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Prix Nobel pour l'espéranto ?
"Free word order is not necessary", says Xie. What is valid for a language spoken by native speakers may not be valid when the language is used among foreigners. When people whose mother tongue is German or a Slavic language, maybe also Hungarian, discuss with people from other cultures, they may follow the structure of their own language, and, for instance, put the object of the verb first to emphasize it. If someone says: "Imagu, la prezidenton insultis la ambasadoro" ("Just imagine, it is the president that the ambassador insulted"), free word order with appropriate markers is useful.
Many languages, like French or Spanish, put the subject after the verb in relative clauses: "la fille qu'aime mon frère" (the girl my brother loves). I've heard people from such countries say in English the opposite of what they meant, in such cases: they follow their usual word order and say "the girl who loves my brother". Since love is not always reciprocal, it's better to be sure who loves whom.
Free word order is also a plus in poetry and literature, as well as in song translation, where the constraints of rhyme and rhythm make faithfulness to the original especially difficult. Esperanto is particularly good at song translation.
You could say "He did not approve the amendments submitted by India to the draft resolution." if that's what you meant.
Why is Esperanto better than Interlingua, for example?
Interlingua seems like a much simpler language to me. I can understand a lot of it without even having studied it, in fact, whereas I can't understand Esperanto at all.
I agree Interlingua seems a latin language without grammar I can understand almost every word, but I don't think that a German or a Russian can understand it
Interlingua is more Latin biased. In fact it was intended for being a language understandable by Romance languages speakers, not Germans or Russians. About the English speakers I would like to know which language is easier for them, Interlingua or Esperanto, which carries more Germanic influences.
About "releonigi": " Why would we need stupid words like those? I think that a language that uses logical combinations of simple words is much easier than one that has many complex words instead."
Well, nobody tells you to use such words if you don't like them. You can express the same idea with simple words in Esperanto as well as in English. But what if you're an Algonquin, a Sioux, a Mongolian, a Turk, an Uzbek, in whose languages that kind of complex word is the standard? Not all languages are structured like English and there are people who express themselves better with such words. Esperanto is a world language and is adapted to all kinds of mother tongues. What you're expected to do, if you join the Esperanto crowd, is to be able to _understand _ such words. Very likely, after a while, you'll enjoy their often humorous aspect.
By the way, I don't see what is stupid in such words. Do you think that "disarmament", "hospitalization", "deconditioning", "invagination", etc. are stupid words? In certain contexts they are really useful. "Disarmament" is more practical than "the fact of giving up one's weapons", especially if, discussing the subject, you need the word again and again. Personally, I prefer the Esperanto word "saniga" (made up from three elements: "san", "ig" and "a") to its English equivalent "therapeutic". A simple matter of taste, perhaps.
<< You could say "He did not approve the amendments submitted by India to the draft resolution" if that's what you meant >>.
Yes, but it is not what the original text said. And the fact that its author used such an ambiguous wording is typical of English, as compared to Esperanto.
I've learned Interlingua. For speakers of English, Spanish and other Romance languages it may seem easier. It is, to read. But when you try to speak it, it's not that simple. And Esperanto is much easier for all non-Western people, as well as for people with a Germanic language other than English.
-- Interlingua's writing is needlessly complicated. I personnally prefer Esperanto "filozofio" to Interlingua "philosophia" (why "ph" when you have "f"?). The /k/ sound has to be written in different ways in different words: c "can", ch "richessa", k "kilogramma", q "quatro", cq "acquirer", etc. In Esperanto, it is always "k".
-- The language lacks clarity. In a text I found the phrase "dracones que occide le homines". Nobody could tell me if it meant "dragons that kill the men" or "dragons that the men kill". Such an imprecision is impossible in Esperanto.
-- There are irregular verbs. There is none in Esperanto
-- It is difficult, especially for, say, a Chinese or a Kazakh, to form the right word from another one. The following examples illustrate only the consistent system of Esperanto and the lack of system in Interlingua in the case of noun / adjective, but this drawback pervades the whole language. In Esperanto, you don't have to learn the word in each case, you just replace the "o" of the noun by the "a" of the adjective:
E "kompenso - kompensa" - I "compensation - compensatori"
E "ilustro - ilustra" - I "ilustration - ilustrative"
E "intenco - intenca" - I "intention - intentional"
E "reakcio - reakcia" - I "reaction - reactionari"
E "ribelo - ribela" - I "seition - seditiose"
Interlingua could be a good Panamerican language. But Esperanto is superior as a really world language
J'ai parlé espéranto depuis mon adolescence. Il est venu en très pratique - quand je sortais en courant de l'argent à Zurich, une fois, l'espéranto a été la raison pour laquelle je n'ai pas dû passer trois nuits sur les rues alpins en hiver. En fait, je ne l'utilisent presque chaque jour, et je sais par expérience combien il est plus facile d'apprendre qu'une véritable langue.
Si je visite Oulan-Bator ou de Lomé, je peux me prévaloir de la gratuité de l'hébergement parce que je sais l'espéranto.
