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Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

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Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#71

Post by olah_1 »

School-Cotton wrote: post #58
olah_1 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a native English speaker, I don't like English being the world language because I'm at a significant disadvantage because 1. I have zero incentive to learn another language 2. I do not have a secret/family language that I can switch into for strategic purposes 3. It gets watered down for the purposes of internationality to the point that we lose even our productive affixes. We can't even create meaningful names wi…

Nothings stops you from learning whatever second language you want. I think having English as a native language actually gives us a huge advantage: we can travel to a large chunk of the world and have a pretty good chance of being understood. We can work in globally relevant jobs with no language barrier. And so on.

> Nothings stops you from learning whatever second language you want.

A lack of incentive is what stops most.

> we can travel to a large chunk of the world and have a pretty good chance of being understood. We can work in globally relevant jobs with no language barrier. And so on.

You described the benefit of knowing English, not being a native English speaker.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#72

Post by olah_1 »

dathinab wrote: post #64
olah_1 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a native English speaker, I don't like English being the world language because I'm at a significant disadvantage because 1. I have zero incentive to learn another language 2. I do not have a secret/family language that I can switch into for strategic purposes 3. It gets watered down for the purposes of internationality to the point that we lose even our productive affixes. We can't even create meaningful names wi…

At the same time you have a major advantage by most of the internet being (language wise) accessible to you from the get to go. I can just say that if I would have been able to speak english in my teenage years it would have majorly influenced my life in a likely positive but at least more interesting direction. Sadly back then I neither had any reasonable english skills nor was I aware of how much it would help me.…

I’m sure that it is better to learn English from a young age, yes. But as it stands currently, you have an advantage over me.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#73

Post by def_true_false »

bigbubba wrote: post #59
def_true_false wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but why do we have to use a character set that can only cleanly represent sounds made by the Romans of 2500 years ago?

Same reason Americans use Phillips head screws instead of something sensible like square drive. Network effects. It may not be ideal but you can get by with it, and most other people are using it as well. Some might look north wistfully, but most around them continue using what they know. And keep in mind, switching to square drive would be easy . Screwdriver sets already come with square drive bits, and hardware sto…

Well, I suppose the printing press has a way of blocking progress. Some languages did manage to update their orthography more recently though, e.g. Lithuanian.

If you look at the former Soviet Union (CIS), you can see a shift away from Russian Cyrillic, so I suppose given enough political incentive, such changes are in fact possible.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#74

Post by bigbubba »

Ancapistani wrote: post #68
bigbubba wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same reason Americans use Phillips head screws instead of something sensible like square drive. Network effects. It may not be ideal but you can get by with it, and most other people are using it as well. Some might look north wistfully, but most around them continue using what they know. And keep in mind, switching to square drive would be easy . Screwdriver sets already come with square drive bits, and hardware sto…

I’m going to be pedantic here, but Phillips head screws serve a purpose - they limit torque by allowing the driver to cam out. They’re almost always improperly used, but my point stands :) Torx is far superior to square drive, too...

Cam-out seems like an ex post facto justification to me. Henry Ford would have picked Robertson if not for the licensing trouble. Robertson's lack of a cam-out 'feature' wasn't the reason.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#75

Post by marcodiego »

emodendroket wrote: post #65
marcodiego wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting.... as a Portuguese speaker, I'd say that it gets progressively easier to read. Note that portuguese has way more coherent writing than english.

I think you probably mean "consistent" rather than "coherent." Either that or you have a low view of our writers!

I used the term "coherent" because I was referring to what the text called "kohirnt speling".

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#76

Post by rhn_mk1 »

bigbubba wrote: post #43
anewguy9000 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

english is the language of the oppressor

I understand that point of view, but desiring the creation of a universal language makes one an aspirational conqueror. The whole premise of 'a universal language for world peace' is oppressive (and for that reason I don't support it no matter the language chosen.)

> The whole premise of 'a universal language for world peace' is oppressive

Could you explain that? I see it more in terms of creating a voluntary standard than forcing people to comply.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#77

Post by emodendroket »

marcodiego wrote: post #75
emodendroket wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you probably mean "consistent" rather than "coherent." Either that or you have a low view of our writers!

I used the term "coherent" because I was referring to what the text called "kohirnt speling".

Fair but saying English writing is incoherent makes it sound like their ideas are all over the place and you can't make heads or tails of it

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#79

Post by mmm_grayons »

croes wrote: post #32
nabla9 wrote: post #9

When I tried it just for a few days, I was surprised how easy it was to learn. It was much easier to learn than English. On the other hand so many people already know English vocabulary that just having regular spelling and simple grammar could work. Mark Twain already suggested it: "A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling: For example, in Year 1 that useless letter 'c' would be dropped to be replased either b…

Fun fact, if you read the last sentence as a german sentence it sounds like english with a german accent.

I was always under the impression that this was the intent and was trying to imply that English was basically bastardized German. Is that not what Twain meant?

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#80

Post by ben_w »

emodendroket wrote: post #49
nabla9 wrote: post #9

When I tried it just for a few days, I was surprised how easy it was to learn. It was much easier to learn than English. On the other hand so many people already know English vocabulary that just having regular spelling and simple grammar could work. Mark Twain already suggested it: "A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling: For example, in Year 1 that useless letter 'c' would be dropped to be replased either b…

People make a fuss about irregular verbs or grammar or whatever but what really makes learning languages hard is the very long tail of words you need to know. The grammar is a comparatively very small amount of content. When we think about how "easy" a language is a lot of it is how likely it is for us to guess from our native language what any given difficult word means -- "geografía" is more obvious to an English s…

The ability to guess plausible meanings if great for comprehending the words, but for speaking them? I’ve guessed „Spoonen” instead of „Löffel”; “live”, “liver”, “love” translated as the equally homophonic „Leben“, „Leber“, „Liebe“; and Siri regularly fails to know if I am trying to say „höher“ or „Hure“ (only one of the latter words is even in Duolingo).
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