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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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This is a very interesting article. At first, my reactionary hackles rose: world language, another step in the march towards world government etc; but I read on, and found myself adding the references to my ‘favourites’ for future use.

I’m still sceptical, though. There are vast differences in education and learning abilities throughout the world: there are people without any learning skills, people who won’t even hear about it and, even in Australia, kids who can’t use their language of birth coherently.

This could lead us back to the times of early England, when the crowned heads and nobs spoke French and kept the peasants who didn’t in ignorance and poverty.

Esperanto’s being ‘four or five times faster to learn than other languages’ is not very meaningful considering the wide variations in linguistic ability
Posted by Leigh, Thursday, 2 February 2006 12:40:52 PM
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Whilst the use of Esperanto as a relay language for communication may appear to be attractive at first sight, closer examination reveales that there are serious practical, financial and technical difficulties. There are very few professionally qualified Esperanto teachers and educational institutions in the world. For logistical and financial reasons the States are not in a position to launch a training programme in Esperanto for existing and future teachers. Training a person to the required standard in a new language would take three to four years of part-time study and would cost a lot. Furthermore, there is no evidence that using Esperanto as a relay language would lead to an improvement in the overall quality of communication. On the contrary, recourse to a language that is not used in everyday life would run the risk of not being able to convey the full range of messages and ideas communicated. Respect for cultural and linguistic diversity must be the crucial element of the future. Promoting better knowledge and understanding of the cultures and languages of others is therefore of particular importance. Languages will continue in future to be the key to knowing others. That’s why Esperanto does not feature in almost all programmes on education and vocational training. The aim of these programmes must promote linguistic diversity with a view to granting equal status to each of the world’s languages. It is therefore necessary to vary language teaching and language use in order to enable all the people to experience the cultural wealth that is embedded in the linguistic diversity.
Posted by coion, Thursday, 2 February 2006 6:00:24 PM
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I completely agree with Stephen Crabbe, and I want to congratulate him. His article is really excellent. His opinions are not based on theory. Stephen has taken the trouble to study Esperanto. That´s the way that every serious journalist should do.

Nobody can deny the need of a second language, a lingua franca, in the modern world. English, Franch and Spanish cannot play that role, because they have many irregularities, words with several meanings, idioms, etc. Many years are necessary to learn them.

On the other hand, Esperanto is easy-to-learn, flexible and efficient in practice. Besides, it is the best defence for the preservation of the linguistic diversity.
Posted by Martelo, Friday, 3 February 2006 8:43:00 AM
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Throwing Out The Baby With The Bath Water.

You can't suddenly change the evolution of world language.
The way sounds and concepts have evolved into words is a rich tapestry that in its most intricate form represents the very fundaments of our DNA. The very fundaments of global diversity. Esperanto can never HOPE to achieve this.
I mean, are we going to translate Shakespeare of Voltaire into Esperanto for example. What about the language of science, mathematics and technology, the main reason why English prevails, for example? You could describe the entire fabric of life on the planet and Esperanto would just not recognise 99.999% of it. It is just a commuter vehicle to get from A to B. It may be a wonderful supplemental language but even this is (clearly) not sustainable due to the difficulty in most of us for learning anything new, let alone another tongue.

English can't be replaced as it embodies:
* Science and technology
* borrows from all languages and has a vocabulary greater than any language.
* Has a richness of literature that cannot be translated.

The future? Chinese characters enhance science and technology by internal processes more spatial than semantic. English needs to borrow chinese script. This will engage 1/4 of the world's population. It will require english to borrow more chinese words than Mojo or Chop Chop. Also:
* It has a user technical advantage whether others adopt it or not.
* It can be a platform to look at arabic and indian scripts with the same intentions.
* Trains the mind for skills like electronic circuit design.

Conclusion: Langauge is more than a communications tool. Its learnability strikes at the very heart of natural human memory techniques. We are all rapidly evolving in our ability to learn. We are looking for new ways to learn and comprehend faster. Chinese script is a tried and true vehicle to that end and can be jently infused without dying. Esperanto is sadly a lost cause because it still relies on difficult to 'learn or remember' semantic structures.
Posted by KAEP, Friday, 3 February 2006 11:22:22 AM
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"Four or five times faster" is for spoken Esperanto. Because of its logical construction, progress in reading and writing is even more rapid. Average folks who don't think they have any "language skills" have been able to learn Esperanto quite well, and then having been introduced in a rational way to the concept of internalizing a foreign language they are actually able to more quickly assimilate other more ordinary languages.

