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Esperanto, Toki Pona, Swahili, Indonesian

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Re: Esperanto, Toki Pona, Swahili, Indonesian

#61

Post by hilux »

HKH2 wrote: post #26
School-Cotton wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's true of almost every language though This is an exaggeration. It’s definitely not true of French, Spanish, or German. Honorable mention for languages like Chinese that don’t even have the concept of “letter”.

Spanish and German are far more consistent than English. Mandarin Chinese has Pinyin which is modern and quite consistent - Pinyin is very useful because you can type it and select the corresponding Chinese characters.

Mao once considered replacing Chinese characters with Pinyin!

Re: Esperanto, Toki Pona, Swahili, Indonesian

#62

Post by myth2018 »

yorwba wrote: post #42
msla wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can look at the whole rest of the page I linked to for ways in which Esperanto is irregular and parochial. For example: http://jbr.me.uk/ranto/v.html There's a whole word class (words ending in AŬ) which is essentially a "Wastebasket Taxon" for his vocabulary: There is no regularity to what ended up there, merely arbitrary choice. That's acceptable in a natural language, but Esperanto is Modern and Scientific and…

I think it's technically true that someone in China at one point used Esperanto to introduce Western languages to a few other people, because around 1900 it was part of a package of futuristic Western ideas like overthrowing the Emperor and Communism. But the claim omits how utterly unsuccessful Chinese Esperantists were at their goal compared to the revolutionary Communists. (Even though they were sometimes the same…

On the other hand, Esperanto is one of the languages featured by Radio China International (https://esperanto.cri.cn), and there's also an official support for the El Cxinia Popolo magazine, and maybe others I'm not aware of. I'm not sure one can generalize 1) the antagonism between the communist government and Esperanto and 2) the lack of skills of the Chinese Esperanto speakers.

Re: Esperanto, Toki Pona, Swahili, Indonesian

#63

Post by justsomehnguy »

hipaa_eng wrote: post #24
nickincardone wrote: post #21

> He said that if he could have chosen a language, instead of English, to be the world’s shared second language, then it would be Swahili or colloquial Indonesian. I've learned Swahili to a basic conversational level and my experience learning the language mirrors the author's time picking up Esperanto. Grammatically, everything seems to make sense especially the simplicity of the verbs, and as a native English speak…

as a swahili speaker I'd say that the beauty of swahili is that it's commonplace to butcher these noun classes unless you're from Tanzania. Kenyans, Congolese, Ugandas do it all the time

As a speaker of a gendered language in a neighbourhood of a non-gendered ones: aside a few anecdotes nobody cares.

Re: Esperanto, Toki Pona, Swahili, Indonesian

#65

Post by 7thaccount »

hilux wrote: post #60
7thaccount wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might exaggerate this a bit. One of the beauties of Esperanto being constructed is that the letters only make one sound and not like 2-4 and there are a bunch of other tricks to keep vocabulary reasonable and grammar logical without a bazillion edge cases. It might be easier for an English speaker to learn than a Chinese speaker, but I guarantee it would be much easier for that Chinese speaker to learn Es…

> It might be easier for an English speaker to learn than a Chinese speaker, but I guarantee it would be much easier for that Chinese speaker to learn Esperanto than English. Proposing such an obviously "white European" language as the global lingua franca is incredibly offputting to many people. Yes, English may be the de facto lingua franca, but at least no one is pretending that it's "objectively best," as they ar…

Name me a better alternative? This is all theoretical anyway.

Re: Esperanto, Toki Pona, Swahili, Indonesian

#66

Post by pavel_lishin »

hilux wrote: post #59

> They were disheveled and unkempt. They had signs saying we could have world peace if everyone spoke Esperanto. ... I cringed. As a math major and lifelong chess player ... "cringy" is how I feel about so many math and chess people I meet. It sucks. Intellectuals so often are impractical, and also interpersonally challenging. I wish I had spent my childhood on team sports instead.

> As a math major and lifelong chess player ... "cringy" is how I feel about so many math and chess people I meet. It sucks.

This feels like something many hobbies share. The more obscure, the more likely you are to run into the weirdos and "edge cases" who are, well, poorly socialized, I guess. But you also get to meet the weirdos and edge cases who are tremendously interesting!

