allen@osu-eddie.UUCP (John Allen) (01/13/85)
I object to Esperanto for several reasons. The first and most important of these is that Esperanto is not as easy as they would have you believe. For example, Prentiss Riddle says, > Jes, multaj problemoj! It's still easier than any national language I've > ever seen... > > --- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.") While this is true for probably all the native speakers of Indo-European languages, anyone who is not a native speaker of any of these languages would have a lot of trouble. This is because the vocabulary is almost entirely, if not entirely, based on Indo-European. Not only that, but the syntax is based on Indo-European syntax. There are many languages (eg. Chinese) where a word can be translated as either verbs or adjectives depending on the context. (In fact there are some adjectives in English which like verbs. "Eager" as in "John is eager to please" is one of these.) Chinese also doesn't mark the distinction between singular and plural. (Just like the English "one sheep, two sheep".) Meanwhile there are languages that mandatorially mark certain grammatical properties that they consider important, but that can only be explained in English and other Indo-European languages by long phrases. (Some of the AmerIndian languages <I forget which ones.> have a marking on each verb which shows one of three conditions 1) If the speaker witnessed an action theirself. 2) If the speaker was told of the action by someone else. 3) If there was direct evidence of the action. .) Since these things are different, they cause problems for a person trying to compare Esperanto to his native language. (How many of you have had trouble learning the case systems of languages like Latin, Greek, Russian, or German.) Another major problem with Esperanto as a world wide language, is that MOST people don't go to the trouble of learning something unless they need it for some reason. The reason that the languages that have come closest to being universal have done so is that they were important for some reason. (Latin for the Roman Empire, because it was the language of the government. English, because of the vast number of colonies of England and the importance of first England and then the United States in world trade.) Other reasons for learning a second language are to read the literature or the scientific works written in that language. As of this moment, Esperanto doesn't have enough of literary or scientific publications of enough importance to prompt people to learn it. Also there is no government that uses Esperanto, so that other people would be prompted to learn Esperanto in order to improve trade relations with that government. Thirdly, even if Esperanto did become a world-wide language, there is a tendency for languages to change, and eventually dialects would eventually emerge and continue to grow apart until they became mutually unintelligible, and we would be back where we started. Finally, speaking totally as a linguist, if there was a world-wide language, then the regional languages would die out, until it was the only language being spoken. Now how much fun would linguistics be if you could only get data from one language. Please, send all flames to allen%ohio-state.csnet@CSNET-RELAY John Allen
jim@randvax.UUCP (Jim Gillogly) (01/14/85)
>> Jes, multaj problemoj! It's still easier than any national language I've >> ever seen... [Prentiss Riddle] >While this is true for probably all the native speakers of Indo-European >languages, anyone who is not a native speaker of any of these languages >would have a lot of trouble. [John Allen] Although the vocabulary and grammar of Esperanto are indeed Indo-European, the simplicity of the grammar and word construction still make it an easy language to learn. Many Chinese are now learning it, according to the L.A. Times last year. Many of the scientific papers in Esperanto were written by Japanese last decade - there was also some abstracting being done. It has been pointed out that the agglutinative nature of word-building in Esperanto is similar to the way concepts are formed It would certainly be't easier for an Asian or African to learn than any OTHER Indo-European lang! > Thirdly, even if Esperanto did become a world-wide language, there is a >tendency for languages to change, and eventually dialects would eventually >emerge and continue to grow apart until they became mutually unintelligible, >and we would be back where we started. I'm not sure that this is still true. Television has certainly made sharp inroads into American regional dialects. Certainly by the time any one language gains world-wide acceptance the media will be a powerful world-wide force. Of course, it's more likely to be an abomination like English than some neatly constructed language. My main gripe about Esperanto is the funny diacritical marks. Makes it really awful to read on the net, as one poster recently remarked. Loglan gets around that, but it's incredibly hard to learn! At least it's neutral as far as word roots and grammar is concerned. -- Jim Gillogly {decvax, vortex}!randvax!jim jim@rand-unix.arpa
riddle@ut-sally.UUCP (Prentiss Riddle) (01/15/85)
