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Why is this getting downvoted? They're right that the criticism is pretty excessive: "Maybe his next article will be about how airlines should speak Esperant

by chaps 3y ago

Why is this getting downvoted? They're right that the criticism is pretty excessive: "Maybe his next article will be about how airlines should speak Esperanto because English is such a flawed language. That’s a clever and unique observation." Hm.

prepend 3y ago
I got a little snarky but I think the analogy holds. Esperanto is a superior language to English. And English has many flaws. Theoretically it would be better to have all pilots and airports learn an efficient language. But it would be stupid and immature to seriously write a blog post about that, especially without talking about all the flaws in that plan.
- lmm 3y ago
  > Esperanto is a superior language to English. Not really. You can say it's more regular but that's because it sees barely any actual use; if it ever gained popularity it wouldn't stay regular. (And given that pilots speak in set phrases anyway, irregularity isn't really an issue). It's not a great language by any stretch, it's an awkward mismash of four european languages; sure it sounds kind of nice in an Italianate way, but if that's what you want then why not just speak Italian?
  - nrdvana 3y ago
    It would stay regular if there was a strict governing body for it that wasn't a Webster-style "whatever people are speaking is the new definition of correct". English really is a disaster of a language. There was a(nother) great XKCD about it just a few days ago. https://xkcd.com/2907/ https://xkcd.com/2907/
    - Stranger43 3y ago
      Correction it's a disaster of at least 4 languages and this is probably why English is so hard to dethrone as it have no strict ownership so everyone is kind of equal in speaking it incorrectly. Sometimes lack of rigidity is actually an feature that allows for things to sort of work that would be politically impossible if thinks had to be specified formally before being used.
      - nrdvana 3y ago
        I'm pretty sure the reason English is hard to dethrone is because Britain ~helped~ forced the various colonies to join world commerce using English, so they started teaching it to entire generations as the national second-language, and then because the USA dominated world commerce after that in a sort of "we'll let you in on the game if you speak our language and use our money" sort of way.
    - prmoustache 3y ago
      > if there was a strict governing body for it that wasn't a Webster-style "whatever people are speaking is the new definition of correct". There is no way it can work. People don't care about governing bodies when they speak a language.
      - maxcoder4 3y ago
        They kind of do. In my language there exists a central "governing" body that decides what is correct, and some "incorrect" regionalisms are disappearing because of it.
        FredPret 3y ago
        When that happens, it’s likely more about politics and social status than the governing body. Ie, the governing body decrees that the regionalisms from the dominant region is the definitive version of the language. But it might be considered cool to speak that way even without a governing body.
        mardifoufs 3y ago
        Are you referring to french? Because, if anything, french in France has an insane quantity of slangs and has an extremely emergent vocabulary. Much more so than any English speaking country I can think of. Quebec isn't really influenced by the Académie française yet has a much more "correct" usage of the language generally speaking. Maybe it's a totally different language but still it goes to show that even a very prestigious central authority doesn't make a language better or less prone to diverge. Regardless of the reason, French is evolving much more quickly than English.
        nrdvana 3y ago
        But maybe that's beside the point. If someone wants to "learn French" they can learn by the official rules and communicate with other french-speaking people regardless of how many slang variants exist in France. They can also probably watch French television and understand it. The point of esperonto was to make it easier to learn. French is regular, but extremely complicated. English is complicated and has a million special cases. Both languages are hard enough to master that society starts to judge a person's intelligence by how well they know the rules and special cases.
  - shermantanktop 3y ago
    > if it ever gained popularity it wouldn't stay regular This. Utility and purity always pull in opposite directions. I see those boutique little (programming) languages written by amateur language designers with exotic type systems or “everything is an X” philosophies, and my reaction is to assume that they are useless for anything past toys and experiments. I know useful language features have been born in that world and then eventually bolted onto mutt languages like Java and Python, but that suits me just fine.
- vouaobrasil 3y ago
  > Esperanto is a superior language to English. And English has many flaws. At least one one perspective, English is superior. That perspective is that you can actually use it in almost any modern situation because it has been tried and tested globally.
  - prepend 3y ago
    This is the point of my analogy. English:Esperanto::csv:parquet (Although I think parquet is much more useful than Esperanto and may eventually end up dethroning csv)

by chaps 3y ago

prepend 3y ago

I got a little snarky but I think the analogy holds. Esperanto is a superior language to English. And English has many flaws. Theoretically it would be better to have all pilots and airports learn an efficient language. But it would be stupid and immature to seriously write a blog post about that, especially without talking about all the flaws in that plan.

