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Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

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Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#131

Post by Wowfunhappy »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #93
def_true_false wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Updating the ortography once in a while would take care of most of the problems. There are real languages that have successfully made "updates" to reflect the shifts in pronunciation, or the usage of additional sounds (compared to Latin), unlike English.

> "updates" to reflect the shifts in pronunciation, 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. And which language do you have in mind when you imply that there are languages that are pronounced in the same way by all of its speakers? Anyway, there is no Academy in…

> 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 think of it, the idea that a word with many correct pronunciations has only one correct spelling is actually totally weird! Why should writing be more prescriptive than speech?

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#132

Post by irrational »

Recently someone said to me that the EU really needs a common language - just like how English is spoken across most USA states. But none of the current European languages would be acceptable across the EU.

It didn’t occur to me at the time, but now I wonder if Esperanto could fill that role?

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#133

Post by bluedevil2k »

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

That’s how language has worked throughout history. Alexander the Great spread Greek. Rome spread Latin.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#135

Post by jobigoud »

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…

> Perhaps it's just raw numbers, more people = more content.

Definitely not that… Some languages with less speakers generate more content than others with more speakers. It's cultural. It's not just Internet, if you look for science fiction novels for example you'll find more in Polish or German than in Portuguese, even though the latter has far more speakers.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#136

Post by dropofwill »

sushshshsh wrote: post #30
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…

I was unironically able to read that but it would probably be better if everyone learned IPA just for fun to use for all languages and see if people find it useful or not. If it's not useful it will die out.

IPA is great for writing down how people speak, but I don't think that's the most important aspect to capture for most writing. An example where this might be useful is the dialogue in Twain's novels, where he would often try to capture the particulars of his characters dialects.

But for most writing the goal is to share meaning, not voice. What would we do for a word like `data`, which has at least 5 different pronunciations that I've heard. Accepting all of them would probably lead to the opposite of the goal. Picking one leads to the same controversy.

Add to that people often aren't aware of their own pronunciation. Personal example is that in my dialect I have the fool/full merger. I wasn't aware of this, I simply heard the language other people spoke as I pronounced it. At university I literally didn't believe people who were telling me that they pronounce those words differently. I just couldn't hear it.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#137

Post by wizzwizz4 »

emodendroket wrote: post #77
marcodiego wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Of a person, yes. Of a language, I think the intention is clear.

Note that this is syntactically ambiguous – a lovely feature of English. Try writing a sentence that isn't.

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#138

Post by Rapzid »

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…

Heh.. As somebody who has studied a little Japanese by the end the voice in my head had taken on that of a Japanese person struggling with English..

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#139

Post by JdeBP »

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?

Ancient-looking to you perhaps; but an invention of the Etruscans and Romans (writing the aspirated "p" that they took from Classical Greek as "ph", hence the Romanized name of the letter "phi") and not in fact as ancient as the Phoenician digamma "f" that you are using. (-:

Re: Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

#140

Post by emodendroket »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #137
emodendroket wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Of a person, yes. Of a language, I think the intention is clear. Note that this is syntactically ambiguous – a lovely feature of English. Try writing a sentence that isn't.

Syntactic ambiguity is a feature of human languages, period. Nothing is uniquely English about it.
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