Esperanto vs English

[from https://www.riscosopen.org/forum/forums/5/topics/15256?page=1#posts-101919]

esperanto might be the most important language on planet though.

It isn’t. Before Esperanto there was Interlingua. There will likely be another attempt some day. I rather imagine it would be a simplified language without complicated things – you don’t need past or future tense, for example, when your sentence indicates explicitly. Yesterday I visit shop. Tomorrow I visit shop. Or even shop I visit tomorrow.
A problem in current languages is that there is a certain order of words. For example I might talk about my white car in English, but it would be my voiture blanche in French. A useful “common” language is one where word order can vary and still be understood, because then the language won’t seem alien to speakers of languages where the word order is different.

language racism based only on number of speakers or any other attribute wont last.

Racism (noun)
prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one’s own race is superior
[according to Google]

I understand what you mean, but racism isn’t really an appropriate word.

Besides, you’re wrong.

Languages have to be ranked according to some sort of metric. This is usually a mixture of the number of speakers, and the language’s “usefulness” (defined as number of speakers in other countries).
The most common languages are Mandarin, Spanish, English, and Arabic.

We can discount Chinese and Arabic as they are incomprehensible to beginners, you’d need to be determined to want to learn either of them.
Spanish? English? This is due largely to colonial histories. The Spanish took their language to most of Latin America (except the past that speaks Portuguese, taken by Portugal’s explorers). Britain exported English all around the world, and while it isn’t the first language by number of speakers, the economic power of the English speaking countries (primarily the United States) ensures that English is currently the international language of choice. It is taught in schools around the world.

This isn’t “racism”, it’s simple fact.

Additionally, to be “non racist”, it’s only fair to point out that as far as languages go, English is awful. It’s contradictory, confusing, irrational, and god knows it’s crying out for some accents to help people know how to pronounce stuff, given the eccentric spelling and even more peculiar way of saying the words.
A bandage was wound around her leg to cover her wound.
As a native English speaker, I know the first “wound” is said like wow-nd, and the second is said like “woo-nd”. I just know this, because you have to know, because there’s nothing written down to guide you.
As I mentioned on my blog ages ago, the sequence of letters “ough”. How would you say that? Rough, cough, plough, though, thought, through, thorough, hiccough, and lough.
And not one single accent or guide as to how to say it.

English is the common language because the powerful countries speak it.
Once upon a time, it was Latin but that’s now a mere historical anachronism deigned to upset med school students.
For now, English is the common language. But that, too, shall pass. Something else will take its place. That something will not, and will never be, Esperanto. More likely it’ll be a side effect of a war, so the future global language won’t be so easy to predict. But it’ll be a real language spoken by a reasonable number of people as a native language. Not “racism”, just reality.

Enjoy: http://www.theislandenglishtutor.com/fun-frustrations.html

I recall a story about twins who invented their own language in the nursery. Foolishly their parents also used it. In consequence they were educationally retarded, because their own language lacked all the richness of common speech which had evolved over centuries. An invented language cannot compete with an evolved language.

May I recommend some reading?

By Nicholas Ostler: Empires of the Word ISBN 0-00-711871-6; The Last Lingua Franca ISBN 978-1-846-14216-1; Ad Infinitum ISBN 978-0-00-734306-5

http://inthelandofinventedlanguages.com/

http://www.zompist.com/

I also recommend

Shakespeare’s Words by David & Ben Crystal ISBN 978-0-140- 29117-9

Hmm, she (Akira Okrent) doesn’t mention Hymmnos – I have some songs in that language.
And a stranger omission is Dothraki. I’ve not looked at the dates, so I can only guess that maybe her book was written before it was a known thing.

But, yes, there are a multitude of languages created for fictional purposes to help enrich a created universe (look! they don’t all speak perfect English!), and then some get delusional and think this process can be applied to the real world as well. ;)

I recall a story about twins who invented their own language in the nursery.

I understand that such a thing is fairly common with siblings. Mom said that I used a strange language that sounded a little like Hebrew when I was a toddler. It’s possible that this is some sort of neurological phase in the process of language assimilation? Do you know if there have been any good studies made of how children actually pick up language skills?
[and why it sucks to learn a language as an adult…?]

Interesting thread.

http://clive.semmens.org.uk/Opinion/GlobalLanguage.html

My novels, particularly Birgom’s Diary, all touch on this sort of issue – there are numerous fictional languages in Birgom’s Diary and Exile in some cases even with a bit of description of them – here’s a page of links to how to pronounce some names (and a few other words) in some of them! The spellings are transliterations; all the languages have their own writing systems, none of them use any system from the real world. Not that I’ve worked those systems out in detail, just a little bit for a couple of pictures.

http://clive.semmens.org.uk/Birgom/Pronunciation.html

“Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation.”

so excuse me while i take off boxing gloves and bayonet and disconnect from your all s nuclear weapon system :→ but.