> I wish I had spent my childhood on team sports instead.

I didn't do any team sports growing up, but I'm trying my best to make sure my kid does.

Re: Esperanto, Toki Pona, Swahili, Indonesian

#67

Post by adastra22 »

kragen wrote: post #58
adastra22 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think that’s a fair assessment. You can’t judge one system by the rules used to construct another entirely different system.

i'm not sure what you are referring to

I was responding to the thing about Chinese specifically.

Re: Esperanto, Toki Pona, Swahili, Indonesian

#68

Post by Taikonerd »

Graziano_M wrote: post #30

I learned Esperanto years ago, not because I wanted to speak the language, but because I heard that students who learned it had an easier time picking up third languages, to the point that they'd surpass those who had been learning that 3rd language (as their second) the whole time! It seems that that strong of a claim has been since removed from Wikipedia, and I am skeptical about it as well. I wish I had spent the…

> It seems that that strong of a claim has been since removed from Wikipedia

It's still on Wikipedia, as the "Paderborn method": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paderborn_method

I'm not sure if Paderborn's claim is true. I'd love to see more modern attempts to replicate it.

Re: Esperanto, Toki Pona, Swahili, Indonesian

#69

Post by Viliam1234 »

hilux wrote: post #60
7thaccount wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might exaggerate this a bit. One of the beauties of Esperanto being constructed is that the letters only make one sound and not like 2-4 and there are a bunch of other tricks to keep vocabulary reasonable and grammar logical without a bazillion edge cases. It might be easier for an English speaker to learn than a Chinese speaker, but I guarantee it would be much easier for that Chinese speaker to learn Es…

> It might be easier for an English speaker to learn than a Chinese speaker, but I guarantee it would be much easier for that Chinese speaker to learn Esperanto than English. Proposing such an obviously "white European" language as the global lingua franca is incredibly offputting to many people. Yes, English may be the de facto lingua franca, but at least no one is pretending that it's "objectively best," as they ar…

> Proposing such an obviously "white European" language as the global lingua franca is incredibly offputting to many people.

A random person on this planet hears about Esperanto: "Sounds easier than English, I guess."

A random woke American hears about Esperanto: "No, silly, let me get offended on your behalf. 'How dare you dream about the world peace, evil white male Zamenhof, how dare you!' Ok, now everyone go back talking English."

Re: Esperanto, Toki Pona, Swahili, Indonesian

#70

Post by Viliam1234 »

senkora wrote: post #28
zozbot234 wrote: post #12

> And oh my god! It’s fascinating! The language [Esperanto] is so well designed! Everything made sense and with each new thing I learned, I thought “That’s brilliant!” Not sure if serious? Obligatory link to JBR's "Bad Language" Ranto: http://jbr.me.uk/ranto/

^This seems to have been downvoted for tone. Fair enough, but I do encourage anyone with an interest in Esperanto to read the linked document. It is a classic post on the complexities of Esperanto that are not obvious to the casual learner, that contains quite a lot of insight.

The entire list is just one huge Nirvana fallacy. Okay, so Esperanto is not literally perfect, it has some flaws... and therefore we should reject it, and instead use some language that has 10x or 100x more of exactly the same flaws? How does that make sense?

Some of the objections, I am not even sure what the author tried to say. For example, point 01a, Esperanto has only 5 vowels, while English has 19. Uhm, interesting, but... are you saying that more is better? I guess that would be a subjective choice: more vowels allow words to be shorter, but are difficult to learn for people who do not have such vowels in their native language. So it is not obvious whether 5 or 19 is better; probably depends on whom you ask.

Point 01b, Esperantists from different countries pronounce the sound R slightly differently. Well yes, that is what you inevitably get when people from different countries try talking the same language. Do you think their versions of English are the same?

Point 02d, Esperanto has accented letters that do not exist on English typewriters. Sure, Esperanto and hundred other languages. What's your point? Is a language universal only when it uses English alphabet? Also, this is not a problem in practice, you either install a keyboard for the language (just like you do with every language other than English) or simply use the "x-method" (write accented letters as letters followed by "x").

But most objections are simply of the kind "I would do it differently". Cool, go ahead and design your own language. Then wait to see it reviewed by someone like you.

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