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From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: Esperanto (was: Languages in the EC)
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References: <3h3ci5$qc8@agate.berkeley.edu> <D403LK.8r8@news.cis.umn.edu> <D4DEC8.G4I@spss.com> <3ileh8$6hg@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 1995 22:26:25 GMT
Lines: 110

In article <3ileh8$6hg@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk>,
M.G. Rison <rison@hep.phy.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>Mark Rosenfelder <markrose@spss.com> skribis:
>> And as in most religious controversies, the believers fail to convince most
>> of the onlookers; partly because their arguments are too tied to the 
>> acceptance of their beliefs, and appeal only to the converted; and partly
>> because they cannot hold themselves back from insulting their opponents,
>> which leaves a bad impression.
>
>I don't think that `the Esperantists' have a monopoly on use of insults.
>I think it cuts both ways...

Sure, but the Esperantist has more of an interest in not offending outsiders.

>> In the case of Esperanto, the basic problem is that the language has been
>> around for a century, hasn't achieved even 1% of its goal, and cannot show
>> that it ever will.  An Esperantist cannot admit this, even to himself... 
>> without ceasing to be an Esperantist.  
>
>This is simply not true.  For one, I didn't learn Esperanto because I
>thought it was about to take the world by storm.  I - and others have
>concurred - learnt it, and now continue to use it, for enjoyment's sake.
>As I stated in some very old post, I don't necessarily think the choice
>of the EU should be Esperanto.
>
>Sure, some Esperantists do hanker after the so-called `fina venko'
>(final victory).  But many - typically the younger ones, and an
>increasing proportion, I would say - don't.  They just want to have fun.

Well, others have certainly been arguing in these newsgroups that Esperanto
*should* be adopted by the EU, or by the world as a whole.  But if you
just want to have fun, I have no quarrel with that.

>> >Agreed.  Trade and tourism could only benefit.
>> 
>> Really?  In fact, aren't people pretty good at knowing what's in their own
>> economic interest?  If learning another language is necessary to get a job
>> or sell products, people will do it (OK, in the latter case they'll hire
>> someone else to do it for them).  
>> 
>> As for travel, according to all the evidence, people travel when they have
>> the money to do so, not when they know other languages.  And if enough of
>> them are travelling, the countries visited will find it in their interest to
>> learn the travelers' languages.  
>> 
>> If after all that the Esperantists still want to maintain that "trade and
>> tourism could only benefit", let them quantify exactly how much they would
>> benefit-- and justify their answers.
>
>For trade: save the costs of translating, and perhaps the costs of
>mistranslation.  A bit like a common currency, perhaps?

Hmm, not a very good analogy: there are good economic arguments against
common currencies.  See Jane Jacobs' _Cities and the Wealth of Nations_,
for instance.

As for translating costs, presumably what you have in mind is (say) the
amount my company spends creating French, Spanish, German, and Japanese
versions of its software.  At first sight it seems like we could save 1/4
of that expense.  But now we need to ask, how successful are we positing
that Esperanto will be?  If it's just an EU language, we haven't saved
the costs of producing Spanish and Japanese versions at all.  And even in
the EU, perhaps a large number of our customers won't learn Esperanto at
all, or maybe our competitors will lure customers with local-language
products-- so we may have to keep writing local-language versions anyway.
Plus, what are the costs of educating entire continents to be fluent
in Esperanto?

This why I asked for quantification.  I'm not at all convinced by vague 
promises that "trade and tourism could only benefit".  If an economic benefit 
is claimed, it should be supported by solid economic analysis.

>For tourism: saving in that contacts would be less `touristic' and more
>`human', if that makes any sense.  IMHO.

As others (including some Esperantists) have pointed out, the more Esperanto 
succeeds, the more "touristic" contacts using it will become.   If one
really hankers for human contact, and to know a country really well,
one will do best to learn the local language.

>> >"It's pointless trying to increase the number of Esperanto speakers
>> >because there aren't very many current speakers."  Right. Heard it.
>> 
>> And there, in a nutshell, is why the number of Esperanto speakers *won't*
>> increase: Esperantists are familiar with the basic problem, even bored
>> by it, as Mr. Rezmerski evidently and understandably is; but they have no
>> answer for it.  Folks, you've been in the same boat for a hundred years.
>> Why is 1995 different from 1965, and 1945, and 1925, and 1905?
>
>Well, there's the EU now, for one.

And there was the League of Nations, in 1919, and the UN, in 1945... 

>But this argument that `It's pointless trying to increase the number of
>Esperanto speakers because there aren't very many current speakers' is
>not good.  I could apply the same arguments to TV or CD and predict that
>they can't have succeeded!

It's not an argument at all, only a distasteful fact to be confronted
(if one hopes for a _fina venko_, that is).  It's no use appealing to TV and
CDs.  TV spread in a few decades from a futuristic hobby to a near-universal 
addiction; CDs took even less time.  Esperanto hasn't.  Something is 
different between these cases.

>Ah!  But the thing which means that the Esperanto debate is not simply a
>religious war is that a number of the claims can be _tested_.  

Which claims do you have in mind?  If you mean claims related to the _fina
venko_, or even the adoption of Esperanto by the EU, these are rather hard 
to test, aren't they?
