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From: deb5@ellis.uchicago.edu (Daniel von Brighoff)
Subject: Re: International Language.
Message-ID: <1995Jan7.214953.26905@midway.uchicago.edu>
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Date: Sat, 7 Jan 1995 21:49:53 GMT
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In article <3ek5e3$m2n@lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk> etg10@cl.cam.ac.uk (Edmund Grimley-Evans) writes:

>According to "Linguistic imperialism" by Robert Phillipson (where you can
>look for the references) the US did force the Philippines to increase the
>emphasis on English in their education system by some kind of economic
>threat.

Nu?  Contrast that one example to the number of countries that have
willingly adopted English as a mandatory second language.
>
>If it were the case that the American films in Europe are being sold for
>less than they cost American viewers, then one could make accusations of
>"dumping". When the Japanese sell electronics in Europe or the USA at
>low prices specially designed to put American and European manufacturers
>out of business people don't hesitate to accuse the Japanese of being
>less than philanthropic and raise trade barriers against them.

I've never heard the Americans accused of dumping their films.  In
fact, the amazing success of American films in Europe contiues *despite*
various protectionist measures taken by the national governments
(France in particular) and the EC.

>However I do not know much about the inside of the film industry or why
>it is that Germany (for example) hardly has its own film industry despite
>being a large and prosperous nation that once had a very good film
>industry.

World War II had a lot to do with it, but participants in the
German brain-drain to Hollywood (_Der Spiegel_ did an series on them
some months back) complain most often about a lack of entrepeneurship
on the part of German filmmakers.

>Yes, there are native speakers of Esperanto. There is an article about
>them in Linguistics 31-3 (325), 539-555, in 1993. La nombro de denaskaj
>esperantistoj ver^sajne estas inter 100 kaj 1000. (Why did I type that in
>Esperanto? Here's a translation: The number of native speakers of Esperanto
>is probably between 100 and 1000.)
>...
>But the point one should be paying attention to is that native speakers
>have neither a normative role for the Esperanto language nor a dominant
>role in the Esperanto community. If one wants to know whether an Esperanto
>sentence is correct or not, one doesn't ask a native speaker. The
>committees of Esperanto organisations and the lists of prize winners in
>Esperanto literary competitions are not full of native speakers.

Should Esperanto ever become accepted as the international language,
this situation is certain to change.  For a rough parallel, look to
the history of Modern Hebrew, which counted not a single native 
speaker at the beginning of this century.

>Languages become associated with culture over time, I think. It's true
>that Esperanto vocabulary is better developed for Christian theological
>concepts than for Buddhism, for example, but this will rectify itself
>automatically if and when more Buddhists use the language.

As I said in my other follow-up post, my primary objection is to the
claim that English is biased whereas Esperanto is not.  The English
vocabularly for discussing Buddhism has likewise swelled enormously
in the last several decades; "Zen" is even a fully "domesticated"
English word.

I wrote:>
>> Which is one reason why I personally question the value of an inter-
>> language.  I think the advantages of putting everyone on "equal
>> footing" (keep in mind that they aren't really:  speakers of an Indo-
>> European language still have a much easier time learning Esperanto than
>> the rest of the world and those without the leisure time and resources
>> to learn a second language are screwed no matter what that language is)
>> are outweighed by the problems of having everyone learn a new interlan-
>> guage.  Given a choice, I wouldn't have chosen English for the world 
>> language, but its better than many of the alternatives and much easier
>> to keep than to replace.
>
>Naively following this line of reasoning and assuming that Esperanto is
>five times easier to learn than English (which corresponds to existing
>empirical evidence) we should choose Esperanto if and only if the number
>of people in the world who don't speak Esperanto is less than five time
>the number of people who don't speak English ... I won't continue this
>by filling in the figures because obviously the entire issue is far more
>complex than this.

Um, could you explain how your equation is a result of "naively following"
the line of reason I presented above?  I just don't see it.

>The first point concerns imperialism - a complex subject about which a
>lot has been written. English language imperialism is possible because
>the English language speakers have political and economic interests in
>common besides their language: most of them are citizens of Britain of
>the USA or belong to elites that share those interests, e.g. African
>ruling classes that were educated and have their bank accounts in Europe
>or the USA. The idea is that Esperanto, with a broader cultural and
>geographical base, is less susceptible to such misuse. Ask an expert
>on imperialism theory whether any of this is vaguely plausible.

The first point concerned cultural bias, which is not the same thing
as imperialism at all.
>
>Data about how easy it is to learn a language is difficult and expensive
>to obtain, and impossible without some kind of official support.
>There are attempts to get more such experiments organised in the EU, but
>an experiment comparing Esperanto and Indonesian for Japanese learners,
>for example, would be very interesting, if anyone could do it.

Agreed!

[digression on Klingon and debauchery at Esperanto conventions deleted]
-- 
	Daniel "Da" von Brighoff (deb5@midway.uchicago.edu)  /\
	5242 S. Hyde Park Blvd., Apt. 303		    /__\
	Chicago, IL  60615				   /____\
