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From: hinsenk@cyclone.ERE.UMontreal.CA (Hinsen Konrad)
Subject: Re: Great Esperanto literature
In-Reply-To: mintaka@alnilam.toppoint.de's message of 22 Feb 1995 15:46:00 +0100
Message-ID: <HINSENK.95Feb22200958@cyclone.ERE.UMontreal.CA>
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Date: Thu, 23 Feb 1995 01:09:58 GMT
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In article <5gLNoyFlaJB@alnilam.toppoint.de> mintaka@alnilam.toppoint.de (Bernd P.F. Kassler) writes:

   A translation of literature looses much of the charm of the original work  
   (i.e. added entropy). It is impossible to translate e.g. the "Ulysses"  

That far I agree.

   I try to explain : As a natural speaker you learn nuances/finesse of  
   language right from the womb. And you learn not only the language, but you  
   learn how to connect syllabs even to your surrounding/environment. (The  
   word "Forest" has another sound in the northern middle european world than  
   ...

What you describe is a theory. What attempts have been made to
verify it? What effort has been spent to look for possible
counterexamples?

   As far as I know there is only a very small number of people (= zero ??)  
   who speak Esp. as natural speakers (ref. Noam Chomsky) so the only  

Native speakers exist (I personally know a few), but they are so few
that they do not have much impact on Esperanto culture or literature.
As far as I know, none of the well-known Esperanto authors is/was
a native speaker.

   I do not know about E. literature but I know only *one* literat that  
   published real *great_works* in a language that he learned when he was  
   already grown-up: Joseph Conrad.

In national languages, this is obviously difficult to achieve. But since
Esperanto is much easier to learn, it is not inconceivable that it
is also easier to acquire a sufficient level of competence to write
literary works in it.

   I think the *fact* that we did *not* hear/read anything about Esperanto  
   literature or poetry is simply its *quality*. ....

It would be nice if there were an objective measure of quality, which
could be applied to check this assertion. As it stands, I simply disagree,
but cannot give any proof.

   I hope I made clear that I've got some philosophical based complaints  
   about E. and its lack of "culture" (and no personal offenses, like Yvonne  
   thought I have).

The problem with philosophical arguments against Esperanto are that they
mostly break down when compared to empirical facts.

--
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Konrad Hinsen                     | E-Mail: hinsenk@ere.umontreal.ca
Departement de Chimie             | Tel.: +1-514-343-6111 ext. 3953
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