Ok point taken, but I still prefer Klingon.
Prix Nobel pour l'espéranto ?
"Who decides what is correct and what is not? What sounds wrong and what sounds natural?", asks Guest (Dec 04, 12:40).
The community of speakers. As long as the few basic rules are observed, you express yourself as you please. In English you must say "I thank you", in French "Je vous remercie" (litterally "I you thank"), in German "Ich danke Ihnen" (litt. "I thank to you"). Only one form is correct in each of the three languages. In Esperanto you can say "Mi dankas vin", "Mi vin dankas" or "Mi dankas al vi". All three forms are OK and in constant use. 120 years of experience on all continents shows that this freedom does not impair perfect mutual understanding. Sure, you have to use a form that tells who thanks from who is thanked, but which of the possible forms you use is your own choice. As a matter of fact, this system enhances spontaneity. Personnally, I couldn't tell you which form is most frequent in my own use. I should listen to records of conversations I have in Esperanto do determine it.
The community of speakers. As long as the few basic rules are observed, you express yourself as you please. In English you must say "I thank you", in French "Je vous remercie" (litterally "I you thank"), in German "Ich danke Ihnen" (litt. "I thank to you"). Only one form is correct in each of the three languages. In Esperanto you can say "Mi dankas vin", "Mi vin dankas" or "Mi dankas al vi". All three forms are OK and in constant use. 120 years of experience on all continents shows that this freedom does not impair perfect mutual understanding. Sure, you have to use a form that tells who thanks from who is thanked, but which of the possible forms you use is your own choice. As a matter of fact, this system enhances spontaneity. Personnally, I couldn't tell you which form is most frequent in my own use. I should listen to records of conversations I have in Esperanto do determine it.
Some sentences in English are correct grammatically but sound wrong.
So nothing sounds wrong in Esperanto as long as grammatically correct?
So nothing sounds wrong in Esperanto as long as grammatically correct?
<<when you write literature, the language is your material, and, for that, you need a mastery that you can attain only in your mother tongue (and Esperanto).>>
Why can someone "master" Esperanto as a second (or n-th) language well enough to write great literature, but not any other language?
(Of course, the vast majority of us, including me, can't master our own native language well enough to write literature at all.)
Why can someone "master" Esperanto as a second (or n-th) language well enough to write great literature, but not any other language?
(Of course, the vast majority of us, including me, can't master our own native language well enough to write literature at all.)
i doubt that Esperanto is as expressive and spontenous as traditional languages because parents don't theach their children to speak in Esperanto, lovers don't say to each other "I love you" and other things in Esperanto, students in School don't study in Esperanto, and so on. As Guest said, once you build a grammatically correct sentence in Esperanto , that's all, but English, Spanish and the rest of languages don't work that way, since to say certain things you must express them with a predefined gramatical construction and other sentences , despite may be in theory correct, sound odd to the speakers of that language.
Hello,
In response to:
So nothing sounds wrong in Esperanto as long as grammatically correct?
Word order is not important because each word is gramatically "tagged".
If in your language, you use Subject+Verb+Complement, then great.
But if you use Complement+Subject+Verb, no problem.
It is like German. You can put up front the word you want to stress in the sentence.
For instance:
I bought the book.
If you start with "I", it is because you want to stress who bought the book, i.e. you and not your mother.
If you start with "bought", it is because you want to stress what you did, i.e. you bought it, you did not steal it.
If you start with "the book", it is because you want to stress what you bought, i.e. the book, not a clock.
It is very flexible, like German, but even more so because people from all different cultures and languages can use Esperanto as they like without sounding strange.
It is really pretty neat.
Ciao,
F. Bartsch
In response to:
So nothing sounds wrong in Esperanto as long as grammatically correct?
Word order is not important because each word is gramatically "tagged".
If in your language, you use Subject+Verb+Complement, then great.
But if you use Complement+Subject+Verb, no problem.
It is like German. You can put up front the word you want to stress in the sentence.
For instance:
I bought the book.
If you start with "I", it is because you want to stress who bought the book, i.e. you and not your mother.
If you start with "bought", it is because you want to stress what you did, i.e. you bought it, you did not steal it.
If you start with "the book", it is because you want to stress what you bought, i.e. the book, not a clock.
It is very flexible, like German, but even more so because people from all different cultures and languages can use Esperanto as they like without sounding strange.
It is really pretty neat.
Ciao,
F. Bartsch
Esperanto will never sound strange if you follow the rules because there are not native speakers.
