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Interlingua vs Esperanto
Which one is better? I've had a look at both of them, and personally, I much prefer Interlingua. It's more like a real language - whereas in Esperanto, there is more Polish / Russian influence, in Interlingua, it is mainly Latin / Romance.
What are your views?
Without any previous knowledge, it is probably easier to understand Interlingua than Esperanto (for a person who knows main European languages, especially at least one Romanic language). But I guess that Esperanto has more logical word derivation system with prefixes and endings, and therefore it is easier to adopt Esperanto as a working vehicle of communication.
Isn't Interlingua the language that everyione automatically knows without ever having seen it before? :)
Seems like a big advantage to me.
Artificial languages are stupid. Imagine being a monolingual native of a language with no history or culture behind it. Then when you went to learn a real language, you'd be spoiled by the simplicity of your language and would find it very difficult to learn even an easy language...
<<Artificial languages are stupid. Imagine being a monolingual native of a language with no history or culture behind it.>>
Sometimes that's a boon, because you're not showing favoritism towards any one group of people.
<<Sometimes that's a boon, because>>
It would still suck though, no? There would be no good literature or music to absorb, either -- not until it had already been around for a substantial period of time, after which the language would have a unique history, culture, geographical association, etc. See my point? (Not to mention, the only other native speakers to converse with would be the children of language geeks.)
The simple grammar makes the language boring also, only a machine or a freak enjoys conlangs.
L'espéranto possède un avantage immense sur interlingua : il dispose d'une base locutive ancienne et dynamique. Et jouit d'une notoriété appréciable ainsi que d'un capital sympathie.
Mais interlingua a un atout majeur dans sa poche : les grandes langues internationales du moyen-âge à nos jours ont été le médiolatin, l'ancien français, le castillan, le portugais, le français moderne et l'anglais. Le monde internationalisé est donc préformaté pour interlingua. Un rien suffirait à l'y plonger.
<<It's more like a real language - whereas in Esperanto, there is more Polish / Russian influence, in Interlingua, it is mainly Latin / Romance.>>
Is this to say that Polish and Russian influence in a language makes it not real?
Experiments of teaching Esperanto to children have shown that it is easier for children to adapt a new language if they have first learnt Esperanto (which they learn in about one fifth of the time demanded for learning a 'real' language). This is because Esperanto has a genial system to recognize word classes and tenses: patro = father, patra = paternal, 'fatherly'; patre = paternally, 'in a fatherly way'; patri = 'to father', to be a father, to act like a father (?) etc. Also, with the aid of Esperanto it is easy to recognize a bulk of words in European languages. There is even rich literature in Esperanto, but of course this can´t be compared with the rich literal traditions of languages that have millions of native speakers.
<<Experiments of teaching Esperanto to children have shown that it is easier for children to adapt a new language if they have first learnt Esperanto.>>
Really? -- A new language? Which new language? Chinese? Esperanto might help with IE languages, but surely not with any language. Can you provide a link to a document describing that experiments? Even in other languages there are genial systems for recognizing word classes and tenses, even in English! There's a lot of critique about Esperanto, too, see here http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/index.html
<<Experiments of teaching Esperanto to children have shown that it is easier for children to adapt a new language if they have first learnt Esperanto.>>
Guess what, it's also easier for children to adapt a new language if they have first learnt Klingon.
There was a wide experiment in Finland in the municipality of Somero in the 1960´s of teaching Esperanto when a famous Esperantist, Joel Vilkki, was the headmaster of the local secondary school. There is at least a link in Finnish (http://www.esperanto.fi/Esperanto2.pdf) but of course it isn´t of great aid for most readers here. Anyway, the results were that pupils got better grasp of what nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, present tense, past tense, future tense, conditional mode etc are all about, as they are clearly recognizable in Esperanto because of different endings. This is not the case in English, there are lots of irregular verbs and the same word can belong to several word classes (this can even be an advantage, and English is a flexible vehicle of communication).
I guess the grammatical system of Esperanto is an aid even for learning languages outside the Indo-European family, although Esperanto of course resembles mostly Indo-European languages (especially vocabulary). Yes, there has been lots of critique about Esperanto, and this critique has led to new constructed languages, like Ido and Antido. I agree that some details in Esperanto could be different though a great part of critique on xibalba.demon site is less convincing (in my mind). I find the basic system of Esperanto admirable. (I don´t belong to any Esperanto association, and I´m no active Esperantist, but I can speak on elementary level and read texts.) It is also true that knowledge in any language helps learning of a new language.
Esperanist couples often are polyglots themselves and that factor also helps children. This doesn't change the fact that Esperanto remains popular among commies who like to destroy culture and openly dream of a monoglottic universe (not that I believe in some conspiracy theory, but it just is popular among communists).
People forget that artificially simplifying grammar doesn't make a language easier necessarily. Also, does a language HAVE to be "simple" (i.e. boring/soulless/fake)? This makes me think about the Simplified Chinese script meant to get rid of illiteracy. Yet, people in Honk Kong and Taiwan don't seem to have problems with their literacy level very still. |