4English is not the most important language in the world. if you think it is after what i said then it is imperialist nationalism. and that is closely next to racism.

i do not like apologizing for you 4Rick_Murry. as trying to understand 4conservative 4donaldtrump supporters how is it good for my health? but for near first time in my life i consider what you mean by ’’common’’ language.

4English does have some advantages :-) . for all i know it might be one of best for linguists studying pronunciation. if you are making argument to short of using an 4IPA alphabet then you will keep 4English around i can see that. if you knew my likes personally you might believe i would backtrack my comments. i could pass edict for whole world to speak 4esperanto. as much as small tribe would struggle to preserve their all s language. but most my life the argument ‘’4English is the common language’’ emotional tone was ‘’do not waste your time with the other language’‘. so number of speakers and usefulness are nationalistic metrics. linguistic metrics would be your ’contradiction’ , ‘rationality’, ‘crying accent’ ‘spelling eccentricty’. and after those maybe number or spread of speakers. or tens of others of some of the properties language students catalog. 4Esperanto is far superior to 4English. at least in my opinion.

are you fluent a little in 4Esperanto or 4Interlingua or another? why speak discouragingly of them if you do not? you said you know some 4spanish and 4French so you could keep using those. 4Esperanto was 70 years before capital i 4Interlingua. but 4Interlingua is great for some kind of common language you mention. common for latin languages. spanish is(in a sense) latin. 4Lingua_Franca_Nova will be very good too. your idea of no verb tense is a valid one too. it could be a constructed language. i am interested about the loose word order language but actually strict syntax order can be very helpful in making a language easy to understand like toki pona. but what is your favorite syntax(?) order? anyways though 4esperanto is good about these things. especially parts of speech. but dont let it sound like i am digressing as you all say. invent the best language you can and use it! if the argument to not use 4Esperanto is written in 4English it is not necessarily true but likely that you are using physical force to create that as reality.

but btw dont forget i am very happy about 4riscos and computers made in 4england. 4china has capital punishment and no country should have that. not both that and jails. 4german seems computerish but computer and university world should go to 4lojban (4Loglan). but that extreme beginner s theory. university should be 4lojban too. and 4esperanto for the scientific language. or common i mean. not 4interlingua latin for the scientific common language. what am i getting at names of plants etc probably not that. theory b. but fairly consider 4esperanto s important and excellent use of suffixes(?).

everyone or every government organization should make great effort to accommodate like 4 or 5 languages. usually. if fail it is still important that tried. including constructed languages!

why speak discouragingly of them if you do not?

For the same reason I’d be disparaging of Klingon, if somebody suggested it as a suitable “universal” language.

We are not a universal people with a universal culture. To think that one language will suffice is, at best, laughable.

Furthermore, languages undergo continual and numerous revisions which cannot be controlled, they just happen. A small example, when I was young something described as “sick” would be a bad thing. Apparently now it means the opposite.

Without a sufficient number of native speakers, a language won’t undergo these sorts of processes, so will always remain a constructed language rather than evolving into a natural language.

As for the rest of all you wrote, sorry, all the "4"s are incredibly annoying and as a person with number issues I find it a massive impediment to comprehension. Your older posts didn’t have “4” scattered throughout. Why do they now?

if the argument to not use 4Esperanto is written in 4English it is not necessarily true but likely that you are using physical force to create that as reality.

D’accord. Parce-que il n’est pas possible de critiquer un mauvaise idée dans ton langue maternelle? Le problème avec espéranto est le même chose, si j’exprime en anglais, française, ou bien sûr en espéranto. Mais il est presque 1h le mat ici, je fait aucun traduction supplémentaire. J’ai va dodo.

Hi entityfree, I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt again because there is something rather strange going on and I wonder if you maybe don’t realise it! :) Your posts have suddenly got the numeral “4” peppered throughout them. I still think it looks rather like you’re trying to capitalise a word, but, instead, we see the numeral 4. For example, in your post, I see “4esperanto”, “4china”, “4riscos” and more.

