Hello! I would like to know whether you have heard of the language Esperanto and what you think about it.
Saluton! Mi volus scii, ĉu vi aŭdis pri la lingvo Esperanto, kaj kion vi pensas pri ĝi.
It's just another government failure. You can't enforce things like language from the top down, not even with a bad William Shatner movie.
What does it have to do with the government?
I have never heard of Esperanto before, but a quick trip Wikipedia calls it a "constructed international auxiliary language." Interesting concept inventing a new language. Although with the proliferation of the English language as the world's most common native and second language, it seems kind of pointless.
Despite that, I fail to see how it qualifies as a government failure since it is not even recognized as an official language in any country.
Quote from: Andy120290 on February 18, 2009, 04:14:08 PM
Although with the proliferation of the English language as the world's most common native and second language, it seems kind of pointless.
Actually, English is not nearly as common as many people like to think.
Quote from: Tom S. Fox on February 18, 2009, 04:17:40 PM
Actually, English is not nearly as common as many people like to think.
I guess it all depends on how you look at it. Chinese is almost certainly one of the most common, but that is simply becuse China is the most heavily populated country. What I probably should have said is that English is one of the most common, but that does not mean a majority of the world's population has even a basic understanding of it.
Exactly. Also, Esperanto has some advantages over English.
For example no irregular verbs, and words are actually pronounced the way they are spelled.
Quote from: Tom S. Fox on February 18, 2009, 03:43:58 PM
What does it have to do with the government?
Well, the UN, actually, a collection of governments.
OK, how are they related to Esperanto?
They tried to make it the official language for diplomats to use when communicating with each other. It didn't work.
Are you sure? I never heard of that before!
Yeah, but Esperanto was created decades before the UN was.
That's true! Also, as far as I know, the UN never considered using Esperanto so far, and why would it not work, anyway?
I cannot find anything saying the UN has seriously adopted, or even considered adopting, Esperanto as a language. Although there are some advocates who say it might be a good idea. Do you have a specific citation for your claim?
I have seen it explicitly stated somewhere that the UN never considered it, but I can't find it at the moment.
According to the Universal Esperanto Association's website, they have representatives in "the United Nations, UNESCO, the Council of Europe, etc."
The UN may have never made an official move, but it wasn't for lack of this group's trying.
The fact still remains: language is a bottom-up system of self-organization, like evolution or economics. It can't be imposed from the top down. Even if they did get everyone to speak Esperanto, it wouldn't be too long before you had different dialects, which over time will diverge into their own separate languages based on the particular communities that use them.
Quote from: MrBogosity on February 18, 2009, 07:31:12 PM
The UN may have never made an official move, but it wasn't for lack of this group's trying.
Yes, but that doesn't make it a failure of the government.
Quote from: MrBogosity on February 18, 2009, 07:31:12 PM
The fact still remains: language is a bottom-up system of self-organization, like evolution or economics. It can't be imposed from the top down.
Why not?
Quote from: MrBogosity on February 18, 2009, 07:31:12 PM
Even if they did get everyone to speak Esperanto, it wouldn't be too long before you had different dialects, which over time will diverge into their own separate languages based on the particular communities that use them.
I don't think there is much room for dialects within the UN.
Why not? Because people do what they want. Look at all of the attempts to do even minor things with English. One of the most successful ones is the rule--completely artificially injected--that you shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition. And look at how many people do.
Another example is sign language. It's artificially created, and there's an "official" version, but the truth is signers do what they want, and when signers from different areas try to talk together they often have difficulties.
Quote from: MrBogosity on February 18, 2009, 08:18:16 PM
Why not? Because people do what they want. Look at all of the attempts to do even minor things with English. One of the most successful ones is the rule--completely artificially injected--that you shouldn't end a sentence with a preposition. And look at how many people do.
Yeah, but that's because in most cases it is completely impossible and unnatural.
Besides, how you speak a language is different from whether you speak a language.
