@Talka
>Esperanto is just plain silly. 

Do you also belittle other manufactured and reformed languages (as below) or is it  just language planning & reform itself that you so detest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_planning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_reform
Some more-or-less successful examples of planning/reform:
* Bahasa Indonesia - Indonesian is a normative form of the Malay language, an Austronesian (or Malayo-Polynesian) language, used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries. It was elevated to the status of official language with the Indonesian declaration of independence in 1945. Actually spoken as such by very few.
* Hungarian (late 18th and early 19th centuries) ? more than ten thousand words were coined,[1] out of which several thousand are still actively used today.
    * Romanian (19th Century) ? replaced the Cyrillic alphabet with the Latin alphabet, dropped thousands of Slavic roots and replaced them with Romance ones.
    * Portuguese (20th Century) ? replaced a cumbersome traditional spelling system with a simplified one (asthma, for instance, became asma and phthysica became t?sica).
    * German (1901/02) ? unified the spelling system nationwide (first in Germany, later adoption by other Germanophone countries)
    * Hebrew/Ivrit (1920s) ? Modern Hebrew was created from Ancient Hebrew by simplification of the grammar (especially of the syntax) according to Indo-European models, coinage of new words from Hebrew roots based on European models, and simplification of pronunciation rules.
    * Chinese
          o (1920s) ? replaced Classical Chinese with Vernacular Chinese as the standard written language.
          o (1950s PRC) ? reformed the script used to write the standard language by introducing Simplified Chinese characters (later adopted by Singapore and Malaysia, but Traditional Chinese characters remain in use in the ROC on Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and various overseas Chinese communities).
    * Turkish (1930s) ? language and writing system were reformed starting in the 1920s, to the point that the older language is called by a different name, Ottoman Turkish. The Ottoman alphabet was based on the Arabic alphabet, which was replaced in 1928 by the new, Latin-based Turkish alphabet. Loanwords of Persian and Arabic origin were dropped in favor of native Turkish words or new coinages based on Turkic roots.
    * Vietnamese (20th Century)? replaced the classical vernacular script with the new Latin alphabet.

>It's silly to promote a manufactured language as an international language

Are you talking about a priori 'manufacturing', or a posteriori? I could conceivably agree about the former. There is a substantial difference, you know. And it's even sillier, and rather arrogant, to want to perpetuate 19th/20th century notions of imperialism, colonialism, ethnic and linguistic superiority in 2007, with total disregard for the rights of others as expressed in Article 2 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. And can I assume that you then also see little point in language revival either?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_revival

>and not think twice about defending linguistic heritages

or destroying Amazonian rain forests, or ravaging Atlantic fishstocks, or destroying the Buddhas of Bamiyan, Pacific coral reefs, contributing to global warming etc. etc. Is the enormous loss of human languages, documented by Unesco, and mainly cause by ethnic 'killer languages' of such little concern to you?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangered_languages

Maybe Esperanto is the solution, maybe it's not.  But without a doubt English has become the universal language today and I don't think any other language (Esperanto included) stands a chance.  At what cost?  Who knows.  The ethical aspects never even crossed my mind until this thread.

Someone develop a babelfish translator already. 

Some interesting issues, folks. (and infinitely more readable when you all play nice... )  This is no doubt a tough slog for an well-informed idealist amongst a band of realists.  I suspect if China becomes the next world economic and military superpower, there'll be far more advocates of esperanto as a neutral world second language.

Thora wrote:

Some interesting issues, folks. (and infinitely more readable when you all play nice... )  This is no doubt a tough slog for an well-informed idealist amongst a band of realists.  I suspect if China becomes the next world economic and military superpower, there'll be far more advocates of esperanto as a neutral world second language.

I'd rather speak Chinese. *goes to buy Remembering the Hanzi

In his list of language reforms, mankso never mentioned the two most relevant to us here: English spelling standardization/reform (the source of spelling differences between commonwealth and the US), and Japanese language reform in the Meiji & post-WWII eras. That doesn't change anything about his argument, but they do potentially provide for more interesting examples.

Last edited by Jarvik7 (2007 September 13, 5:23 pm)

suffah wrote:

Someone develop a babelfish translator already. 

This is actually a good point.  Working on better translation algorithms would probably be a  way to save "language diversity" that might actually feasibly work.

@mankso
None of the language reforms you listed bears the slightest similarity to creating a completely new language by blending about 10 others and trying to get everyone in the world to use it.
And as for your list, I think PRC's sweeping reform of the writing system was an arrogant and contemptible act, and may very well have been an attempt at information control by the communist government.

It seems like you missed the second line in that article on killer languages:
"Being a killer language is not an intrinsic characteristic of a language, but most major languages could be identified as "killers"."
Any language can be a killer language, including Esperanto.  Its supposedly non-ethnic nature doesn't change that in the least.  As I've already said, the prague manifesto doesn't mean jack as far as that goes.
English is choking off other languages because of its widespread use, and Esperanto would do the same if (as you wish) everyone started speaking it.

yawfosu88 wrote:

Why the spirit of aggression and insults? You will never make the world a better place that way. Your giving Esperantists a bad name and because I'm not likely to run into more in the near future and the impression your giving will inevitably taint my view of Esperantists in a negative way. Don't refer to (by implication) users of this site as Philistines, because you don't know anyone here. This site, I believe was started in the
spirit of helping people, specifically to accomplish their language goals and is very successful in that end with regards to Japanese.

You hit the nail on the head. 

mankso, the people on this forum are very intelligent and obviously have an interest in learning foreign languages.  There's no need to be condescending or viciously attack everyone's opinion that doesn't agree with yours.  I'm sure you're not a hostile person, but your posts certainly come off that way.    Your posts contain hyperbole to prove a point, I understand that, but you gotta realize why people aren't more open to what you're trying to say.

Maybe so, but I bet you mankso is still crazy.

Machine_Gun_Cat wrote:

Sorry but ロマ字　＝　Fail

The word is ローマ字. I quite like this word's appearance.

Last edited by nest0r (2009 February 24, 4:58 am)

This topic is way too old for trolling (Machine_Gun_Cat), topic closed.