An anonymous guest said:
> "i doubt that Esperanto is as expressive and spontenous as traditional languages"
Well, let's compare like with like. For the vast majority of its speakers, Esperanto is a *second* language that they use with people who have a different first language; so you should be comparing the expressive capacity that people have in *their* second languages with what people manage in Esperanto.
Having said that, while that describes the primary reason for the language's existence, its use does go beyond that -- way beyond -- and people find that it's just as easy to be very expressive in Esperanto as in other languages, even one's own native language.
> "because parents don't theach their children to speak in Esperanto"
Well, except for the parents that *do* teach their children Esperanto. The number of people who speak Esperanto as a first language, i.e. learnt at home as a small child through hearing it used at home, is quite small, and only a small percentage of the number of Esperanto speakers, but they do exist.
> "lovers don't say to each other "I love you" and other things in Esperanto"
See above. ;o) Lots of couples form at international Esperanto meetings whose only common language is Esperanto. This of course leads to the children mentioned above!
Umberto Eco once made the same declaration -- "You can't make love in Esperanto!" -- and a young woman in his audience raised her hand and said, "Pardon me for contradicting you, sir, but I can attest that one certainly *can* make love in Esperanto."
> "i doubt that Esperanto is as expressive and spontenous as traditional languages"
Well, let's compare like with like. For the vast majority of its speakers, Esperanto is a *second* language that they use with people who have a different first language; so you should be comparing the expressive capacity that people have in *their* second languages with what people manage in Esperanto.
Having said that, while that describes the primary reason for the language's existence, its use does go beyond that -- way beyond -- and people find that it's just as easy to be very expressive in Esperanto as in other languages, even one's own native language.
> "because parents don't theach their children to speak in Esperanto"
Well, except for the parents that *do* teach their children Esperanto. The number of people who speak Esperanto as a first language, i.e. learnt at home as a small child through hearing it used at home, is quite small, and only a small percentage of the number of Esperanto speakers, but they do exist.
> "lovers don't say to each other "I love you" and other things in Esperanto"
See above. ;o) Lots of couples form at international Esperanto meetings whose only common language is Esperanto. This of course leads to the children mentioned above!
Umberto Eco once made the same declaration -- "You can't make love in Esperanto!" -- and a young woman in his audience raised her hand and said, "Pardon me for contradicting you, sir, but I can attest that one certainly *can* make love in Esperanto."
Hello,
In response to:
Why can someone "master" Esperanto as a second (or n-th) language well enough to write great literature, but not any other language?
Esperanto is far easier to master because, as mentioned above, it is very flexible. It is also a language virtually without exceptions, thus removing a vast amount of memory work. I could teach you the general past, the present and the future of all verbs in less than five seconds. My students in English and German go bananas when I show them. They then spend a number of years of hard work trying to achieve the same proficiency in English and German.
Words are easy to form. The famous example is the word horse.
Horse, stallion, gelding, mare, colt, filly, foal, stable, etc. Eight root words without even looking hard. All these words can be formed in Esperanto with the same root, plus a suffix. There are about 30 suffixes for the whole language, people generally take about a day to feel comfortable with them. Then they have fun inventing words and asking "Is that how you say it in Esperanto?" and the answere most often is Yes!
So it truly is remarkably easy to master Esperanto. I have seen people write decent short stories just weeks after starting to learn the language (at on average four hours of study per week).
As a teacher of languages, it is fun to see students gain confidence and have fun, which is rarely the case for "national" languages.
Ciao,
F. Bartsch
In response to:
Why can someone "master" Esperanto as a second (or n-th) language well enough to write great literature, but not any other language?
Esperanto is far easier to master because, as mentioned above, it is very flexible. It is also a language virtually without exceptions, thus removing a vast amount of memory work. I could teach you the general past, the present and the future of all verbs in less than five seconds. My students in English and German go bananas when I show them. They then spend a number of years of hard work trying to achieve the same proficiency in English and German.
Words are easy to form. The famous example is the word horse.
Horse, stallion, gelding, mare, colt, filly, foal, stable, etc. Eight root words without even looking hard. All these words can be formed in Esperanto with the same root, plus a suffix. There are about 30 suffixes for the whole language, people generally take about a day to feel comfortable with them. Then they have fun inventing words and asking "Is that how you say it in Esperanto?" and the answere most often is Yes!
So it truly is remarkably easy to master Esperanto. I have seen people write decent short stories just weeks after starting to learn the language (at on average four hours of study per week).
As a teacher of languages, it is fun to see students gain confidence and have fun, which is rarely the case for "national" languages.
Ciao,
F. Bartsch
Hello,
In response to:
once you build a grammatically correct sentence in Esperanto , that's all,
Do you mean that the sentence has no real meaning?
