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From: elna@netcom.com (Esperanto League N America)
Subject: Perfect Language? 
Message-ID: <elnaDpCpoL.CtB@netcom.com>
Organization: Esperanto League for North America, Inc.
References: <Pine.SOL.3.91.960330130551.17956A-100000@rask> <4jp120$b9v@reader2.ix.netcom.com> <4jt5rk$sl2@hopi.gate.net> <31639479.3061592@news.nando.net>
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 1996 18:50:45 GMT
Lines: 35
Sender: elna@netcom3.netcom.com

dgary@nando.net (D Gary Grady) writes in a recent posting (reference <31639479.3061592@news.nando.net>):
>
>I agree with you that it should be possible to invent a better
>language than Esperanto. In fact, it has possibly been done. Certainly
>I can think of individual aspects of various languages (planned and
>otherwise) that strike me as improvements over the corresponding bit
>of Esperanto, though I've yet to see a language without flaws (in my
>judgment, anyway).
>
Umberto Eco addressed this notion in "The Search for the Perfect Language"
and ascribed the desire to create a "Perfect Language" to the desire to
complete the Biblical myth of the Tower of Babel. The state of mankind 
during the mythical period between the Garden of Eden scene and the Tower 
of Babel episode was that all humans spoke a single language, which was a
perfect language, in that Adam had created it under Divine tutelage. Eco
cleverly argues that the current attempt of Europe to unify is a symptom
of this desire to return to the pre-Babel state. Eco seems to think that
this myth-bound urge lies at the root of planned language projects, and 
also drives people to study and learn them. I disagree. Most people who
learn Esperanto do so because it is non-national, interesting, useful.
I know that there are several ex-Esperantists who still believe in
creating a "Perfect Language" and have abandoned Esperanto due to its
tragically human faults; but most of us who use this international 
language have no illusions about its mythological implications-- it is
more reasonably approached as an engineering project than as metaphysics.
The concept of "perfection" is thorny and utopian, and has little to do
with the real-world problem of spoken communication in this modern era
of telephones and jet planes.


-- 
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 1-800-828 5944
