UNO Languages

<< Also I have a particular dislike for Esperanto, not just the fact that it is artificial and euro-centric but be the fact it has no culture, in the sense there are no group of native speakers and thus once you learn it you do not have the excitement of understanding a culture that was alien to you before. >>

Again, I must leap to Esperanto's defense, despite not being an Esperantist. That may seem strange, but I am sympathetic to the goals of Esperanto even though I'm not a big fan of the language itself, and I do like to debate... also, the reasons for my dislike of the language are not the same as any of the reasons anybody has mentioned so far.

Anyway, I have to admit that I'm always mildly annoyed by this "culture" argument. If you learn languages in order to connect to other cultures, that's fine. Everybody is free to determine whatever criteria makes a language worth learning for them. So if you don't like Esperanto because you believe it doesn't have a culture, that's fine. I might dislike French because I dislike like French culture. (This is only an example; I have no problem with French culture.) But I wouldn't go out of my way to tell everybody that French is a waste of time because of it. I wouldn't say "Don't learn Esperanto; it has no culture" any more than I would say "Don't learn French; it has a crappy culture." (I know that you in particular weren't discouraging others from learning Esperanto, at least in this thread, but I still had to make the point.)

Still, culture isn't even the purpose of language. The purpose of language is to communicate, and Esperanto is generally very good at that. It's not perfect, but it's more adequate than any natural language is at that purpose. Two people who have studied Esperanto for a year and have no other language in common can communicate better than they could if it were a natural language instead of Esperanto. This supposed lack of a culture may mean that Esperanto isn't right for you, but that doesn't make it a bad language.

Moreover, Esperanto *does* have a culture. It doesn't have a country that you can physically visit, but there is a definite internet culture (the next best thing ;)), as well as its own body of literature, its own ideals, etc. You can even listen to the news in Esperanto. I'd say that you have just about every aspect of a culture except for a centralized location. Its culture may be very young, but it's there.

<< In addition, I find it kind of stale, by the simply fact it not evolving as a normal language would and if a new word is introduced it would not be due to the speakers but down to the academy that invented it. >>

Although you are free to believe that Esperanto is stale, I believe that none of your claims are true in the slightest.

Esperantists invent new words using affixes all the time; being able to do so is one of the core features of the language! In addition, word borrowing is frequent and not necessarily mandated by the academy.

Esperanto *has* evolved the way a normal language would. That's not "will evolve" or "does evolve": it has already happened, and continues to do so. This is well-documented; while the pure fundamentals of the language have not changed, Esperanto can hardly be said to be almost the same as it was a hundred years ago. In fact, it's more likely that the language is changing too fast than that it isn't changing fast enough. English hasn't changed NEARLY as much as Esperanto has in that amount of time.

A trivial example of both language change and word invention are the words "komputi" and "komputilo". The original definition of "komputi", so I've heard, originally meant something like "to meter", rather than the general sense of "compute". But when computers came along, the Esperantists started calling it a "komputilo" (komputi + suffix for "tool"). Some people objected because this didn't match the meaning of "komputi", but, through common usage, it eventually became the accepted term, and accordingly the meaning of "komputi" shifted to mean "compute". The academy did make a pronouncement that "komputilo" is the standard word, and that the meaning of "komputi" changed, but it was the use of the language that caused it. This process is *exactly* what happens in natural languages. Don't forget that natural languages have similar academies too. English doesn't, but some other languages do. Spanish has the Real Academia Española (RAE), for example, which any serious Spanish student will very quickly become familiar with. I would also presume that Esperanto's academy would be more receptive to change than academies like the RAE, since the language is so young.

All factors considered, it seems to me that the situation is almost the exact opposite of what you describe in just about every way. Where did you get these ideas from? (That's a serious question, not a rhetorical one.)

- Kef

I have seen texts in Esperanto and have heard it spoken (over the internet).

These are not ideas just my personally views. Whilst you cannot deny it is euro-centric and essentially has no native culture (regardless of the internet).

The reason i said i found it stale is because, normally a language will introduce words due to popular usage even when it has a word of its own. Whilst Esperanto will be mainly (not all) be done by the academy. in addition, a culture is essential to a language as it defines, shapes and as the culture evolves so does the language.

the "internet-culture" you say Esperanto has, can you describe it, what are the common idioms used, can you name any of it own proverb?

Whilst other languages my have academies (France and Spanish),not all of their recommendations are absorbed into the languages such as baladeur for walkman etc. In addition, none of the recommendations means the other terms are seen as incorrect.

I have never said it is bad, just do not like it.

<Two people who have studied Esperanto for a year and have no other language in common can communicate better than they could if it were a natural language instead of Esperanto. This supposed lack of a culture may mean that Esperanto isn't right for you, but that doesn't make it a bad language. >

May I ask who defines the pronunciation of Esperanto. As you will know different language who use the Latin alphabet pronounce certain letters differently.

Again your above statement is only true to speakers of certain European languages especially Romance, not necessarly true for speakers of other languages groups. thus, showing its euro-centric leaning.

The reasons Esperanto will never be an international language, is essentially it has no culture. English only became an international language because of the British empire which set the foundation, on which partly allowed the globilization of American culture. same was true for french, where it was seen as the language of diplomacy, art, music etc.

<< Whilst you cannot deny it is euro-centric and essentially has no native culture (regardless of the internet). >>

I indeed cannot deny that it is Eurocentric -- although I maintain that it would still be easier for a speaker of Chinese or Japanese to learn Esperanto rather than English or Spanish or whatever.

