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Do All Journalists Speak Esperanto Now? | ||
Tags: Esperanto | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto |  | |
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6015 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes  Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 33 of 45 04 August 2009 at 11:53am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Income tax on translators? :-| I find the figure hard to believe, anyway.
It is in a way, but it's English that's the open-source language (developed by millions) and Esperanto that has the proprietary code-base (developed by one man).... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| cordelia0507 Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5842 days ago 1473 posts - 2176 votes Speaks: Swedish* Studies: German, Russian | Message 34 of 45 04 August 2009 at 12:59pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Cainntear's quotes on the previous page were really spot on - I love it when people can come up with eloquent quotes for or against something. Although I love Douglas Adams (and am pleased to be able to read him un-translated) I agree more with Tolstoy in this case.
The wikipedia article did not mention exactly where the alleged EUR 17 billion were going to. I can't find the quote again because I can't remember what the article was about. I'd quite like to read it again, so I'll update if I can find it. HERE are some pro-Esperanto statements of a slightly political nature. Read in your own language. In fact, I think largely the attitude in Britain about English as a world language is good. Britain is simply enjoying a "free ride" from the dominance of the US and its' language right now. The UK is complaining since it means that people can get away without the enormous time expenditure of learning a foreign language to fluent level. A lot of the things that people like me find irritating about British peoples' attitude towards English probably happens COMPLETELY UNCONSCIOUSLY and not on purpose. Many people in the UK feel genuine regret and unease about their ability to speak foreign languages, but lack serious incentives to study them. A sense of superiority can come about if you see someone struggle and make a fool of themselves as they attempt to master a skill (English) that you've known since birth. This is human nature. Fairly clearcut advantages to the UK that I can think of: 1) There is a massive ESL industry in the UK. This is no doubt generating a lot of income for the country. The French admit to be pushing French for this exact reason. I saw some figures about it relating to France in a magazine. The figures for the UK will easily be quadroupled compared with France's. 2) European headquarters of multinational corporations tend to be in the UK for the same reason and despite the troubles with infrastructure and high living costs in London. This is true for corporations with roots in another EU country which do most of their R&D and production elsewhere. 3) Software localisation and translations industry is booming in the UK, such companies are among the safest bet for buying shares, these companies grow like weed... All the large ones are in the UK. 4) Brain - surge (?) into Britain. Many of the smartest people from elsewhere in Europe end up at British universtities because they can speak the language. They may end up working in British industry and under such circumstances their inventions benefits Britain, not their native country. 5) Call centre industry in the UK or Ireland. When Hungarians, Swedes and Italians call tech support for a standard household product, they usually end up speaking with a native located on the British Isles. These thousands of call centres are a source of income of course. If it weren't for the position of English they'd be elsewhere. I can't think of anything else right now, but this is a good start. Like I said, I mainly LIKE Brits & Britain, and I DON'T think Britain has some kind of sinster master plan to dominate Europe by means of English as lingua franca... I don't know about America but in their case I wouldn't entirely rule out the possibility of a clandestine plan along these lines... But seriously, the ubiquitousness of English has come about after WW2 mainly through the economic, cultural and military dominance of the US. The UK is simply taking advantage of the situation in the interest of the nations finances. Edited by cordelia0507 on 04 August 2009 at 1:57pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6015 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 35 of 45 04 August 2009 at 2:02pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I certainly feel privileged to have been able to walk into a well-paid job when I went to Spain when I looked at all my well-educated Spanish friends washing dishes in Edinburgh...
I didn't know this... interesting...
I think you're overstating this. Many major software companies have their European centres in Switzerland because of their multilingualism. Even where the call centers are in the UK, (eg Adobe) there's still a lot of foreign workers, because the UK doesn't have the multilingual skills. When Amazon moved the operational headquarters of their European operations from the UK and into Ireland, the reason cited was that they had stronger language skills out there. The dominance of English is making us complacent, and that's very dangerous.... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6474 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 37 of 45 04 August 2009 at 6:21pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Open-source is not defined by the origin but by the current situation. Very often open-source programs (such as the awesome Anki) were initially created by one person, who then released them to the world for everybody to benefit. Right now, open-source describes Esperanto a little bit better than English because a) Zamenhof explicitly released the language as such, stressing that everybody should feel free to use it for whatever purpose and make it their own and b) the community of Esperanto speakers has more influence over their language and more freedom of expression than the community of English speakers has over theirs. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6015 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 38 of 45 04 August 2009 at 7:08pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Dialectisation = forking.
Open source lets anyone make their own version. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6474 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 39 of 45 09 August 2009 at 10:16am | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Just a reminder: the free 1-hour overview class is tonight! Hope to see some of you there!
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| Sprachprofi Nonaglot Senior Member Germany learnlangs.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6474 days ago 2608 posts - 4866 votes Speaks: German*, English, French, Esperanto, Greek, Mandarin, Latin, Dutch, Italian Studies: Spanish, Arabic (Written), Swahili, Indonesian, Japanese, Modern Hebrew, Portuguese | Message 40 of 45 11 August 2009 at 10:27pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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Here's the link to the recorded session, for those who couldn't make it: http://edufire.acrobat.com/p19661087/ .
Also, you can download the slides from http://drop.io/esperanto_overview 1 person has voted this message useful |
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