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| Thread: Esperanto |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · «PREV |
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PandaTar
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posted October 26, 2018 07:59 PM |
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In a resume, you would not support Esperanto, but you support Interlingua? Or what is your position, then, regarding a global language?
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"Okay. Look. We both said a lot of things that you're going to regret. But I think we can put our differences behind us. For science. You monster."
GlaDOS – Portal 2
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AlHazin
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posted October 26, 2018 08:56 PM |
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Edited by AlHazin at 21:28, 26 Oct 2018.
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So I first posted here an opinion, answering Pandy on his last question.
Since it is a source for free insults, there it is deleted, and please keep on debating on how much you are right and all agree with each other.
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Nothing of value disappears from this world, it will reappear in some shape or form ^^ - Elvin
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Elvin
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Endless Revival
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posted October 26, 2018 09:00 PM |
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AlHazin said:
So to answer you, even if all humanity learnt esperanto or interlingua and only used that language, you would after a certain time see that the Esperanto spoken in Japan is not the same as the one in USA, which is not the same in Germany, which is not the same in Kazakhstan... etc. And find yourself with a miriad of different languages again.
I think you missed a couple of logical steps there.
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artu
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posted October 26, 2018 09:14 PM |
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I get that my brother, but Islam snows anything up.
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Tarnoob
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posted October 26, 2018 09:18 PM |
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Edited by Tarnoob at 21:22, 26 Oct 2018.
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PandaTar, It’s a very good question. What I wrote in the previous post is that:
1) esperantists too often say linguistic nonsense about their language, e.g. they exaggerate its easiness, usefulness, the quality of its design etc,
2) interlingua or other conlangs are far more entitled to the claims often made on esperanto, like easiness or usefulness.
Yeah, so from what I wrote you could conclude that esperanto is poorly designed for its original purpose, i.e. Global Lingua Franca (GLF). I do believe esperanto is a terrible proposal for that. Whether I believe in GLF in general, and whether I believe in planning it and choosing a conlang for that role, is a separate issue.
Personally I believe that planning a GLF is unlikely (at least in the 21st cent), maybe unless some radical political transformation happens. So yeah, it may be possible, but in conditions which are hardly predictable. So, it’s unjustified to assume that keeping a militant movement, in the original spirit of esperanto, makes it any more likely to reach that goal.
I believe that interlingua, elefen, glosa, novial or ido would make far better GLF than esperanto, but I don’t want to advocate for any of them playing that role. I don’t even have a strong preference between any of them for that role. It’s because I know that it’s impossible to choose or to construct a language optimal for GLF, at least in the present demographic and linguistic situation of the world. For example, it’s impossible to maximise easiness for everyone on Earth. And even for a very narrow group, like users of top 4 Romance languages (Spanish, French, Portuguese & Italian) it’s impossible to maximise both easiness and understandability at the same time. And I personally don’t know which one is more desirable for a GLF. It’s a problem so abstract to me that I really don’t feel any need to decide on that, and I definitely don’t need to answer that in order to make use of these conlangs.
Instead, I do hope that interlingua, elefen, glosa, or even novial and ido, do have some potential for purposes other than GLF. They may be very valuable for education and to create an international diaspora of hobbyists (IDH). These diasporas may overlap, just like the fandoms of Lord of the Rings and of Game of Thrones overlap, so I see no competition between different auxillary conlangs. That’s a very different perspective from many esperantists, who may see fans of other projects as „traitors”; imposing their own idealistic beliefs on other people.
One day I may learn glosa or even advocate teaching it in schools, but for reasons very different from those common to esperantists. I don’t believe naïvely that forcing enoguh people to learn a language at school would magically make that language a GLF. I simply find glosa edutaining, i.e. educating & entertaining.
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„Philosophy is unnecessary, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.” – C.S. Lewis paraphrased
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PandaTar
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posted October 26, 2018 09:29 PM |
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Ah, understood then.
I also don't think in our current global situation a global language would simply surface, unless under some severe changes on very deep rooted aspects in many nations.
I like other languages as a whole. They all have some valuable constructive power about them, the way they evolved and were first conceived. I'm a Portuguese speaker, but funny enough, I found learning Japanese easier than some other languages. The way Japanese works kinds of make sense. Not that learning Japanese is easy, only a bit less difficult than some others in my perception.
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"Okay. Look. We both said a lot of things that you're going to regret. But I think we can put our differences behind us. For science. You monster."
GlaDOS – Portal 2
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Tarnoob
Hired Hero
cyborg – cybernetic organism
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posted October 26, 2018 11:59 PM |
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Edited by Tarnoob at 15:27, 27 Oct 2018.
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This post is quite off-topic, but I don’t find it very bad in a section which is itself off-topc. If this digression grows too big, someone can open a new thread.
Japanese indeed has many easy features. Its phonology is far simpler than in most, if not all, languages of Europe. Japanese phonology may be even simpler than the phonology of any language from the main Eurasian language families: Indo-European, Uralic, Turkic and Afro-Asiatic (at least: Semitic).
