3 ms·

Invented languages and their long history of failure.

10 points by fogus 17y ago

tokenadult 17y ago
Some context about Esperanto: http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/ http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/
- wynand 17y ago
  That is not really context. It's a prejudiced rant. I went through an Esperanto phase some years ago and read this article back then. He's basically criticizing the language for not being as simple as it could be. He completely overlooks the point many people will find Esperanto easy to learn. If you speak an Indo-European language and have never studied another language before, I dare even say that learning a bit of Esperanto will help you learn another Indo-European language. It's been ages since I've used Esperanto but I definitely don't regret having learnt it (especially since I didn't have to put in much time).
  - tokenadult 17y ago
    It's a prejudiced rant. The author of the link I submitted above http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/ http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/ calls his hypertext article a "rant" in its very directory name, but I would call it an informed rant, as the author evidently knows a good deal more linguistics and more about non-Indo-European languages than most advocates for Esperanto as a world auxiliary language. He completely overlooks the point many people will find Esperanto easy to learn. Which people? Based on what evidence? I have studied (in chronological order) German (school study, beginning in elementary school) Russian (" ", begun in secondary school) Esperanto (self study, begun in secondary school with a friend from my Russian class) Modern Standard Chinese (school study, begun in university) Cantonese (" ", begun in university) Biblical Hebrew (" ", begun in university) Literary Chinese (" ", begun in university) Attic Greek (" ", begun in university) Biblical Greek (" ", begun in university) Taiwanese (self study sometimes with Mandarin-speaking tutor, begun after university) Japanese (self study with Mandarin-speaking tutor, begun after university) Hakka (self study with Mandarin-speaking tutor, begun after university) and some sporadic self-study of Latin, French, Spanish, Indonesian, Mongolian, Aramaic, and other languages, begun and resumed here and there in the above time span. I have been employed for years as a Chinese-English interpreter and translator and read German comfortably. There is nothing particularly easy to learn about Esperanto. In particular, there is nothing particularly easy to learn about Esperanto for native speakers of non-Indo-European languages. One participant on the sci.lang Usenet newsgroup showed, more than a decade ago, that the percentage of Esperanto speakers on the continent of Asia has to be strictly less than 1 person in 1,000. He wasn't axe-grinding for English--he himself was a Han Chinese from Hong Kong, a native speaker of Cantonese, who usually took a kind of pan-Chinese view of linguistic issues. Esperanto's lack of network effects--the paucity of people who speak it or write in it--means a learner who tries to learn it in natural settings by direct exposure finds Esperanto much more difficult to learn than many other languages. It's easy to encounter conversations in French or Spanish (I encountered them frequently when I lived in Taiwan) or German (the same) or even Russian (that was more rare in Taiwan when I first lived there, but is easy here in the United States). It is exceedingly difficult to find live conversation in Esperanto anywhere but in an Esperanto club meeting. Here are some informational questions, for anyone with knowledge of the subject to answer: 1) What consumer product, produced anywhere in the world, has product labeling or assembly directions or instructions for use printed in Esperanto? 2) What terrestrial broadcast TV station, anywhere in the world, has a regular news program in Esperanto? How about the same for a broadcast radio station? 3) What weekly news magazine anywhere in the world with professional journalists on staff publishes in Esperanto? 4) What international scientific meetings are conducted regularly with Esperanto as the working language? 