Also, what makes you think that Esperanto would necessarily split of into different languages? We haven't seen that happening to English, yet, and that's spoken in different places of the world.
QuoteWe haven’t seen that happening to English, yet
Oh, really? Go to England and talk to a cockney sometime. "Oy, daon' be jak, mate! Cam an nok ap ta ra'le an' 'um an weal gaw ap th'apples an pears u' me fla' an' 'av a bi'o tao'n d'ole!"
Even if people somewhere started to speak a variation of Esperanto, they could easily learn to speak standard Esperanto again.
And they could choose to speak The Queen's English if they wanted to, too. What's your point?
What's your point? You said that the possibility of the language changing is a problem, and now you admit that it isn't a problem.
No, I'm saying that language IS going to change, on its own, and that trying to enforce things from the top down--either to enforce changes or to force things to stay the same--is foolhardy.
What do you mean by "enforcing from the top down"?
Artificial constructs are top-down enforcement. Like the sentences-ending-with-prepositions thing. It's an attempt to artificially control the uncontrollable. Same thing with the feminist extremists' attempts to get rid of gender-based personal pronouns. It just doesn't work.
Okay, but who, in your opinion, is trying to enforce what from the top down in regards to Esperanto?
The group I just mentioned. They've been trying to do it for over 100 years!
This may also be due to conservatism.
Also, you are skipping topics again. We were talking about why language change may or may not be a problem. Why are you talking about the UN, again?
I wasn't talking about language change. I was talking about the inappropriateness of trying to control a bottom-up system from the top down. That's all I've EVER been talking about in this thread.
If you want to find out how much the English language is going to change in the near future, I would suggest reading a comments page on YouTube!
But at least the written word is standardized to a point. Which is why, aside from minor spelling differences, it is no trouble to understand the various forms on English around the world.
On the subject of artificially injected rules, I remember being taught a couple of those in high school. Must of been a good teacher because I still habitually conform to some of them today.
Quote from: Andy120290 on February 19, 2009, 01:21:37 PM
If you want to find out how much the English language is going to change in the near future, I would suggest reading a comments page on YouTube!
omg u r rite lolz!
QuoteBut at least the written word is standardized to a point. Which is why, aside from minor spelling differences, it is no trouble to understand the various forms on English around the world.
Writing, yes, but keep in mind that Chinese has one uniform character set, and yet Mandarin and Cantonese speakers cannot understand one another unless they know the other language.
Quote from: MrBogosity on February 19, 2009, 01:01:27 PM
I wasn't talking about language change. I was talking about the inappropriateness of trying to control a bottom-up system from the top down. That's all I've EVER been talking about in this thread.
No, wait, you said that Esperanto would split off into different languages!
Besides, I remember a case where what you call "controlling from the top down" worked: Grammarians recommended to use the double accusative with the German verb "kosten" and it worked just fine!
I still don't get how that is related to Esperanto, though.
Anyway, before we lead this discussion
ad infinitum, do you think Esperanto is useless, then?
nay. It's not worth the hassle. But it is an interesting concept
What hassle?
Quote from: Tom S. Fox on February 21, 2009, 07:30:54 AM
What hassle?
I guess he is referring to the hassle of engineering a language and popularizing it enough to become commplace when there are plenty of other languages out there that work just fine.
But it is already engineered.
Not socially it isn't.
People have come up with all sorts of languages: Klingon, the Newcomer language from Alien Nation, etc. That's the easy part. The hard part is getting people to use it.
The Dvorak keyboard layout is much more efficient that QWERTY, and is perfect now that we have electronic keyboards and don't have to worry about keys jamming. When I tried it out, it took me just a couple of days to get used to it, and my typing speed went from 75wpm to over 100.
But people just don't want to change, no matter how easy or advantageous it is. Not if they don't have a real incentive to, at any rate.
Quote from: MrBogosity on February 21, 2009, 03:53:12 PM
Not socially it isn't.
What makes you say that (especially with a double negative)?