You must understand that Esperanto has a built-in set of rules, is very flexible, etc., but it is also the product of a "population" over the past 120 years. Words are now formed in one way and not in others because that is the way the decision of the community came down.
Example.
Belulino
Bel + ul + in + o
Beautiful + person + feminin + standard ending for names of things
The order of the 2nd and 3rd elements could theoretically be inverted, but... no one does that (except beginners). The word "belulino" has thus taken on a real meaning and depth of its own because it is used and shared by millions of people.
In short, the language is no longer a lifeless project. It is a language just as capable of moving people, inspiring them, angering them as any other.
It really is time to stop with the clichés.
Ciao,
F. Bartsch
In response to:
once you build a grammatically correct sentence in Esperanto , that's all,
Do you mean that the sentence has no real meaning?
You must understand that Esperanto has a built-in set of rules, is very flexible, etc., but it is also the product of a "population" over the past 120 years. Words are now formed in one way and not in others because that is the way the decision of the community came down.
Example.
Belulino
Bel + ul + in + o
Beautiful + person + feminin + standard ending for names of things
The order of the 2nd and 3rd elements could theoretically be inverted, but... no one does that (except beginners). The word "belulino" has thus taken on a real meaning and depth of its own because it is used and shared by millions of people.
In short, the language is no longer a lifeless project. It is a language just as capable of moving people, inspiring them, angering them as any other.
It really is time to stop with the clichés.
Ciao,
F. Bartsch
The typical discussions about Esperanto, as I can see here, are quite understandable. I've tried to learn Esperanto (June), ended up... well, quite satisfied, especially owing to its easiness, even without using any sort of efficient learning methods I would later (September) design to learn other language with "less pain". No, there is still some pain of Esperanto! (below) But it's minimal - less so than any other conlangs which I believe to be unnecessary with the popularity of Esperanto.
I don't wish to discuss issues that are subject to "vain" debates, like the vocabulary source of Esperanto - I only knew English as one of the source languages, and did find it hard to remember the peculiar word roots (those actually from Latin, German...), but I understood that it couldn't be any more neutral. Other conlangs that are written Latin with loads of Russian, Hindi and Chinese-chopped-up word roots are simply unlearnable. So, I think Esperanto is a good compromise, yet...
I find that both plural and accusative markers are entirely unnecessary. If you really like that sort of markers as some sort of tricks for Chinese learners, for example, better add more cases instead of just one. That sort of free word order is just unnecessary. (Or perhaps English would be a better model of inflectional markers)
While I still appreciate this language, especially for the human factors, I would find it hard to encourage others to try it. It's understandable that it would be difficult to make it "easier" in any way, but the virtual-ness and emptiness would easily lead some Chinese (whose native script isn't the Latin, whose native language doesn't share those peculiar word roots [even for me, with some good knowledge of word roots]) to regard it as... well, any negative adjectives which I don't want to mention but you can name.
I thought that Esperanto, while easy, was not much of "practical" use, even if I meant reading it online. I thought that, while easy, it wouldn't take significantly less time to learn. After I discovered some better methods to learn, yes, I could of course learn Esperanto even faster than before. But it still doesn't help much, even though it lacks some typical unnecessary features of its source languages (genders, cases, chaotic spelling, nasal vowels, tricky idioms, tricky collations.....to sum up, millions of exceptions that would your whole life to learn them all), conceptually its agglutinative features wouldn't reduce its difficulty terribly much. Its objective easiness should not have been promoted (thus its fame). That language education of other languages in general fails to address the needs of students isn't really a good reason of learning a conlang instead (so, what's the point of that?) Its perpetual selling point should be neutrality (even though, as I see it, as a native of a yet-to-become-democratic country, it could actually be too idealistic).
I don't wish to discuss issues that are subject to "vain" debates, like the vocabulary source of Esperanto - I only knew English as one of the source languages, and did find it hard to remember the peculiar word roots (those actually from Latin, German...), but I understood that it couldn't be any more neutral. Other conlangs that are written Latin with loads of Russian, Hindi and Chinese-chopped-up word roots are simply unlearnable. So, I think Esperanto is a good compromise, yet...
I find that both plural and accusative markers are entirely unnecessary. If you really like that sort of markers as some sort of tricks for Chinese learners, for example, better add more cases instead of just one. That sort of free word order is just unnecessary. (Or perhaps English would be a better model of inflectional markers)
While I still appreciate this language, especially for the human factors, I would find it hard to encourage others to try it. It's understandable that it would be difficult to make it "easier" in any way, but the virtual-ness and emptiness would easily lead some Chinese (whose native script isn't the Latin, whose native language doesn't share those peculiar word roots [even for me, with some good knowledge of word roots]) to regard it as... well, any negative adjectives which I don't want to mention but you can name.
