ellis@spar.UUCP (Michael Ellis) (11/03/85)
> It is used a lot in Europe and is gaining strength in the far east > and the third world. (200,000 Chinese are taking courses now!) >.. > The time you spend learning it will also help you learn other > romance languages. >-Neal McBurnett Esperanto is indeed a most transparent language -- with little more than a few fairly natural rules requiring less than 10 minutes' inspection, and a basic knowledge of the international Graeco-Latin root stock, one can automatically read Esperanto with remarkably few excursions to the dictionary. If all those Chinese speakers are learning esperanto, it would make sense to use esperanto as a medium for encouraging east-west understanding. Is there anyone `in charge' of the language? If so, would it be possible to encourage them to add a major stock of Chinese and Japanese stems as well, so that it would become an enterprise which drew together all the fertility of this planet? The Graeco-Latin core of Esperanto is a total win, considering how universally it is used in all scientific, artistic, and business circles. Adding noneuropean terms would seem to seal Esperanto's promise to become the international language this planet needs so badly. Several words I'd especially like to see (WG=Wade Giles, P=Pinyin, A=ancient Chinese, J=Japanese): la reno = Humanism (human) (WG jen, P ren, A zen) la dao = the Tao (WG tao, P dao, A dau, J do) la deo = Virtue (WG te, P de) or la tako = " (A tak, J toko) la tjeno = Cosmos (heavens) (WG t'ien, P tien, A tien, J ten) lau^a = venerable, ancient (WG,P lao, A lau) la kau^azo = frog (J kawazu <= ?? (WG ko, P go, A kap; WGP hia, A gha, J ka; WGP wa, A ua, J a; WG kuo, Pguo, A kwak)) Just a suggestion.. "Others are so bright and intelligent" -michael
neal@druny.UUCP (Neal D. McBurnett) (11/10/85)
> Is there anyone `in charge' of the language? As with all living languages, the users of Esperanto are in control. While Esperanto does have an "Academy", it is only somewhat more effective than the French Academy: i.e., the typical Esperanto speaker doesn't pay much attention to it. It usually either debates refined points of grammar which are of little practical interest, or votes to accept new words as "official" only long after they have in fact been used by a wide variety of writers, and appear in many dictionaries. Thus, the way to go about adding words to Esperanto is the same as in any other language: you use them yourself, preferably by writing a "best-seller". Currently almost all the new words are for specialized fields, like computer science or religions. Most of the word roots taken from non-european languages refer to local cultural or religious practices, or local flora, fauna and foods. For example, "mosque" is "moskeo", "couscous" is "kuskuso". Two of the words you suggest have already been dealt with: zen zeno (your suggestion "reno" means "kidney", (from Latin)) zen buddhism zenismo humane humana humanism humanismo Tao Tao ("The indefinable, impersonal principle, inherent in the universe, which causes it to move") For the rest of the words, I will give an Esperanto translation of your English translation. I assume that in fact there are other untranslated nuances present in the Chinese words, and I would love to hear a more complete definition. virtue virto cosmos kosmo venerable respekteginda (amuzingly, your suggestion "la^ua" means "in accordance" in Esperanto) ancient antikva, praa, maljuna frog rano > Adding noneuropean terms would seem to seal Esperanto's promise to become the international language this planet needs so badly. I think it is more important for Esperanto to hold on to its established literature and body of speakers than to try to incorporate a lot of words from non-european languages. -Neal McBurnett, ihnp4!druny!neal