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Does international language work? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| zooplah Diglot Senior Member United States zooplah.farvista.net Joined 6373 days ago 100 posts - 116 votes  Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: German | Message 41 of 91 29 January 2010 at 9:16pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Neutrality doesn't mean that it's equal for the speakers of all languages. It means that it's not bound to any nation, culture, or ideology. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| zooplah Diglot Senior Member United States zooplah.farvista.net Joined 6373 days ago 100 posts - 116 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: German | Message 42 of 91 29 January 2010 at 9:20pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
1) Microsoft is victor because of marketing and bullying. If Zamenhof did the same, it might actually be the lingua franca. 2) Betamax had better quality, but it had its disadvantages. 3) Volapük comes from vola, the genitive of vol (world) and pük (speech). 4) Esperanto definitely has a chicken-egg problem. I find it amazing that as many people who speak it do, especially the first adopters (could you imagine being a North American who decides to pick up a language that no one else on the continent understands, before the Internet?). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| zooplah Diglot Senior Member United States zooplah.farvista.net Joined 6373 days ago 100 posts - 116 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: German | Message 43 of 91 29 January 2010 at 9:26pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
You can't be serious.
Zamenhof started working on Esperanto long before Schleyer started working on Volapük. It's just that Zamenhof took far more care for its completeness, facility, and viability. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| zooplah Diglot Senior Member United States zooplah.farvista.net Joined 6373 days ago 100 posts - 116 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: German | Message 44 of 91 29 January 2010 at 9:50pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
How so? I'd say that Esperanto is far more flexible, clear, and concise than English (not that that would be hard).
You have no idea what you're talking about. Haven't you ever read Fundamento de Esperanto? Rule 15 of the "official grammar": The so-called „foreign” words, i. e. words which the greater number of languages have derived from the same source, undergo no change in the international language, beyond conforming to its system of orthography. ― Such is the rule with regard to primary words, derivatives are better formed (from the primary word) according to the rules of the international grammar, e. g. teatr'o, „theatre”, but teatr'a, „theatrical”, (not teatrical'a), etc. How about what Zamenhof wrote in Lingvaj Respondoj (Language Answers)?: ...miaj Respondoj devas esti rigardataj kiel opinioj kaj konsiloj absolute privataj... [...my Answers must be regarded to as absolutely private opinions and advice...] It's made clear that it was in the will of speakers and no single person had proprietorial control over it. So even when he disagreed with the direction the actual language was heading, all he could do was express it, but he couldn't forbid people from using it: La vorton “ŝati” mi uzas ordinare en la senco de “rigardi kiel valoran, kiel gravan”. Ekzemple: la gazetoj tre ŝatas la kunlaboradon de aŭtoroj gloraj, sed tute ne ŝatas la kunlaboradon de komencantoj. [I usually use the word "ŝati" in the sense of "to regard as valuable, as important". For example: the newspapers very much appreciate the collaboration of glorious authors, but absolutely don't appreciate the collaboration of a novice.] [Even back then, people were using "ŝati" to mean "to like" instead of "to appreciate"; nowadays, you usually use "aprezi" to mean "to appreciate."] In Fundamento de Esperanto and Lingvaj Respondoj, Zamenhof talks about the Academy (Akademio de Esperanto), but as the late Don Harlow always said, the Academy was always reactive and will only approve a decision 50 years after everyone is already using it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| zooplah Diglot Senior Member United States zooplah.farvista.net Joined 6373 days ago 100 posts - 116 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto Studies: German | Message 45 of 91 29 January 2010 at 9:57pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Why not? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5526 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 46 of 91 29 January 2010 at 10:55pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
What I meant was, in SWEDISH it is used as a way to say rigamarole. I was not under the impression that whoever invented it named it rigamarole, crackpot though he probably was.
If you realise this, why do you bother to learn it? 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Gusutafu Senior Member Sweden Joined 5526 days ago 655 posts - 1039 votes Speaks: Swedish* | Message 47 of 91 29 January 2010 at 10:58pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Of course I haven't, almost no-one has. You misunderstood our discussion, it was about flexibility in a historical sense, language change. Someone claimed that there was an official grammar, I retorted that this must mean less language change, less adaptation. Edited by Gusutafu on 30 January 2010 at 12:08am 2 persons have 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 48 of 91 30 January 2010 at 10:16am | IP Logged | ||||||||
Why should that be the case? All languages have official grammars that only change through incremental changes in usage, not on the basis of ideologically-based campaigns and language planning. The reason that the Fundamento was adopted as unchangeable was to give Esperanto the kind of solid foundation that traditions of usage give most languages. Nobody can just arbitrarily decide to change all the pronouns in a language, for example, not even a body with nominal authority over the language. The "untouchability" of the basic rules of the Fundamento give Esperanto a coherence that many other conlangs have lacked. This is one of the reasons why Esperanto has done so much better than many other conlangs, which have been subjected to continual radical reforms. In fact, Esperanto changes and evolves in exactly the same way as any other living language. This article by Claude Piron shows some of the ways in which Esperanto has changed and evolved throughout its history. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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