Espéranto n'apporteront pas la paix, pas plus que Al Gore apportera mondial climatisation, mais c'est en fait un outil utile pour combler les barrières linguistiques pour ceux qui savent utiliser et à l'utiliser, et ses valeur propédeutique à l'apprentissage d'autres langues est rien à négliger non plus. (Vive les anglicismes!) Ĝis tie per Google.
Leland aka Haruo
Seattle
I might add that the propedeutic value of Esperanto probably applies when the second foreign language is English, too. It would be interesting to see some solid data on the point.
Haruo = Leland
>>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.
While I do agree that in English, like others, there are peculiarities, like the uncertainty about English tenses (whereas German tenses, as I see it, are more "regular"), which would prevent others from writing good literature, especially when they aren't native speakers (or even being natives, they might not be able to write well), I think languages, no matter how "bad" they can go against the will of foreign learners, would just "improve" themselves naturally. How exactly could Esperantists convince others to acquire an additional language, when neutrality may not at all be easy to "attain"/maintain, and when efforts have still to be made to learn?
Both Esperanto and Interlingua, no matter how easy they have been designed, are still "languages" (established, complete) in their own right and thus "languages" with a purpose. While it would be one reason for me to believe that only one conlang would be necessary (i.e. Esperanto) for that purpose, namely "neutrality" (which I couldn't quite believe to be promising), after all, I'm still looking for ways of convincing others. So, I learn it, master it, meet foreign friends speaking it, and maybe even participate in international conventions. But what next?
>>Interlingua is more Latin biased. In fact it was intended for being a language understandable by Romance languages speakers, not Germans or Russians.
Me too. Though I don't think conlangs are per se entirely stupid (but, rather, sort of idealistic), more conlangs would be unnecessary. Stuff like Interlingua is simply so unintelligible (or does it serve as Neo-Latin?) and hardly "learner" friendly, when "I" can't even guess with "limited" knowledge of English.
>>I've learned Interlingua. For speakers of English, Spanish and other Romance languages it may seem easier. It is, to read. But when you try to speak it, it's not that simple. And Esperanto is much easier for all non-Western people, as well as for people with a Germanic language other than English.
I almost forget its ultimate turn-offs. Conlangs have to be promoted. Natural ones don't need to be. Despite millions of exceptions in every natural language, as a natural product of (to a large extent) arbitrariness, I'd be glad to learn exceptions because natural languages are useful in a different sense from that of conlangs. But if conlangs have to be designed NOT in their own right, such as being endowed with irregularities of whatever sort (spelling, conjugations...), people like me, a typical, linguistically simplistic-minded Chinese, would be put off within seconds. (indeed, I reckon that Esperanto and Interlingua may be serving different groups of learners...)
Adding irregularities would render a conlang into a product of an ivory tower - or, as the Esperantists put it, volapukajxo.
Xie, you say that Conlangs (does that mean "constructed languages"?) have to be promoted. My reason tells me you're right. At the same time, my intuition says that Esperanto is part of a socio-historical process that develops by itself and so can grow without having to be actively promoted. It spreads because people notice it's useful, fun and much easier than other languages, whatever its imperfections. It appears to meet some deep-seated need.
Since the beginning, it has had many adversaries keen on destroying it, but it survived them all, even when they were extremely powerful, like USSR, nazi Germany, the McCarthy era in the US and the Cultural Revolution in China. It's interesting that it has been around longer than such entities as Swissair or Panam, that most people would have thought perennial. Yet no government, no intellectual or economic élite has ever supported it, rather the opposite. Its users are not rich enough to engage in real modern advertising. Isn't it impressive that, in such an adverse environment, it goes on spreading, at a very slow pace, to be sure, but constantly?
There must be in it something undefinable, but strong enough to go on attracting people. I just got in touch with a guy in a remote area in the South of Morocco who walks eight kilometers to reach a bus station from where he travels 24 more kilometers to get to the computer nearest to his place and, from there, contact all kinds of people from all over the world just for the pleasure of enjoying using Esperanto. Doesn't that imply a tremendous force of motivation at work ? I don't understand it -- even though I feel something similar in me -- but I've encountered quite a number of similar cases.
That's why I make the hypothesis that there is in Esperanto something which is stronger than individuals, fashions, intellectual judgments, interests, policies, etc. It must answer some inner, unconscious need endowed with a tremendous strength. Am I crazy?
one concert can do much more than Esperanto did in all its existence
>>That's why I make the hypothesis that there is in Esperanto something which is stronger than individuals, fashions, intellectual judgments, interests, policies, etc. It must answer some inner, unconscious need endowed with a tremendous strength. Am I crazy?
Conlangs seems to have become a neologism, btw.
There might be some truth, yes. There must be a lot of philosophical ideas in it which I couldn't ever explain. :)
Despite some technical problems with this language, which I mentioned, I harbour feelings that it should be the very candidate as an IAL in its own right. People are still free to create conlangs, but I think they couldn't replace Esperanto in the near future.
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