Second, "coion" is sadly misinformed. I use Esperanto every day online to chat with friends about our lives, about their language or mine, about world news, about details of software engineering or system maintenance, etc. Look at the scope of material covered in detail in the Esperanto Wikipedia! Science, poetry, news, and fiction... I can't imagine much of anything which Esperanto couldn't handle, and in fact it can be used MORE expressively. Although it has a logical structure, it's extremely flexible. You can speak your thoughts more directly in the way that you think them, without constantly dodging steaming heaps of grammar like "that's not a real word" or "it's improper to say it that way."

That "KAEP" person is just plain wrong except where he/she says that English has a large body of untranslatable literature. Every culture with literature has that too. English, however, is not the sole embodiment of science, does not borrow from all languages, and most blatantly of all... would NOT benefit from moving to Chinese writing. Can you imagine advocating a system where one might run across an idiograph one doesn't know, and be completely unable to find out what it means, much less how it's pronounced, simply because there is no reliable way to look it up in a dictionary? Would you promote a system of "typing" where every single word is a multiple-choice vocabulary quiz? Even then, Chinese writing is not just a word-for-word substitution of English. I suspect that this person has little if any personal experience with written Chinese.
Posted by rdmiller3, Friday, 3 February 2006 3:05:13 PM
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Congratulations and thanks to Stephen Crabbe for an
article about Esperanto well researched.

Other journalists and some of the people replying to this
article, give their opinion about Esperanto without any
research.

Leigh mentions learning time and variations in learning
ability ... and we pretend to impose English on those people.
English is my third language, Esperanto my second.
I started writing Esperanto within two weeks of my first
contact. I needed many, many years to reach that level
in English. Learning Esperanto helps proficiency in their
own native language.

Coion mentions the cost of training and the quality of
communication. Training any teacher to teach Esperanto
costs a small fraction of training English teachers, and in
a much shorter time. I don't understand "relay language".
You communicate in Esperanto same or better than using
other languages, and a lot better than people trying to
communicate using a half learned English. (The way most
non-natives learn English)

Esperanto IS USED in everyday life. It is the best language
to learn for appreciating other cultures.

Coion says: "with a view to granting equal status to each
of the world’s languages". Maybe you think that imposing

English gives "equal status". Would you please research
a little bit about Esperanto?

KAEP says: Esperanto can never HOPE to achieve this.
I mean, are we going to translate Shakespeare ...

Shakespeare has been translated into Esperanto many
decades ago ... Many native English speakers had
enjoyed Shakespeare in Esperanto, and still today cannot
understand the original Shakespeare language.

KAEP says: ... even this is (clearly) not sustainable due
to the difficulty in most of us for learning anything new,
let alone another tongue.

And you want the whole world to learn English?
Esperanto is much easier.

>richness of literature that cannot be translated.

English literature is translated all the time. Shakespeare in
Esperanto is much easier to understand than the original.

Please read a book in the make in

http://www.icxlm.org/eobook.htm

For more information:

http://www.eeo.8k.com/lern.htm

Enrique
Fremont, California, USA
(my email address is in the book)
Posted by Enrique, Friday, 3 February 2006 4:13:56 PM
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The Miller,

Have you visited Sydney suburbs lately?
Whether you like it or not, Chinese will impact on the English language. Further, Esperanto has been around for at least 30 years and it hasn't caught fire. Why is that? I have given the answer and you stick your head in the sand and wait for your pet puppy to find its way home. Ooops ... roadkill!
Is it Esperanto training that has dulled your comprehension to what I said about gently infusing chinese characters into English subjects, principally the sciences? Each subject could start from basics and make their own accepted vocabularies. Its a start, but more important it is in line with the majority of the world's peoples.
And REMEMBER that as Mark Twain said " Every picture speaks a thousand words ". The mind learns faster in pictures than words.
Further I explained why English IS the 'world' language. I did not and do not dispute contributions from other languages. As I said they are all part of the human fabric.

