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Esperanto a waste of time? | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| Enriquee Triglot Groupie United States esperantofre.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5333 days ago 51 posts - 125 votes  Speaks: Spanish*, Esperanto, English | Message 321 of 351 24 November 2010 at 4:45am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hoogamagoo wrote: 23 November 2010 at 4:58pm
>You just reminded me of my favorite Esperanto irregularity: >"Mi amas vin'" >That apostrophe makes a huge difference. Spoken, this >phrase means "I love you," but when read it means both >"I love wine" and/or "wine love me". This is not an Esperanto irregularity. It is not even Esperanto. The structure of Esperanto fixes very well who is the doer or the maker, and who or what receives that action. "Mi amas vin" without apostrophe means "I love you". "Mi amas vinon" or "Vinon amas mi" means "I love wine". "Vino amas min" means "Wine loves me". The ending "-n" shows who or what is loved. In poetry it is permitted to use the apostrophe instead the ending "-o" in a noun (substantive). This happens only when the ending is "-o". It is not possible to use the apostrophe in the noun "vinon", because it doesn't end in "-o". You cannot write " Mi amas vin' " In poetry you could write " Min amas vin' ", in which case means "Wine loves me." 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Enriquee Triglot Groupie United States esperantofre.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5333 days ago 51 posts - 125 votes Speaks: Spanish*, Esperanto, English | Message 322 of 351 24 November 2010 at 5:08am | IP Logged | |||||
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Juan wrote:
>seeing that it lacks the very qualities that make >languages interesting: the imprint of history, culture >and society. Maybe the the imprint of history in Esperanto is shorter than in other languages (123 years). Culture and society exist. When you go back to English from Shakespeare time ... is that the same language that you call English today? I believe that most young people born in countries where English is spoken, cannot understand the writings from Shakespeare time or older. If they want to understand that, maybe they have to study that English the same way people study foreign languages. When you speak about the imprint of history in Spanish, (or French, Italian, Portuguese) do you consider Latin as part of that history? In that case, that is also part of the history of Esperanto. Esperanto wasn't created from scratch. It was developed from existing languages. English and Spanish, also developed from other existing languages. Right after publication, and during the next 123 years, Esperanto developed in the same way other languages developed ... by being used. >what Esperanto utterly lacks, having been born >in a laboratory. Using this line of thinking ... what do you think about "test tube babies"? (in-vitro fertilization). How human are these people ... having been created in a laboratory? Edited by Enriquee on 24 November 2010 at 5:36am 5 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| CaucusWolf Senior Member United States Joined 5270 days ago 191 posts - 234 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Arabic (Written), Japanese | Message 323 of 351 24 November 2010 at 5:53am | IP Logged | |||||
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In my point of view Esperanto is a language. I do however feel that it cannot be expected to be given the same respect as other languages. Although it does have a history its history is no where near as old or as deeply rooted as in other languages.
I disagree that it doesn't have any specific culture or people because a portion of the language learning community is that culture.(about 1 million+ speakers) In my opinion we should consider it a huge achievement that a language like Esperanto even survived. We as both language enthusiasts and intellectuals should respect the language even if we don't think it's as valid as others. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Hoogamagoo Diglot Newbie United States Joined 6549 days ago 14 posts - 70 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto | Message 324 of 351 24 November 2010 at 6:04am | IP Logged | |||||
Oh, fiddle dee dee. ;-) I hope you noticed that I did clarify that it was a "poetic abuse" in a follow up post, but anyway... It depends on who you think wins in a fight: Grammar or Poetry. In English, I find that Poetry tends to win when one is writing poetry. Grammatical "errors" are part of the name of the game and the ambiguity generated from that sort of abuse of the linguistic rules can be one of the spices that can make it work. Of course, there are poets who feel very differently about that. "Mi amas vi" is perfectly good Esperanto poetry. It implies love given from both - ah, but to who?. "Min amas vin" works too. Both you and I are the objects of this. And again, but by whom? by each other? it's mysterious, it's fascinating. The transitive verb begs for one of these to be the answer, but it's open ended. The ambiguity of whether or not it is a grammatical error within the context of a poem is delightful. the nature of poetry is that it is carefully constructed, and therefore everything is intentional, therefore the meaning is kind of open ended, and subject to being pushed around by the rest of the poem. Tossing "Mi amas vin'" in a poem is clearly wordplay and it has that same ambiguity previously stated. I suppose the proper translation is "I love, the wine loves." But there is also the hint that one loves