better in English: Fuck you, if you don't speak it.
<Tranch'>
Ce news devient completely freneza, je vais finir par en lose ma latino...
Robert Weemeyer
> "Robert Weemeyer" skribis:
>
> > Pregxo en katolikaj diversoj enhavas la vortojn [...]
>
> Kio estas "diversoj"?
>
> Cxu versoj de dio?
> Cxu versoj pri dio?
Hrrg! Mi celis skribi "diservoj".
Robert
Dario Rodriguez
Mi bone komprenas vian surprizon antau mia "hamleta" mesagho.
Mia absurda adapto de la fama hamleta "To be or not to be" celis esprimi
satire mian kontraustaron al tiuj homoj, kiuj ech scipovante pli malpli
nian lingvon, trouzas la rajtigon de la charto de SCE, lau kiu eblas
skribi en iu ajn lingvo pri Esperanto.
Tute alia estas la respektinda rajto de bonintencaj homoj kiuj tute ne
konante nian lingvon sin turnas al SCE kun demandoj, en la angla au en
iu ajn alia lingvo. Al ili mia kompreno kaj estimo. Dankegon, ekzemple,
al la kara sinjoro Manish, kiu, ekde la unua momento ekzemplodone
komencis uzi nian lingvon malgrau ke li estas jhusa novlernanto.
La kreinto de chi fadeno sendis bombastan mesaghon, anglalingvan,
pretekstante "I'm sorry, I used to be fluent and have forgotten much
vocabulary. So I may have to post in either English or mangled
Esperanto."
Milfoje preferinda estas la uzo de kripla Esperanto, kiun komprenos
chiuj legantoj de SCE, ol la uzo de la angla (au de iu ajn alia lingvo)
kiu riskas ne esti bone komprenata fare de multaj legantoj de la forumo.
Kvankam aperis pluraj respondoj anglalingvaj, aliaj veteranaj membroj de
SCE, ege dankinde, respondis esperante au kun esperanta traduko.
Aperis, kiel ofte okazas, tiu chiama trolulo de SCE, profesoro Lee, kiu
malgrau la jaroj pasintaj ekde lia malfelicha apero en SCE, neniam
sukcesas finlerni nian lingvon, kio, evidente, estas severa makulo en
lia "curriculum vitae": kia hontego: profesoro kiu ne estas kapabla
finlerni nian facilan lingvon!
Finfine, mi ripetas ke mi alte estimas la karan anglan lingvon, kiun mi
dezirus pli bone majstri, sed, ve, mi estas jam maljunulo, kaj dum mia
junagho miaj gepatroj ne havis sufichan monon por sendi min al Britio au
Irlando por ghisfunde lerni ghin. Mia eterna kaj granda chagreno pri
alilingvaj mesaghoj en SCE etendighas al chiuj lingvoj, ech se la
mesaghoj estus en mia gepatra hispana lingvo.
Dario Rodriguez
Klivo
> Aperis, kiel ofte okazas, tiu chiama trolulo de SCE, profesoro Lee, kiu
> malgrau la jaroj pasintaj ekde lia malfelicha apero en SCE, neniam
> sukcesas finlerni nian lingvon, kio, evidente, estas severa makulo en
> lia "curriculum vitae": kia hontego: profesoro kiu ne estas kapabla
> finlerni nian facilan lingvon!
Estimata Dario, shajnas ke vi ne komprenas sinjoron Lee Sau Dan.
Se li majstrus Esperanton, tio falsigus lian tezon ke Esperanto estas
malfacilega por Chinoj kaj Azianoj. Sinjoro Lee devas tre peni por NE
finlerni nian lingvon.
Liaj fruaj mesaghoj foje montras profundan konon de Esperanta
gramatiko. Li ech ghuste uzis la nominativan predikaton (ekz: Mi
konsideras ghin bonA.) Poste, li sukcesis mallerni la akuzativon.
> Dario Rodriguez
Klivo
PS: Mi petas ke vi ne uzu latinajn vortojn ('curriculum vitae') en
Esperantaj mesaghoj. Mi alte estimas la karan latinan lingvon, kiun
mi dezirus pli bone majstri, sed, ve, mi estas jam mezagha, kaj dum
mia junagho miaj gepatroj ne havis sufichan monon por sendi min al
Vatikano.
Sergio Pokrovskij
>>>>> "Klivo" == Klivo Lendon skribis:
SP> [...]
Klivo>>> PS: Mi petas ke vi ne uzu latinajn vortojn ('curriculum
Klivo>>> vitae') en Esperantaj mesaghoj. Mi alte estimas la karan
Klivo>>> latinan lingvon, kiun mi dezirus pli bone majstri, sed, ve,
Klivo>>> mi estas jam mezagha, kaj dum mia junagho miaj gepatroj ne
Klivo>>> havis sufichan monon por sendi min al Vatikano.
SP> Mi senrezerve konsentas kun Klivo, sed cxe tia rekomendo
SP> bonvenus indiko pri tauxga esperantigo (se oni komprenas, pri
SP> kio temas; por averagxa ruso "curriculum vitae" estas
SP> nekomprenebla).
SP> Iam en cxi tiu forumo oni proponis vorton "vivprotokolo".
Kaj mi aldonu ke tiu vorto (en pli facile prononcebla formo
"vivoprotokolo") jam estas en ReVo:
http://www.uni-leipzig.de/esperanto/voko/revo/art/protok.html#protok.vivo0o
--
Sergio
Sergio Pokrovskij
[...]
Klivo> PS: Mi petas ke vi ne uzu latinajn vortojn ('curriculum
Klivo> vitae') en Esperantaj mesaghoj. Mi alte estimas la karan
Klivo> latinan lingvon, kiun mi dezirus pli bone majstri, sed, ve,
Klivo> mi estas jam mezagha, kaj dum mia junagho miaj gepatroj ne
Klivo> havis sufichan monon por sendi min al Vatikano.
Mi senrezerve konsentas kun Klivo, sed cxe tia rekomendo bonvenus
indiko pri tauxga esperantigo (se oni komprenas, pri kio temas; por
averagxa ruso "curriculum vitae" estas nekomprenebla).
Iam en cxi tiu forumo oni proponis vorton "vivprotokolo".
--
Sergio
Marko Rauhamaa
> Iam en cxi tiu forumo oni proponis vorton "vivprotokolo".
Lau mia opinio "spertlisto" estas pli tuj komprenebla.
Marko
--
Marko Rauhamaa mailto:ma...@pacujo.net http://pacujo.net/marko/
Dario Rodriguez
esprimon "curriculum vitae". Tiu latinajho estas vaste uzata en Hispanio
(oni ne uzas hispanlingvan ekvivalenton).
Mi notas la proponojn pri ties esperanta traduko.
En nova PIV troveblas la esprimoj "vivprotokolo" kaj "kariertabelo".
Dario
Raymond S. Wise
Lastatempe, en mia grupo de Esperanta konversacio, ni scivolis, kio estas la
vorto por traduki "résumé/resumé/resume"--la usona vorto por "curriculum
vitae", char unu el niaj membroj serchas laboron. En unu el niaj
angla-esperantaj vortaroj, ni trovis "(viv)resumo".
En Britujo shajnas, ke oni ne uzas la vorton "résumé" en tiu senco, oni uzas
ghin nur en la senco "mallonga priskribo de iu situacio" kaj neniam uzas la
literumadon "resume" por tia priskribo.