Quote from: MrBogosity on February 21, 2009, 03:53:12 PM
People have come up with all sorts of languages: Klingon, the Newcomer language from Alien Nation, etc.
See, that's exactly the point, those are
ad hoc languages invented for movies. They are not suitable for real life.
Quote from: MrBogosity on February 21, 2009, 03:53:12 PM
That's the easy part.
If you think inventing a language is easy, try it yourself!
A few years back I tried inventing my own language. I like things with languages alot (hence the 'lingual' in my name) but it was really hard and it was almost impossible not basing it on something else, which esperanto is.
And shane's right. As they say, 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'. The english language needs a spelling reformation. But no one's going to change it. It won't be changed for a long long while I reckon
Quote from: Sinlingual on February 21, 2009, 05:06:28 PM
And shane's right. As they say, 'if it ain't broke don't fix it'. The english language needs a spelling reformation. But no one's going to change it. It won't be changed for a long long while I reckon
What's your point?
Quote from: Tom S. Fox on February 21, 2009, 04:33:56 PM
What makes you say that (especially with a double negative)?
That wasn't a double-negative; that was a modified negative.
QuoteSee, that's exactly the point, those are ad hoc languages invented for movies. They are not suitable for real life.
Tell that to the Trek fans who speak fluent Klingon!
Quote from: MrBogosity on February 21, 2009, 05:11:09 PM
That wasn't a double-negative; that was a modified negative.
Modified negative? What is that supposed to be?
And more importantly: Why do you keep evading my questions?
Quote from: MrBogosity on February 21, 2009, 05:11:09 PM
Tell that to the Trek fans who speak fluent Klingon!
How is this in any way related to what I just said?
In other words, it wasn't, "No, it wasn't engineered," it was, "No, it wasn't socially engineered."
I'm not evading. I'm answering as well as I can.
And you said that you couldn't learn the languages fluently and use them. I pointed out that many people do just that with Klingon.
I think Shane is just getting insecure because he is the only one here who is fluent in Klingon. ;D
Quote from: MrBogosity on February 21, 2009, 06:45:28 PM
... it was, "No, it wasn't socially engineered."
Yeah, I know, but what does that mean and why do you think that Esperanto isn't socially engineered?
Quote from: MrBogosity on February 21, 2009, 06:45:28 PM
And you said that you couldn't learn the languages fluently and use them.
That's not what I said. I said that it is not suitable for real life. Klingon, for example, has a very limited vocabulary.
Because social engineering is the process of getting everyone to speak it. And it hasn't happened.
No language is spoken by everyone, so what are you getting at?
You need enough people to speak it to make it usable, though, and again they haven't been able to do that with Esperanto.
Why are you double-speaking all through this subject? What kind of bias is in play here?
What do you mean by double-speak?
And how many people would you need, in your opinion, to make it usable?
Like, pretending I literally meant "everyone" when the context made it clear I wasn't.
You need enough people so that you use it enough to retain it as a fluent language.
Quote from: MrBogosity on February 21, 2009, 10:42:20 PM
Like, pretending I literally meant "everyone" when the context made it clear I wasn't.
Actually, it wasn't clear. How many would be enough for you?
There's no set number. Three people would be enough IF they have daily contact with each other and only speak Esperanto to each other...but the likelihood is smaller with that number.
Why would they have to only speak Esperanto to each other?
Because if they speak anything else, the Esperanto will get corrupted.
Read Arthur C. Clarke's 2010: Odyssey II. Look at how the American characters started speaking in Russian without realizing it, even to each other. Look at how ALL of the characters started speaking in both languages, prompting one character to jokingly post a memo banning the speaking of "Russlish." That kind of thing actually happens!
Anyone remember Ebonics? lol
You are starting to tick me off.
How do you know whether that would happen to Esperanto?
How do you know that it isn't socially engineered?
How do you know that it isn't usable?
Why do you always avoid these questions or quickly switch the subject?
QuoteYou are starting to tick me off.
Why, because I'm presenting evidence and arguments as to why it won't work?
I ask again: what is your bias here?