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Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

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Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#171

Post by stereolambda »

claudeganon wrote: post #162
stereolambda wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In the big picture perhaps, but I tend to think about the raw economic and having-a-say-in-the-world status of an individual. In that sense, it's statistically better to be at the center and the mainstream. You can luck and hack your way into something from the periphery but it's harder. The wider benefits of cross-pollination is another discussion.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#172

Post by Hokusai »

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…

> "A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling: For ex...

That makes no sense, because it is not solving the problem with the English language pronunciation.

To solve pronunciation you have 2 options:

1. Set on 1 pronunciation for any syllable and stick with it. Throw away old pronunciations.

e.g. Arkansas sounds like "are + Kansas"

2. Word by word, re-write it in a way that fits its sound.

e.g. Kansas becomes Kensas and Arkansas becomes Arkanso. Or something like that, I do not get English pronunciation at all.

But, I understand that is not sociable possible. It follows the same logic that using the Imperial system. As we grow old, we like what we know, and we hate that people forces us to learn new things. So, changing how millions communicate would be very difficult.

I see more plausible a come back of Esperanto than to change how English is written or spoken.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#173

Post by Tainnor »

ColanR wrote: post #113
Tainnor wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That argument makes no sense. English is far from alone in borrowing heavily from other languages. Loanwords are one of the most obvious cases of linguistic contact and can be found everywhere throughout the world. There are multiple ways how a language can deal with such loanwords: they can keep the original spelling, making those words an irregular exception to the pronunciation rules, or they can adapt the spellin…

> There are multiple ways how a language can deal with such loanwords: they can keep the original spelling, making those words an irregular exception to the pronunciation rules... Isn't that the point? IIRC, English was originally about 50/50 Saxon and French - most of the fancy / unintuitive / rule-breaking words are French loan words (e.g., "rendezvous" & "accomplice" are French, "loan" is old Norse, "word" is old…

The "English creole" hypothesis has been discussed a lot and it is true that English is a bit special within Europe in having absorbed a lot of material from other languages such as French and Norse, but I still think that it is very recognisable as a Germanic language (both grammatically as well as from the perspective of "core vocabulary"), so I don't think that the languages "merged" in the same way as this maybe happened in the case of some recognised creoles. (See e.g. here for a summary: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_English_creole_hypoth...)

There is still no reason in principle why English couldn't have chosen a more regular system of spelling, especially at a time where literacy was low anyway. The idea that the spelling is irregular because you have several competing systems (French vs. Anglo-Saxon vs. Norse) might sound compelling, but I don't think it holds water, cf. homographs such as "sow" (female pig) and "sow" (to plant) which both have Old English origins.

(Also I don't think that "rendez-vous" is a good example. I don't have hard evidence, but I would find it entirely implausible that this is a word of Norman origin, it's much more likely to be a late import from the 18th or 19th century, when French was fashionable, not at all comparable to something like "pork".)

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#174

Post by Causality1 »

To me this is sort of the principles vs pragmatism problem. Would it be better if everyone spoke Esperanto? Sure. It's also true that you generate a lot more good in terms of economic opportunity for every dollar spent educating the underprivileged in English than you would trying to expand the reach of Esperanto.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#176

Post by learnstats2 »

anticensor wrote: post #78

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

I don't see any young people choosing to learn a language which has such problems with gender - when a learner has to deal with this in the first lesson.

Assuming male as the default seems to me to be increasingly evolving out of natural languages. Agreeing a reform among Esperanto-speakers seems impossible, given that many are attached to its historical roots.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#177

Post by musicale »

garmaine wrote: post #97
7thaccount wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I've always wanted to learn a language, but was frustrated by all the grammar irregularities and other barriers to entry. English has that in spades, but it wasn't a problem as you don't have to worry about that with your first language. Esperanto was the first language I've made any real progress with. Spanish is considered a fairly easy language for English speakers to learn, but I knew fairly little after 3…

Pretty much every other language has regular spelling, and many have very regular grammar. English is the exception, being a Frankenstein assemblage of languages.

> Pretty much every other language has regular spelling

That may be true for Chinese or Japanese phonetic alphabets (e.g. pinyin, bopomofo, hiragana, katakana, etc.) but literacy demands mastery of characters as well.

Although many characters have phonetic elements, it is essentially impossible to know how to write a word correctly in hanzi/kanji without knowing the component characters.

Among European languages, French seems to have challenging spelling, and there appear to be spelling bees for foreign learners at least. Dutch also seems to have had a spelling/dictation contest until recently.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#178

Post by learnstats2 »

7thaccount wrote: post #84
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…

Yeah, I've always wanted to learn a language, but was frustrated by all the grammar irregularities and other barriers to entry. English has that in spades, but it wasn't a problem as you don't have to worry about that with your first language. Esperanto was the first language I've made any real progress with. Spanish is considered a fairly easy language for English speakers to learn, but I knew fairly little after 3…

It's probable that Esperanto speakers speak more clearly because: a) that's the purpose of speaking the language, and, b) there are few conversations between two fully fluent speakers; even if you are fluent, you can't expect your conversation partner to be.

Spanish does have phonetic spelling, but is also likely to have more elision in every-day speech.

Native speakers know and use what is understood without needing to be said, from non-verbal cues.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#179

Post by ColanR »

Tainnor wrote: post #173
ColanR wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are multiple ways how a language can deal with such loanwords: they can keep the original spelling, making those words an irregular exception to the pronunciation rules... Isn't that the point? IIRC, English was originally about 50/50 Saxon and French - most of the fancy / unintuitive / rule-breaking words are French loan words (e.g., "rendezvous" & "accomplice" are French, "loan" is old Norse, "word" is old…

The "English creole" hypothesis has been discussed a lot and it is true that English is a bit special within Europe in having absorbed a lot of material from other languages such as French and Norse, but I still think that it is very recognisable as a Germanic language (both grammatically as well as from the perspective of "core vocabulary"), so I don't think that the languages "merged" in the same way as this maybe…

> There is still no reason in principle why English couldn't have chosen a more regular system of spelling, especially at a time where literacy was low anyway.

I mentioned that farther downthread. The original Webster's dictionary served exactly this purpose - in the early 1800s, his stated goal (IIRC) was to give the new USA a standardized language to help differentiate it from the country they'd split off from. Also mentioned downthread, he based his standardization on the languages the words were loaned from.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#180

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

claudeganon wrote: post #161
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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, whil…

> The idea was to preserve local autonomy...

Maybe some early Esperanto disseminators were like this, but Zamenhof himself hoped that Esperanto (or at least something like it) would eventually replace all local languages.

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