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The Forum > Article Comments > World language needs planning not power > Comments

World language needs planning not power : Comments

By Stephen Crabbe, published 2/2/2006

Stephen Crabbe argues we need a world language and pushing a language like English upon other nations will not work.

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The amount of unfounded garbage being posted about Esperanto in this discussion by people who haven't got a clue is almost sickening.

Por la esperantistoj, mi konsilas ke vi ne partoprenu en chi tiu diskuto. Iliaj mensoj shajnas jam fermitaj.
Posted by rdmiller3, Saturday, 4 February 2006 4:02:17 AM
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After reading the previous messages, it occurs to me to mention some facts. Zamenhof first published his language in 1887, so that Esperanto is almost 120 years old. To those who say, "If Esperanto is so great, why hasn't it swept the world?", I would remind them that the idea of the metric system was first suggested by a French priest in 1670. It took 200 years for the idea to be formally implemented, and it has still not conquered the world's largest economy. But it will. Big ideas take a lot of time to establish themselves.

The structure of the language has not changed significantly since 1887, but the vocabulary was grown tremendously. The revised version of the principal dictionary, about the size of Webster's Collegiate and published in 2002, has 47000 lexical items. The number of words available to a competent speaker is greater, because he can use prefixes and suffixes to build words from known roots. If the meaning is obvious, these constructed words may not appear in dictionaries. Esperanto is an agglutinative language. Unlike Turkish, which somebody mentioned, it does not have vowel harmony or other complications which make it difficult to learn.

Most of the vocabulary, 75% of so, comes ultimately from Latin. Hence the language looks "Southern European". It takes a significant amount of effort to learn any language. Is it harder for a speaker of Mandarin to learn Esperanto than a speaker of a European language? Yes. Is it harder a Mandarin speaker to learn English than Esperanto? The answer is also yes. The absence of irregularities makes Esperanto much easier to learn than English or other natural languages.

The need for an international medium of communication --- Esperanto, English, or something else --- is unrelated to the problem of preserving as many as possible of the 6000 or so languages still spoken today. Sixty indigenous languages are spoken today in Mexico. Some are close to extinction and all are threatened, but they are not threatened by either English or Esperanto. They are threatened by the national language of Mexico, which is Spanish.
Posted by Neal, Saturday, 4 February 2006 5:08:41 AM
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Let's take one more look at the fundamentals.

For the individual, there is little incentive to learn a new language unless there are specific benefits.

For businesspeople who negotiate across language boundaries, there may on the surface be some incentive. But in my experience, the cultural nuances that are contained within each language form a crucial part of the understanding of the other party's position. I fail to see how translation into a purely mechanical form, with no history or culture to provide clues to thought processes, can help. Learning each other's language is important; both parties learning a third is actually detrimental.

The only conceivable benefit is to international diplomats and politicians, to whom the language's sterile construction and expression is a perfect reduction of there existing mode of communication. Since they already use as few meaningful expressions as they can get away with - witness any interview with a politician or a bureaucrat - it would be ideal for them.

The fact that no-one else would know what they are talking about would also not matter, since this would not be a significant change to the status quo.
Posted by Pericles, Saturday, 4 February 2006 7:21:37 AM
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Problems with Esperanto

http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=problems+with+esperanto&meta=
Posted by KAEP, Saturday, 4 February 2006 12:34:46 PM
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Thank you to those who are explaining the origins of Esperanto to those of us who know virtually nothing about it.

I have never had to do serious business in a language other than English, but I think I may have some insight into this. I am a regular visitor to Bali. I do not like studying and avoid doing it. I am, however, interested in language and communication. I have found spoken Indonesian to be easy to pick up at a very basic level. As the Indonesians use the same alphabet as the English speaking nations and speak phonetically [with a few simple rules], written Indonesian is also easier to understand than English and various European languages.And the Balinese, like many different Indonesian regional people, also have their own very different language.

Most visitors to Bali get used to bargaining for clothing, ornaments, jewelry etc. Bargaining is the national sport in Bali and none of the sellers are offended by this, as long as the bargaining is kept light-hearted. I also bargain for accomodation in nice hotels. I use my very basic Indonesian, together with a smattering of Balinese and a few English phrases which they are familiar with and which they use in a joking manner. [Of course if I'm stuck I fall back on English.] And I try to imitate their intonation, which is very important. I have found that this works very well.

If ever I needed to do any serious business in Indonesia, then I would use exactly the same tactics and I'm sure that I would be making friends whilst negotiating deals. But I can't imagine trying to do this in a language where none of the parties understood the leg-pulling, the ironies, the double meanings, the face-saving devices.

How about personal relationships? How would a "come-on line" come across in Esperanto? Could Esperanto ever be "the language of love"? What about romantic ballads, rock-n-roll and rap? Could a song sung in Esperanto ever be top of the hit parade? Maybe I'm getting a bit facetious, but could I even be facetious in Esperanto?
Posted by Rex, Saturday, 4 February 2006 12:57:47 PM
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Thank you to all posters so far for your comments on my article. I should have pointed out that it is actually a sequel to another published about three weeks ago. See http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=4048
You might get a better perspective by reading the first article.

Most of the world does not know anything about Esperanto, but the language offers so many obvious benefits that it deserves some strong advocacy and publicity. It’s especially interesting to find a few Esperantists coming on site. I’m not an expert on Eo so your contribution is valuable.

Pericles: As usual I find your comments thoughtful and stimulating. There is already a “network” of Esperantists around the globe, though not huge as you point out. I agree that a government mandate is not immediately feasible, but maybe the “network” could begin to expand significantly if two or more corporations dealing with each other across linguistic borders were to agree to train their staff in Esperanto. As far as I know this hasn’t been tried, but it would be a fascinating experiment.

KAEP: I have a little experience in Chinese and, like rdmiller3, I can’t see any benefit in trying to apply its script to English. I also disagree that visual learning is essentially faster than learning through other sensory channels -- a very interesting topic but too complex to consider here. And English is almost certainly not becoming the world language. (See my previous article above.)

Rex: Esperanto is nothing like a pidgin-English. Yes, Indonesian is easier than most languages, especially in its phonetic writing; but Esperanto is much easier still because it is not only phonetic but has all the other beneficial aspects that I and other posters have mentioned. And no, very few of the world’s scientists know anything about Latin. It would be a lot more difficult to use – the heavily inflected grammar, the diphthongs….. I suggest you spend an hour or two working on the first stages of Esperanto online. You’ll be surprised at what you discover.
Posted by Crabby, Saturday, 4 February 2006 1:38:30 PM
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