Re: Shall We All Leave At Once?

In article <gcednaLX1Yh31a3V4p2dnAA@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Agamemnon <agamemnon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Esperanto, which is still spoken (or written) by at least tens of
thousands
of people, is arguably the most successful constructed language -

Next to Klingon which is spoken and written by thousands more.

Not according to Dr. Lawrence Schoen, head of the Klingon Language
Institute, who numbers actual Klingon speakers in the hundreds.
Inflated "Klingon speaker" figures are based on sales of the Klingon
Dictionary and similar books, which is a very poor indicator. By
the way, Dr. Schoen is an old friend of mine, and credits me, in
part, with stimulating his interest in languages. You are out of
your depth here.


Esperanto was not 'based on Spanish'. Its word-stock is heavily
Latinate, usually filtered through French, which was the 'universal'

Filtered through French to make it sound like Spanish, totally ignoring
Greek, Germanic, Armenian, Slavic and Indo-Iranian languages.

No. To most non-speakers it resembles Italian more than Spanish,
but it is a distinctive phonetic system that actually bears little
resemblence to either of them. Interestingly, within the Esperanto
community, 'model' accents are Slavic or Hungarian. There are
certainly words from German and even Greek in the vocabulary, and
its word formation techniques resemble nothing in Italian or Spanish.
Which you would know if you had actually studied any real information
about it instead of just mouthing nonsense that either you thought
up yourself or read in some magazine article.

Why bother
with it, when you can just learn Latin and make thousands of ancient texts
open to yourself. Why bother with it, when you can learn Proto-Indo-European
which will allow you to derive every Indo-European language?

Well, I answered that question, but even though you quoted my answer,
you appear not to have read it, or understood it:

language at the time that Zamenhof created it. "Spanish already
exists so why replace it?" betrays utter ignorance of the purpose
for which Esperanto was devised, i.e., as a neutral _second_ language
that people around the world could learn in order to communicate
better with others
=not for reading ancient texts or to 'derive every Indo-European language'=
(please do not start a discussion of whether
Zamenhof was naive in this goal; I am explaining facts, not arguing
the merits of Esperanto).

They should try learning English or French.

Did you miss the 'neutral' part? But again, I do not care to argue
the merits of Esperanto with someone who knows nothing about it (and
is unaware of that fact).
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Tried to watch Fear Her again...
    ... For example if English were like Esperanto, ... Spanish _feels_ closer to English than it does to Esperanto. ... language is very different from yours) but that's how it seems to me. ...
    (rec.arts.drwho)
  • Re: Shall We All Leave At Once?
    ... Not according to Dr. Lawrence Schoen, head of the Klingon Language ... >> Esperanto was not 'based on Spanish'. ...
    (rec.arts.drwho)
  • Re: Eventuale vi emus iel reagi...
    ... "Fans of the Esperanto language are in Florence for their 91st World ... Why would artificiality be wrong? ... were told there were literary translations from over 60 languages. ...
    (soc.culture.esperanto)
  • Re: unnatural languages
    ... Esperanto are not a new phenomenon. ... Esperanto-related creoloid variety) as their native language? ... You are entirely ignorant of Irish sociolinguistics, ... generations of Irish speakers by now. ...
    (sci.lang)
  • Re: unnatural languages
    ... But I suppose the many international Esperanto conventions can be described as something similar -- and why not include the local conventions, there are foreigners all over the place anyway. ... For instance you could hardly shift over to a different language unconsciously; but there's no specific difference between that and maintaining your language under the same name, ... if idiolects of a natlang like English can remain mutually ... Where you'd expect something like that to be described: in dictionaries. ...
    (sci.lang)