John Allen (allen@ohio-state.csnet) has come up with a number of quite reasonable complaints about Esperanto. Neverthless, I don't think that the problems he raises are serious enough to justify dismissing Esperanto entirely. Allen is on the mark with his chief gripe, namely that Esperanto is not as truly international as some of its proponents claim. Its vocabulary is almost entirely European (mostly Romance, with quite a bit of English and German and a dash of Slavic and Greek thrown in). Furthermore, its grammar is based on a simplified Indo-European model using concepts and categories (subject and object, noun and verb, number and tense) which may be familiar to us but are radically different from those expressed by the grammars of many languages. It's true that someone who speaks a European language can learn Esperanto much more easily than someone who does not. However, this in itself does not disqualify Esperanto as an effective interlanguage, because it is also the case that a non-Indo-European speaker can learn Esperanto much more easily than any "natural" Indo-European language. Unfortunately, the differences between language families are so wide that no language, artificial or not, could be expected to bridge them, and any interlanguage we propose is going to be quite foreign in its grammar and vocabulary to people who speak nothing related to it. The Indo-European language family from which Esperanto is drawn is numerically and geographically more widely used than any other, thus limiting as much as possible the number of people to whom Esperanto will be totally foreign. An even more important factor is that it is built on a s i m p l i f i e d European base; a speaker of Japanese, Swahili, or Guarani would encounter fewer unfamiliar words, fewer strange concepts, and fewer confusing exceptions in learning Esperanto than English, French, Russian or Chinese. Allen's second complaint about Esperanto is that "most people don't go to the trouble of learning something unless they need it for some reason." Well, most educated people in the world today have a definite need to learn a language other than their native tongue. (North Americans may tend to forget this, but it's true nonetheless.) Unless they're lucky enough to be native speakers of one of the more popular languages, they probably have to learn several. How much simpler would it be if everyone learned the same common second language? Allen is correct that the languages of international communication of the past were thrust on people rather than chosen by them, and that Esperanto doesn't have the political, military, economic or scientific might behind it that Latin, French, English or Russian have had. True, but that is one of Esperanto's chief advantages as a potential interlanguage: it is politically neutral. If it is ever adopted for wide-scale use, its adoption will be a matter of mutual decision, not of force. Allen's third objection seems to me to be contradictory. On the one hand, he predicts that Esperanto, if widely used, would split into dialects; on the other, he complains that it would wipe out the local languages. How could the Esperanto language community ever be so strongly unified as to displace national languages and at the same time suffer from such disunity that it would break into fragments? I don't believe that either of these things would ever happen. Remember, Esperanto is intended to be a universal second language used primarily for international communication; worldwide contact among Esperanto speakers reinforced by its being a language of "book learning" would keep it reasonably unified. Esperanto has been spoken for nearly eighty years now and hasn't shown signs of splitting into dialects yet. And no one is suggesting that Esperanto should be written or spoken in place of local or national languages. If anything, increased use of Esperanto should improve the health of small linguistic communities by reducing the pressure on, say, Gaelic, Flemish or Catalan from major languages like English, French or Spanish. Personally, I'm not very optimistic that Esperanto will ever catch on the way its inventor intended it to. There may have been a time (between the world wars?) when it stood a chance, but now I tend to be skeptical. Still, I think it offers educational and recreational opportunities that make it worth my trouble to learn it. (After all, I d o speak a couple of European languages, and for me Esperanto is pretty easy.) Shortly I plan on picking up a couple of pen-pals from places I'd otherwise have no contact with, perhaps China and Finland. If I someday find out that the Common Market or the U.N. has adopted Esperanto as an official language and I get some practical use out of it, then so much the better. --- Prentiss Riddle ("Aprendiz de todo, maestro de nada.") --- {ihnp4,harvard,seismo,gatech,ctvax}!ut-sally!riddle --- riddle@ut-sally.UUCP, riddle@ut-sally.ARPA, riddle@zotz.ARPA
urban@spp2.UUCP (01/15/85)
In article <37@osu-eddie.UUCP> allen@osu-eddie.UUCP (John Allen) writes: > > I object to Esperanto for several reasons. The first and most important >of these is that Esperanto is not as easy as they would have you believe. > . . . > anyone who is not a native speaker of any of these (indo-european) languages >would have a lot of trouble. This is because the vocabulary is almost >entirely, if not entirely, based on Indo-European. Not only that, but the >syntax is based on Indo-European syntax. > ... (discussion of properties of non-IE languages) But this argument simply says that "no international language is possible", not that "Esperanto is not the best candidate" for an international language. Any grammar you can devise will be somehow "alien" to a large segment of people, according to this argument. In fact, the large bulk of international business is now conducted in European languages anyway. The Chinese have found Esperanto useful as a regularized and simple introduction to European language structure and vocabulary. > Another major problem with Esperanto as a world wide language, is that >MOST people don't go to the trouble of learning something unless they need >it for some reason. The reason that the languages that have come closest to >being universal have done so is that they were important for some reason. >... (citing political examples of the past) ... >Other reasons for learning a second language are to read the literature or >the scientific works written in that language. As of this moment, Esperanto >doesn't have enough of literary or scientific publications of enough >importance to prompt people to learn it. Also there is no government that >uses Esperanto, so that other people would be prompted to learn Esperanto in >order to improve trade relations with that government. The