Enrique,

Over half the world population is ASIAN. Their progress has been hindered by dialect isolation. The Internet generation has made that flaw null and void. You do not have a choice. Esperanto has had its chances. You need to look at why it is not competing with the natural evolution of English that I am prescribing. Just writing a book and wishing you were king for the day to pass a law that we all speak Esperanto is not enough.
*
Posted by KAEP, Friday, 3 February 2006 4:59:03 PM
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Much as it would give an immense warm glow to the doe-eyed egalitarians if the world suddenly decided to learn Esperanto, it isn't going to happen.

After more than a hundred years, the best estimate of Esperanto speakers that I could find is two million - around .03% of the world's population.

Also, it is already more than fifty years since UNESCO officially "recognized" the language.

Exactly how long does it take for it to be acknowledged that the experiment, however worthy its objectives, is a failure?

The basic flaw in the equation is not the logic: of course it would be neat if everybody could communicate more easily and accurately, and a lingua franca would surely help.

But in order for Esperanto to become ubiquitous, there needs to be a network effect. In the same way that the first fax machine was useless until the second was bought, and email relies upon there being a recipient as well as a sender, Esperanto requires a growing body of users in order for it to catch on.

This almost invariably happens as a result of demand, not supply.

The only examples of a successful supply-side network effect come through monopolies, either state driven (you will all drive a Zil), or through market manipulation (Microsoft).

There are clearly insufficient intrinsic advantages of Esperanto to generate a demand-side revolution, and it is highly unlikely that we will see it government-mandated, in our lifetimes at least.
Posted by Pericles, Friday, 3 February 2006 6:09:53 PM
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The problem with Esperanto is that whilst it might be simple to learn, it is only in the context of being a speaker of Germanic or Romance languages. It would be interesting to see how easy Esperanto is to someone that speaks, say, an agglunative language to begin with (like Turkish) -- and would be easy to test.

It might also be noted that, unlike Esperanto, the majority of the world's languages do not use such fixed word orders and the majority do not use a SVO order either (only 42% if I remember correctly). In addition, there are lots of things missing in Esperanto that are very common, like productive compounding, tones in phonology (used by the majority of the world's speakers) and so on. If the language starting to get used by any great number of speakers, it seems more than likely, that, like every other language, these sorts of things would start to infiltrate it
Posted by rc, Friday, 3 February 2006 7:25:54 PM
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Excellent article.

I can confirm that learning Esperanto is far easier than learning English. After only a few weeks of learning Esperanto alone on the Internet, I could already correspond in that language. It was a rewarding experience. It took me years the reach the same level in English. Furthermore, it is a fun language to learn because of its flexibility and word construction rules among other things. Being easy does not mean it is not a powerful language. In fact it is just the opposite: it is possible to express ideas with precision, elegance and concision. Critics often come from people who have no idea what Esperanto is (fear of the unknown) and yet feel that they can comment about it (it has no culture, no literature, no native speakers...). Those assertions are uninformed: Esperanto has a culture since it has been spoken for more than 100 years in many countries, books are published in Esperanto and yes, there are native speakers. The Esperanto community on the Internet is dynamic: wikipedia in Esperanto for example (http://www.vikipidio.org) already has more than 35,000 articles. There are also several great free lessons to learn Esperanto on the web. http://www.lernu.net is excellent for anybody who wish to discover and learn the language.

-- Dominiko
Posted by dominiko, Friday, 3 February 2006 8:25:29 PM
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As someone who knows nothing about Esperanto, perhaps I'm not really qualified to say anything. However, I've had a quick look at one of the sites and it seems to me that Esperanto is a kind of Pidgin-English, with bits of Southern European languages thrown in. In fact the name of this language suggests "hope" in French.

So why should speakers of vastly different languages be prepared to settle for what appears to be an English/Southern European hybrid? If you're going to learn Pidgin-English, then you may as well learn standard English, which is what many people from non-English speaking countries are already willingly doing.

