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| Thread: Esperanto - the language of humanity |  This thread is pages long: 1 2 · NEXT» |
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Tarnoob
Hired Hero
cyborg – cybernetic organism
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posted February 01, 2009 12:36 PM |
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Poll Question:
Esperanto - the language of humanity
Maybe some of you have heard about it and threatit as a dead idea or hobby for freaks. Don't believe myths, colide with facts - it's still alive! Millions of humans speak it every day, making it incredibly fast progressing and evolving. Wikipedia in eo has over 100,000 entries, eo is spoken by more people than Czech is, hundreads of esperantists' meetings are organized, it has big chances to become an official auxiliary language of European Union... I could mention in infinity. Of course, it isn't mass-known language, like English for example, but has quite well perspective of development.
1. It's *neutral*, no nation is advantaged - it's been created to save some languages from hegemony of others;
For Example Ludwik Zamenhof, the creator of eo, lived in Poland controled by Austria, Prussia and Russia in XIX century. Eo was his way of fighting with russification and germanization, to help different nations in easy, *neutral* communication.
I think it's also neccessary nowadays, when English has huge influence on others.
2. It's *easy*, after few months you can be able to talk with another esperantist and feel confident. No homonyms, no exceptions, no difficulties. All the basic grammar has just 16 rules.
3. It's *free*, esperanto has been created speccially for enormous ease in word formation. 500 eo words give more abilities in communication than 3000 Spanish words. What's more, many philosophers, poets, scientists and primarily normal guys admit that in esperanto they can best say out their thoughts and feelings.
4. It's *fun* to learn laguages, especcially those easy. Believe me, using eo you can know some really friendly-oriented people with simmilar dreams and views. It's also great class of how the language works, you can train your memory a bit... It's also helpful in learning other languages. For example I learn also French and some its words I know from eo, what helps me in faster and easier understandig.
Guy, wake up. We have already English as an international language!
Of course, I know it. And I learn it for 7 yers, because it's simply
neccessary and also can be fun. But remember that En isn't the first 'inter'national-national language (Latin, French, Russian, German and others were before) and also isn't the last. Let's give a chance to some just, neutral easy and rich, truely language of humanity, and the future will show if it works.
It's dead, unnecessary and I won't communicate with much people.
You are right. Using eo isn't neccessary. But remember, that paying on charity also isn't neccessary, although it can make the world just a bit better place to live. Eo also can, and this dream won't come true, if no one supports it. *No one will use esperanto, if no one learns it.* So, give it a try! It isn't difficult and doesn't take much time. Even if it's wa sting time, it's less useless than playing too much Heroes
So, let's do it together! Let's save the variety of national languages, treating them an equal degree. Let's make the international communication much easier and help people to reach more peace, freedom and friendship, using common language!
Some links:
lernu.net - for those, who want to learn it
eventeo.net - a news portal
eo.wikipedia.org - eo version of wikipedia
http://esperanto.net/info/index_en.html - index of interesting links
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU - great convincing film
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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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Darkshadow
Legendary Hero
Cerise Princess
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posted February 01, 2009 12:53 PM |
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Like people would acutally bother to learn this 
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Tarnoob
Hired Hero
cyborg – cybernetic organism
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posted February 01, 2009 01:25 PM |
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Several minutes a day is really bother 
And would people bother to pay on charity As you can see, some bother. There're still some people on the Earth, who want to do someting for otherselves.
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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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TitaniumAlloy
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Professional
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posted February 01, 2009 01:45 PM |
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english is easier, i already speak it
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baklava
Honorable
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posted February 01, 2009 03:04 PM |
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I don't like it.
Does that make me a bad person?
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mvassilev
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 01, 2009 03:44 PM |
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I like the idea of an international language, but I'm no fan of Esperanto. I prefer Interlingua. Or we could just have some simplified form of English.
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Eccentric Opinion
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Asheera
Honorable
Undefeatable Hero
Elite Assassin
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posted February 01, 2009 04:15 PM |
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Quote:
1. It's *neutral*, no nation is advantaged - it's been created to save some languages from hegemony of others
What about Chinese and such who use a different alphabet? Aren't those disadvantaged?
