Re: Esperanto

[Terry Hancock <hancock@anansispaceworks.com>]

On Sunday 19 December 2004 10:15 pm, Anthony Hoskins wrote:
> I've been playing with this idea a bit, and was wondering if I could get some
> input on it. As many of you probably already know, Esperanto is a language
> designed for International communications. It is designed to be easy to learn,
> while powerful enough to allow anyone to describe what they mean. 

While Esperanto is interesting, it has to be appreciated that it is a
highly Euro-centric language. It may seem equally easy (or difficult)
for most Europeans to learn, but it is not at all simple from the PoV of
Japanese, Chinese, Swahili, or Cherokee.

For example, why on Earth an inflected language?  Analytic languages
like English and Chinese seem to be the normal result when Creolization
occurs for people speaking disparate languages.  So it seems
unnatural to think that a synthetic language will be a useful artificial
interchange language.

Esperanto is essentially an artificial *Romance Language* even more
than merely being Indo-European.  It's choice of phonemes, moreover
is far from the simplest and most common set.

I'm not sure there is actually such a thing as an *intrinsically* simpler
language to learn.   Languages tend to be easier or harder as a
function of how similar they are to your native language, AFAICT,
more than any intrinsic properties.

OTOH, *any* artificial language is probably easier to learn as a result
of small vocabulary and phoneme set (but this is equally a criticism
of the language's expressive power).  But as the language becomes
internalized, the natural tendency will be to expand it -- the lesson
of natural languages seems to be that humans have a preferred
level of complexity in language, and they gravitate towards that.  Too
simple and the language feels stilted and unnatural, too complex,
and words or sounds get dropped from the language.

I'd second the suggestion to support i18n of applications, but as
for teaching applications?  Heck, why not Klingon* or Quenya**?  Just
as artificial, even smaller vocabularies, and you get to talk to lots
of Trekkies or Elf-Wannabes, respectively.   With Esperanto, you can
speak to Esperanto enthusiasts.  Not that much difference. ;-)

Not that its *bad* to learn Esperanto -- it actually sounds like it's
probably fun.  I just question doing it for ideological reasons. ;-)


*Okay, not really a good example. But hey, I wanted to learn Japanese
precisely because it would be *hard* for me, not easy.

**Probably easier than Esperanto for Finns, Koreans, or Japanese,
as Quenya was inspired by the study of their language family.


-- 
--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks  http://www.anansispaceworks.com