neal@druxv.UUCP (Neal D. McBurnett) (05/19/85)
Perhaps some of you have seen the discussions on Esperanto in net.nlang. How could it be applied to the language problems in India? As I understand it, English currently functions as the de facto interlanguage in India, and I'm would assume that the readers of this net group have already "bought in" to that approach to some extent, but surely it causes problems! English simply is not well suited (in a technical sense) to the task (too idiosyncratic, not phonetic (a reading knowledge does not imply a listening knowledge, to say nothing of a speaking knowledge), too many synonyms, politically charged, etc.) Esperanto is well developed, easy to learn (1 year of Esperanto == 5 years of Spanish, e.g.), provides a good basis to aid in learning other languages, currently has a new book coming out each week, and 100 regular periodocals. It is politically neutral, and has somewhere around 1,000,000 speakers. It is also a lot of fun: students are encouraged by the lack of exceptions and idioms, and can see worthwhile progress in weeks instead of months. For example, 100,000 people are now studying Esperanto in China for these and other reasons. Any comments? -Neal McBurnett, ihnp4!druny!neal, 303-538-4852 Here is a small sample of the language, part of an article on the problems in the Punjab written in the international "Newsweek"-like publication "Monato" back in October, '84. If you're interested, I have a dictionary and other stuff on-line. (The '^' is a diacritical mark to be placed over the folowwing letter, which functions sort of like a following 'h' for consonants: (^s == sh) and some other modification for vowels.) ---- .H Si^hoj - avangardo de Pan^jabio, de Eugene de Zilah .H el Monato, 10/84 .P Kiam anta^u 3 jaroj mi vizitis batalgrupon (jatha) de la pretermilitista organiza^jo de la pan^jabaj si^hoj, la politika etoso de Pan^jabio jam estis tre stre^cita. Mi elmetis la demandon al la "jathedar," la loka ^cefo: kio okazos, kiam Indira Gandhi ordonos perforte "normaligi" la pan^jabian situacian? La giganta si^ho per sia helgriza rigardo ekboris en miajn okulojn kaj diris per vo^co profunde malgaja: "Tiam, tuj okazos 5 'la^hoj' da kadavroj, poste 30 jaroj da gerilo kaj poste, eble, la venko." Mi ne povis ne alpensi la 500,000 anta^udiritajn mortontojn, kiam en junio 84 mi eksciis pri la militista perforto de Darb^ar S^ahib, sanktejo gravega, templo el oro por la simplanima popolo pro ^gia ortegita tegmento. Sant ^Jarnail Singh Bhinranvale miksis sian kadavron kun la frataj kadavroj kaj la ruineroj de la Ora Templo. La eki^go de civitana milito estas ^ciam katastrofo, ne nur por la ruinigota lando, sed pro la malica ekzemplo por la tuta homaro. La centra registaro de Hindio, kaj ^gia ^cefo, s-rino Indira Gandhi, ne estas pli malspertaj ol la registaro de ajna lando. Kiel ni povas klarigi la okazinta^jojn? .H Multaj postuloj .P Estas okulfrape ke la konflikto okazis inter bazo kaj registara organiza^jo, a^u, se oni volas, inter ribelontoj kaj registara armeo. Kiel ^ciam en simila situacio la ribelontoj postulas ion, kion la centra registaro rifuzas pro diverasj kialoj. E^c se la elmetitaj postuloj kovras nur la konsciajn erojn de la popola volo, ili povas tamen informi nin. La pan^jabaj si^hoj, la^u dokumento ellaborita de la ^Siromani Akali Dal en oktobro 1973, postulas: .P -disvastigi la si^hajn vivmanierojn, kontra^ubatali ateismon kaj la kontra^u-si^han propagandon, .P -starigi mezlernejajn kaj universitatan instruadon pan^jablingvan, .P -konservi la konvinkon ke la si^hoj formas nedependan, nacian enton, kaj doni al ^gi naciskalan esprimon, .P -el^siri analfabetismon, netu^seblecon, malegalecojn sociajn kaj kastajn diskriminaciojn, .P And so forth (200 more lines)....
agrawal@csd2.UUCP (Mukul Babu Agrawal) (05/30/85)
>/* csd2:net.nlang.india / neal@druxv.UUCP (Neal D. McBurnett) / 6:11 pm May 18, 1985 */ >How could it be applied to the language problems in India? As I >understand it, English currently functions as the de facto interlanguage >in India, and I'm would assume that the readers of this net group have >already "bought in" to that approach to some extent, but surely it causes >problems! English simply is not well suited (in a technical sense) to >the task (too idiosyncratic, not phonetic (a reading knowledge does not >imply a listening knowledge, to say nothing of a speaking knowledge), >too many synonyms, politically charged, etc.) >Esperanto is well developed, easy to learn (1 year of Esperanto == 5 years >of Spanish, e.g.), provides a good basis to aid in learning other >languages, currently has a new book coming out each week, and 100 >regular periodocals. It is politically neutral, and has somewhere >around 1,000,000 speakers. It is also a lot of fun: students are >encouraged by the lack of exceptions and idioms, and can see worthwhile >progress in weeks instead of months. For example, 100,000 people are now >studying Esperanto in China for these and other reasons. > >Any comments? >-Neal McBurnett, ihnp4!druny!neal, 303-538-4852 I donot think Esparanto is well suited in the Indian Context. The most important reason why it is useful in the English speaking countries is perhaps that the Latin script is not phnetic. Neither is Chinese. On the other hand , All Indian languages are totally phonetic and most have a very well developed grammer. Furthermore the words in Esparanto have their roots in essentially the European languages such as Latin. Thus while it is not too difficult for a person already knowing some latin based language to learn Esparanto, it would be extremely difficult for a person from India. The main reason why India does not have a uniform language is political. e.g. Hindi, which is spoken by almost 40% of the country's population has its drawback in that it is seen as a supremacy of the north Indians ( Mostly Aryans) over the South Indians ( Dravidians ). The Tamil riots are a testimony to that. Yet another reason is the presence of numerous dialects of the same language. but this cannot be avoided in any language and Esparanto does not suffer from this problem simply because it is too new. It is obvious that as ( and if ) different communities learn Esparanto they will devlop dialects suitable for there own culture . Any language is an extremely dynamic entity and it has been seen that new idioms and words get added to any language with time. All these things are bound to happen to Esp. as time progresses. Mukul Agrawal agrawal@csd2.arpa