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From: elna@netcom.com (Esperanto League N America)
Subject: Re: two agendas of artificial intelligence
Message-ID: <elnaE01yot.MMH@netcom.com>
Organization: Esperanto League for North America, Inc.
References: <53t89q$irs@bignews.shef.ac.uk> <elnaDzqpsA.KuG@netcom.com> <54s0lu$fav@nntp1.best.com> <3276929d.6862958@news.nando.net>
Date: Tue, 29 Oct 1996 19:41:17 GMT
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Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.ai:41748 comp.speech:11281 comp.ai.nat-lang:5546 sci.lang:63385 comp.ai.philosophy:47936

dgary@nando.net (D Gary Grady) writes in a recent posting (reference <3276929d.6862958@news.nando.net>):
>
>I personally think it would be ridiculous to expect the average human
>to learn a language just because it would be convenient for computers,

Well, I know quite a few people who learned such computer-convenient
languages as Cobol, Basic, C, etc. Perhaps those who learn this kind
of language are not "average humans".   :-)
           [...snip...]
>Finally, I'll note that while I wouldn't want to expend the huge
>effort required to learn a language (by this I mean a real language,
>not a computer language such as C or FORTRAN) just to be able to talk
>to my computer, the ability to speak to a computer in a given language
>might be an added incentive to learn the language at least to some
>modest level of competence. For example, some people have acquired a
>practical knowledge of English in part to be able to use
>English-language-oriented computer software. If some sort of
>voice-command system were available in, say, Esperanto, that might
>serve as an additional modest encouragement to learn Esperanto.
>
And if it turns out that using an orthographically clean language is
several orders of magnitude easier for the computers to handle, it 
might be *many* years before the  transition is made to mainstream
national languages.
-- 
Miko SLOPER              elna@netcom.com              USA  (510) 653 0998
Direktoro de la          ftp.netcom.com:/pub/el/elna   fax (510) 653 1468 
Centra Oficejo de la     Learn Esperanto! Free lessons: e-mail/snail-mail
Esperanto-Ligo de N.A.   Write to above address or call 1-888-2-ESPERANTO