lmm 3y ago
> Esperanto is a superior language to English. Not really. You can say it's more regular but that's because it sees barely any actual use; if it ever gained popularity it wouldn't stay regular. (And given that pilots speak in set phrases anyway, irregularity isn't really an issue). It's not a great language by any stretch, it's an awkward mismash of four european languages; sure it sounds kind of nice in an Italianate way, but if that's what you want then why not just speak Italian?
- nrdvana 3y ago
  It would stay regular if there was a strict governing body for it that wasn't a Webster-style "whatever people are speaking is the new definition of correct". English really is a disaster of a language. There was a(nother) great XKCD about it just a few days ago. https://xkcd.com/2907/ https://xkcd.com/2907/
  - Stranger43 3y ago
    Correction it's a disaster of at least 4 languages and this is probably why English is so hard to dethrone as it have no strict ownership so everyone is kind of equal in speaking it incorrectly. Sometimes lack of rigidity is actually an feature that allows for things to sort of work that would be politically impossible if thinks had to be specified formally before being used.
    - nrdvana 3y ago
      I'm pretty sure the reason English is hard to dethrone is because Britain ~helped~ forced the various colonies to join world commerce using English, so they started teaching it to entire generations as the national second-language, and then because the USA dominated world commerce after that in a sort of "we'll let you in on the game if you speak our language and use our money" sort of way.
  - prmoustache 3y ago
    > if there was a strict governing body for it that wasn't a Webster-style "whatever people are speaking is the new definition of correct". There is no way it can work. People don't care about governing bodies when they speak a language.
    - maxcoder4 3y ago
      They kind of do. In my language there exists a central "governing" body that decides what is correct, and some "incorrect" regionalisms are disappearing because of it.
      - FredPret 3y ago
        When that happens, it’s likely more about politics and social status than the governing body. Ie, the governing body decrees that the regionalisms from the dominant region is the definitive version of the language. But it might be considered cool to speak that way even without a governing body.
      - mardifoufs 3y ago
        Are you referring to french? Because, if anything, french in France has an insane quantity of slangs and has an extremely emergent vocabulary. Much more so than any English speaking country I can think of. Quebec isn't really influenced by the Académie française yet has a much more "correct" usage of the language generally speaking. Maybe it's a totally different language but still it goes to show that even a very prestigious central authority doesn't make a language better or less prone to diverge. Regardless of the reason, French is evolving much more quickly than English.
        nrdvana 3y ago
        But maybe that's beside the point. If someone wants to "learn French" they can learn by the official rules and communicate with other french-speaking people regardless of how many slang variants exist in France. They can also probably watch French television and understand it. The point of esperonto was to make it easier to learn. French is regular, but extremely complicated. English is complicated and has a million special cases. Both languages are hard enough to master that society starts to judge a person's intelligence by how well they know the rules and special cases.
- shermantanktop 3y ago
  > if it ever gained popularity it wouldn't stay regular This. Utility and purity always pull in opposite directions. I see those boutique little (programming) languages written by amateur language designers with exotic type systems or “everything is an X” philosophies, and my reaction is to assume that they are useless for anything past toys and experiments. I know useful language features have been born in that world and then eventually bolted onto mutt languages like Java and Python, but that suits me just fine.
vouaobrasil 3y ago
> Esperanto is a superior language to English. And English has many flaws. At least one one perspective, English is superior. That perspective is that you can actually use it in almost any modern situation because it has been tried and tested globally.
- prepend 3y ago
  This is the point of my analogy. English:Esperanto::csv:parquet (Although I think parquet is much more useful than Esperanto and may eventually end up dethroning csv)