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Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

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Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#161

Post by claudeganon »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #90
peatmoss wrote: post #50

For me, what I love most about Esperanto is its unabashed affirmative optimism. The name itself means “one who hopes.” For me it’s a microcosm of competing epistemologies in society. I’ll be a little casual with definitions here, but if we adopt a rationalist / positivist view of the world, Esperanto is a straightforward solution to a problem. Zamenhof despaired at his multi-ethnic neighbors killing each other. He hy…

Zamenhof’s optimism isn’t as universally admired as you suggest. First of all, the Yugoslav wars stand as bloody proof that even if neighbors can understand each other and speak more or less the same language, they can just find something else to fight over. Secondly, Zamenhof was still writing from an Enlightenment-era framework that saw language diversity as a problem, something to systematize away. In our modern e…

>Secondly, Zamenhof was still writing from an Enlightenment-era framework that saw language diversity as a problem, something to systematize away.

The anarchist philosophy that was responsible for the global spread of Esperanto was far more complex than this and rooted in a rejection of reductive, Darwinist cultural formulations that were coming to prominence at the time. The idea was to preserve local autonomy, while providing a universal medium for exchange, such that communities could develop their own unique cultural systems and permutations thereof, but still have recourse to share them in a mutally beneficial way with others. Esperanto was widely popular in Japan under this rubric, for example:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23357508

It was likewise suppressed by authoritarian regimes on the left and right for its encouragement of this eclecticism.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#162

Post by claudeganon »

stereolambda wrote: post #83
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…

I think that the advantages of being a native speaker in the end outweigh the disadvantages. You are exposed to the dominant economic and cultural ecosystems easier and much earlier. You may lack some ability to switch context and reframe things for different cultures, but it's not generally a practical necessity in life. On the other hand, you may sometimes be harder to understand for non-native speakers, especially…

>You are exposed to the dominant economic and cultural ecosystems easier and much earlier.

I don't think that early induction into specific ideologies as something to be described as blanket good. This kind of monolingualism certainly hasn't helped the intellectual life of the average American or its society writ large.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#163

Post by anticensor »

JdeBP wrote: post #153
anticensor wrote: post #78

I have a mother, not a fatheress. (Esperanto speakers got the joke)

There have been efforts to fix this over the years, but this is indeed a problem with the way that the language was designed.

Esperanto has chosen all words to be masculine positive by default, they could have introduced a feminine-only word like French does though, such as mino.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#164

Post by simion314 »

JdeBP wrote: post #146
simion314 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

OK, I give up on my idea, hopefully some linguists would popup in here and link some articles that would explore the topic. I think it would be interesting to plug some rules into an algorithm and have it search for the optimal language. We would not force it as a main language but a secondary one, like when you make a movie or book you provide a translation in this language too on top of the other popular languages you support. Since is a simple and perfectly defined language from it you could auto-generate translation to less popular languages.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#165

Post by Wowfunhappy »

thotsBgone wrote: post #156
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which pronunciation will you choose? If you are a prescriptive linguist from Newcastle you will presumably expect everyone to use a short a in 'castle' but someone from the south would use a long a. It occurs to me that in an alternate universe, the answer could be "both spellings are correct", because logically speaking, if both pronunciations are correct, shouldn't the same apply to the written version? Come to t…

I don't want to read your words in your accent, I want to read them with my internal monologue.

Huh, that's fair—I suppose if it was possible to wear earpieces that made others's accents match our own, perhaps we would! Writing actually makes it possible.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#166

Post by Tade0 »

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…

They've gotten so good, you don't even need to learn a new language to learn something that's only available in English

It's a mixed bag really. Japanese is still too foreign for Google Translate to interpret properly outside of common phrases.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#167

Post by msla »

emodendroket wrote: post #48

If Esperanto were ever adapted in significant numbers it would develop irregular forms and all the other quirks that make natural languages difficult to learn.

Not if it were only ever a second language, learned in classrooms and nowhere else.

Think modern Latin: It's not evolving anymore. It's adding words, but its grammar is unchanging.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#169

Post by jodrellblank »

bigbubba wrote: post #110
jodrellblank wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My reading of Esperanto wasn’t to make everyone have to speak it as their first and only language (though I’m sure some have suggested that), but to make it a simpler more convenient halfway house language that would put everyone at the same disadvantage, if you will. you show willingness to be friendly and negotiate by stepping away from your native language and learning another, but you don’t have to step into anot…

> Expecting to go anywhere and speak English is rude. I would just like to clear this up: I do not support the notion of any universal language, and that includes English. My observation that English is relatively more universal than Esperanto is not an endorsement of the premise of universal languages being a laudable goal.

Let me change that, a traveller expecting to go anywhere and speak their native language is rude, expecting all travellers to learn every destination language of everywhere they go is unworkable. Every employee learning the language of every company and customer, also unworkable. A universal intermediate language that isn’t any nation’s preferred language and hasn’t been part of any colonial efforts in the past, is a possible way to dodge both those things. Not rude because everyone’s stepping out of their home language.

But it would have to be grassroots - if the English government mandated that everyone speak Esperanto in school then tried to spread it round Ireland and the EU it would ruin it. Same if the EU adopted it en masse, Brexiteers would reject it on principle. It could only ever happen if it grew in a balanced way where more and more places distributed around the world use it, and more and more people around the world learn it because it’s useful, and it somehow never becomes one country or one group’s unfair advantage. (That is to say, it can’t ever happen).

Would you still oppose a universal language if it was voluntary, not pushed by one nation into others, and not a replacement to primary national languages?

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