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From: brg@netcom.com (Bruce R. Gilson)
Subject: Re: Judging Esperanto
Message-ID: <brgE79prL.9Iv@netcom.com>
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References: <brgE78KpL.DnF@netcom.com> <332eb27e.864913@news.mindspring.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Mar 1997 02:04:32 GMT
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In article <332eb27e.864913@news.mindspring.com>,
D Gary Grady <dgary@mindspring.com> wrote:
>brg@netcom.com (Bruce R. Gilson) wrote:
>
>>When someone points out that dozens of constructed languages have been devel-
>>oped that are simpler, easier to learn to use, etc.,  [...]
>
>I would have more confidence in your judgment on this point if I had
>the impression that you were in a position to make such a comparison
>on some solid basis of knowledge.
>
>However, having discussed the subject with you over a number of years
>in this forum and elsewhere, my impression is that your opinion of
>Esperanto, at least, is founded more on superficial impressions and
>preconceptions than on actual acquaintance with the language.

Let me ask you a question: what more do I need to know about the language
which I do not already? I know the common endings: -o for nouns, -i for verb
infinitives, -a for adjectives, -j for plurals, -n for the accusative; etc.,
I know about the agreement rules (granda pordo, grandan pordon, grandaj
pordoj, grandajn pordojn) and I know enough vocabulary to assess the proportion
of easy-to-recognize and difficult-to-recognize words. True, I cannot, without
a dictionary, string together a sentence in Esperanto unless I happen to know
the specific words I need. And I can read only 30-60% of a post in Esperanto.
But I do not think one needs to be fluent in a language to comment intelli-
gently about it.

I am certainly not fluent in Japanese. But I can state many true propositions
about it: that it is verb last, that questions are marked by postposing a
particle "ka," that postpositions are used, not only for the prepositions of
English but also to mark subject and object roles, etc. This does not make me
an expert in the language, but I can say with some confidence what features
of Japanese may be hard for an English-speaker to learn, and vice versa. And
this level of knowledge, I believe, is all I need to discuss intelligently the
merits and demerits of Esperanto.

I might note that Phil Hunt, coming from a quite different background from my
own, comes to almost identical conclusions to mine about the defects of
Esperanto. This gives me some confidence that my judgment is impartial.

>As you note in a couple of recent postings, you have had little
>contact with Esperantists, have seen hardly any printed matter in the
>language, and so on, and hence you have essentially no knowledge of
>the language beyond a familiarity with its grammatical morphology and
>some subset of its vocabulary and principles of word formation. This
>has led you to draw some erroneous conclusions about the nature of the
>language (as witness for example our discussion a few years ago about
>the nature of words for opposites).

On the contrary: it would seem that most Esperantists who post describe the
absence of opposite-meaning pairs as one of Esperanto's great features, saving
half the time in memorizing words (not all words have opposites, so "half" is
generous in extreme). If my comments were in error, so seem to be most Espe-
rantists who post to the lists.

>Of course, fans of Esperanto are equally guilty of making
>pronouncements about other languages on the basis of even less
>familiarity, notably some recent attacks on Phil Hunt's Eurolang.
>
>We all have our prejudices. Those who want to participate in the
>creation of a new and better language are naturally inclined to look
>down on the current leader in the category. Those who for whatever
>psychological reasons are repulsed by the very idea of artificial
>languages argue that such languages are, just _have_ to be,
>linguistically uninteresting, incapable of subtle expression, and
>otherwise defective. Those who know and use Esperanto are disinclined
>to transfer their loyalty to another constructed language, especially
>when no one such language seems a clear choice even to those who
>reject Esperanto.

With this, I will agree.

>And, as Mark Rosenfelder has pointed out, constructed language
>enthusiasts in general fail to appreciate why most people learn
>languages and why the practical limitations on the immediate utility
>of any constructed language make all of them unlikely candidates for
>widespread use, at least in the forseeable future.

Do you include Esperanto in this?

If so, that's a fairer statement than I've seen from most Esperantists.

>Given all that, I don't think we profit very much from endless threads
>of Esperanto-bashing or Eurolang-bashing or Interlingua-bashing and
>the inevitable responses of the defenders of those languages. To
>passive spectators it simply reinforces the notion that constructed
>language enthusiasts are all a bunch of misguided, argumentative
>cranks. We would do better to strive to at least _sound_ objective and
>reasonable...

I've tried to cut down on my Esperanto-bashing as part of my active efforts
to _do_something_ rather than just complain: my formation, with Thomas Leigh,
of a Novial development group. However, some of the comments by Don Harlow
and Miko Sloper have brought forth responses merely because it's impossible
to just stand by while ridiculous assertions are made.


                                Bruce R. Gilson
                                email: brg@netcom.com
                                IRC: EZ-as-pi
                                WWW: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/3141
                                (for language stuff: add /langpage.html)
