Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site spp2.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!trwrb!trwspp!spp2!urban From: urban@spp2.UUCP Newsgroups: net.nlang Subject: Re: Esperanto->English translator and grammar posted to net.sources Message-ID: <298@spp2.UUCP> Date: Wed, 5-Dec-84 11:41:30 EST Article-I.D.: spp2.298 Posted: Wed Dec 5 11:41:30 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 8-Dec-84 04:45:14 EST References: <1379@druxv.UUCP> Reply-To: urban@spp2.UUCP (Mike Urban) Organization: TRW, Redondo Beach CA Lines: 56 Summary: How easy is Esperanto to learn? (1) Well, Esperanto is the only "natural language"* that people regularly are able to learn, to a degree of fluency, with only a book as a teacher and model. The attendees at the first international Esperanto congress are said to have been themselves pleasantly surprised at how well they were able to speak the language "for real" for the first time. (2) Because of the European admixture of root-words that contribute to the basic Esperanto vocabulary, and because of English's own peculiar history, English speakers have a particularly easy time learning to read Esperanto (of course, recognition is always easier than recall). In fact, an English speaker with a normal high-school exposure to any Latin-derived language will probably be able to make good guesses at the content of most Esperanto publications before beginning to learn the language. (3) Because it has a regularized grammar and morphology (although the phonological properties like nasal assimilation and secondary accent seem to be left somewhat undefined), Esperanto can be more "fun" to learn than "real" languages. Since you tend to get a more immediate psychological payoff from Esperanto, you tend to be less likely to abandon the learning task before you're fairly good at it. (4) There are native speakers (denaskaj parolantoj). The language is evidently so well-crafted that a child whose parents speak Esperanto (perhaps as their only common language) will analyze and model the language internally in such a way as to produce the same language as the parents, even producing unexpected, novel, but grammatically correct and comprehensible utterances**. I consider this to be, somehow, a remarkable achievement of linguistic engineering, even if it WAS accomplished by copying "standard average European" grammar. I don't necessarily claim that Esperanto is in any sense "useful" for most people. It IS an excellent linguistic hobby item, and many tourists and "korespondemuloj" (uh, people who like to write letters) find it quite rewarding. Mike ................................................................ *by "natural" I am playing Humpty-Dumpty and refer to the fact that its domain of discourse is the real world. Is there a more accurate and equally concise term? Maybe I should just say "human" language to distinguish it from AI languages or mathematical notations? **I once read an anecdote about such a speaker who surprised her parents by asserting that her father worked "maldiman^ce", lit. "un-sundaily" (i.e. every day but Sunday). Quite correct, but her parents had certainly never heard this novel compound before.