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Does international language work? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6016 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 33 of 91 21 January 2010 at 1:08am | IP Logged | |||||
But does it generally take Chinese people longer to learn Esperanto than (for example) Germans and Poles? That's part of neutrality, surely.... 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| davidwelsh Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5534 days ago 141 posts - 307 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, Norwegian, Esperanto, Swedish, Danish, French Studies: Polish, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Pali, Mandarin | Message 34 of 91 22 January 2010 at 9:31am | IP Logged | |||||
There is a difference, but it's minimal compared to the difference between Chinese and Germans and Poles learning Esperanto on the one hand and their learning English on the other. It's true that speakers of European languages have an advantage in learning Esperanto in that they will recognise a lot of the vocabulary and so will have less memorising to do. This advantage though is marginal compared to the huge advantages all learners have by virtue of the affix system, regular grammar and the isolating nature of the language. Esperanto was never intended to be equally easy to learn for everyone. The only way you could make Esperanto equally easy for all would be to make it harder for everyone, by creating the vocabulary from scratch or mangling loan words beyond easy recognition. (The latter was Volapük's approach.) Zamenhof drew on European languages because they were - and still are - by far the most widely spoken around the world. It's not just Europeans who speak European languages. North and South Americans overwhelmingly speak a European language natively, and a great many people in Africa and Asia speak one as a foreign or second language. By using European languages as the basis for the lexis Zamenhof wanted to ensure that the maximum number of people would have a significant lexical discount. The point about Esperanto being neutral is that it doesn't belong to anyone. There is no native speaker norm to which you have to conform. Esperanto spoken by a Chinese is just as valid and correct as Esperanto spoken by a European. That's essentially where the claim of neutrality comes from. Edited by davidwelsh on 22 January 2010 at 9:58am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| davidwelsh Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5534 days ago 141 posts - 307 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, Norwegian, Esperanto, Swedish, Danish, French Studies: Polish, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Pali, Mandarin | Message 35 of 91 22 January 2010 at 10:56am | IP Logged | |||||
I don't think this is quite true. Certainly the late 19th century was a good time to be promoting an International Auxiliary Language, but IALs were ten a penny in Zamenhof's day, it wasn't just Volapük. According to Arika Okrent's list there were 35 IALs published in the 1880s alone. In 1887, Esperanto was one of 8 IALs to be published. It was Esperanto that emerged from this seething market of ideas, not by luck but by popular acclaim. It was the one most people chose, because they judged it to be best suited to the purposes of an IAL. It was Esperanto's emergence that killed Volapük, simply because most Volapük speakers decided Esperanto was better, and switched. Edited by davidwelsh on 30 January 2010 at 2:22pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5526 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 36 of 91 22 January 2010 at 1:15pm | IP Logged | |||||
Something like the way people chose Microsoft over Apple, Linux, Unix, Commodore etc because Windows is the superior OS? Or the triumph of VHS over Betamax? Really, it is seldom "the best" solution that emerges victorious, it is more about luck, pricing and marketing. In any case, Esperanto didn't "emerge" very far, after more than a century of, it is still smaller than Norwegian! Volapuk is a joke in Swedish, it means "rigomarole", so beating Volapuk is not much of an achievement. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6016 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 37 of 91 22 January 2010 at 2:28pm | IP Logged | |||||
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One of the most appealing features of Esperanto is that the author said people were free to change it. However, if you think about it, it's a fairly superficial claim, as the official grammar books exist and if anyone attempts to learn a "different" Esperanto, they'll not be understood!
There's an illusion, therefore, of being able to "fix" what you think is wrong, which Volapük et al didn't offer. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5526 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 38 of 91 22 January 2010 at 6:53pm | IP Logged | |||||
In reality, Esperanto must be much less flexible than natural languages. If enough people say something in a new way in English, that is the new norm. Not so with Esperanto, at least if they take the official grammar seriously. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| davidwelsh Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5534 days ago 141 posts - 307 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, Norwegian, Esperanto, Swedish, Danish, French Studies: Polish, Sanskrit, Tibetan, Pali, Mandarin | Message 40 of 91 23 January 2010 at 12:32am | IP Logged | |||||
Nope, that's exactly how it works in Esperanto too. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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