urban@algol (Michael Urban) (09/16/88)
Remembering that this is COMP.std.internat, the topic of Esperanto seems to be only peripherally related. On the other hand, David Harvey's message points out some issues that apply to the more general question of international standards. I will try to keep the topic from ranging too far afield of the newsgroup charter. In article <645@wsccs.UUCP> dharvey@wsccs.UUCP (David Harvey) writes: > >I just had to throw my two bits into the discussion of languages. >I don't really know enough about Esperanto to judge its relative merits, >but it seems that people who favor it have forgot an essential element. >All people seem to favor their own ethnic culture which also has an >associated language. If you doubt it, try getting the Quebecois to >speak English! Esperanto supporters hardly forget this fact. Indeed, the *usual* argument that Esperantists face is the more naive `but English is already the de facto standard international language.' >And even if Esperanto is adopted, what is to prevent it from >changing? A language is a living thing, something that changes as the >people who use it also change. Here we manage to get back to the original issue. The purpose of Esperanto is not to replace national languages, nor is it intended to represent some Platonic ideal of The Perfect Language. The purpose of Esperanto is to provide a standard method for the interchange of ideas between people without a common national language. Its goal is to fulfill the same function, in natural-language (human) communication, as the ISO Latin-[1-4] codes, all-numeric dates, metric measurements, and other international standards (although all too often, `international' means `not American'). Naturally, as a human language, it is subject to evolution in usage. But since it is not normally used as someone's first language or primary language, the pressures for change are certainly mitigated. At present, the fact that Esperanto is primarily a *written* language, and that the dissemination of written materials in Esperanto is fairly global, keeps the language comparatively stable; Mr. Harvey tacitly acknowledges this when he says, >Actually, television, radio, and other means of national and >international communication mediums are having a stronger stabilizing >force than the French national committee on language. Interestingly, some of the antecedent discussion (all-numeric dates) also seemed to be based on the idea that the topic was finding the Perfect Representation of date information, rather than considering that the purpose of the date representation was to agree on a standard notation that could be understood everywhere. Similar peculiar arguments have been presented to show that English/American measurement units are `better' (more natural) than the arbitrary SI units. These also miss the point. >But back to Esperanto, I really don't feel that it is a language worth >studying. It is kind of like Latin, a dead language since it isn't used >much. The number of speakers is approximately on a par with Icelandic. But this is a fairly weak argument in any case, although a common one (`Well, Esperanto seems like a swell idea, but until everyone else learns it I won't bother with it'). Most computers speak ASCII, not Latin-1, but that is hardly a reason to ignore Latin-1. >Personally, I feel Americans would benefit far more from studying >Espanol or another language that is in ACTUAL USE somewhere in the >world. Which ONE? Or is it proposed that we learn several? Does learning Espa\~nol really address the problem that the Unix Programmer's Manual has to be translated into French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Japanese and Italian (instead of a single, well-understood interlanguage)? Or that Americans are extremely isolated from technical and industrial developments in Japan, France, Germany, Italy, etc., because a relatively small fraction of their technical material is translated into intelligible English? Many early reformers of Esperanto, or proponents of similar interlanguages (Ido, Novial, Interlingua, etc.) had the idea that the reason that Esperanto was not more successful was due to imperfections in the language itself. They apparently felt that if a more perfect language were available, the world would open its arms and adopt it. It is now clear that the main reason no neutral language has been accepted as an international standard is that the world has not yet acknowledged the magnitude of the language problem, or still maintains the belief that adoption of a national language (usually `my' language) as an international standard is a feasible solution. In the United States, owing to our geographic isolation, we rarely understand the need for international standards of any kind. Only in the last few years have American computer manufacturers heeded the long-standing European need for an 8-bit alphabet (and we will note that DEC's 8-bit code is different from the Macintosh's, which is different from Latin-1, which...). Laser printer images are still resolved in `dots per inch'. The problem still appears to be recognition of the problem. Mike Urban ...!trwrb!trwspp!spp2!urban "You're in a maze of twisty UUCP connections, all alike"
rroot@edm.UUCP (Stephen Samuel) (09/23/88)
From article <1437@spp2.UUCP>, by urban@algol (Michael Urban): > argument that Esperantists face is the more naive `but English is > already the de facto standard international language.' >>But back to Esperanto, I really don't feel that it is a language worth >>studying. It is kind of like Latin, a dead language since it isn't used >>much. > > The number of speakers is approximately on a par with Icelandic. But > ..... t I won't bother with it'). Most computers speak ASCII, > not Latin-1, but that is hardly a reason to ignore Latin-1. > Only in the last few > years have American computer manufacturers heeded the long-standing > European need for an 8-bit alphabet (and we will note that DEC's 8-bit > code is different from the Macintosh's, which is different from A long time ago, people were using all sorts of codes for character representation. The codes for 'a' and 'A' were almost as varied as the number as manufacturers (possibly, even, MORE varied). Nontheless: somebody came up with the Idea of a 'standard character set' which would make it possible for different manufacturer's systems to use the same codes for their text characters (or, at least, have a standard intermediate character set to transmit data with). Needless to say: even today (decades later) people are still using vendor-specific codes for character representation, but a LOT of people are now using ASCII, and it's generally possible to take text from one system; translate it to ASCII; transport it to a second system and translate the ASCII to that system's form without (in most cases) loosing very much important information. The system may not be perfect, but it DOES work reasonably well... I see (as do, I think, most others) Esperanto as being the natural- language equivalent of English. It may not be perfect but it IS well-defined and, if enough people learn it (and this seems to be the case), there will be a reasonably consistent way of getting stuff from one language to another. -- ------------- Stephen Samuel Disclaimer: You betcha! {ihnp4,ubc-vision,seismo!mnetor,vax135}!alberta!edm!steve BITNET: USERZXCV@UQV-MTS