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Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

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Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#191

Post by im3w1l »

pwdisswordfish4 wrote: post #181
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…

Every now and then comments like this one pop up (or even a bit more frequently than the way that sounds). But it's hard to understand how they get written up and posted. It only makes sense if you assume the author has dozed off halfway through the comment they meant to reply to, woke up, and banged out a response anyway.

I thought so too, but after rereading both comments, he does respond to a rather central point

> has coalesced a community infused with something of the “let’s build” optimism

with

> among the most active Esperantists who attended the annual European congresses (...) Those super-idealistic Esperantists (...) were seen as weirdos

Thus saying that such a community has in fact not coalesced.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#192

Post by emodendroket »

jhbadger wrote: post #189
emodendroket wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's part of it, but another way vocabulary can be easy is if it is self-documenting meaning you can figure out the meaning without memorizing it specifically. The Chinese 地理 is literally "Earth Science" (a term also used in English but with a broader meaning of all sciences dealing with the earth including geology and geophysics as well as geography) . Spanish "geografía" means "earth description" but isn't as sel…

Well in Japanese it's the same word but now you have to know all about Chinese for Japanese words, not to mention learning to write the characters, which is just a big hurdle you don't have to worry about with Western languages. And beyond that, yeah, Spanish words you might need to know about Greek and Latin morphemes but my point is those exact same ones are all over our language already so they're familiar. I already know that "geo-" means "Earth" and "co-" means "together" from my native language.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#193

Post by emodendroket »

msla wrote: post #167
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.

But in the medieval period, when Latin was actually used as a lingua franca in just the way you suggest, it continued evolving, not just in vocabulary, but also in grammar and pronunciation, to the point where Latin users from different countries struggled to understand each other. If Latin today is really unchanging it's probably because there are few people who aren't classics scholars or in the Vatican who actually produce anything in it.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#194

Post by nashashmi »

Fnoord wrote: post #102
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…

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…

> > In the third year, publik akseptanse of the new spelling kan be expected to reach the stage where more komplikated changes are possible. Governments will encourage the removal of double leters, which have always ben a deterent to akurate speling. Also, al wil agre that the horible mes of silent "e"s in the languag is disgrasful and they woud go.

"expected" still has a 'c'

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#195

Post by sterlind »

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…

Esperanto helps with that by being polysynthetic and allowing you to attach suffixes to extend words (agglutination)

For instance:

good - bon+e (-e makes adverb)

bad - mal+bon+e (mal- is like un-)

very bad - mal+bon+eg+e (-eg- intensifies)

to make bad - mal+bon+ig+i (-ig- makes active, -i makes a verb)

to make worse - pli+mal+bon+ig+i (pli- means more)

you can also string roots together like in German: man+sak+o = hand+bag+noun suffix = purse/handbag.

this, and the familiarity of the roots to Indo-European speakers, makes Esperanto very fast for Europeans to learn. a small number of roots and good grammar gives you a lot of return on your time.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#197

Post by axegon_ »

leke wrote: post #160
axegon_ wrote: post #14

I gave it a go several years ago out of curiosity. Knowing 1 Germanic language(English), 1 Romance language(Spanish) and 1 Slavic(Bulgarian), I found it brutally easy. For the most part, I could understand the average conversation out of the box with ease. One thing that came to my mind is that it could be a huge win for nlp purposes: With such simple, yet incredibly strict rules, you'd be able to make an incredibly…

I tried it too, but eventually walked away from the endeavor. I found you really have to learn to think the "Esperanto way" of saying things. That's the tricky part. At least, if I tried to communicate a more complex thought other than a general conversation, it wouldn't really be understood by the community, or at least be understandable, but just incorrect. To overcome this, I think I would have next had to emerge…

That's another thing I've noticed: having used all the languages I speak as primary for extended periods of time, it seems that I can entirely switch my way of thinking into either one. That is, my thoughts can operate with either one of the three and I switch between them depending on the context. Which is extremely convenient but comes with a drawback - I'm quite possibly the worst interpreter out there: ask me to translate a sentence with more than one verb and you get gibberish at best. Unless it's written down and I have the time to process it.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#198

Post by msla »

emodendroket wrote: post #193
msla wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But in the medieval period, when Latin was actually used as a lingua franca in just the way you suggest, it continued evolving, not just in vocabulary, but also in grammar and pronunciation, to the point where Latin users from different countries struggled to understand each other. If Latin today is really unchanging it's probably because there are few people who aren't classics scholars or in the Vatican who actuall…

> If Latin today is really unchanging it's probably because there are few people who aren't classics scholars or in the Vatican who actually produce anything in it.

That's probably a big factor. Maybe Esperanto would achieve similar stability if it were only used by ISO working groups or in other official environments. But if that happens, it ought to come under fire for its Eurocentrism, its sexism, and its general quirkiness, all of which it has been able to skate on because it's never been taken seriously before.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#199

Post by adrianN »

emodendroket wrote: post #123
adrianN wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe after a couple of centuries. Languages don't change that fast, especially after the introduction of the printing press and formal language education in schools. You can read 200 year old texts without problems. Shakespeare is close to five hundred years old and you can still understand it with a little effort.

It seems like it would be exactly analogous to the formation of pidgins, which takes one generation, not centuries. Also, if I think back to high school I would challenge the idea that every speaker of modern English has "no problems" reading 200-year-old texts.

People have been learning foreign languages in school without developing a pidgin for a long time now. Pidgin formation seems much more likely if the language acquisition is not as part of formal training, but from an informal need to communicate like for trade.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#200

Post by anticensor »

learnstats2 wrote: post #176
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.

It is obvious Zamenhof artificially selected the vocabulary to equate grammatical and natural genders. This artificial selection also applied to all words being positive by default: to say bad, you need to say ungood instead.
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