grw@fortune.UUCP (07/20/83)
First point: I don't think Esperanto was ever meant to be
a world-wide international language, just a language for speakers
of indo-european tongues. Is that true?
I'm not sure how much my opinion is based in chauvanism,
but it seems to me that an international language really ought
to be based in English. My reasoning is as follows: English
and Chinese are tied for first place in terms of number of native
speakers, it's true, but:
1) Chinese is spoken only in a limited geographic area, whereas
English is spoken on every continent, and a lot of islands.
2) English is far and away the most common "second language" in
the world -- most people who speak two languages speak enlish as
at least one of them.
3) English is unofficially the standard language in international
trade.
Do these arguments hold water, or not? Admittedly, English is
a very kludgy language and thus not very easy to learn, and the
spelling rules are even worse, but an international language could
be built by using English with phonetic spelling and fixed-up
grammar. Yes or no?
-Glennellis@flairvax.UUCP (Michael Ellis) (07/22/83)
In response to an article by Glenn (fortune!grw)...
English does seem to have come closer to the status of `international
language' than anything else around, in spite of the fact that `Chinese'
(its `dialects' are actually separate languages) has more speakers.
I believe this is clearly because we (we == Americans, British,
Canadians and Australians) English speakers, as a whole, are temporarily
on top of the heap, and have been for some time. `International'
languages have always been unofficially determined by the top dog(s),
anyway. Sooner or later, though...
Now how long will an international language that achieved its status by
power and money remain truly international ?
Answer: Until shortly after the power leverage is gone. Since nothing
lasts forever, I suspect that our temporary lead must disintegrate,
though it may take centuries. When this happens, I hope it will be
because other cultures have caught up with, and not destroyed, ours.
A genuinely international language should reflect all cultures fairly,
not showing bias towards speakers with any particular vocabulary,
syntax, or phonetic habits. If this is not the case, then the favored
culture will be more proficient and thereby become yet more powerful.
Contrariwise, it will be rejected by those to whom it is alien -- and
cease to be international.
Short of genocide or subjugation, I see no way, in the long run, to
establish a stable, voluntarily accepted international language without
making major concessions to the languages of India, China, Africa and so
on. How can (and why should) English hold its current predominance?
As to your comment:
"Admittedly, English is a very kludgy language and thus not
very easy to learn, and the spelling rules are even worse, but
an international language could be built by using English with
phonetic spelling and fixed-up grammar."
We all know that English spelling is quite horrible, probabably the
worst spelled language in the world (except Gaelic). But I believe its
grammar is far simpler and more logical than anything else from Europe.
Not klugy at all, perhaps even elegant.
Did you ever see the (`orthogonal') English verb scheme expressed in
phrase-structure notation? Or the lack of pointless grammatical gender
in nouns? Or the paucity of inflections (word endings like -s and -ed)
and inflectional categories ? As far as being easy to learn (to speak,
not write) English gets an A+ from me.
For real elegance and simplicity, I'd check out the Chinese dialects,
though. The worst obstacle I have here is the classifier concept,
apparently (?) used to distinguish the many, many homonyms. But talk
about being hard to write**!!
-michael
** in this case, really a strong point. But that's another topic.