Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site randvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxj!houxm!ihnp4!zehntel!hplabs!sdcrdcf!randvax!jim From: jim@randvax.UUCP (Jim Gillogly) Newsgroups: net.nlang Subject: Re: Problems with Esperanto Message-ID: <2251@randvax.UUCP> Date: Mon, 14-Jan-85 12:10:29 EST Article-I.D.: randvax.2251 Posted: Mon Jan 14 12:10:29 1985 Date-Received: Thu, 17-Jan-85 13:40:40 EST References: <37@osu-eddie.UUCP> Organization: Gillogly Software Lines: 35 >> Jes, multaj problemoj! It's still easier than any national language I've >> ever seen... [Prentiss Riddle] >While this is true for probably all the native speakers of Indo-European >languages, anyone who is not a native speaker of any of these languages >would have a lot of trouble. [John Allen] Although the vocabulary and grammar of Esperanto are indeed Indo-European, the simplicity of the grammar and word construction still make it an easy language to learn. Many Chinese are now learning it, according to the L.A. Times last year. Many of the scientific papers in Esperanto were written by Japanese last decade - there was also some abstracting being done. It has been pointed out that the agglutinative nature of word-building in Esperanto is similar to the way concepts are formed It would certainly be't easier for an Asian or African to learn than any OTHER Indo-European lang! > Thirdly, even if Esperanto did become a world-wide language, there is a >tendency for languages to change, and eventually dialects would eventually >emerge and continue to grow apart until they became mutually unintelligible, >and we would be back where we started. I'm not sure that this is still true. Television has certainly made sharp inroads into American regional dialects. Certainly by the time any one language gains world-wide acceptance the media will be a powerful world-wide force. Of course, it's more likely to be an abomination like English than some neatly constructed language. My main gripe about Esperanto is the funny diacritical marks. Makes it really awful to read on the net, as one poster recently remarked. Loglan gets around that, but it's incredibly hard to learn! At least it's neutral as far as word roots and grammar is concerned. -- Jim Gillogly {decvax, vortex}!randvax!jim jim@rand-unix.arpa