the other simply because the verb is transitive. Don't shoot the richness of the language just because it is usually extremely accurate. Esperanto can be ambiguous too. It lends itself to some of the most interesting poetry because it is capable of this sort of thing - to those who love the wordplay. It also has that crazy word-lego thing, so you can come up with some crazy words that mean exactly what you say or that suggest a meaning that is, while technically not the right word, gets the point across. For instance, "malpluvi," the opposite of rain. Depending on the context, you can make it clear that you are talking about the rain clearing up. I even had occasion once where I couldn't remember the word for evaporation and used "malpluvi" to squeak by in the conversation. We all had a chuckle, but we knew what I meant... and it would have worked great in the right poem. Clarity makes languages useful. Ambiguity makes them richer. I'm just saying Esperanto can do both modes, and usually it's pretty obvious in which mode you are working. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Aineko Triglot Senior Member New Zealand Joined 5446 days ago 238 posts - 442 votes Speaks: Serbian*, EnglishC2, Spanish Studies: Russian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin | Message 325 of 351 24 November 2010 at 7:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
I wanted to let this one pass, but it's just bugging me:
bold: why? or better question: what is it exactly that languages DO, to say that they deserve more or less respect? Yes, Esperanto history and culture are younger comparing to other languages, but on the other hand, comparing to these same languages, they are quite unique: language that develops by community united only by the language and not by national feelings, that survives for more than 100 years and continues to grow (boosted by internet) - why is that less deserving of respect than other languages.
language validity? Could you please explain what you mean by this (coz I'm trying to understand and I can't :) ). 1 million people speak it, there is literature and culture - why is it less valid than others? Based on some criteria posted on this thread I could say "Bulgarian is less valid than other languages!", "Why?", "Because it doesn't interest ME." (sorry Bulgarian, nothing personal). I can give you numerous examples where languages were called 'invalid', 'false', 'less valid'... all from recent Balkan history. But in all cases it was politics talking from the people. I am repeatedly surprised when I hear 'language enthusiast and intellectuals' speaking like that. 6 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| leosmith Senior Member United States Joined 6548 days ago 2365 posts - 3804 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Tagalog | Message 326 of 351 25 November 2010 at 5:35am | IP Logged | |||||
Definition of a useless language:
Hence, Esperanto is not useless. QED. 4 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| fanatic Octoglot Senior Member Australia speedmathematics.com Joined 7144 days ago 1152 posts - 1818 votes Speaks: English*, German, French, Afrikaans, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Dutch Studies: Swedish, Norwegian, Polish, Modern Hebrew, Malay, Mandarin, Esperanto | Message 327 of 351 25 November 2010 at 5:57am | IP Logged | |||||
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There are four times as many people speaking Esperanto as speak Icelandic. There are only a handful of people who speak some languages. Is learning their languages a waste of time? Who decides?
Learning Esperanto is not a waste of time if: You are sitting for an exam in Esperanto. You are learning Esperanto to win a bet. You are playing the part in a movie of someone who speaks Esperanto. You are attending an Esperanto congress. You have a girlfriend/boyfriend and your only common language is Esperanto. You are commissioned to write an article/book on the subject of Esperanto. You want to learn the language to prove you can do it. You simply like the language. You want to attend Esperanto classes because you like a boy/girl who attends. Anyone can say that learning Esperanto would be a waste of their time. I think that anyone who makes a blanket statement that learning Esperanto is a waste of time for anyone else is being arrogant. Learning Esperanto will be a waste of time for some people. It is definitely not a waste of time for others. I think the question of whether Esperanto is a valid language is irrelevant. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6701 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 328 of 351 25 November 2010 at 10:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I don't care about Zamenhof. Forget Zamenhof. Let's suppose you went to the library and found two language courses, one about Bahasa and the other about Esperanto. Let's also assume (somewhat unrealistically) that the latter didn't mention Zamenhof or the canonical 17 or so principles, but just gave factual information about the grammar plus some of the usual bland texts about daily life in a fictive community, complete with lists of words and short snippets of songs and some silly games. Something like Teach Yourself.
By which logical test could you discover that the former described a very real language spoken by 200 mio. humans or more somewhere in the far East and the latter a - once - constructed language spoken by a community spread thinly all over the planet? Edited by Iversen on 25 November 2010 at 10:18pm 6 persons have voted this message useful |
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