LL-L "Language politics" 2004.09.27 (06) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: Grietje MENGER <grietje at menger.fsnet.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2004.09.27 (02) [E]

Various things Esperanto:

I've tried to learn a bit of Esperanto on my own, after I found Audrey
Childs-Mee Saluton! in a second hand bookshop in Glastonbury. The funny (or
funny....) thing was, that I didn't really learn it because I found it wholy
uninteresting as a language. (This is from someone who doesn't think that
Welsh mutations or Gaelic lenition is difficult but considers it fun!) But
of course, that is a personal opinion.

I am, as a matter of linguistic experiment, interested in what would happen
in the following case:
If you put 5 or more Esperanto speaking (but no other communal language)
together on a desert island with a good mix of male/female so procreation
would ensue and children would be born whose first language would be
Esperanto. How long would it take, do you imagine, before Esperanto would
display exactly those features that other natural languages have? That is,
colloquialisms, "secret" speak (like Cockney rhyming slang). How long would
it take, in other words, for it to loose its neutrality?

I am also not thoroughly convinced that Esperanto is as neutral as it is
proclaimed to be. Does not every speaker use her own "nurture" factor in the
language she uses? Where it is neutral is in the fact that each is speaking
a learned language, therefore all are equally "disadvantaged" in the
language (matters of proficiency aside).

Grietje Menger
Scotland

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: "Language politics" [E]

>
> From: Pyt Berg <pytbergy at yahoo.com>
> Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2004.09.26 (01) [E]
>
> Esperanto IS a GREAT European language. It is 40% Latin based, 30%
Germanic
> based and 20% Slavic based. The rest of the words come from around the
> world.
> Espserantists try hard to convince people it is a world lanaguage, but
only
> about 7 million people speak it.
>
> If you really want to greatly expand your understanding of the CORE
> structures of many European words and hence languages it is very useful.
> There are root words in Esperanto. For that it is an ideal vehicle ( a lot
> easier than learning Latin & Greek).

Even in the UK, children are taught a second language in school, usually
French, so we can get ahead of Esparanto just by learning one
extra-curricular language, for example, Russian, Polish or Czech.

Esperanto IS NOT a GREAT European language because it completely neglects
Celtic languages, the Finno-Urgic languages and so on.

> EVERTHING I ever learnt in Esperanto (especially words) I have found a way
> of
> using them to assist me to learn other EURO lanaguages. It teaches you to
> think
> more about the words you are learning and their common origins.

I think this is an interesting observation in that it might explain why
Esperanto is most popular in countries (such as Russia and Korea) where
speakers of indigenous languages shouldn't find it an easy language to learn
at all. Perhaps it's because it gives them a foot in the door of several
important languages at once (eg French, Spanish, English).

Once again, rhough, English seems to present itself as the "natural"
alternative to Esperanto. OK, it won't help you much with Eussian (I don't
actually remember that much Slavonic in Esperanto, though), but it does
cover some Romance as well as Germanic vocabulary.

It all seems to go against the grain of what Zamenhof was originally
attempting, though. If you want to give people a core vocabulary for
learning important languages, Esperanto doesn't really seem a very good way
to do it. Who would want to learn Esperanto's tenses, moods and aspects just
incidentally to trying to acquire a core vocabulary for other languages?

We seem to have a few Esperantists around - but no-one ahs answered my
question about how idiom is handled in Esperanto (or Middelsprake).

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language politics


Karaj kunabonantoj de Lowlands-L, la retpoŝto-listo por la lingvoj kaj
kulturoj de la Eŭropa Malalteja,

I don't really want to encourage much continuation of this Esperanto thread
(which is marginal to us, at best, except in opposition to English as a
universal lingua franca), nor do I want to deride what the Esperantist
movement has achieved.  Nevertheless, I can't resist adding a few words to
Grietje's and Sandy's.

As I said before, Esperanto is fundamentally Eurocentric.  Although Dr.
Zamenhof was rather progressively thinking for his time, it seems that he,
like virtually all other Europeans then, thought to some degree or other in
terms of Eurocentrism and cultural hierarchies, besides going for the
convenience of working only on the basis of the languages he personally
knew.  What counted at that time were the European _Kultursprachen_
("cultural languages" or "culture-bearing languages"), languages through
which then *important* culture was transmitted: the "important" languages of
Europe's "great" cultures, namely those of powerful countries (French,
English and German, perhaps Russian) and those considered "classical," "the
fountains of European culture" (Latin and Greek, with Hebrew somewhere on
the periphery), secondarily the rest of Europe's national languages.
National languages of small countries were ignored, as were any minority
languages.  Non-Indo-European languages of Europe did not even enter the
equation, except in Volapük, which considered Turkish.  Asian languages were
"Oriental," "exotic," and thus inconsequential, besides being so alien and
difficult that Europeans should not be expected to study them. And all
non-Eurasian languages were "primitive," thus could be ignored anyway.

The Soviet Union, Mainland China and North Korea encourage or used to
encourage the use of Esperanto simply because they thought that chosing a
"neutral" world language was in keeping with their interpretations of
Marxism.  There was no more "neutral" language that was viable and was not
directly associated with the Capitalist enemies.

But how can you convince people that English is, potentially at least,
neutral enough to serve as a global lingua franca?  How can you allay fears
of "Anglicization" and "Americanization" as parts of the process rather than
as separate processes?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

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