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| Cage Diglot aka a.ardaschira, Athena, Michael Thomas Senior Member United States Joined 6627 days ago 382 posts - 393 votes  Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Portuguese | Message 41 of 191 06 July 2007 at 1:48am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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If you can call Esperanto a real language would you have to call Pig Latin one too..right? I grew up speaking it to my friends along with English...hmmmm... perhaps I should add it to my profile...;) Can you really compare Esperanto to a real language like Hebrew? Hebrew was not invented in 1948 when the Jewish people claimed their lands. It only laid dormant for a time. That language is one of the oldest languages there is. Are there monolinguals whose only language is Esperanto? Wouldn't be very many people they could speak to. Wouldn't comparing Esperanto in richness of expression, history, and heritage to a real language be like comparing lightning bugs to lighting? Edited by Cage on 06 July 2007 at 2:00am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| FSI Senior Member United States Joined 6362 days ago 550 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English* | Message 42 of 191 06 July 2007 at 2:40am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
I noticed you didn't counter NSL in the entirety of your post.
Nah. Pig Latin's a language game - a cipher. It's a means of obfuscating an existing language. Not the same as Esperanto, NSL, or Hebrew.
Why not? Can you really compare NSL to a "real" language like Hebrew?
If by dormant, you mean dead, certainly. By that logic, we'd have to describe Latin as a "dormant" language. The same with Old English, and Proto-Indo-Iranian. Hebrew was extinct. It wasn't spoken. Thousands upon thousands of words were invented - yes, invented - in order to make the language viable, and usable in modern times. Does this make Hebrew a fake language?
That language, as it was spoken, is dead. The language as it is spoken now is a hybrid of how we believe the old language might have been spoken, with a thorough overhaul to render it practical in the 21st century.
Perhaps, but most likely not, for the same reason nearly every endangered language currently in existence possesses fewer and fewer truly monolingual speakers by the day - the world is a much smaller place. Each day, cultures and languages intertwine irrevocably. Whenever two meet, the dominant culture imposes its language on its neighbor, and the "weaker" language dies out. 100 years ago, it might have been feasible to have communities of monolingual Esperanto speakers in isolated parts of the world. Today, this is very difficult, for the reasons outlined above.
Substitute Nicaraguan Sign Language into your above sentence. The "cultural bling" of a language shouldn't have anything to do with its right to exist. NSL has existed for solely 30 years. Does this mean it is a "lightning bug" compared to any other language in existence? I think not. Language isn't some kind of old boy's club, where one needs to have the proper credentials in order to gain entry. A language simply requires people willing to speak it. And depending on one's count, Esperanto has a couple million, with a tally growing every day. This may be compared to the dozens (hundreds?) of languages that, sadly, go extinct each year. Perhaps we shouldn't be as eager to draw up underhanded constructs to keep Esperanto out of the language tent - because when we do, we inevitably crowd out thousands of languages without the global weight of Esperanto, which are every bit as real in the minds of the people who use them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto And for the record, there's quite a bit of culture to be had in Esperanto. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Cage Diglot aka a.ardaschira, Athena, Michael Thomas Senior Member United States Joined 6627 days ago 382 posts - 393 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Portuguese | Message 43 of 191 06 July 2007 at 3:26am | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Great post FSI! Definitely food for thought there. Perhaps one day the Esperanto speakers will form their
own country and a thousand years from now no one will think of Esperanto as any less than any other language? Edited by Cage on 06 July 2007 at 3:32am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6442 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 44 of 191 06 July 2007 at 3:48pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Why is a country necessary? There are "5000, give or take a couple of thousand" languages. Last I checked, there were far less countries. If you consider Basque, Cantonese, and Navajo languages, a country isn't necessary. Some people consider Esperanto 'lesser', some do not. The same is true for any other language. The issue is perception, not some objective fact or status or attribute. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| Cage Diglot aka a.ardaschira, Athena, Michael Thomas Senior Member United States Joined 6627 days ago 382 posts - 393 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: French, Portuguese | Message 45 of 191 07 July 2007 at 2:55pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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Hey Volte chill out guy! I was speaking tongue in cheek! I was speculating when I said "perhaps". Who knows where things will go in the next 1000 years. Healthy languages are those with five million or more speakers. The rest are struggling for survival. Edited by Cage on 07 July 2007 at 2:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| reltuk Groupie United States Joined 6819 days ago 75 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 46 of 191 07 July 2007 at 3:51pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
Judging a language's likelihood to survive in the short-term seems to be related to a number of factors, including: 1) average age of the linguistic community, 2) rate of adoption as a native language by subsequent generations within the linguistic community, 3) rate of "attrition" by younger generations to live or work outside the linguistic community, 4) rate of marriage and child birth amongst native speakers within the linguistic community, as compared to cross-linguistic community marriages, 5) prevalence of communication with and proximity to other linguistic communities. While that list is no where near comprehensive, it's a bit more of a realistic approach to the situation than just throwing out a (random?) number like 5 million. I would suggest that Esperanto is not struggling to survive, despite having less than 5 million speakers, and almost no native ones. A sufficient number of people enter the linguistic community every year and there is sufficient interest of maintaining the language as a form of communication from within the community that, baring some great changes in the geo-political or socio-linguistic fabric of the World, it does not stand a reasonable chance of not being spoken three to five generations from now. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||||||||||||||
| The Law Newbie United States Joined 6378 days ago 31 posts - 31 votes Speaks: English* | Message 47 of 191 07 July 2007 at 4:16pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
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More talk on Assimil, less on Esperanto :(
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| reltuk Groupie United States Joined 6819 days ago 75 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 48 of 191 07 July 2007 at 4:37pm | IP Logged | |||||||||||||||||
It seems to me that an awful lot has been written about Assimil on these forums already. Is there specific information you're looking for that you haven't found in previous posts yet? 1 person has voted this message useful |
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