5) What scientific journal, anywhere in the world, expects articles to be submitted with an Esperanto abstract? 6) What hotel, restaurant, or travel agency, anywhere in the world, advertises for new employees who are expected to be fluent in Esperanto? Esperanto's fussiness in grammar and difficulty in learning killed its network effects, and its lack of network effects kills its future prospects for growth. Esperanto's peak number of speakers at a given moment across all time is less than the number of speakers English and Chinese (and probably other languages) each add each year simply by natural increase and voluntary second-language learning.
- eiriarte 17y ago
  The author of that article is well known in the Esperanto world for being the author of that article... and nothing more ;) A true expert in Esperanto, the linguist and psychologist Claude Piron, debunked that article years ago: http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/why.htm http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/why.htm
  - tokenadult 17y ago
    The late Claude Piron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Piron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Piron is known for little else in most online discussions besides writing that article.
    - eiriarte 17y ago
      http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Claude+Piron%22 http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Claude+Piron%22 but: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Justin+B.+Rye%22 http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Justin+B.+Rye%22
      - tokenadult 17y ago
        But Claude Piron wasn't even point-by-point in his reply disagreeing with Rye, which I think can better be characterized as "prejudiced" (from a different reply above in this thread) than Rye's writing, although perhaps not as a "rant." Just to ask one more informational question, why is it that Esperantists eager to demonstrate how easy Esperanto is to learn and to understand usually don't provide parallel texts in Esperanto with their English-language replies in online discussions of Esperanto? The Chinese saying is " 實事求是 " (conventionally translated, not quite to my satisfaction, as "seek truth from facts"), with the idea that if something is a good idea, it is practical.
        eiriarte 17y ago
        Well, see this: http://www.esperanto-sat.info/article347.html http://www.esperanto-sat.info/article347.html Best regards,
rawr 17y ago
I'm pretty sure Klingon is still a failure, but for different reasons.
jacquesm 17y ago
All language is invented, every time somebody coins a new word they're inventing language. What doesn't work is to raise the barrier so high that people will have to learn a lot of new words at the same time. Learning language is an incremental thing, and the pressure to learn it is dependent on the installed base. An artificial language will be hard to spread because there is the chicken-and-the-egg problem, if enough people spoke it then there might be a reason to cross that huge barrier to entry.
- req2 17y ago
  Words aren't language; an example of a "natural" languages invented today can be found in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language. Many creoles follow the same pattern of spontaneous development. This is a distinct difference from the inventedness of Esperanto or Lojban. Artificial languages don't spread because they don't solve anyone's problem; they solve everyone's problem.
fogus 17y ago
This article is about spoken languages, but much of its spirit can be extended to invented [1] programming languages; that is, the likelihood, no, the inevitability of their being stillborn. [1]: they are all invented of course
- shabda 17y ago
  Agreed. Languages and Frameworks are grown over time, not invented. That is why I have much higher hopes for Jython or Jruby than Groovy or Scala. Similarly all successful frameworks (Django, Rails and PHP) were extracted out of existing software, not invented.
  - notaddicted 17y ago
    That is the case, but languages grow by adding features from experimental languages.
DanielStraight 17y ago
She rocks for writing that book. I definitely want to read it.

