urban@algol (Michael Urban) (08/31/88)
In article <3782@polya.Stanford.EDU> rokicki@polya.Stanford.EDU (Tomas G. Rokicki) writes: (in response to someone else's all-numeric date proposal) >...I like the names of the months, like the names of the days of > the week. When a strictly numeric date format is adopted, the >world will be lesser for it. >When I ask the computer for the date and time, I prefer > 12:05 on Wednesday, 12 March 1943 >infinitely over > W 19430312.12:05 >or any such. Much easier to read. Well, of course, that depends on how much space you have available to display the date. You might need to use "1205 Wed 12 Mar 43", which is still more readable than all-numeric, has the advantage of brevity, but could never be mistaken for `English'. The point is... > >>> It is quite obvious that Esperanto is superior to English; >Obvious to whom, and for what purpose? ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ... expressed in that short phrase. If the purpose of representing the date is for My Consumption, then I should be allowed to select its representation wherever possible. I hope that we all agree that `all power to the user' is a `Motherhood' issue over which there is little dispute. If the purpose is communication between two individuals who likely will not have the same personal preference, than a standard may be necessary; if their languages are different, something like yyyy.mm.dd has clear advantages. If the purpose is to transmit data between two machines, I cannot imagine why anyone would have a strong emotional opinion on the subject; it might as well be ``struct tm'' for all I care, as long as I can get my output to appear as I wish. Since I notice that this is cross-posted to comp.text, I may observe that this is similar to the familiar argument for the use of markup languages rather than troffish or WYSIWYG document representations; if the document contains \Date{88}{10}{12}, the printed representation can be ``October 12, 1988'' or ``1988.10.12'' depending on the specific requirements of the document's readers. In a typical WYSIWYG system, a date in a document will often be just a string of characters, bound forever to one realization. > Esperanto, in my opinion, is ugly. I like English, for all of its >inconsistencies. Writing English is an art. Shakespeare >is beautiful; a translation of Shakespeare to Esperanto >or even modern english loses so much of its nature. > (more [reasonable] rhapsodizing on English omitted --- sorry, Tomas) Writing any language is an art. A translation of Shakespeare to any language loses much of its nature. Writing in Esperanto is also an art, and translation of original Esperanto literature and especially poetry to English would also lose much of its nature. Beauty is proverbially in the eye (or ear) of the beholder, and many people find that Esperanto hath beauties of its own. But aesthetics are, I think, beside the point. Once again, we must consider the purpose of the language. English prose is all very nice, but if you are going to communicate with a group of people from Japan, China, and Finland, you will need to use a common language. From several points of view (political neutrality, ease of learning, simplicity of structure), Esperanto has evident superiority to English. As a hint: suppose the English speaker were not present. Incidentally, when people write letters and periodicals in Esperanto, the date is typically expressed as something like ``Mardon, la 26a de julio,'' or ``26 jul 1887.'' Esperantists do not care for all-numeric dates either, precisely because of the ambiguities and differing conventions in the U.S. and Europe. >...the last thing we need is a prescriptive language, totally lacking in a >history or culture. I am disheartened enough by the disappearence of the >subjunctive in modern English. Don't even think about >teaching Esperanto to my kids. > Nobody is seriously suggesting that Esperanto replace everyone's first language. But it is a very reasonable proposal for a universal SECOND language. Surely you are not suggesting that our children should never be taught a second language? Mike Urban ...!trwrb!trwspp!spp2!urban "You're in a maze of twisty UUCP connections, all alike"
pdc@otter.hple.hp.com (Damian Cugley) (09/08/88)
