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"Linguists are undecided about Esperanto" Indifferent would be a better word. In any case, Esperanto has no feature which set it apart from other European lan
by Typhon 9y ago
"Linguists are undecided about Esperanto"
Indifferent would be a better word.
In any case, Esperanto has no feature which set it apart from other European languages, whether in lexicon (obviously) or in grammar, it is thoroughly european (as demonstrated in great detail here : http://jbr.me.uk/ranto/ http://jbr.me.uk/ranto/ )
- fizixer 9y ago> Esperanto has no feature which set it apart from other European languages. Do you know why it was created? To have one language for communication for the whole world unencumbered by historical baggage of politico-cultural domineering (e.g., prevalence of english due to British imperialism). (among other reasons). That right there is a feature that sets it apart from all natural languages (other than the created ones like Klingon, Lojban, etc) not just European.
- macintux 9y agoI'm not confident that the reason for something's existence can be objectively described as a feature.
- mallaidh 9y agoThat has nothing to do with aspects considered in the context of linguistics, however.
- emodendroket 9y agoYeah, but it fails at its objective when considered outside a European context.
- chch 9y agoThat's one of the things I like about the auxiliary language Interlingua[1] over Esperanto[2]. To quote from Wikipedia: "Interlingua has detached itself from the movement for the development and introduction of a universal language for all humanity. Whether or not one believes that a language for all humanity is possible, whether or not one believes that Interlingua will become such a language is totally irrelevant from the point of view of Interlingua itself. The only fact that matters (from the point of view of Interlingua itself) is that Interlingua, thanks to its ambition of reflecting the cultural and thus linguistic homogeneity of the West, is capable of rendering tangible services at this precise moment in the history of the world. It is by its present contributions and not by the promises of its adherents that Interlingua wishes to be judged." It was created with a goal of taking its structure and vocabulary from other common European (mostly Romance) languages, which means if one is familiar with those languages, they can already decently read Interlingua. The same passage from above, for those who might know some Romance language: "Interlingua se ha distachate ab le movimento pro le disveloppamento e le introduction de un lingua universal pro tote le humanitate. Si o non on crede que un lingua pro tote le humanitate es possibile, si o non on crede que interlingua va devenir un tal lingua es totalmente indifferente ab le puncto de vista de interlingua mesme. Le sol facto que importa (ab le puncto de vista de interlingua mesme) es que interlingua, gratias a su ambition de reflecter le homogeneitate cultural e ergo linguistic del occidente, es capace de render servicios tangibile a iste precise momento del historia del mundo. Il es per su contributiones actual e non per le promissas de su adherentes que interlingua vole esser judicate." [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua [2] Not that I've actually studied either, for full disclosure.
- emodendroket 9y agoYeah, I can basically understand texts written in interlingua.
- bshimmin 9y agoI can understand the above paragraph too (from a background in English/Italian/Latin/school-level French), but I can't say there's anything beautiful about it!
- emodendroket 9y agoBeauty isn't really the goal here.
- BoiledCabbage 9y agoAt that point you might as well just speak a Spanish/Italian mashup.
- emodendroket 9y agoI mean, yes, that's basically what this is but it tries to go for words that are in at least 3 (I think?) romance languages.
- geofft 9y agoI learned French in high school and not Spanish (thanks to growing up in southern Louisiana), and I can't read Spanish or Italian texts unless I'm extraordinarily lucky about vocabulary, but I can read Interlingua just fine. I suspect I'd be hopelessly lost in an ad-hoc mashup of Spanish and Italian, but Interlingua is pretty good about constraining vocabulary to things that are usually obvious to a speaker of any Romance language and not adopting shifts that have only taken place in one / a few languages.
- cabalamat 9y agoThis has been done, it's called Interlingua (de IALA, to disambiguate it from the other conlang csalled Interlingua).
- colanderman 9y agoWhy do you say that? Esperanto has actually been relatively successful in Asia (as the article details). Yes, its grammar and lexicon are unrelated to any east Asian languages, but it is nonetheless easy to learn, to the point that it is sometimes used pedagogically as a "first European language" in Chinese universities.
- emodendroket 9y agoIn the sense that it is way easier for native speakers of Europeans to learn than for native speakers of languages such as Asian languages I don't think it actually succeeds in the goal of decolonizing, if you will, the lingua franca.
- SerLava 9y agoWell, Chinese is a very cool language but it's awful for keyboard input and the like. Ideally we'd use a language with an alphabet that also isn't tonal.
- FRex 9y agoWhat's wrong with Chinese input using a decent IME actually?
- emodendroket 9y agoIt's much slower than a skilled alphabetical typist can do. In Japanese, and I assume also in Chinese, there is a faster system used by people who do jobs that require fast typing, but it's very complicated and most people do not learn it.
- FRex 9y agoWhat is that Japanese system?
- 9y ago
- microcolonel 9y agoThe problem is that it has a bizarre phonetic inventory for an IAL. That said, I think people overblow the significance of choosing a European base over some other. I know people whose native languages are syllabaries, abugidas, and logographies; most of them prefer even the supremely flawed English alphabetic writing system.
- Emilie_ 9y agoLori implied I'm in shock that a stay at home mom can earn $8303 in one month on the internet ___________http://bit.do/dnRs5 http://bit.do/dnRs5
- jcranmer 9y ago> Do you know why it was created? To have one language for communication for the whole world unencumbered by historical baggage of politico-cultural domineering (e.g., prevalence of english due to British imperialism). (among other reasons). Which is actually quite a farce. Esperanto is largely a language that's vaguely Slavic in grammar and strongly Polish in phonology, with vocabulary largely derived from Slavic, Romance, and Germanic languages. In other words, Esperanto is a "world language" that comes from a time where "world" meant "Europe", and it largely assumes that Indo-European language peculiarities are fairly universal in languages (they're not).
- akvadrako 9y agoThis is just bullshit. What makes you think Zamenhof thought "world" meant "Europe" or didn't know about asian languages?
- madcaptenor 9y agoFrom John Cowan's list of "Essentialist Explanations", credited to Kapitano Eglefino (http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan/essential.html#Esperanto http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan/essential.html#Esperanto): "Esperanto is essentially English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Latin, and Greek, invented by someone who speaks English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Latin, Greek...and Polish." --
- dragonwriter 9y ago> To have one language for communication for the whole world unencumbered by historical baggage of politico-cultural domineering Unfortunately, Esperanto bears a lot of that baggage, despite it's intent.
- SimbaOnSteroids 9y agoWe should all just speak a flavor of python and be done with it.
- grasleya 9y agoThe universe will end before we can decide on 2.7 or 3.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- dotancohen 9y agop = multiprocessing.Process(target=decide, args=(2.7,3,)) p.start() sys.exit()
- SimbaOnSteroids 9y agoYour variable naming triggers me good sir.
- phewvvg 9y ago'import babelfish'
- jefurii 9y agoI can't cite anything to back this up, but Esperanto is a lot easier for native Japanese speakers to pronounce than English is, plus the grammar is more regular.
- vacri 9y agoIt's bizarre that every intro to Esperanto seems to find it important to note that it was created by an oculist.
- colanderman 9y agoThe article isn't about linguistic properties. It's about the uptake of Esperanto literature and culture throughout Asia. (Yes, Esperanto has a culture.)
- Typhon 9y agoMaybe so, but why include the sentence I quoted, then ?