I thought that Esperanto, while easy, was not much of "practical" use, even if I meant reading it online. I thought that, while easy, it wouldn't take significantly less time to learn. After I discovered some better methods to learn, yes, I could of course learn Esperanto even faster than before. But it still doesn't help much, even though it lacks some typical unnecessary features of its source languages (genders, cases, chaotic spelling, nasal vowels, tricky idioms, tricky collations.....to sum up, millions of exceptions that would your whole life to learn them all), conceptually its agglutinative features wouldn't reduce its difficulty terribly much. Its objective easiness should not have been promoted (thus its fame). That language education of other languages in general fails to address the needs of students isn't really a good reason of learning a conlang instead (so, what's the point of that?) Its perpetual selling point should be neutrality (even though, as I see it, as a native of a yet-to-become-democratic country, it could actually be too idealistic).
Supplement: I forgot miserably another huge drawback of the language - the script - or more precisely - the diacritic marks. It might be unrealistic to do reforms with Esperanto (perhaps, it shouldn't be changed for good), but those diacritic marks, along with plural and accusative markers (but not tenses; they are more efficient than Chinese, so they are useful), just appear to me like the silent letters of some languages.
01:22 pm <<Why can someone master Esperanto well enough to write literature but not another language?>>
The answer belongs to a large extent to the field of neuropsychology. Esperanto is a language in which there is no secondary reflex to insert in the brain to repress primary reflexes. I've observed a 5 year old child who was bilingual French /Esperanto. His Esperanto was perfect, his French was far from the standard. All his mistakes in French were due to exceptions, and thus impossible in Esperanto. They were similar to those of an English speaking child who says "my foots" for "my feet", "I falled" for "I fell" or "a fisher" for "a fisherman". It is applying its natural tendency to use -- to fully generalize, in fact -- primary reflexes. Only gradually will it install the secondary reflexes which will repress these spontaneous forms and replace them by the correct ones. In a language with only primary reflexes, the feeling of mastery, of security, is much stronger. Moreover, since the language results from use by people with the most diverse cultural and language backgrounds, it has incorporated a tolerance to diversity which does not exist in other languages and which makes it much easier to be oneself. In English, I'm constantly asking myself questions: is this correct? is this acceptable? does this have the meaning I think? Is the past tense of "cost" "costed" or "cost"? You can't write your feelings or conceive a proper dialogue if you're constantly plagued by such questions. I never have such doubts when speaking or writing in Esperanto. I'd need a book to answer the question, but I hope this will give an idea.
The answer belongs to a large extent to the field of neuropsychology. Esperanto is a language in which there is no secondary reflex to insert in the brain to repress primary reflexes. I've observed a 5 year old child who was bilingual French /Esperanto. His Esperanto was perfect, his French was far from the standard. All his mistakes in French were due to exceptions, and thus impossible in Esperanto. They were similar to those of an English speaking child who says "my foots" for "my feet", "I falled" for "I fell" or "a fisher" for "a fisherman". It is applying its natural tendency to use -- to fully generalize, in fact -- primary reflexes. Only gradually will it install the secondary reflexes which will repress these spontaneous forms and replace them by the correct ones. In a language with only primary reflexes, the feeling of mastery, of security, is much stronger. Moreover, since the language results from use by people with the most diverse cultural and language backgrounds, it has incorporated a tolerance to diversity which does not exist in other languages and which makes it much easier to be oneself. In English, I'm constantly asking myself questions: is this correct? is this acceptable? does this have the meaning I think? Is the past tense of "cost" "costed" or "cost"? You can't write your feelings or conceive a proper dialogue if you're constantly plagued by such questions. I never have such doubts when speaking or writing in Esperanto. I'd need a book to answer the question, but I hope this will give an idea.
Xie thinks that plural and accusative markers are unnecessary. Maybe. But at least they're useful. In international settings, when people have mother tongues with extremely different structures, the more precision you have the better. In a sentence like "he did not approve the amendments to the draft resolution submitted by India", a language without markers, such as English, is a cause of misunderstanding. In the actual case I quote here, "submitted by India" referred to the amendments, not to the draft resolution. In Esperanto you'd have "submetita" or "proponita" if the submitted text was the resolution, "submetitajn" or "proponitajn" if it was the amendments. In legal and scientific texts those markers are quite helpful.