Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!rutgers.rutgers.edu!news.sgi.com!howland.erols.net!ix.netcom.com!elna
From: elna@netcom.com (Esperanto League N America)
Subject: Re: complaints & perfection
Message-ID: <elnaE68oso.9y3@netcom.com>
Organization: Esperanto League for North America, Inc.
References: <853605030.2652@dejanews.com> <33114002.6E3A@scruznet.com> <elnaE64vJ5.35M@netcom.com> <7f7mjxbit0.fsf_-_@phoenix.cs.hku.hk>
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 1997 02:12:24 GMT
Lines: 68
Sender: elna@netcom2.netcom.com

sdlee@cs.hku.hk (Lee Sau Dan ~{@nJX6X~}) writes in a recent posting (reference <7f7mjxbit0.fsf_-_@phoenix.cs.hku.hk>):
>
>        I   think  if  Zamenhof   made the   decisions  carefully,
>justifiably and   with everyone on  EVERY  CONTINENT of this  world in
>mind, then others would not complain.  

But how could one possibly please people who want an IAL to have a
grammar based on isolating strategies *and* those who favour inflection
*and* those who support agglutination?
Or what about an admixture of vocabulary sources- would you favour a
melting-pot approach: 18% Chinese, 11 % Germanic, 19% Romance, &c. 
What a mess this would be!  And the very smallest languages would be
completely left out. How about a few words from *every* language on
the planet?? Would that be fair?

>      Has anyone ever complained that
>Esperanto had  no   grammatical  gender?  

Given my experience dealing with complainers of several stripes, I do  
not doubt that somebody somewhere is deeply disappointed that Esperanto
does not have grammatical gender!  He/she likely even used this terrible
oversight as an excuse to not learn the language...


>         Would  anyone   complain  if
>Zamenhof were clever enough to imagine  a language without grammatical
>number, too?  ^^^^^^

Here again is your assumption that *isolating* grammars are more clever
than other kinds.  Why do you think this? Might it have something to do
with your native language?

>     Would  anyone complain if  Zamenhof could accept using a
>preposition to mark the direct object, instead of the overloaded "-n",
>which is also used for indicating direction and time?
>
Perhaps this would have been accepted. But this line of argument is
right back to "what if Esperanto were not as it is?" A useless tack
for this discussion.
>
>    Esperanto> Look, guys, every language planner must make some
>    Esperanto> choices, the result of which is that huge classes of
>    Esperanto> languages will be less similar to the result than other
>    Esperanto> huge classes. This is unavoidable. 
>
>Yes,  you're right, but Zamenhof  did make many  decisions without the
>whole world in mind.  Many choices were  taken in a way biased towards
>the Europeans.  So, why should   whole world (not just Europe)  accept
>such decisions?  This  is   not an argument against  _his  invention_.
>It's an argument against  _using_ the language "internationally" (in a
>truly _global_ sense).
>
Many of the decisions rendered Esperanto decidedly *unlike* the major
European languages, most of which are inflectional, not agglutinative.

So do you prefer that the whole world use English? Or are you perhaps
content with the current chaos and lack of standardization?

Do you object to the metric system of measurement? It is decidedly
European in origin. What about the Western numbers? (Actually these
were invented by Arabs, but Europeans spread them) How about the 
24-hour day? (Babylonian, but also spread by Westerners.)
>
-- 
Miko SLOPER              elna@netcom.com              USA  (510) 653 0998
Direktoro de la          ftp.netcom.com:/pub/el/elna   fax (510) 653 1468 
Centra Oficejo de la     Learn Esperanto! Free lessons: e-mail/snail-mail
Esperanto-Ligo de N.A.   Write to above address or call:  1-800-ESPERANTO