argument here is "it isn't in official use, so there's no reason to put it into official use", or "when enough OTHER people learn it, then *I* will". Presumably, the only suitable international language is therefore some already-existing national language. See your own argument 1, if you're suggesting this is the case. Do you think that English is easier for a Japanese speaker to learn than Esperanto? > Thirdly, even if Esperanto did become a world-wide language, there is a >tendency for languages to change, and eventually dialects would eventually >emerge and continue to grow apart until they became mutually unintelligible, >and we would be back where we started. This has not happened with Esperanto. Since it is intended specifically for international communication, it doesn't seem to break into population clusters that develop their own dialects. Once again, you're not saying anything about Esperanto itself, but about any international language. > Finally, speaking totally as a linguist, if there was a world-wide >language, then the regional languages would die out, until it was the only >language being spoken. Now how much fun would linguistics be if you could >only get data from one language. This is a misunderstanding of the function of an international language. The people who used Latin as an IL in Europe in the Middle Ages and Renaissance didn't stop speaking their own language! Esperanto and all the less successful interlanguage projects are intended as international *auxiliary* languages. The idea is: to go to an international science conference with delegates from twenty nations, everybody doesn't have to learn 19 other languages, they only have to learn one (regularized, and [one hopes] easy) second language -- and no single country has the cultural domination implied by "everyone will speak English [French/Latin/Japanese/Arabic], and all papers will be presented in that language." Evidently, you don't believe that an international language is necessary, desirable, nor even possible. As a linguist, what solution do you propose to ease the problem of international communication? Or do you see no problem? Mike Urban trwrb!trwspp!spp2!urban
steiny@scc.UUCP (Don Steiny) (01/15/85)
> > Another major problem with Esperanto as a world wide language, is that > MOST people don't go to the trouble of learning something unless they need > it for some reason. The reason that the languages that have come closest to > being universal have done so is that they were important for some reason. > This is so true. Witness that Ireland tried to reintroduce Gallic as a national language and since there was now reason for anyone to learn it the attempt fizzled out. On the other hand, Hebrew came back to life with the formation of the modern state of Israel because it was the only way all the diverse people that settled there could communicate. -- scc!steiny Don Steiny - Personetics @ (408) 425-0382 109 Torrey Pine Terr. Santa Cruz, Calif. 95060 ihnp4!pesnta -\ fortune!idsvax -> scc!steiny ucbvax!twg -/
emjej@uokvax.UUCP (01/16/85)
/***** uokvax:net.nlang / osu-eddie!allen / 5:49 pm Jan 12, 1985 */ >While this is true for probably all the native speakers of Indo-European >languages, anyone who is not a native speaker of any of these languages >would have a lot of trouble. This is because the vocabulary is almost >entirely, if not entirely, based on Indo-European. Not only that, but the >syntax is based on Indo-European syntax. Yes, this is quite true. This hasn't stopped what appears to be a quite healthy group of Esperantists in the "People's" "Republic" of China from forming--I'll send you a back issue of *El Popola ^Cinio* ("from (more precisely, 'out of') People's China") if you wish. I'm told that there are Esperantists in (post-Shah) Iran as well. It seems that Third World countries are interested in Esperanto as a way to avoid "linguistic imperialism." In any case, those interlanguages that try to avoid bias by pulling words from many different languages tend to wind up like Loglan, which figures that since "blanu" has x[i]% of the phonemes in whatever "blue" is in English, Hindi, Chinese, and whatever other languages they chose, "blanu" is sum (x[i] * p[i]) % "intellegible", where p[i] is the fraction of the world that speaks language i, and ends up equally incomprehensible (in the sense of having individual words recognizable) to everyone. Also, is there anything that stops Esperanto from choosing roots from whatever native language people wish to agree on? As for the loss of all those picturesque natural languages--well, as a programmer, I suppose that using <fill in your favorite high-level language> does eliminate the regional charm of using X, Y, and Z assembly language, but my job is to write programs, just as the "job" of the language user is to communicate. An interlanguage widens the range of people with which one can communicate, just as high-level languages, or perhaps standards for programming languages is the better analogy, make it possible for me to write programs that run on more machines. James Jones /* ---------- */
andyb@dartvax.UUCP (Andy Behrens) (01/18/85)
> My main gripe about Esperanto is the funny diacritical marks. Makes it > really awful to read on the net, as one poster recently remarked. > > Jim Gillogly La "Sesdek Reguloj" de Esperanto enhavas rimarkon, kiu diras Presejoj, kiuj ne posedas la literojn ^c, ^g, ^h, ^j, ^s, ^u, povas anstata^u ili uzi ch, gh, hh, jh, sh, u. Sed mi opinias, ke tio estas pli malbela ol la supersignoj anta^u la literojn. * * * * * (For those who want a translation:) The "16 Rules" of Esperanto grammar have a note indicating that the accented letters ^c, ^g, etc., can be replaced with ch, gh, respectively, if your press is not capable of printing the accents. My feeling is that this alternative is even uglier than the accents before the letters. Andy Behrens {astrovax,decvax,cornell,ihnp4,linus}!dartvax!andyb.UUCP andyb@dartmouth.CSNET andyb%dartmouth@csnet-relay.ARPA