And if we're just looking for a language which is much easier to learn than English, then the world already has such a language and it's spoken by hundreds of millions of people, many of whom also have their own very different languages. I'm talking about Indonesian. But I'm not of course suggesting that Indonesian should become the world language.

If there really was a push to have a world language, I would be inclined to favour the very logical Latin. Without really knowing, I would presume that the world's scientists would already have some working knowledge of Latin, so that would be a good start.

As much of this is presumption on my part, I hope that the more knowledgeable posters will not be too hard on me. I'm just putting a few comments forward for debate.
Posted by Rex, Saturday, 4 February 2006 12:04:54 AM
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Rex,
I for one find myself in your boat, you are qualified to express an opinion, if you have an opinion, in a decocracy, whether or not anyone agrees or disagrees.

Many of Earths languages have already been lost, and as far as I can tell the main language of the world today is USA. It has hijacked English, Australian and most western countries, "hey guy" this contorted ugly beast of a language permeates nations, as cigarette smoke does clothing, the end result, it stinks..

I support a situation whereby people could be multi-lingual, in my case I only speak Australian, and do not wish to change my heritage by using the old yankee drawl, and expressions. I am quite comfortable with my own Australian history, and believe it is a disgrace that children leaving schools today know all about Billy the Kid, but have never heard of Ned Kelly.
Posted by SHONGA, Saturday, 4 February 2006 2:44:07 AM
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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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Rex - you have echoed my thoughts, which were running along the lines of 'can you write poetry in Esperanto? How would Shakespeare sound? What about Aussie Aussie Aussie OI OI OI?'

In short would a world language kill all cultures?
Posted by Scout, Saturday, 4 February 2006 1:38:44 PM
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I don't think that we should encourage people to be detached from the langauge of their forefathers. The effect of English upon other European languages is terrible... I know of its effects on Italian most intimately, knowing that the language can do without its anglicisms, both subtle in the changing of significance of words, and more overt in the adoption of words when there is an equivalent already in existance. If "il weekend" has now conquered "la fine della settimana", what will stop another world language from causing similar havoc? Not all of us are as stubborn and proud as the French.

It's a very interesting article, however I think the premise on which it is based is weak.
Posted by DFXK, Sunday, 5 February 2006 11:00:50 AM
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English is the world lingua franca. Where is the evidence to say it causes hostility or loss of language diversity. English for hundreds of years has been far more than just the language of the English people.

One of the strengths of English is that its unplanned. There is no 'academie d'anglais'. No planned language can complete with that.

Computer translation is a more likely saviour of minor languages in the world.
Posted by David Latimer, Sunday, 5 February 2006 11:43:58 AM
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"The effect of English upon other European languages is terrible." Is it? Sometimes it may be amusing or incongruous, but hardly terrible.

How about the other way around? Cafe, restaurant, souvenir. Even beef, mutton and pork are Anglicised French words. Smorgasbord, sputnik, kindergarten, delicatessen, tempo, vista, sauna, the list is endless. And English is richer as a result.

It has been pointed out to us that the metric system took 200 years to catch on and still has not conquered the whole world. But the advantages of the metric system are obvious and it's much easier to learn than another language. I don't know if school children still have to learn the times tables, but I recall that we all knew at a very early age that 10 times was the easiest and 12 times one of the hardest to remember.

And thank you Crabby for joining in the fun and explaining things to us. You suggest that I "spend an hour or two working on the first stages of Esperanto online". As I said previously, I don't like studying and avoid it whenever I can. I have learned my bits and pieces of Indonesian and Balinese by mixing with Balinese people in a holiday situation and letting it rub off on me. This is what I call the painless way of learning.

I actively make a proper attempt to learn things which fall into one or more of the following categories:
Things I need to know.
Things I am genuinely interested in which can't be easily learned by my favourite method of "letting it rub off on me".
Things which are to my advantage to know.

