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The downside of Esperanto is that very few people speak it and is harder to learn in some ways as there's far less media in the language – you got that 1960s Wi
by arp242 4y ago
The downside of Esperanto is that very few people speak it and is harder to learn in some ways as there's far less media in the language – you got that 1960s William Shatner film that's entirely in Esperanto, and maybe 2 or 3 more, and ... that's it.
Meanwhile you can learn English from watching Star Trek, Time Team, SpongeBob, reading Harry Potter, The Hobbit, shitposting on Reddit, etc.
For better or worse, English already is the de-facto universal language, or the closest we have to it. We tried the Esperanto thing back in the 20s, and it didn't really work out as there was very little interest outside of a fairly sizeable but ultimately limited group of enthusiasts. I don't see how Esperanto or any other constructed language will take off in the foreseeable future.
Continued evolution of English pronunciation and spelling seems like a more realistic and better option – the language will change anyway, as all languages do, so might as well ensure it changes in a reasonable direction. Time spent advocating Esperanto is probably better spent on advocating more consistent English.
- stavros 4y agoSure, but my point still stands, it's unfortunate that English is the one that spread. Spanish would have been a better choice.
- _yweu 4y agoWhy is that? I'm not criticising, just curious. What makes it a better language?
- stavros 4y agoIt's much more phonetic, which removes a huge amount of work in learning to spell.
- TinkersW 4y agoSpanish is too verbose and the gender feature is a pointless waste of time. Informal/formal also pointless.
- stavros 4y agoSame as having to always mention the gender in English, ie "he said", whereas in Spanish it's just "said".
- programmer_dude 4y agoDoes Spanish assign gender to inanimate objects?
- stavros 4y agoIt assigns linguistic gender, which isn't the same as people's gender.
- programmer_dude 4y agoYes, I thought so. Isn't that unnecessary overhead? I think this disqualifies Spanish and other languages like it.
- stavros 4y agoTo me, it doesn't matter much, because there isn't much "extra" to learn. The gender is derived from the word suffix, and there are three or four rules to that, so it's both extremely easy to learn and to apply to unknown words. This is unlike, say, German, where each word has a random gender and you need to learn it along with the word. There, I agree, that's unnecessary overhead.
- msla 4y ago"They said" is good English, whereas in Spanish word endings change due to gender.
- stavros 4y agoWhat is "he said" in Spanish, and what is "she said"?
- InCityDreams 4y ago> I doubt that English is a good basis for a universal anything, due to the extreme inconsistency of spelling and pronunciation. There are some other disadvantages, as there are in any language, but having to learn how a word is spelled and pronounced entirely independently of each other, with no correlation, is a big drain on time. I imagine something like Esperanto would be much more suitable for the role. Isn't that the same for many things [how something is vs learning something about it that isn't how it is]? Roman numerals still catch me out; I cannot work out some programming code; a highlighted corner in a spreadsheet hides a comment; I can speak German phonetically (easy pronunciation rules - wysiwys) without understanding a word understanding a word.
- stavros 4y agoYes, but I've had to learn both languages as an adult, and English was much harder.