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From: hinsenk@cyclone.ERE.UMontreal.CA (Hinsen Konrad)
Subject: Re: Single European Language
In-Reply-To: I.G.Batten@ftel.co.uk's message of Wed, 14 Jun 1995 12:49:32 GMT
Message-ID: <HINSENK.95Jun14175112@cyclone.ERE.UMontreal.CA>
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Date: Wed, 14 Jun 1995 21:51:12 GMT
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In article <DA5yAK.C7v@ftel.co.uk> I.G.Batten@ftel.co.uk (Ian G Batten) writes:

   Which is all interesting stuff, but no more proof to me of a living
   culture than the fact that someone translated the bible into Klingon.
   Is anyone transacting business in Esperanto?  Writing Novels?  Making
   films?  I see from soc.culture.esperanto that they're flaming about

The answer is yes to all of those. I suggest you get the book catalog
from the World Esperanto Association in Rotterdam. It will

1) show that business is done in Esperanto, as the whole catalog
   is written in Esperanto and has the sole purpose of attracting
   customers to a mail-order book store,
2) list a huge number of books written in Esperanto or translated
   into Esperanto,
3) list films made in Esperanto.

   I'd not noticed that this was cross-posting out of uk.politics, but as
   we now have a wider audience, perhaps someone will shoot down this
   proposition:

	   To be as expressive as a language spoken by a community
	   as its first language, a language must be spoken by some
	   comparable community as its first language.

To test this proposition, you need some way to measure expressiveness.
If you come up with one, I am sure someone will be willing to
apply it to Esperanto, as well as a couple of other languages,
to see whether your proposition is true. Personally I don't
believe in it.

--
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Konrad Hinsen                     | E-Mail: hinsenk@ere.umontreal.ca
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