I don't want anyone to get upset at this, because it is just my personal feeling and not intended to be derogatory to anyone, but to me Esperanto is just an unnecessary curiosity and not currently worth "an hour or two" of my time. And, rightly or wrongly, I would say that would be the opinion of most people of whatever nationality who are aware that there is such a language as Esperanto.
Posted by Rex, Sunday, 5 February 2006 1:24:49 PM
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Here are a few facts answering points made in this forum: (1) I had a better command of Esperanto after six months than of English after six years and I met many people, with the most varied mother tongues, who had the same experience. (2) A global Esperanto community has been in existence for a century. It's a kind of diaspora: few people in a given place, but somebody most everywhere. It organizes many international events (see http://www.eventoj.hu/kalendar.htm), so that people meet, fall in love, have children. Often they have no other common language, and the whole family communicates in Esperanto, which is the mother tongue of the children. (3) For reasons pertaining to neuropsychology, you express your feelings better in Esperanto than in any other foreign language, all other factors (time devoted to study, etc.) being equal. I had someday a request for psychotherapy from a lady who spoke Polish, Esperanto, English and German. Esperanto proved to be best to express emotional matters and describe precise experiences. We were both more fluent in it than in English. (4) I've attended Shakespeare plays both in English and Esperanto. In English, I hardly understood 50%. In Esperanto I understood everything and enjoyed the plays a lot. Most of Shakespeare's works exist in Esperanto. (5) I've worked in Central and Eastern Asia and had many contacts with Esperanto speakers over there. Although Esperanto is ten times more difficult for the average Chinese than for the average European, it is still thirty to fifty times easier than English, or any national language except Malay-Indonesian. (6) Lack of teachers would not be a problem, since a good level is speedily reached by people in the teaching profession. (7) It's not true that Esperanto has had its chance and failed it. Compared with the metric system, which was nowhere in use 120 years after its publication, its success is impressive. Esperanto has never ceased spreading, except during the Hitler-Stalin era, although at a very slow pace. So it's a bit premature to speak of failure. Let's wait and see.
Posted by valano, Sunday, 5 February 2006 10:34:41 PM
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valano, you don't say what is your native tongue, but I have no doubt that Esperanto is easier to learn than English. One simple reason for this is the richness of the English language - approaching a million words, according to the Global Language Monitor.

Whenever you translate a sentence, particularly when it is trying to convey an abstract concept, some level of meaning is lost. This is the reason I cannot take seriously your statement "I've attended Shakespeare plays both in English and Esperanto. In English, I hardly understood 50%. In Esperanto I understood everything and enjoyed the plays a lot."

While you may well have understood the words, valano, I doubt very much whether you understood their meaning in the way Shakespeare intended. One of my abiding memories of studying his plays at school is the effort we spent analyzing and dissecting the words, and the construction of the sentences in which they found themselves, in order to wring out their meaning in the context of the play.

We did this because Shakespeare wrote for an audience fundamentally different to that of the century in which I studied him. If we hadn't put in this effort, much of the meaning would have passed over our heads.

Given the subtlety of his usage, you can forgive me for doubting whether Shakespeare translated into Esperanto did much more than tell a story.

There is also the dimension of imagery. In my previous post I talked about cultural nuances, which are closely related to the imagery, over and above sterile translation, that is created by words.

So let's be practical. Here is a short, relatively simple piece from Macbeth. I'd welcome a translation from you, plus commentary on the way Esperanto captures Shakespeare's imagery.

"She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death."

Iambic pentameters would be nice, too.
Posted by Pericles, Monday, 6 February 2006 3:13:24 PM
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Crabby, thanks for the expansion, I had missed the previous piece.

I'm not sure it adds much to the story, though. I am still of the opinion that we are in a demand-driven environment, and while it may very well occur that English is eventually superseded as the world's natural second language, I cannot see its replacement being Esperanto.

Your observation on the lack of a strong network effect shows the problem starkly.

"...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."

Corporations are complex organisms. If I were to present the case for your proposal to the Board, I would have to show a number of things, the first of which would be the net value of the investment - not to the world at large, but to my corporation. At the same time, my counterpart in the other corporation(s) would be doing the same thing.

What, exactly, could we point to that would create the necessary added value?

Would we have a competitive edge in the market, and how would it manifest itself? Would we be able to lower our cost base, and if so how? What would we need fewer of (in expense terms), and where would we gain revenue or profitability?

This was my point about diplomats and politicians. They have no compunction about spending other people's money for no tangible value in return. (Quite the opposite, in fact. If they didn't spend our money, they would simply disappear.) More importantly, they have absolutely no need to express complex thoughts and ideas - to do so is anathema to their calling.

