Re: Settling an Argument - Assembly *IS* a Language, Right?


Christopher Culver wrote:
Raymond S. Wise wrote:
Preserving the diversity of natural languages is *not* the paramount
idea of Esperanto.

Your own Prague Manifesto says it is. And the Manifesto has been
endorsed by UEA and most national associations, and signed by thousands
of individual Esperantists.


The Prague Manifesto can be read at

http://www.esperanto.se/dok/praguemanifesto.html

Linguistic diversity is given as one of seven essential principles. To
claim that linguistic diversity is "paramount" is not the same thing as
that. However, I'm going to put the question to the members of
alt.english.usage and alt.usage.english to see if they agree with you.



The paramount idea of Esperanto is that *humanity is
one huge family whose members should be able to communicate with each
other on an equal basis.*

That's exactly what Zamenhof and the early Esperantists believed, and
how Esperantists behave in practise. A glance at the history of the
movement will show that the "language diversity" advertising began only
in the late 1960s. And the same core activists who are claiming that
Esperanto protects language diversity are those who are most opposed to
Esperantists exchanging other languages. It's a bait-and-switch.

If Esperantists would simply admit that the "language diversity"
advertising is a fraud, and just start explaining to the public the
original goal, Esperanto everywhere, then I wouldn't be so vocal about
the movement. You all should stop the deception already.


Deception has to be deliberate, and I have no reason to believe any
deception is involved. And how could you know much of anything about
Esperanto without knowing that the idea behind having Esperanto spoken
by all is that every person would be able to communicate with any other
person in the world without the need of a translator? The distinction
others have made, that Esperanto is intended to be an *auxiliary*
language rather than a *universal* one, is still valid. (The idea of a
language as the equivalent of a "universal" one for a given
country--such as the discrimination of speakers of patois in France or
the punishment, in the first half of the 20th century, of speakers of
Spanish and American Sign Language in the US--has not been completely
eliminated, as can be seen in recent debates concerning the
"Star-Spangled Banner" and the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish.)



I've believed since reading
Mario Pei's comments on the matter

I can't believe you're citing Mario Pei here in sci.lang.


See my reply to Peter T. Daniels



People who share only the lingua franca as a common language will get
married and use only the lingua franca in the home.

Didn't happen with me and my significant other. When we met, our only
lingua franca was Esperanto. We immediately learned each other's native
languages and abandoned Esperanto. We see no reason to go back to
speaking an artificial language that only puts up a wall between our
respective cultures.


But it would happen in such marriages generally. It's happening *now,*
just with the lingua franca being in place over a smaller area.



I've discussed such matters with other Esperantists, and I have come to
agree with them that one advantage which Esperanto has over a natural
language such as English used as a lingua franca is the point about
equality.

Two people are rarely equal in speech even if they share the same
language, because there are always subtle differences in register and
rhetoric skill. Preserving an colourful diversity of national languages
which makes life interesting is more important than seeking the
unreachable state of "equality". Sometimes Babel is good.


I disagree.



It is much more likely that a person can gain a
native-speaker fluency in Esperanto compared to a native speaker of the
language than it is for a person learning English as a second language
to gain a native-speaker fluency.

For people speaking European languages, sure.


Why limit it to people speaking European languages?



Esperantists don't "condemn and ostracize people curious about other
fields, botany and mathematics for example."

No, but they do condemn and ostracize people interested in other
languages.

And the main allegiance of Esperantists is not, I contend, with the
language, but instead with the human family.

No, it's to the language. If you really had allegiance to the human
family, you'd be willing to learn the languages that are dear to the
hearts of your foreign friends.


Tell that to a Hmong or Somali speaker who finds himself in the
emergency room of a hospital where no translator is available.


--
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA

E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com

.

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