Newsgroups: sci.lang
From: andre@shappski.demon.co.uk (Andre Shapps)
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!udel!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!peernews.demon.co.uk!shappski.demon.co.uk!andre
Subject: Re: Name pronunciation
References: <D4GvGD.5Av@indirect.com>
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Date: Fri, 24 Feb 1995 18:40:41 +0000
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In article: <D4GvGD.5Av@indirect.com>  stevemac@bud.indirect.com (Pascal MacProgrammer) writes:
 
>   Better Klingon (or Farsi, or Swahili, or even English) than no European 
> or worldwide language at all.  Of course, Esperanto would be the =very= 
> best choice.

And food production would be a lot more efficient if we all ate the same food.

Actually, of course, as you understood, I was being facetious. I just like the idea of people 
all over the world making violent guttural noises each time they address each other.

More seriously, though, I was wondering whether the development of a language ordinarily 
follows some sort of Darwinistic progression, whereby it becomes in some way adapted to the 
culture and environment in which it grows. It is well known that, to a greater or lesser 
extent, learning a language usually involves a fair amount of understanding of the culture from 
which it arose. There are many examples of occupying powers trying to force populations
to speak only the language of the occupying force, so worried are they that the language
is inherently linked to the culture.

I am worried about the a language that was not developed in that way. I would imagine that 
there are perfectly good reasons why irregularities in languages arise that may be to do with 
ease of use, since it is often the most commonly used parts of a language that become the most 
irregular (the verbs to be, to have, to go etc. in varying degrees). Is it possible that such 
irregularities are fundamental to the way we feel the need to talk and that that is why they 
occur?

I believe that learning a language does a lot more for you than simply the fact that you can 
now speak the language. It tends to expand the mind in other ways to. I find it gives me more 
outlets for expression. I doubt that anyone disagrees that in different languages, while thay 
can nearly all express the same facts to the same degree of accuracy, some of the nuances of 
less factual text simply don't translate from one to the other. My point here is that I think 
that a very good case could be put to show that having many languages spoken on the planet is 
actually a good thing. I don't claim to have *made* the case here, just to show that one exists. 
Perhaps someone else would like to expand.

And one more thing. Let's take a hypothetical situation in which the entire population of the
Earth has managed to learn Esperanto. What mechanism is proposed to prevent divergence?
Will there be an "acceptable" degree of divergence? Will there be some kind of watchdog that
will take countries to task if their colloquial use of Esperanto strays into the realms of
being a another dialect? Does the whole thing revolve around the fact that communication (for
a privaleged proportion of us anyway) is so fast these days? I have a feeling that either the
world will need some sort of totalitarian regime, or that some one is going to have to put an
incredibly well reasoned argument to, for example, Tibetans, about why this culture which
they've been fighting to preserve is - erm - wrong.


-- 
Andre Shapps


