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From: donh@netcom.com (Don HARLOW)
Subject: Re: Re^3: THE WORLD'S...LANGUAGE*!!!
Message-ID: <donhD6vMpM.9pD@netcom.com>
Organization: Esperanto League for North America, Inc.
References: <Pine.SUN.3.91.950401000021.6862P-100000@amanda.dorsai.org> <5jOewSiDoOB@diana.access.owl.de> <3mdiqc$sbk@info.epfl.ch>
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Date: Tue, 11 Apr 1995 15:22:34 GMT
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Dejan Djukic <Dejan.Djukic@circ.de.epfl.ch> skribis en lastatempa afisxo <3mdiqc$sbk@info.epfl.ch>:

>
>I personally do not like Esperanto because I find it
>ugly.  And it is a purely esthetic conclusion.  I do

(Following posted from alt.uu.lang.esperanto.misc, where I found this 
interesting message.)

Every time I see this sort of comment (the word, by the way, is 
"subjective", not "esthetic"), I am reminded of Antoni Grabowski's 
delightful little anecdote about an experience he had.

Grabowski, who was one of the very early translators of poetry into 
Esperanto (he gave us the poems in _El Parnaso de Popoloj_ as well as the 
Esperanto translation of Mickiewicz's epic _Pan Tadeusz_), was at a party 
once where the subject of Esperanto arose. Most of those present shared 
Mr. Djukic's opinion about Esperanto's ugliness. "Perhaps you would like 
to hear some Esperanto?" Grabowski suggested.

The group agreed, and Grabowski took a notebook out of his pocket, 
flipped it open at random, and began to read. After three or four verses, 
the comments began. Listen to the flatness of the vowels ... the 
mushiness of the consonants ... the language is choppy and sounds like 
water running down a drain ... the words are misformed ... all in all, 
you can tell just by listening to it that it's a hodge-podge created by 
an uneducated Russian who grew up speaking Jewish ghetto argot and 
wouldn't know what a _real_ language was like if it reared up and bit 
him. 

Grabowski, looking at his notebook, said, apologetically, "I'm sorry. I 
don't know how it happened, but what I just read to you was a poem by the 
great Provenc,al poet Mistral, written in his own native language. It 
wasn't Esperanto."

More comments. The noise of people coming in and out, you know ... I 
believe I was distracted by one of those newfangled motorcars going by 
outside ... the acoustics in here are terrible. Could you read a bit 
more, please?

Grabowski looked on down the page and began again. After three or four 
more verses, the comments began again. Ah, the simple clarity of the 
vowels ... the crispness of the consonants ... the delightful lilt of the 
accent and intonations ... the classical conciseness of the words ... 
anyone can tell, just by listening, that here is a language that has been 
honed by generations of loving wordsmiths and literateurs into a vehicle 
suitable for bearing the great literature of a people to the world at 
large. No silly artificiality here!

"I must apologize again," Grabowski interjected. "What you just heard was 
my Esperanto translation of the same poem by Mistral."

End of anecdote. We may suppose that the group turned to some other, more 
congenial topic -- and that if its members ever got involved in another 
discussion about Esperanto, they were even more critical of it. After 
all, as has been said in more than one society, while it may be bad to 
call someone a fool, it is absolutely intolerable to prove it.

-- 
Don HARLOW			donh@netcom.com
Esperanto League for N.A.       elna@netcom.com (800) 828-5944
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/el/elna/elna.html         Esperanto
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/do/donh/donh.html 
