My job is to be a translator, so guess my point of view in this issue :P
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Esperanto
I didn't find any thread about esperanto ( i probably miss).
What is your opinion about this language?
I think it's a good idea and i'am seriously thinking to learn it.
My job is to be a translator, so guess my point of view in this issue :P
Para los pueblos de todo el mundo, que luchan por la paz, la democracia y el socialismo, el leninismo es como el sol que trae consigo una vida alegre. - Ho Chi Minh
Comunes el sol y el viento, común ha de ser la tierra, que vuelva común al pueblo, lo que del pueblo saliera
Maoism is (...) Marxism Leninism on cocaine - Rafiq
Pas de liberté pour les ennemis de la liberté - Louis Antoine de Saint-Just
El marxismo conlleva muchos principios que en últimas instancias se compendian en una sola frase: “es justo rebelarse contra los reaccionarios" - Mao Tse-Tung
Die Barrikaden schließen der Strasse aber geöffnet der Weg.
Why not learn a language with hundreds of millions of speakers instead? That's probably way more helpful for international communication.
Because we oppose cultural appropriation
Man is but a goat in the hands of butchers
I love the concept of international auxiliary languages, and Esperanto probably has the most enthusiastic base and the most momentum, but here's the basic problem:
There are a dozen and one IAUs out there, all vying to be the one. Esperanto, Ido, Volapük, Interlingua, et. al. I honestly think Esperanto is too Eurocentric, and would much prefer a more diversified vocabulary and neutral grammar, like Lojban. Nonetheless, I think the quest for a universal language is one unlikely to be achieved before we have translating programs so good we won't need one.
Well, the fact is by use english as international language, we open the door to USA culture, no?
This.
Anyway, Esperanto is horribly Eurocentric, casually sexist, nationalist and so on.
I would hold out more hope for something in the vein of Isotype, although that needs burned State and the Revolution sprinkled over it to drive the social-democracy out.
Can yyou tell me more about this? It's first time i heard that speech and i want to be sure of what i'am doing before loose my time.
The "Eurocentrism" argument is mostly based on idiom. Grammatically, it is its own thing. People with this argument often prefer languages like Lojban, which is indeed more 'fair' in the sense that it is hard to learn for everyone. "Sexist" seems to refer to this debate, which has evolved into a non-issue (as explained in that article). The "nationalist" one is beyond me really, as Esperanto is explicitly designed for global usage, and I'll leave that explanation to 870.
I myself am very much in favor of Esperanto and would like to see it as a lingua franca in a future European unification project. Europe, the continent where I live, would hugely benefit to move away from the cultural dominance of the main languages and by having a low entry point language that can be used everywhere.
I would advise to look for a local Esperanto group and start digging in
We also have an Esperanto usergroup that needs more life anyway.
I think, thus I disagree. | Chairperson of a Socialist Party branchMarxist Internet Archive | Communistisch Platform
Working class independence - Internationalism - Democracy
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It's language invented by man born in Poland so I could defend it but... it wouldn't be logical.
Some natural languages (English form example) have simpler grammar. Esperanto is good for Indo-European languages speakers, but why to learn completely artificial language at all? It would be better effort to simplify existing one like Simple English does...
"Property is theft."
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
"the system of wage labor is a system of slavery"
Karl Heinrich Marx
I think the Eurocentrism of Esperanto is obvious; it is based on Indo-European grammar and vocabulary, more precisely on the grammar and vocabulary of European languages (the influence of e.g. Sanskrit on Esperanto is minimal at best).
And no, I don't prefer Lojban. Lojban is a crime against human speech. The point is that if you're going to have an international language, then you should be a bit more attuned to how people actually speak, or explicitly limit yourself to Europe as some conlangs did.
As for sexism, words are male by default unless given a suffix; almost every word concerning women is [male word]-[female suffix].
The nationalism is apparent in the pretty inconsistent rules for ethnonyms and country names; Belgium is [Belgian][land] but a Chinese person is [China][person].
As a Swedish-speaker, I say we just take English. No conlang can survive.
English has a more simple grammar? What? Esperanto has 16 defined grammar rules which you could learn by heart in less than a week. According to research done by the Institute of Cybernetic Pedagogy at Paderborn (Germany), Esperanto requires a fraction of the time to learn compared to other, natural, languages at a certain level:
2000 hours studying German = 1500 hours studying English = 1000 hours studying Italian (or any other Romance language) = 150 hours studying Esperanto.
So what is the point of learning an artificial language like Esperanto? Because it is easy to learn, vastly more easy than English anyway, it was designed to be easy. As such it is enabling humans worldwide to learn a language to communicate with eachother at a low entry point.
I think, thus I disagree. | Chairperson of a Socialist Party branchMarxist Internet Archive | Communistisch Platform
Working class independence - Internationalism - Democracy
Educate - Agitate - Organise
Whoever believes that Esperanto, or any other such language, will ever achieve actual usage even remotely is kidding him/herself. What's wrong with everyone speaking, say, Chinese, Spanish or English? Why should I learn a language to speak with 100 people instead of learning a language to speak with 1,000,000,000 people?
What is this even supposed to mean?
...if you're a French high school student (according to the article). Which is a bit problematic, as Esperanto is extremely similar to French, and without the melo glielo crap that makes Italian a pain to learn.
If your first language is highly isolating, on the other hand, or has an ergative-absolutive case system and so on, I would think that the numbers would be quite different.
The problem with this is, first, that Esperanto is probably about as easy to learn as English for speakers of non-Indoeuropean languages (if not more so, with adjective agreement which is missing from English etc.), and second, people don't have to be fluent in English to communicate. As someone once said, the de facto world language isn't English but Dodgy Pidgin English, plus whatever snippets of the local language you know.Originally Posted by Q
Exactly, what does this "cultural appropriation" thing means? Is it supposed to be a joke?
The language of the future will be developed in a bastardized form by the intermixing of peoples in a socialist world. Over the internet. With cat videos being the first sign of a world culture.
Yeah, let's call a language which basis is internationalism Eurocentric... what annoying pedantry.
Yeah, if you use the term Eurocentric, you pretty much guarantee I'm gonna tune you out in most cases.
So, if I made up an "international" language that was highly analytic, written with logograms, formed sentences by the topic-comment rule, and most of its vocabulary was taken from Mandarin, Vietnamese and Wu, you wouldn't call that Sinocentric?
