Re: unnatural languages

On 26 helmi, 15:36, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Feb 26, 5:34 am, phogl...@xxxxxx wrote:

On 26 helmi, 11:14, LEE Sau Dan <dan...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

"phoglund" == phoglund <phogl...@xxxxxx> writes:

phoglund> As regards the "18-rule Esperanto", nobody of course
phoglund> learns Esperanto by mastering the 18 rules alone.

Then, you should dissuade those Esperantist who preach around about
the "ease of Esperanto", with the rationale being "it has only 16
basic grammar rules".

Don't you tell me what I should be doing.

Oh, fer chrissakes. You just "told" me to read those two articles that
don't say what you think they say.

Troll.

We are discussing the
question, whether Esperanto is a natural language or not,

A simple question of fact and/or definition -- yours, or everyone
else's

What is your definition? Can you concoct a definition which leaves
Esperanto a non-natural, non-real, non-human language, and Modern
Hebrew a natural, real and human language?

and whether
it is a "mark of fanaticism" to suggest that Esperanto shouild be
subject to scholarly inquiry instead of scholarly scorn.

I don't recall "mark of fanaticism" -- who said that?

I answered to Lee Sau Dan, that I was not interested in the
ideological assertions of Esperantists - he obviously seemed to think
that I endorsed the ideological proclamations and dogma of
Esperantist. I told him that I was not endorsing the ideology, but
that I simply regarded Esperanto as a worthy subject of linguistic
research, as well as any language. You told me not to express that
view, because I was only marking myself as a fanatic.




You can "scholarly inquire" into it all you want, but don't claim that
doing so has to do with linguistics.

Is Professor Lindstedt's article (which you did not bother to read)
linguistics or not? If it is not, what is it, and why is it not
linguistics?

Esperanto has
the rationale of being the only international auxiliary language with
a significant following,

Are you familiar with the English saying, "Don't put the cart before
the horse"? The (minuscule) "significance" of its following is not its
"rationale"!

Are you familiar with this thing called pragmatism? Let me spell it
out for you. The idea of an international auxiliary language is
attractive to lots of people with a nice, non-xenophobic outlook -
this may appear novel to you, but there indeed are such people in the
world. The only international auxiliary language of any consequence is
Esperanto. If you are attracted to the idea of an auxlang (if you
allow me to make use of the jargon word), you can either propose an
auxlang of your own, or learn one of the existing auxlangs. An
auxlang of your own is unlikely to attract following, so you will
probably prefer one of the existing ones. The most practical choice
will be Esperanto, then.

As I said previously: I am not an Esperantist, but I can feel empathy
(look it up in a dictionary, as the concept is hardly familiar to you)
with a person who becomes attracted to the idea of an international
auxlang for ideological reasons. For such a person, the most pragmatic
course of action is to learn Esperanto. This is not due to any
intrinsic merit of the language itself, but due to the historical
accident that it happened to fill the slot of an international
auxlang.


and for anyone ideologically interested in an
international auxiliary language, Esperanto is the most rational
option regardless of its ease. Noting that it has survived for a
century, it is evidently easy enough for all practical purposes.

Exactly. It is purely a matter of ideology.

Esperanto is more or less an ideological project, in the sense that
national languages are ideological projects, they usually have some
ideological significance for national states. The internationalist
ideology associated with Esperanto is comparable to the nationalist
ideologies associated with many national languages. It is an ideology
that has wide attraction among people of goodwill.


I don't know anything about this Logjam that used to get mentioned
here very frequently, but I gathered it was by far more
"rational" (being based in symbolic logic, or something?) than
Zamenhof's little Mischling.

You don't know, but you still have solemn opinions. Typical.



phoglund> Real Esperanto ("real" in the sense of "acceptable by
phoglund> fluent or native speakers") is learnt in contact with
phoglund> the speaker community, as is any language.

Thus making it as difficult to learn as natural languages,

So?

if not

harder. Why harder? Because it's harder to find fluent Esperanto
speakers (and practically impossible to find native speakers) to
regularly speak with.

AFAIK fluent Esperanto speakers are found everywhere, if you know
where to look for them, and Professor Lindstedt seems even to have
found native speakers.

Sorry, but I don't hear you speaking -- English, Finnish, Irish,
German, or Esperanto -- through the email or the newsgroup.

Troll-.


.

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