10 points by fogus 17y ago

tokenadult 17y ago

Some context about Esperanto: http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/ http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/

wynand 17y ago
That is not really context. It's a prejudiced rant. I went through an Esperanto phase some years ago and read this article back then. He's basically criticizing the language for not being as simple as it could be. He completely overlooks the point many people will find Esperanto easy to learn. If you speak an Indo-European language and have never studied another language before, I dare even say that learning a bit of Esperanto will help you learn another Indo-European language. It's been ages since I've used Esperanto but I definitely don't regret having learnt it (especially since I didn't have to put in much time).
- tokenadult 17y ago
  It's a prejudiced rant. The author of the link I submitted above http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/ http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/ calls his hypertext article a "rant" in its very directory name, but I would call it an informed rant, as the author evidently knows a good deal more linguistics and more about non-Indo-European languages than most advocates for Esperanto as a world auxiliary language. He completely overlooks the point many people will find Esperanto easy to learn. Which people? Based on what evidence? I have studied (in chronological order) German (school study, beginning in elementary school) Russian (" ", begun in secondary school) Esperanto (self study, begun in secondary school with a friend from my Russian class) Modern Standard Chinese (school study, begun in university) Cantonese (" ", begun in university) Biblical Hebrew (" ", begun in university) Literary Chinese (" ", begun in university) Attic Greek (" ", begun in university) Biblical Greek (" ", begun in university) Taiwanese (self study sometimes with Mandarin-speaking tutor, begun after university) Japanese (self study with Mandarin-speaking tutor, begun after university) Hakka (self study with Mandarin-speaking tutor, begun after university) and some sporadic self-study of Latin, French, Spanish, Indonesian, Mongolian, Aramaic, and other languages, begun and resumed here and there in the above time span. I have been employed for years as a Chinese-English interpreter and translator and read German comfortably. There is nothing particularly easy to learn about Esperanto. In particular, there is nothing particularly easy to learn about Esperanto for native speakers of non-Indo-European languages. One participant on the sci.lang Usenet newsgroup showed, more than a decade ago, that the percentage of Esperanto speakers on the continent of Asia has to be strictly less than 1 person in 1,000. He wasn't axe-grinding for English--he himself was a Han Chinese from Hong Kong, a native speaker of Cantonese, who usually took a kind of pan-Chinese view of linguistic issues. Esperanto's lack of network effects--the paucity of people who speak it or write in it--means a learner who tries to learn it in natural settings by direct exposure finds Esperanto much more difficult to learn than many other languages. It's easy to encounter conversations in French or Spanish (I encountered them frequently when I lived in Taiwan) or German (the same) or even Russian (that was more rare in Taiwan when I first lived there, but is easy here in the United States). It is exceedingly difficult to find live conversation in Esperanto anywhere but in an Esperanto club meeting. Here are some informational questions, for anyone with knowledge of the subject to answer: 1) What consumer product, produced anywhere in the world, has product labeling or assembly directions or instructions for use printed in Esperanto? 2) What terrestrial broadcast TV station, anywhere in the world, has a regular news program in Esperanto? How about the same for a broadcast radio station? 3) What weekly news magazine anywhere in the world with professional journalists on staff publishes in Esperanto? 4) What international scientific meetings are conducted regularly with Esperanto as the working language? 5) What scientific journal, anywhere in the world, expects articles to be submitted with an Esperanto abstract? 6) What hotel, restaurant, or travel agency, anywhere in the world, advertises for new employees who are expected to be fluent in Esperanto? Esperanto's fussiness in grammar and difficulty in learning killed its network effects, and its lack of network effects kills its future prospects for growth. Esperanto's peak number of speakers at a given moment across all time is less than the number of speakers English and Chinese (and probably other languages) each add each year simply by natural increase and voluntary second-language learning.
eiriarte 17y ago
The author of that article is well known in the Esperanto world for being the author of that article... and nothing more ;) A true expert in Esperanto, the linguist and psychologist Claude Piron, debunked that article years ago: http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/why.htm http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/why.htm
- tokenadult 17y ago
  The late Claude Piron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Piron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Piron is known for little else in most online discussions besides writing that article.
  - eiriarte 17y ago
    http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Claude+Piron%22 http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Claude+Piron%22 but: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Justin+B.+Rye%22 http://www.google.com/search?q=%22Justin+B.+Rye%22
    - tokenadult 17y ago
      But Claude Piron wasn't even point-by-point in his reply disagreeing with Rye, which I think can better be characterized as "prejudiced" (from a different reply above in this thread) than Rye's writing, although perhaps not as a "rant." Just to ask one more informational question, why is it that Esperantists eager to demonstrate how easy Esperanto is to learn and to understand usually don't provide parallel texts in Esperanto with their English-language replies in online discussions of Esperanto? The Chinese saying is " 實事求是 " (conventionally translated, not quite to my satisfaction, as "seek truth from facts"), with the idea that if something is a good idea, it is practical.
      - eiriarte 17y ago
        Well, see this: http://www.esperanto-sat.info/article347.html http://www.esperanto-sat.info/article347.html Best regards,

rawr 17y ago

I'm pretty sure Klingon is still a failure, but for different reasons.

jacquesm 17y ago

All language is invented, every time somebody coins a new word they're inventing language. What doesn't work is to raise the barrier so high that people will have to learn a lot of new words at the same time. Learning language is an incremental thing, and the pressure to learn it is dependent on the installed base. An artificial language will be hard to spread because there is the chicken-and-the-egg problem, if enough people spoke it then there might be a reason to cross that huge barrier to entry.

req2 17y ago
Words aren't language; an example of a "natural" languages invented today can be found in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language. Many creoles follow the same pattern of spontaneous development. This is a distinct difference from the inventedness of Esperanto or Lojban. Artificial languages don't spread because they don't solve anyone's problem; they solve everyone's problem.

fogus 17y ago

This article is about spoken languages, but much of its spirit can be extended to invented [1] programming languages; that is, the likelihood, no, the inevitability of their being stillborn. [1]: they are all invented of course

shabda 17y ago
Agreed. Languages and Frameworks are grown over time, not invented. That is why I have much higher hopes for Jython or Jruby than Groovy or Scala. Similarly all successful frameworks (Django, Rails and PHP) were extracted out of existing software, not invented.
- notaddicted 17y ago
  That is the case, but languages grow by adding features from experimental languages.

DanielStraight 17y ago

She rocks for writing that book. I definitely want to read it.