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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