Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015) • Hacker News Board

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#141

Post by mhh__ » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 8:55 PM UTC

olah_1 wrote: post #17

bigbubba wrote: post #7

The value proposition of Esperanto never made sense to me. If the goal were merely to get everybody speaking the same language to achieve world peace, then the efforts of pragmatists would go towards teaching more people English, since that language is the closest to the finish line. Of course that would be contentious in some political philosophies, it doesn't surprise me that some people drawn to the 'universal lan…

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…

Re. Point 2

Move to glasgow if you want to be able to switch into a "different" language

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#142

Post by pfdietz » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 8:56 PM UTC

What an excellent example of Betteridge's Law.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#143

Post by JdeBP » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

olah_1 wrote: post #17

bigbubba wrote: post #7

The value proposition of Esperanto never made sense to me. If the goal were merely to get everybody speaking the same language to achieve world peace, then the efforts of pragmatists would go towards teaching more people English, since that language is the closest to the finish line. Of course that would be contentious in some political philosophies, it doesn't surprise me that some people drawn to the 'universal lan…

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…

Have you tried Brummie? Non-native speakers often have significant trouble with England's non-RP accents.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#144

Post by antognini » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 9:07 PM UTC

bserge wrote: post #10

Comeback? Has it ever been more than a niche curiosity? It's more like translation tools will make a comeback. Already have. They've gotten so good, you don't even need to learn a new language to learn something that's only available in English (or other languages). Incidentally, this was a major reason I learned English. There was so much more information available back in the early 00's that I just had to do it. Ro…

> Comeback? Has it ever been more than a niche curiosity?

There was actually a fair amount of momentum behind Esperanto in the 1920s. The League of Nations seriously considered adopting it as their official language of business and was also considering recommending that member states include Esperanto in their educational curricula. The only real opposition was from the French, who wanted to preserve their language as the language of diplomacy, and vetoed these proposals.

But by the late 1930s that momentum had faded away and totalitarian governments (particularly Germany and the Soviet Union) began to suppress Esperanto.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#145

Post by mythrwy » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 9:08 PM UTC

anewguy9000 wrote: post #29

bigbubba wrote: post #7

The value proposition of Esperanto never made sense to me. If the goal were merely to get everybody speaking the same language to achieve world peace, then the efforts of pragmatists would go towards teaching more people English, since that language is the closest to the finish line. Of course that would be contentious in some political philosophies, it doesn't surprise me that some people drawn to the 'universal lan…

english is the language of the oppressor

And yet, here you are using it to express that sentiment.

Kind of a catch 22 or strange irony about this, but I suppose that is true of the entire philosophical viewpoint being expressed.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#146

Post by JdeBP » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 9:12 PM UTC

simion314 wrote: post #105

kwhitefoot wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't one. English is not imposed by an authority, it is pulled and pushed from all directions by schools, corporations, governments, history, fashion, misunderstanding, other languages, bloody mindedness, and more.

The one used on national UK TV for example and as I said it would be a fork, you don't want to force people to change, though something like Esperanto would cause less outrage then forking english it seems.

UK national TV has been featuring a multiplicity of regional accents since the 1970s.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#147

Post by bonoboTP » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 9:13 PM UTC

dathinab wrote: post #53

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.

While english was simplified quite a bit in the recent 100+ (probably more) years and is often seen as a "simple" language there are quite many languages which are much more coherent then english. E.g. recently there had been an article on hacker news about bilingual people which are fine in one language but have a writing-disorder in english. Likely due to it being less coherent.

> E.g. recently there had been an article on hacker news about bilingual people which are fine in one language but have a writing-disorder in english. Likely due to it being less coherent.

Also, there is no equivalent of a "spelling bee" in most other languages. Being able to spell all words is not seen as an exceptional skill in most languages written in the Latin script.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#148

Post by JdeBP » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 9:14 PM UTC

CydeWeys wrote: post #4

vikramkr wrote: post #3

Esperanto isn't actually that universal. It's very European, using a Latin alphabet, grammar and syntax from romance languages, etc. Its going to be very easy for a Spanish or English or German speaker to pick up, for example. Probably a bit less easy for someone speaking a language on the idno side of indo European, like a hindi speaker, and then progressively harder as you get further and further away from the lang…

You're not wrong, but if you're designing a universal language I think Latin script is the only feasible option. You're not helping anyone if you invent an entirely new script that everyone has to learn from scratch, and that doesn't even have extant keyboards. Latin script is the only choice that makes sense -- most people worldwide already have at least some familiarity with it, and it has excellent universal hardw…

For maximum irony, you should end your post with at least two emojis. (-:

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#149

Post by JdeBP » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

bserge wrote: post #10

Comeback? Has it ever been more than a niche curiosity? It's more like translation tools will make a comeback. Already have. They've gotten so good, you don't even need to learn a new language to learn something that's only available in English (or other languages). Incidentally, this was a major reason I learned English. There was so much more information available back in the early 00's that I just had to do it. Ro…

Don't expect to learn Scots from the World Wide Web, thanks to the goings on at the Scots language Wikipedia and all of the mirrors and automatic translators that have used it as source material.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#150

Post by vinay427 » Sat, Oct 17, 2020, 9:16 PM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #109

Fnoord wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reminds me of this old joke [1]: > The European Union commissioners have announced that agreement has been reached to adopt English as the preferred language for European communications, rather than German, which was the other possibility. > As part of the negotiations, the British and American government conceded that English spelling had some room for improvement. Consequently, they have adopted a five-year ph…

"fotograf" is precisely how it is spelt in Czech and I am not sure why the English language insists on keeping the ancient-looking "ph" in those words; what the phreaking phuck?

Well, German (among others) does this as well in many cases, and it's otherwise far more phonetic than English in orthography. It's not some unique Anglo insistence, in this case.