It’s relatively easy in many ways:
1) its phoneme inventory is relatively small. It has only 5 vowels (like Spanish) and, according to [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology]English Wikipedia[/url], about 15 consonants. That’s far less than for many common languages, and far less than in Esperanto, which has 23 consonants; of which 3–4 are completely pointless and redundant even from a European perspective.
2) Japanese phoneme inventory is relatively universal; i.e. it’s mostly made of cross-linguistic elements, and there are relatively few oddities. These oddities are usually variations of other consonants, i.e. allophones – so mispronouncing them probably isn’t too confusing.
3) its phonotactics is simple, i.e. e.g. the syllables have a simple structure. There are not too many onsets (syllable openings), no diphthongs, the syllables are usually open (without a coda), and if there is any coda, then it’s simply /n/. And the combinations of syllables don’t make too much mess.
4) its prosody, i.e. stress & intonation, is okay. There is stress, and it varies between dialects, but there are no tones as in many East Asian languages. I’m not sure if the Japanese stress can differentiate meaning. If not, it would make it simpler & easier than English. English does differentiate meaning by stress, i.e. it has minimal pairs which differ [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial-stress-derived_noun]only by intonation[/url]; e.g. PERfect (very good) & perFECT (to make very good). Japanese also has vowel length, but 2 lengths is not a tragedy. Again, I’m not sure if it differentiates meanings. And again, if it doesn’t, it would make it easier than English. In some dialects „cut” and „cart” differ only in the vowel length.
This simplicity has interesting consequences. For a total layman, it may be relatively easy to sing or recite in Japanese, even if you don’t understand a word. I love [url=https://youtu.be/q0z08OpmEPc]the soundtrack[/url] of Ghost in the Shell (1995) and maybe if I tried to sing the lyrics, I wouldn’t fool myself as much as if I tried to sing something in, say, French or Arabic.
Also, the Japanese phonology makes it relatively easy to pronounce Japanese names of people and places. My native Polish is notorious for having mispronounceable names like Krzysztof Grzegorczyk z Rzeszowa (a name of my friend, and his home city). Also, the loanwords from Japanese are relatively easy to pronounce and may vary little cross-linguistically; karate, kimono, harakiri, shinto, zen, samurai, shogun, katana, nunchaku etc. are all relatively simple to pronounce and to write.
Japanese phonology is not the simplest one on Earth; e.g. Hawaiian is even simpler. But some sophistication gives Japanese its flavour, and it doesn’t sound like Minions-speak. So yeah, learning Japanese may be a lot of fun, and some parts may be very short and easy, giving more time for the harder ones.
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„Philosophy is unnecessary, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.” – C.S. Lewis paraphrased
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PandaTar
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posted October 27, 2018 12:14 AM |
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Thanks for the insight! =)
I also sing a couple of songs in Japanese, having very little undertanding of what I'm actually singing, and I actually don't trip my tongue, hohoho. I specially like Suteki Da Ne, a song from Final Fantasy X. And My Pace, from one of the endings of Bleach anime.
Speaking of that Japanese 'NE', in my language, we often refer "né" is a contracted form for "não é?", which means "isn't it?". In Japanese, the meaning is very close, if not the same. So I wonder if that's one of the words we 'borrowed' from them or vice-versa.
And speaking on that suject, of borrowing words, I think the most possible way of having this globalization of vocabulary is by fast and easy spread of new words. Old words and languages might never succumb, but new words are probably the ones that everyone might speak in a similar way throughout the world, or so I think. Maybe someone will tag this particular global group of words a language.
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"Okay. Look. We both said a lot of things that you're going to regret. But I think we can put our differences behind us. For science. You monster."
GlaDOS – Portal 2
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Tarnoob
Hired Hero
cyborg – cybernetic organism
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posted October 27, 2018 04:46 PM |
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Edited by Tarnoob at 21:40, 27 Oct 2018.
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Quote:
I think the most possible way of having this globalization of vocabulary is by fast and easy spread of new words. Old words and languages might never succumb, but new words are probably the ones that everyone might speak in a similar way throughout the world, or so I think. Maybe someone will tag this particular global group of words a language.
I find it fascinating that Glosa does exactly that. It takes its words from the international academic vocabulary, usually of Latin & Greek origin. The creators of Glosa realised that the development of technology, medicine & education makes this vocab familiar to ordinary people, very often worldwide. I’m not sure if Zamenhof and creators of other conlangs realised that social trend. Even if they did, their conlangs don’t implement this. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but it’s great that there is a conlang making use of it.
For example, before the 20th century, maybe only the highly educated people in Europe and the Eurosphere knew that Greek „micro” means „small”. But the world is now filled with microphones, microscopes, microfibres, advertisments of microelement dietary supplements, and sci-fi films about microorganisms. So this word and its meaning are now almost obvious to hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
Maybe this trend will change significantly in the 21st century, and many languages will share lots of loanwords from Mandarin or Hindi. But so far, Glosa with its Latin-Greek lexicon is very interesting.
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„Philosophy is unnecessary, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.” – C.S. Lewis paraphrased
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