That’s what we’re trying to get across to you. Are you perhaps using a screen reader or something?

you responded quickly. i say it not technically 4English imperialism. not necessarily so. theory b. but still language imperialism which would be similar to the racism argument. maybe that is called ’’4Languageism’’ . but i think that would introduce more levels of philosophical debate. however the problem of nationalism in translation actually is that. whether it 4Polish , 4German, almost everything 4Serbian 4Russian. but not constructed languages! i mean a language should not need to be the same as place person came from. and it seems most(?) software seems to make it that way. ( and if anyone ever debates me on nationalism i might say a nation chosing it s language should be diiferent from the whole world choosing that nation s language (a la mismo(???)) (for them all (the nation) i mean) . which is what is happening in the current world order. theory c).
but to me 4English being the language of ‘The People’ seems so very not so compared to 4Esperanto for any people who like to use language. like in the sense(?) of the usefulness. maybe not like in the sense of enjoyment.

wow though ’’Aldershot’’ section is neat i did not realize. i can continue other topic where i was.

yes that is correct exactly what i am getting at capitalization. but i think that 4rick_murry s question. seems bigger question is totalitarianism. is theory b.

4I 4think 4that 4he 4has 4a 4virus 4on 4his 4machine 4that 4converts 4shift 4to 44

Pff. English is the most used, most incoherent, awful mish-mash of languages on this planet.
I don’t speak another, but I am a poor colonial wretch so this is to be expected.

but you did not say the reason. if you know me i might not like 4Klingon although i do not know what it is. because i do not like war culture. and i do not like fiction.
but talk about 4Ithkuil as a universal language and i am excited.
so there actually were two huge wars about it last century. is theory d. and the winners from it on this topic were 4Esperanto and 4Interlingua. how is that not enough?? (for now). if your call for native speakers is based on something like place than it is racism. in the literal way. it is tying the language to the bodies. it is saying that is the single only way for language to exist. so what kind of people think that? 4German s 4National 4Socialist concentration camp operators? just a guess. humanism and communism are superior ideas to capitalistic nationalism. even if they are wrong. that is idea that we are universal people. on a small planet. unless you think some kind of premodern postmondern (?) kinds of things which maybe interesting but then like bye bye for now. just sounds like prejudice to me. from organizations that make things like tanks and such and people s lives miserable. but totalitarianism goes any way that it can! as you know from the number of people constantly needed to remind 4Esperanto speakers :-p
also when you open your mind to it there are very neat proposals for 4Chinese universal languages! so 4Arabic to i bet. 4Lingua_Franca_Nova is doing great for 4Russian learners.
-go vegan or something

ha yes it is shift. which brings up other topics of sexism and gender neutrality in language. that is he and she pronouns for people in public business. more accurately problem of society not language. so i already decided i like this too 017 . what is example . maybe people know what 017ROOL is i forgot. i know 017Riscos (?) but like what if you talk about 7Run command. how should non english speakers translate that. i dunno.

Am I imagining it or is it the case that entityfree’s replies don’t relate to the questions asked of him/her/it?

Perhaps the name gives a clue…

It seems to be like the Two Ronnies Mastermind sketch, answering the question before last.

I apologize for that, but this is Aldershot… is this me, or entityfree’s answers sound a bit ‘mechanic’?
Sorry if it sounds offensive.

I think we have to be very careful here. We’ve already lost a couple of contributors recently. I wouldn’t want to see the situation that arose in the c.s.a newsgroups a few years ago where at least a couple of people were shot down in a flamewar.

I think we have to be very careful here.

Quite so. But should robots receive the same compassion that we afford people? I put this as a general question, without reference to recent contributions.

[a two-mug-of-tea wall of text follows]

i mean a language should not need to be the same as place person came from. and it seems most(?) software seems to make it that way.

For many people, a language and where they were born are intrinsically tied. If we ignore the issues of conquering and colonialisation (which is a whole different story), the reason why people in many places get so worked up over immigration is because “somebody from somewhere else” is still a relatively new concept in human terms. To put that into context, I have a…. a… it’s my uncle’s uncle, not sure what the word is. He was born in Small Town America (like on practically any US TV series set in a small town, the whole picket fences and flying flags on the porch deal). He fell in love with a girl in high school. They married. They both work, in town. They damned near went “foreign” when they travelled about fifty miles to the beach for a holiday in the same state. And although I have no contact with them now, I have no problem laying down cold hard cash to bet that they’ll die and be buried in that town.

My mother, on the other hand… America, Canada, Iceland, England, Scotland, Wales, Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Andorra, Italy, Greece, Israel, most of the little islands in the eastern Atlantic, and some other places along the Med I don’t remember. Maybe Cyprus? Maybe Yugoslavia (when it was Yugoslavia).
As for actually living – America, Scotland, England, and France (with a hiccup in Spain).
We were sort-of planning on working out the logistics of how much would need to be saved up for having a holiday in/around Cork. She really wanted to see southern Ireland.