Business, on the other hand, relies heavily on precision in understanding; there is simply no substitute for learning your opposite number's language. Using an intermediary platform requires two specific translation points, each of which will leak information. And information degradation creates risk.
Posted by Pericles, Monday, 6 February 2006 3:52:12 PM
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Pericles, I agree with you. Shakespeare is beyond my reach. I can't study him in depth as you did in school. So the question for me is: nothing, or something? I prefer something, even knowing it's far from the real thing. Poetry is untranslatable. How would you render with all its harmonics Esperanto poetess Eli Urbanova's verse *La dolce lula belo betula*? "The sweet lulling beauty of the birch" is awful compared to the original, with the special atmosphere created by the rhythm, the vowel sounds and the alliterations. If I gave you my translation of the Macbeth piece, you'd judge Esperanto on the basis of my translation, instead of judging me on the basis of my lack of talent. It would distort the picture.
Esperanto is not perfect, far from it. But it's the less unfair, the less unpleasant, the less expensive of the means of mutual understanding available to people with different mother tongues. English puts 95% of the world population in an inferior position in relation with native speakers, and is an incredibly complicated tool for non English speakers. Broken English gives pitiful results, as compared with Esperanto, after a much bigger investment in time and effort (four hours a week for five years in most countries). If a comparison of the various systems of linguistic communication in use today interests you, go to http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/communication.htm .
English is a very rich language, you say. Indeed. And yet many Esperanto words have no equivalent in it, for instance *samlingvano* "a person speaking the same language", *filminda* "worth being filmed", *kisema* "who has a tendency to kiss a lot". Because the right to combine elements is unlimited, Esperanto's vocabulary is infinite. The difference between the two languages is that English's richness is a matter of memory, of hours and hours of being in an English speaking environment, whereas Esperanto's is a matter of intelligence, or of reflex, so it gives equal chances to all, wherever they live, after a very sensible investment in time. From a global point of view, the former is artistocratic, the latter democratic.
Posted by valano, Monday, 6 February 2006 10:43:51 PM
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Interesting points have been made about Shakespeare. As a follow on from that, how would Esperanto handle figures of speech such as simile and metaphor? How about alliteration and poetic rhyming? Or poetic license? Could we savour the cheeky delight of a cunningly worded erotic limerick? Or the challenge of a cryptic crossword? And would anagrams be easy to both devise and disguise?

How about humour? Either a subtle or a terrible double entendre? [And how would we translate "terrible" in this context?] What about menage a trois? Or either a very clever, or very awful pun? [Translate "awful" in this context.]

And if we describe a lady as "petite", this word carries far more meaning than its literal translation from the original French.

Over to the Esperantists. [I hope this is the correct term.]
Posted by Rex, Monday, 6 February 2006 11:12:43 PM
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Thanks valano, you've already answered me on alliteration. Looks good too!

For "person speaking the same language" I'm comfortable with the [well known in Australia] Italian colloquial word paesano, "man from the same town".

And I'm enjoying this interchange of ideas.
Posted by Rex, Monday, 6 February 2006 11:30:54 PM
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Pericles, here is the Macbeth piece translated by an American friend:

"Shi devus morti poste;
Tiel postrestus temp por tia vort.
Morgauo, kaj morgauo, kaj morgauo
Rampas chi-etapashe de tag al tag
Gis la lasta silab' de registra temp,
Dum hierauoj stultulojn lumgvidis
al voj de polva mort."
(*j* is pronounced as *y* in *boy*)

Rex, no problem with metaphors. By discussing, corresponding, taking part in international Esperanto life, speakers acquire a sense of which metaphors are universal and which are not. "Slug" is *limak*. Slugs are slow. So one way of expressing that someone is moving very slowly is to say that he or she *limakas*. (You can use any concept as a verb at the present tense by adding *as* to the root.)
As to rhymes, there is even a special poetic form in which roots rhyme according to a pattern and endings to another:

Agrable
sur sablo
mi kushas.
Kontente
la vento
min tushas.

