5 ms·
There is a critical difference between Esperanto and Interslavic. Esperanto is meant for communication between Esperanto speakers. Interslavic, on the other han
by ijzeren_jan 7y ago
There is a critical difference between Esperanto and Interslavic. Esperanto is meant for communication between Esperanto speakers. Interslavic, on the other hand, is meant to be understandable for Slavs who haven't actually learned it. In other words, the success of Interslavic cannot only be judged by the number of people who learnt it. Basically, one speaker is enough to serve an entire audience, one translator is enough to serve all Slavic readers. Creating a community of Interslavic speakers has never been the primary purpose of creating the language.
- andolanra 7y agoThe thing Interslavic is doing has also been tried before, but the illustrative example isn't Esperanto (which is an ad-hoc mixture of words taken arbitrarily from existing languages and put into a synthetic grammar) but rather Interlingua, which is a kind of streamlined Romance language. It too is more-or-less comprehensible by people who speak any Romance language, and was intended to be used in much the same way. In fact, to quote the creator of Interlingua writing in Interlingua: 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. (Edit: to translate for non-Romance speakers, this means, "The only important fact (from the point of view of Interlingua itself) is that Interlingua, thanks to its goal of reflecting the cultural—and therefore linguistic—homogeneity of the West, is capable of providing tangible services at this precise moment in the history of the world. It is for its actual contributions, and not the promises of its adherents, that Interlingua wishes to be judged.") It too has met with only limited success: there were some short-lived scientific publications in Interlingua, for example, for the intended audience of all Romance-speaking scientists. Even so, it never attracted much of an audience. That's not to say such a thing could never happen: merely that it's not unreasonable to be pessimistic here.
- barry-cotter 7y agoPlease don’t indent quoted text as code. It makes reading on mobile a chore and isn’t great on desktop either. Use > 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.
- lacampbell 7y agoInstead use markdown which HN doesn't support? :P Grandparents was easier to read than yours. Turn your phone sideways
- Shorel 7y agoNative Spanish speaker here: I only needed to read the translation for the last three words. They did quite a good job. :) But a language also needs an army (or a central bank, or both).
- tasogare 7y agoAs a French, the text is also really easy to understand, except for the two words "vole esser". That being said, writing in this language would still require months of learning.
- otto2 7y agoAs non-native speaker of Spanish and French, the text is easily understandable, more so than written Portuguese or Italian.
- poloniculmov 7y agoAs a romanian, I only had issues with the last 3 words, though I did have a hunch that judicate is something about judgements.
- 7y ago