I said (rashly): > Esperanto often expresses concepts concisely that require complicated > English phrases - random example: `IMHO' translates to `lau^ mi'. Peter da Silva: peter@ficc.uu.net > And in English it translates to 'I think'. It wasn't a good example - I'm only a beginning Esperentist and `lau^ mi' (or `lauh mi'? `laux mi'?) was the first phrase that came to mind. It *does* have different *connotations* from `I think' (and probably from `IMHO' too {:-( ), however. If I remember correctly, `connotations' was the topic of discission. There *are* better examples. (Honest! :-) ). > And look, no diacriticals! I've already said that the diacriticals are amongst Esperanto's worst `features'. I **WISH** Z. had had the sense to live up to his claim that Esperanto would be easily spoken and written (and typed) by *everyone*. The `H^' sound (sounds like the `chi' in `TeX' ?:-) ) has all but dissappeared but those silly accents will endure forever. It's easy to say something u^ -> w, j^ -> j -> y, g^ -> dj, s^ -> sh, k -> c -> ts, c^ -> tsh, h^ -> k but this violates La Fundamentoj and is as much a waste of time (and risk of getting flamed) as suggesting C change == -> = -> :=, && -> `and', || -> `or' etc. We either stick with the current dumb notation or create another language altogether. > How does Esperanto compare to other universal languages (loglan?)? That's > a better comparison. I only know a little about other `interlanguages' - from what I've read in Esperanto publications, mostly - but Esperanto has the largest following, for what it's worth. Various `improved' Esperanto-offshoots have appeared and died and the original keeps on strong. pdc -- /-------------------\/-------------------------\/------------------------\ | Damian Cugley =@= || pdc@hplb.lb.hp.co.uk || ...!mcvax!ukc!hplb!pdc | | HPLabs Bristol UK || pdc%otter@hplabs.HP.COM || ...!hplabs!otter!pdc | \-------------------/\-------------------------/\------------------------/ (#disclaim <net/std.h> 'Esperanto - la lingvo por sennacia fajrado') (Feel free to correct my spelling, I'm dictionaryless) > "Have you hugged your wolf today?" We used to have two German Shepards but we had to give them away. :-(
bas+@andrew.cmu.edu (Bruce Sherwood) (09/09/88)
Sigh. Anyone who could characterize Esperanto as "ugly" just doesn't know the language well enough to have a basis for judgement. While I sympathize with Mike Urban's points about the utility of Esperanto not depending on whether or not it is beautiful, much stronger statements can be made concerning the less utilitarian virtues of the language. To put it in a deliberatiely provocative but appropriate form, I have sometimes lectured on the topic "The Cultural Value of Esperanto in Education." I have greatly enjoyed the novels of Alexis Kivi, the founder of modern Finnish literature. And I have benefited a great deal from the insights obtained by reading literary works from Hungary and Bulgaria, where due to their histories the good guys always lose, resulting in a literature far more pessimistic than the optimism of American literature. These cultural joys and insights came to me through excellent native-speaker translations into Esperanto. This provided a window onto worlds that otherwise I wouldn't even have known about. Among other important cultural benefits, this kind of direct contact with smaller cultural groups helps guard against a very common dehumanizing dismissal of these groups. Even teachers of French or German, who ought to be in the business of heightening the multi-cultural awareness of their students, are likely out of ignorance to claim that "there is no such thing as a Bulgarian novel." Such attitudes slide easily into the notion that Bulgarians aren't really quite fully human, unlike we English speakers who have a real literature. Moreover, the beauty and power of Shakespeare for native speakers of English is closely related to the lack of expressiveness that non-native speakers suffer when trying to express themselves in English. English obtains nuance and expressiveness through an enormous and multi-source vocabulary. It is extremely difficult for a foreigner to pick his/her way through this loaded minefield. Do I say freedom or liberty? Is the noun form of strong strongness? Etc. Esperanto provides nuance and expressiveness in a very different way, through a small vocabulary with extremely powerful word-formation mechanisms which, due to their regularity, can be expolited by a non-native speaker. When I speak English or Spanish with a Mexican, one of us is in a strongly dominant position and the other unable to fully express oneself. The full power of the language of Cervantes is not accessible to me, nor the power of the langauge of Shakespeare to the Mexican. But it is a fact that in Esperanto both of us can be FAR more expressive of our thoughts and emotions, of our culture, than in either foreign language. True, I am less expressive in Esperanto than in English. But the key cultural point here is that I am far more expressive in Esperanto than I can ever hope to be in Spanish. The same is true for Italian, despite having lived in Italy for a year. Bruce Sherwood