Some people see the world, but many people (sadly) don’t. Because of this, it is not an unreasonable assumption that many people “from a place” will speak the language of that place. It’s what you grow up with, it’s what you’re most comfortable with.

Another example? By rights I should parle avec vous en francaise parce-que je n’habite pas dans un pays anglophone, but my “home” language is English. It’s one of the reasons I prefer Netflix (lots of films in English) to Prime Video (lots of English-origin films only available in French dub).

but to me 4English being the language of ‘The People’

English is the language “of the people” because the current world setup has the ones with money and power and influence speaking English and everybody else is expected to do the same.
If you don’t like that, just wait patiently. Both America and the UK are doing an amazing job of shooting themselves in the foot head. Maybe in a decade or two we’ll start to see a shift away from English to something else.
But, mark my words, it will not be esperanto. It’ll be a real language that people use.
I don’t imagine it’ll be Arabic or Chinese, as both would appear to have a fairly steep learning curve. After all, unlike Japanese (which has kana), Chinese is pretty incomprehensible to look at and understand from the outset.

What language it will be depends, a large part, on what comes to fill the void left by the wreckage of the once-powerful English speaking nations. It could be French or German if the EU steps in. It could be Russian if this was all a clever ploy by Putin to bring down The West.

but you did not say the reason. […] how is that not enough??

Because we were actually originally talking about a replacement “universal” language to speak instead of English. You suggested Esperanto, and I said that it’s already been tried and failed (InterLingua), just like in time Esperanto will probably be replaced by the latest great attempt at a language for all.

Why will they fail? Three reasons, since I must explicitly give reasons rather than expecting you to follow context:

1. It needs to be a real language that people actually use. Nobody sane is going to abandon their mother tongue in the hope of possibly learning something that might be useful in the future. I think it’s fairly safe to say that everybody who speaks Esperanto does so as a second or third language. In this world, rightly or wrongly, the second language of many people that will get you places is English. Why learn a language to make a point when you can learn one to increase your employment opportunities?
   Note: There are, of course, many exceptions to this. For instance, a Cantonese speaker in Hong Kong. Would you imagine their second language these days is English, or Mandarin? People in India, aren’t there like a dozen related languages in India? Might be more useful to speak Bengali and Urdu (to name the only two I remember) than anything and English… It probably depends a lot upon exactly where you’re from and what matters to your family – interaction with locals, or interaction with the world at large. Likewise, I can imagine people on the Franco-German border probably speak both French and German, and if English, it’ll be in third place.
2. One universal language is simply not possible. Some people have grown up with their written language being a phonetic representation of the spoken word (like Cyrillic languages, Korean…).
   Some people have grown up with their written language elements encapsulating ideas and concepts. For example in Japanese 女 means a female. Maybe adult, maybe child, it depends upon what is around it. Suffice to say that if you see 女 on a door and you’re not a double-X chromosome carrier, use the other door. The one marked 男. You’ll notice it isn’t spelled out, it isn’t an abbreviation like M and F. It’s an ideograph what encompasses the notions of “female” and “male”.
   And some have grown up with the Latin-based languages that is a sort-of transcription of what is being spoken, only a rather bizarre and complicated one where the spelling and the sounds don’t have a 1:1 relationship. This is often seen when trying to romanise a word from another language. Over the years at work we’ve had a few Russians/Ukrainians who have been called Xenia. Or Ksenia. Or Zenya. It’s the same name, written in our language three different ways.
   On the reverse, English can offer you “wind” and “wind” which are two entirely different words said in two entirely different ways. There are many more examples.
   Don’t even get started on the concept of word order. Is my car a white car, or a car white? Maybe white my car is. Or car of mine white is coloured. Or perhaps in more philosophical languages, car that I use has absence of colour (note that not only have I replaced what the colour is with what it is not, but I’ve also removed indication of possession – some cultures don’t really work with the idea of personal possession).
3. And finally, some people cling onto a language because of what it represents. Do you really think all the people that speak Welsh do so because of the great that it does in the world? No, they most likely speak Welsh because it is one part of their celtic heritage that hasn’t been obliterated (almost was!) by the forward march of English and English exceptionalism. Welsh people, at least every single one I’ve met personally, are more than willing to point out that they are not English. Even the ones that don’t actually speak Welsh. Because, let’s face it, they are not English! So learning and using Welsh (usually in addition to English, because they do have to interact to some degree with the rest of the UK) is a way to preserve their personal heritage and culture.

