Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: Notesfiles $Revision: 1.6.2.17 $; site uokvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uokvax!emjej From: emjej@uokvax.UUCP Newsgroups: net.nlang Subject: Re: Problems with Esperanto Message-ID: <4500010@uokvax.UUCP> Date: Tue, 15-Jan-85 16:41:00 EST Article-I.D.: uokvax.4500010 Posted: Tue Jan 15 16:41:00 1985 Date-Received: Fri, 18-Jan-85 02:33:02 EST References: <37@osu-eddie.UUCP> Lines: 38 Nf-ID: #R:osu-eddie:-3700:uokvax:4500010:000:2066 Nf-From: uokvax!emjej Jan 15 15:41:00 1985 /***** uokvax:net.nlang / osu-eddie!allen / 5:49 pm Jan 12, 1985 */ >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. This is because the vocabulary is almost >entirely, if not entirely, based on Indo-European. Not only that, but the >syntax is based on Indo-European syntax. Yes, this is quite true. This hasn't stopped what appears to be a quite healthy group of Esperantists in the "People's" "Republic" of China from forming--I'll send you a back issue of *El Popola ^Cinio* ("from (more precisely, 'out of') People's China") if you wish. I'm told that there are Esperantists in (post-Shah) Iran as well. It seems that Third World countries are interested in Esperanto as a way to avoid "linguistic imperialism." In any case, those interlanguages that try to avoid bias by pulling words from many different languages tend to wind up like Loglan, which figures that since "blanu" has x[i]% of the phonemes in whatever "blue" is in English, Hindi, Chinese, and whatever other languages they chose, "blanu" is sum (x[i] * p[i]) % "intellegible", where p[i] is the fraction of the world that speaks language i, and ends up equally incomprehensible (in the sense of having individual words recognizable) to everyone. Also, is there anything that stops Esperanto from choosing roots from whatever native language people wish to agree on? As for the loss of all those picturesque natural languages--well, as a programmer, I suppose that usingdoes eliminate the regional charm of using X, Y, and Z assembly language, but my job is to write programs, just as the "job" of the language user is to communicate. An interlanguage widens the range of people with which one can communicate, just as high-level languages, or perhaps standards for programming languages is the better analogy, make it possible for me to write programs that run on more machines. James Jones /* ---------- */