Nur bruas
la skuo
de l'ondo.
Forestas
la resto
de l'mondo.

(Vowels like in Spanish, Italian or Latin, stress always on last but one syllable).

Pleasantly / on sand / I lie. // Contentedly / the wind / strokes me. // The only noise/ is the shaking (the tremor)/ or the waves. / Absent is / the rest / of the world.

Humour, limericks, double entendre, puns etc. abound in Esperanto thanks to the unlimited freedom to combine elements. I remember a poem about a man who moved from Cuba which ended by: *edzecon fugis kiel fidel-kastron* "He flew away from marriage as from *fidel-kastro*, *fidel-kastro* = "the castration that is faithfulness".
Or, to take a more serious example, there is a Chinese four word phrase exhorting fathers to act like fathers and sons like sons. *Patro patru, filu fil* is an exact rendering of this Confucianist sentence, much more encompassing than all its Western versions.

*Esperantist* is correct, but personally I prefer *Esperanto speaker*, the *-ist* suffix risks to add connotations that can evoke something quite different from what is meant, which is simply "somebody who uses Esperanto"
Posted by valano, Tuesday, 7 February 2006 10:29:04 PM
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Rex, "man of the same town" is in Esperanto *samurbano*, which I feel is quite different from *samlingvano*, "somebody with the same language". Compare: *samlandano* "fellow-citizen", *samreligiano* "coreligionist", *samoazano* "a person from the same oasis", *samlunano* " somebody from the same moon, from the same satellite of a given planet". You are my *samforumano* : we take part in the same forum. The series is unlimited. And there are many synonyms. "Fellow student" can be *samklasano* "someone of the same class", *samlernejano*, "of the same school", *kunstudanto* "who studies with…", *studokunulo* (*kun* = "with", *ulo* = "somebody who…" > *kunulo* "companion", *studo* = "study"). Esperanto is rich as nature is rich. Everything living is composed of just a few elements: carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, a small number of trace elements, a few metals. And yet, what a variety! What a difference between a kangaroo and my little self, between you and a mocking bird ! This is what happens when nothing restricts the possibility to combine things. One of the reasons why I'm in love with Esperanto is that I feel free in it as in no other language. And the effort needed to reach that marvel is very light, as compared with other languages. It's the most cost effective language in the world.
Posted by valano, Tuesday, 7 February 2006 10:58:57 PM
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The day before my 'samlingvanino' showed me your article, I received a copy of Israela Esperantisto, No.143 , December 2005.
Although there had been a small Esperanto group in Jerusalem in 1926, and a suggestion had been made at the Universal Congress in Edinburgh that year that there should be a Congress in Jerusalem, definite moves began in 1944 to form a Near East Esperanto League combining both Arabian and Jewish members. A congress organised by the Palestine Esperanto League took place in Jerusalem in April 1945, attended by both Jews and Arabs.

People who want nuances should read some of Valano's books. In one, I read "albanoj ponardas' - Albanians use a dagger to kill, not a gun.
He also created a manner of speech which would include our "ain't", "dunno" etc to differentiate the types of people abou whom he wrote.
People who want satire etc should read books by Raymond Schwartz. He wrote limericks, all about young women, one of which is easily understandable::
Jen estas fraulin' Budapesta, /lau certa informo atesta, /s'i estis en Buda /dumtage tutnuda/ kaj nokte en Pesto - senvesta!

Because of the many prefixes and suffixes, the basic list of words is relatively small but they can be adapted. So 'muso' 'mouse' gives computer users the word 'musumi' - 'to use the mouse' for which there is no equivalent in English.
Following the use of prefixes and suffixes, the word we use for USA is 'Usono' - as 'UnitedStatesOfNorthamerica' This means that 'American' relates to the whole area from Alaska to Chile; and 'usona' relates to the area between Mexico and Canada plus Alaska
At a meeting in Cuba I told a journalist that I had begun to learn Esperanto in 40 years ago; he said 'You are lucky; I have known it for only 15 years'
Apart from serious original writing, and translations there is also a very satirical magazine from Russia which at times verges on pornography.
Esperanto caters for everyone!

from Tregenna
Posted by tregenna, Thursday, 2 March 2006 12:52:20 PM
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