So, we have “a language that people actually use”, “a language that encompasses the many varied cultures and methods of expressing language”, and “a language that won’t make anybody feel that their historical identity is being replaced by something from somewhere else”.
If you can name any language on this planet that fulfills all of the above criteria, you’re a better man than I am.

<…some bollocks I’m not going to quote…>

I have touched on how birthplace and language are actually intertwined. While it isn’t necessarily the case – the child of two Somalian parents who is born in France may speak Somalian within the walls of their home, but will probably be expected to speak some degree of French in order enter school, and all the usual stuff. People in Germany speak German. People in Norway speak Norwegian, even if they can’t agree on how to write it. People in Mexico speak Latino Spanish (which is slightly different to Castillian Spanish).
Obviously it is not an absolute rule, but by and large people speak a native language that is the language of the country in which they were born and raised.

Which has eff-all to do with nazis, and dragging the Third Reich into the discussion only embarrasses and demeans you.

which brings up other topics of sexism and gender neutrality in language.

Indeed. I had a long running battle with my bosses at work who would refer to the group (of females) using female words. But when I was present they would switch to using male words. Which is correct French.
I replied using female words, and when gently corrected, pointed out that it makes no sense at all for a group of sixty women to be referred to as female, and a group of sixty women and one man to be referred to as male.
There are more men working in production now, and since they grew up with that crap as a natural part of their language, they don’t see anything unusual about it so I don’t comment any more.
But if you’re going to have a language that distinguishes between male and female in the way structure of the language, I think it’s a pretty easy bet to say that it will discriminate against females.

It’s worth pointing out that your preferred Esperanto has the gender-specific words be masculine by default, with an “ino” suffix to act as a female modifier. Thus, Esperanto is inherently sexist too.
This probably has more on that, but it’s not a language I know: https://egalecen.org/2014/08/04/kial-igi-riisto/

more accurately problem of society not language

That I’ve already pointed out, the two are often quite intertwined. What would you imagine French culture and society to be if you stripped them of their language?

I think we have to be very careful here.

Heh, to hell with that. This is the Internet. The only thin-skinned crybabies allowed on the Internet are orange coloured failing Presidents.

the c.s.a newsgroups a few years ago

How recently is “a few years ago”.

I pretty much dropped the public (non-Argonet-specific) usenet in 2002 because of that. Is it still happening? Don’t these people know that they can hone their skills in alt.flame and leave the rest of the world in peace rather than in pieces?

But should robots receive the same compassion that we afford people?

It depends. The Japanese seem to have a good line in making rather cute (if slightly creepy) female adult and female child robots, that I can imagine people having feelings for (and I don’t mean in the pervy way, although I’m sure that happens too). People may feel genuinely upset if it is injured or “dies” (broken irreparably).
It’s hard to imagine the same sort of compassion aimed at those welding arm gizmos that assemble cars.
So I think that whether or not robots should receive the same compassion depends upon the robot. I’m sure entityfree will be along shortly to tell me that such a thought is horrifically racist…. :-p

An excellent two mugs-worth.

When I started school, when I was seven, we started learning Latin. This was so exciting that I started inventing made-up languages for my imaginary world. I knew others of my own age who did the same. Of course, we set our imaginary worlds to war with each other. We drew maps, spaceships, clothes, as well. One friend, rather more intelligent than the rest of us, prodded these conceits with sarcastic hyperbole. His imaginary people lived inside a hollow comet. Their language was so complex that grammarians had never finished codifying it. I remember he had some wonderful noun-cases: the ambulative , the irate , and so on. The point is, most of us like to create and to imagine. Words are such useful little fellows. We can be stuck without them. And their histories, when they can be known, give you a new perspective.

A nice example of some of the ambiguities of the English language often turn up in newspaper headlines, where they’re often written that way on purpose.

Google News app popped up a notification saying:

Anti-Black racism protests gets underway in Toronto
(from CP24)

Now, is this:

• Racist anti-black people protesting

Or:

• People protesting racism against black people

Given it’s Canada, I guessed the latter. Correctly. :-)

Though, a thousand people marching together during a pandemic – what!?

Many times I have heard that mathematics is the universal language. How do I ask where a restroom is or introduce myself then? Never have I seen an English to mathematics phrase book.

Many times I have heard that mathematics is the universal language.

Not from me. Mathematics gets a lot of hype, mostly from non-mathematicians. Mathematics has a language, as how else would mathematicians communicate? But it evolves and is beset by archaisms, muddle and arbitrary nonsense like any other. All the intellectual masturbation over the sublime purity of logic and mathematics is the fruit of ignorance, and the desire to categorize those one does not understand as witches (burn them!) or saints (hype them!).