I still don't understand the "no culture" argument. What defines a culture?

<< The reason i said i found it stale is because, normally a language will introduce words due to popular usage even when it has a word of its own. Whilst Esperanto will be mainly (not all) be done by the academy. >>

I don't understand what you're saying here. If Esperantists want to borrow synonyms, they will; if they don't, they won't. The academy only has so much power over it. If people decide to obey the academy, they do so only because it is essential to keeping the language unified and comprehensible to everyone.

<< I have never said it is bad, just do not like it. >>

Right, but it isn't necessarily easy to distinguish "I don't like Esperanto" and "Esperanto is bad", because one can easily say one and mean the other, so I went ahead and answered that argument anyway, especially since somebody in this thread posted who *does* think it's bad. So my post wasn't completely aimed specifically at you, even though it was in response to you, if that makes any sense.

But as for the rest of my post, I would prefer that, if you dislike a language, that you dislike it for the right reasons. It wouldn't make sense to dislike Esperanto because it's "stale" if it's actually anything but stale. And I still disagree with your reasoning there, but at least you seem to be informed on the matter after all.

But if you do dislike Esperanto, that's perfectly fine. There are plenty of languages that I dislike, and that even includes Esperanto. The phonology is horrendous -- imagine a Japanese person trying to pronounce all those consonant clusters! The orthography was ill-considered with those damn circumflexes. And what's with having exactly two cases for nouns? The cases aren't hard to deal with, but they can turn off casual dabblers, which is exactly what we don't want. The morphology can be misleading; it was pointed out that "fundamento" could be taken to be a combination of fund- (bottom/thorough) and ment- (mint). The handling of transitive versus intransitive verbs was not handled well at all. The letter ĥ is all but deprecated. And, on the whole, there are just too many irregularities. Far fewer than natural languages, but more than such a language should have. Yet many of these flaws are fundamental and permanent because they're part of the core 16 rules that Zamenhof said you can never ever change. All attempts at reforming these rules have failed. Is Esperanto still good enough for its purposes? Sure. But such matters do make it aesthetically ugly to me.

<<<< Two people who have studied Esperanto for a year and have no other language in common can communicate better than they could if it were a natural language instead of Esperanto. >>>>

<< Again your above statement is only true to speakers of certain European languages especially Romance, not necessarly true for speakers of other languages groups. thus, showing its euro-centric leaning. >>

No, I don't agree. Let's say that a Chinese person and a Japanese person are trying to communicate in speech (not in writing). They would still probably have more success conversing in one year's worth of Esperanto than one year's worth of, say, Korean. They might even have more success than if one of them studied the other's native language for a year. Esperanto doesn't resemble Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, but the spoken forms of those three languages don't resemble each other very much either! (Though, to be fair, Japanese and Korean are somewhat similar to each other grammatically.)

<< The reasons Esperanto will never be an international language, is essentially it has no culture. English only became an international language because of the British empire which set the foundation, on which partly allowed the globilization of American culture. same was true for french, where it was seen as the language of diplomacy, art, music etc. >>

You're right about those historical examples, but I don't think they preclude the idea of an international auxiliary language. We could all be speaking an international auxiliary language if we all did something as simple as studying it in school and actually using it a bit. In a way, it's not that simple... but in a way, it is. And Esperanto is free from any notions of "imperialism"; people would not feel threatened by Esperanto the way they would feel threatened by increasing the pervasiveness of the English language even more.

- Kef

<I don't understand what you're saying here. If Esperantists want to borrow synonyms, they will; if they don't, they won't. The academy only has so much power over it. If people decide to obey the academy, they do so only because it is essential to keeping the language unified and comprehensible to everyone.>

That is the thing, even though you say Esperantists can introduce they own words, will other Esperantists understand them. As there are no native Esperantists speakers, it is primarily left to the academy, which gives it an unintentionally control of the language.

<No, I don't agree. Let's say that a Chinese person and a Japanese person are trying to communicate in speech (not in writing). They would still probably have more success conversing in one year's worth of Esperanto than one year's worth of, say, Korean. They might even have more success than if one of them studied the other's native language for a year. Esperanto doesn't resemble Chinese, Japanese, or Korean, but the spoken forms of those three languages don't resemble each other very much either! (Though, to be fair, Japanese and Korean are somewhat similar to each other grammatically.) >

This is more of a question, how do people learn the pronunciation of Esperanto?


<I still don't understand the "no culture" argument. What defines a culture? >

what i mean by culture is each language has a set of its own proverbs, common idioms which are influenced my the custom of its native speakers.

Therefore, does Esperanto have its own proverbs, idioms etc?

<You're right about those historical examples, but I don't think they preclude the idea of an international auxiliary language. We could all be speaking an international auxiliary language if we all did something as simple as studying it in school and actually using it a bit. In a way, it's not that simple... but in a way, it is. And Esperanto is free from any notions of "imperialism"; people would not feel threatened by Esperanto the way they would feel threatened by increasing the pervasiveness of the English language even more.>

I doubt people speaking African languages and Asian languages will see as this. As european speakers would have more of an advantage.

I dont think everyone see English as a threat. Most people see english as a means to ends, i.e. as a way of getting a job etc.

Only certain countries do such as France, as i feel they are smarting from the rise of English.

You never hear of Japanese, Indian, Africans, Chinese, Scandinavians, Eastern European etc feeling threaten. Because they know English will not replace their languages in their countries.