Re: Who castrated Esperanto?

On Feb 20, 4:02 pm, craoibhi...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
On Feb 20, 5:30 pm, Iain <iain_inks...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:





On Feb 20, 11:35 am, craoibhi...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:

On Feb 20, 11:58 am, Iain <iain_inks...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Feb 20, 5:17 am, Horace LaBadie <hwlabadi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

In article
<7bb3a0b2-2be0-4f13-b4a7-a9f5dc6ff...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,

 Iain <iain_inks...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Feb 19, 11:30 pm, Iain <iain inks...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Feb 19, 11:03 pm, Horace LaBadie

<hwlabadi...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In article
<65339a0c-d3f5-4a6e-a2a5-01444a378...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,

 Iain <iain inks...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
In English, for example, there is hardly any advantage in having
"autobiography" when "life story" will suffice.

Well, yes, there is. They mean different things.

Expand.

And even if they
didn't, why use two words when one will do?

Exactly!

Ok I see your point.

Presumably you meant: why use a phrase containing two words when a one-
word phrase will suffice?
The problem there is merely that it needs to be learned.
The three words "own life story" are closer to the cradle, and
"autobiography" is one thing more to learn.

--Iain

As learning division is one more thing to learn after subtraction, but
it makes things simpler. It's a bit idiotic not to learn new words,
especially useful ones.

Still missing the point. We're not talking about the wisdom of
forgetting English words. We're talking about how the smallness of
Esperanto's vocab is jolly nice.

Trying to limit the vocabulary of Esperanto is a losing battle. If
Esperanto is used as a language of general human-to-human
communication,

But it isn't a language of general human-to-human communication. It's
a language of special human-human communication.

By "general" I meant "general purpose". Thus, a language that is used
and can be used in all human activities. By my token, a language of
special human-human communication - in the sense that you seem to be
aiming at - is a controlled language specially designed for use in a
limited range of situation. Thus, a language such as Seaspeak,
Emergencyspeak, or Airspeak, which consists of a limited number of
words and phrases for specified uses and specified situations.


Esperanto, if adopted worldwide as a second language, would lack an
environment of surround talk, because each speaker, though able to
communicate with foreigners, would be surrounded by his mother tongue
nonetheless, and only ever speak Esperanto on occasions. The examples
would fade from his memory, and only the rules(which are few enough to
never forget) would remain.

How exactly will you prevent people from using Esperanto words and
phrases to convey special shades of meanings?


I wouldn't. Who said I would? What has that got to do with anything?


How exactly will you
prevent them from using Esperanto as a status symbol, e a conservative influence on the language as ifp
symbol, as a source of slang words? How exactly will you prevent
people from using Esperanto as a vehicle of artistic expression


I don't need to. It doesn't matter if a language evolves offshoots.
That doesn't damage the original specification from which it is
taught.

Does Zammenhof's work evolve? Does the ink move about on the pages?


In a world where everybody speaks Esperanto and knows that everybody
else does, too, people will speak the language among others just for
fun, or to show off - in order to convey something by their choice of
language.

Therefore, on rare occasions, like I said.

And they will use it for writing poems, stories, books and
songs, because they want to be read and they know they will be read
more widely that way.


It's a self-solving problem!

In your scenario -- a world in which Esperanto has saturated
international culture, Esperanto's regularity becomes less important.

The whole reason why Esperanto's regularity is considered hallowed, is
because that makes it supremely easy to learn. If, however, Esperanto
is already saturating international culture enough for that regularity
to be evolved away, it wouldn't matter if it became irregular --
saturation and surround talk would do the same job.


One of the big mistakes of the Esperanto community, is the attempt to
keep the language alive, whereas they should be ensuring it remains
dead, but well known nonetheless.

It is not a mistake. It is a feature. Of language.

Now you're doing that peculiar thing that scientists something do,
when faced with engineers -- judging agendas by the standards reserved
for judging facts.

What do you mean "It's a feature"? It's a feature created by
counterproductive deed.


Esperanto ought to be delivered as a set of rules and paradigms. It
ought never to be taught by example, except maybe a handful of initial
examples. That way, the language gets rebooted each generation.

The wind blows wherever it pleases, saith the Lord. Once Esperanto has
been launched and acquired by real living people, the speaker
community will no more heed your ideas of why and where Esperanto
"ought to be" used, or how.


There is no wind. Wind would be day-to-day conversation.

That's the element that doesn't exist with a USL.

Esperanto has an agenda attached. Where Esperanto is defined as the
language laid down by Zammenhof, any decision to teach Esperanto would
be a decision to teach according to the specification.

You are judging a language that only exists in second-language form.

The means by which each living person aquires Esperanto in the first
place is still in the hands of those teaching it (those in charge of
the agenda). If those teaching it teach according to the original
specification, this exerts a tremendous conservative influence on the
language that simply cannot exist in languages that have native
speakers.

Now, let's suppose Esperanto evolved a certain way that ruins its
inherent benefits. Ok. So what? If there still exists an effort to
teach the original specification, the original language would live on
alongside the offshoots and runoffs.


it will necessarily become more and more similar to

natural languages and evolve in the same way they do. This will
involve the adoption of learned borrowings from the common vocabulary
of Western culture and, increasingly, from English (giko "nerd, geek"
is a case in point).

Contrary to the sort of linguists criticized by Piron, I do not think
Esperanto is somehow laughable, stupid, ridiculous or scary. But on
the other hand, I don't think Esperantists usually grasp how
preposterous the idea is that it could be possible to design a
language which is easier than national languages because it does away
with universal characteristics of natural languages. It is not
possible. That language will inevitably develop many of those
trappings which make your average national language a kind of inside
joke - idiomatic expressions, specific cultural references and so on.
Thus, the people who are told that you only need to master Zamenhof's
grammar to count as full-blood Esperantists are being had. The fact
is, that Esperanto is by now a language with a cultural package and a
history, very much like any national language.

I don't think it is a bad thing. I think that if anything it makes
Esperanto more interesting as a subject of study, in the same way that
national languages are interesting. But for people like you - and they
are found among opponents and proponents of Esperanto alike - the idea
of Esperanto as something fundamentally different from national
languages seems to be an axiom, and the thought of Esperanto as
essentially a natural human language with all the trappings, bells and
whistles of one is equally unsettling.

Granted, there is nothing about the content of Esperanto composition
that immunises it against the forces of language evolution. But there
are ways of handling a language that sidestep the forces of evolution.

If you want to develop Esperanto analogues to Seaspeak or Airspeak, be
my guest. However, as the Lord saith, the wind still blows wherever it
pleases. You speak as if the genie could be brought back into the
bottle. It can't.


The genie _does_ go back in the bottle. When I learned Latin, I didn't
end up sounding like a modern Italian. Because I learned according to
older texts, not the descendant language to Latin.


Esperanto has acquired a community of speakers,
native or non-native, and if you want to contribute to the further
development of the language, join them. But don't think you can tell
them how they should behave about the language. They will not heed
you. Theirs is the only show in town.

Nobody needs to tell speakers how to behave. Like I said, it's all
about teaching, not speaking.

You can confer negligible senescence on a language by ensuring it
never comes alive.

So, how will you ensure it?

Education, of course. But not by me. I'm just stating my opinion.

Again: you can imagine whatever you want, but you will never force
people to only use the language the way you'd prefer them to do.

Irrelevant.

Again, whatever future you think best is entirely irrelevant. You are
basically blaming people for being people and language for being
language. The wind still blows where it pleases. La vento blovas kie
gxi volas.

Again, I fully accept that Esperanto will evolve. That doesn't mean
that the original version goes extinct.

--Iain
.

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