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Esperanto, an International Language
- firatcan 6y agoI believe this shows us, maybe it's impossible to create and international spoken language? or nearly impossible?
- Torwald 6y agoWe already have it? Like, this language we are both using here and which is neither your nor mine mother tongue?
- hutzlibu 6y agoBut it was not artificial created. Which is not a bad thing. Because a natural language is created by millions of speakers, so it sounds a bit strange to me, that only one person should be the creator of a language.
- Torwald 6y agoWe did it as kids: "secret language" we called it. The big thing is the development of speech. From sounds to words. Once you have that, adding another language is not that complicated.
- hutzlibu 6y agoYeah, we too. I just meant, that language is a process that involved millions. And it does not make sense to me, that millions should speak the language only one person created. (even though I like the intention) I often also observed, that 2 people, who spend lots of time together, also kind of develope their own language, that others have it hard to follow. That can become extreme, there was a russian family, living 40 years in isolation, the russian the daughters spoke, was not understandable at all to other people https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-russian-family-was-cut-off-from-all-human-contact-unaware-of-world-war-ii-7354256/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/for-40-years-this-rus...
- vasili111 6y agoEnglish is already international language. Maybe it is not perfect but it is enough for not to create new international language.
- throwaway3878 6y agoEnglish is far from the international language. There are billions of people and entire continents where no one speaks English. Unless you meant the de facto language for business and research, or the language spoken in the areas I care about, which is different from the international language.
- ryanfreeborn 6y agoWhich continent is the one where no one speaks english?
- throwaway3878 6y agoI had (somewhat hyperbolically) Asia and Latin America in mind but this being HN I eagerly await someone pointing out the existence of Belize or some parts of India and Singapore in a valiant effort to be technically correct.
- Zenst 6y agohttps://www.worldatlas.com/articles/english-speaking-countries-in-asia.html https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/english-speaking-countri...
- samatman 6y agoIndia has the largest English-speaking population in the world. Yes, larger than the United States; it has a lot more people. That's not a technicality, nor is it fair to Singapore to call that a technicality: it's a small country, but the vast majority of its citizens speak English as their home tongue. English has official status in only Guyana and the Falkland islands, of all of South America. That's more like a technicality, especially since Creole is the actual spoken language of the people. Belize is in Central America, which is part of the North American continent; the Caribbean (and its various English-speaking islands) are also lumped in with North America.
- Koshkin 6y agoSpanish and Malaysian come out at the top of my list of the best candidates for the international language.
- yankcrime 6y agoBonvoro alsendi la pordiston, lausajne estas rano en mia bideo!
- cjjp 6y ago...and I think we all know what that means!
- codemac 6y agoSaluton!
- zozbot234 6y agoCan't talk about Esperanto without linking Justin B. Rye's cautionary "Ranto": http://jbr.me.uk/ranto/index.html http://jbr.me.uk/ranto/index.html
- throwaway3878 6y agoThat rant is more than a decade old and not as relevant as people like to tout. There are issues with esperanto but most of what is lamented there is really subjective.
- Koshkin 6y ago“a decade old” :)
- SomeoneFromCA 6y agoIdo sounds better.
- Koshkin 6y agoAlmost anything sounds better.
- generalpass 6y agoTitle is wrong. Should be: Esperanto
- zubi 6y agoShameless plug: I wrote a scrabble-like html5 game for esperanto speakers named "7 Literoj". Android and web app available at https://7literoj.34bit.net/ https://7literoj.34bit.net/ Please comment if you play it.
- Koshkin 6y agoMost languages borrow, often heavily, from its neighbors, but this one is truly a Frankenstein of a language. There’s something deeply unnatural and aesthetically unpleasing about it. I don’t understand how people can like it (although many do).
- Zenst 6y agoFor a language it sure does open itself up to schoolboy humour like many other languages. How are you? In esperanto is: Kiel vi fartas? Which for the uninitiated trying to understand what was said and from an english speaking background, would probably yield a response of : Pardon me. Not sure how other languages bases see this and it does seem to be more palatable towards french/spanish in how it sounds and may for those native speakers be easier to pick up I suspect. Though I've never met a person who can speak esperanto, I've met many people who can speak Klingon. Which makes me wonder is there more people in the world that speak some Klingon than esperanto!
- G4BB3R 6y agoEsperanto has more than 100 thousand fluent speakers (lower levels are in the millions) and more than 2000 native speakers. Klingon is not even close to esperanto.
- firatcan 6y agoYes, I read that it was millions after the WW2, but it starts declining since then.
- D-Coder 6y agoNot according to a professor who did actual research on number of speakers of languages. Three letters from Professor Sidney Culbert (English originals): >Notes on the letters: http://www.panix.com/~dwolff/docs/culbert-notes.html http://www.panix.com/~dwolff/docs/culbert-notes.html >Letter from 1967: http://www.panix.com/~dwolff/docs/culbert-1967.html http://www.panix.com/~dwolff/docs/culbert-1967.html >Letter from 1969: http://www.panix.com/~dwolff/docs/culbert-1969.html http://www.panix.com/~dwolff/docs/culbert-1969.html >Letter about research methodology: http://www.panix.com/~dwolff/docs/culbert-methods.html http://www.panix.com/~dwolff/docs/culbert-methods.html
- flatfilefan 6y agoLinguists are misguided. Instead of studying (diverging) languages or designing new ones they should work on convergence of existing ones. At leas in Europe there should be some Latin, Germanic and Uralic. Slavic belonging to Latin. And then Latin and Germanic uniting in English or such. That’ll be a real humanitarian cause.
- G4BB3R 6y agoHumanitarian cause would be preserving the national language and having an international one that is easy for everyone to learn, and Esperanto works great.
- thwave 6y agoConlang Critic's episode on Esperanto is worth watching, if only for his criticism of Esperanto's phonology: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sao9mCLy3Xo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sao9mCLy3Xo
- thysultan 6y agoand thus spoke C++.
- inawarminister 6y agoI'm studying Interlingua, a pan-Romance-English international auxiliary language that has the distinct Advantage of being able to be understood by Romance speakers at the first glance. I think it's much more "useful" since I can't speak any Romance languages at all at the start. I tried looking towards Interslavic (Medjaslovanoj) and Intergermanic (Folkspraak*), and the former is interesting - Slavs can understand that register with quite a bit of effort, but the latter, sadly, is still in development and is fragmented. For other areas, Hijazi/MSA is the standard of the Arab world, Mandarin is for Sinosphere, and... Malay for SEA, I think. A worldwide international language is quite hard, because you need to dislodge the usefulness of English in some ways. A 100% constructed language is hard to learn for adults. A pseudo-natural conlang is... Impossible for the whole Earth.