I like an international language but English suits that category pretty well. Of course, maybe this Esperanto is easier than English, but I already know English and I don't think I would bother learning another language now... maybe I would have liked and supported it if I would have learned Esperanto instead of English, and if it truly was used a lot internationally, but now...
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DagothGares
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No gods or kings
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posted February 01, 2009 04:20 PM |
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Honestly, asheera...
You learn Esperanto grammar in like two hours or even less... The rest is just vocab. I only have a quarrel with expressions and question words:
Kyo
Kyu
Kiel
translate as:
Depends... Not exactly easy to translate in English, unless used in a sentence
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TheDeath
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with serious business
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posted February 01, 2009 04:21 PM |
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Chinese doesn't even have an alphabet since it's not a phonetic language
This esperanto is far from neutral not only because of that -- it's obvious is very tied with spanish (and I prefer the "sound" of english)
Universal language? Well geeks already have one (ignoring english): let's all learn some programming languages to speak in everyday life
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del_diablo
Legendary Hero
Manifest
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posted February 01, 2009 04:40 PM |
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Well its a step towards someting called the right direction.
Personaly i would preffere a asian internation language, we already got way to much of the latin alfabeth in the world.
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TheDeath
Responsible
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with serious business
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posted February 01, 2009 04:42 PM |
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Not for me. I'd rather learn english which is somewhat harder and listen to english speakers than spanish speakers any day (just personal preference).
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del_diablo
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Manifest
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posted February 01, 2009 04:55 PM |
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But then again what on the countrys were English is native? What 2nd languages should they then learn?
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Doomforge
Admirable
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Retired Hero
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posted February 01, 2009 04:56 PM |
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none, they are privileged 
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del_diablo
Legendary Hero
Manifest
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posted February 01, 2009 05:01 PM |
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But still, its the chance of being faced with no aknowledgement of not-english languages.
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TheDeath
Responsible
Undefeatable Hero
with serious business
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posted February 01, 2009 06:01 PM |
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Like I said, I don't like it. I don't like how it sounds. Too much like spanish. Is that a good enough reason?
Now, if you truly want a neutral language, you'll need some cyborg-speak or computer-speak to accomplish that... or a programming language
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mvassilev
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Undefeatable Hero
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posted February 01, 2009 06:03 PM |
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I'm not much of a fan of how Spanish sounds either. But Esperanto is more based on a Latin vocabulary than on Spanish.
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Eccentric Opinion
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Tarnoob
Hired Hero
cyborg – cybernetic organism
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posted February 01, 2009 07:38 PM |
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The sound of it isn't fixed. It can sound a bit Spanish because it's mostly romanic vocab, and often Spanish/Brazillian/French/etc become eo lectors. For me it sounds also quite Asian and sometimes even Czech it depends on the speaker, really.
As a curiosity, eo has typically Slaviac phonetics and Asian grammar (with a lot of prefixes and suffixes), so it isn't so Spanish as it looks And is *much* less romance than interlingua or others.
Of course, creating fully neutral language is IMposiible, or it was completely artificial. There are some like that, for example Lojban, but they are created mostly for science.
Diablo, congratulations! You got an award, please open your DVD-ROM to get it
You're right. Eo isn't perfect, and is far from perfection, but it's also far from hegemony and is a good step. We wouldn't reach the target if we don't even try doing it.
And it isn't big effort! As someone said, it's only few hours to learn ALL the grammar, then only the vocab, which there's not so much. Just few houndreds of words is enough, because adding suffixes & preffixes you can say whatever you mean. And ther're no exceptions, to make an adjective add "-a" at the end, to make pronoun "-e", noun "-o", etc.
As I said, give it a try. You won't know if it's bad idea, if you don't learn this language. Once again: why not?
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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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Lord_Woock
Honorable
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posted February 01, 2009 07:44 PM |
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This seems like something I will likely never have a practical use for, which probably means I will eventually learn to use the language fluently and start writing haiku in it.
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Yolk and God bless.
---
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TheDeath
Responsible
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with serious business
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posted February 01, 2009 08:00 PM |
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It doesn't even use all that letters
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Seraphim
Supreme Hero
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posted February 01, 2009 08:10 PM |
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I dunno,but i jsut do not like Spanish.It sounds catastrophic.
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