Re: Promote Esperanto at Obama's Change.org

On Dec 5, 12:00 pm, Craoibhi...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Dec 5, 6:43 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:





On Dec 5, 10:34 am, Craoibhi...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

On Dec 5, 4:47 pm, "Peter T. Daniels" <gramma...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Dec 5, 6:40 am, garabik-news-2005...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
wrote:

Franz Gnaedinger <f...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Dec 5, 9:10 am, "Jens S. Larsen" <jens_s_lar...@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

In my country, there's a lot of talking about English as a language
everybody should learn, and even more talking that imply that English
is a language everybody have learnt already. Usually the reactions are
very feeble.

And once again I ask my old question: is there
a rock band singing in Esperanto, and I mean
a band who had a hit that was or is played on
the radio? A language that can't be sung has

Team. Very, very popular Slovak group in the '80s. Though
Esperanto versions of their songs remained quite obscure and
known mostly among Esperantists.

no chance to take over. English can be sung
very well.

You have to be joking - English? with all the interdentals, weird vowel
positions and short, monosyllabic words ending with consonants?
Sung? Yes. Understood while being sung? Difficult.

A century of Broadway musicals proves you wrong.

I tend to agree with Radovan up to a certain point. Esperanto has
clear, Italian-style vowels and is eminently more singable than
English. The only reason why I can understand English when it is sung
is the fact that I have been force-fed with English since I was eight
years old. But even as a teenage boy, when I had seen loads of
subtitled American TV serials (we don't do dubbing in Finland, and
this is why we usually speak quite good English), I found the lyrics
of much English-language music - both pop and classical - utterly
impenetrable without a crib.-

I cited neither pop nor classical. I cited Broadway, which includes
Tin Pan Alley -- the genre known as American Popular Song. If you
can't understand every word sung by Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby or
Mel Torme'; or Mary Martin or Barbara Cook or Rosemary Clooney, then
your command of American English isn't nearly as good as you think it
is.

Nowadays I can understand them, because I have been exposed to
American English for decades. When I was a teenager, I couldn't,
although I was able to read The Lord of the Rings in the original.-

Tolkien embraced native vocabulary and eschewed Romance loans.

What about American literature, like Melville, Twain, Wharton,
Hemingway, Fitzgerald, even Faulkner?
.

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