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From rokicki@polya.Stanford.EDU Tue Aug 30 20:12:38 1988
				Tuesday 30 Aug 1988

Tom Rokicki:					rokicki@polya.Stanford.EDU
(replying to Bill Wolfe)
> . It is quite obvious that Esperanto is superior to English;
> 
> Obvious to whom, and for what purpose?  Esperanto, in my opinion, is
> ugly.

Esperanto isn't intended to be `superior' to (or to `surplant') any native
language.  It is merely intended to be a useful *second* language for all
people, to allow international communications unencumbered by interpreters,
and the appreciation of works of art from all cultures.
	
I'll certainly agree the orthography is a bit on the icky side.  The
accents are the biggest impediment to Esperanto's progress.  Why, oh why,
couldn't Zamenhoff [?sp] have had the wit to use just letters without fancy
diacritical marks?!?!

On the other hand Esperanto was designed to be pleasant on the ear (Z based
the pronounciation rules on Italian).  The grammar has some elegance in its
consistency and simplicity, although the assymetry of the `-in-' infix is a
stupid ugly bug which should have been rectified years ago.

It's a bit like C: simple and elegant in some ways but suffering from a bad
choice of symbols/notation.  (Good thing Z didn't use Cyrillic.)


> I like English, for all of its inconsistencies.  Writing English is an
> art.  Shakespeare is beautiful; a translation of Shakespeare to Esperanto
> or even modern english loses so much of its nature.

According to those who are experienced in these things, Esperanto
translations are usually far superior to translations into other languages.
Esperanto's relative flexibility allows a closer `match' than trying to
bend the concepts in Shakespeare to match those in another target language.

An Esperanto translation is accessible to any Esperantist, regardless of
nationality.


> It is precisely the rich nature of English that is lacking in Esperanto
> that allows such rich and subtle thoughts to be easily and concisely
> expressed.

I will certainly concede Esperanto's tendency towards literal meanings can
cause loss of some very subtlte distinctions.  E.g. `damp' and `moist' both
translate to `malseketa'; `beautiful' and `handsome' both become `bela'.

Esperanto often expresses concepts concisely that require complicated
English phrases - random example: `IMHO' translates to `lau^ mi'.

>                                   English words have a long history of
> usage from which they have derived their connotations if not their total
> meanings; the last thing we need is a prescriptive language, totally
> lacking in a history or culture.

Esperanto does have *some* history, you know, and a lot of culture: both in
translations from around the world and original works.  Esperanto's Acadamy
is probaly less `prescriptive' than the Acadamie Francaise; like ANSI C, it
`codifies existing usage' rather than imposing new ideas.  

Like C, the speaker can either voluntarily stick to the standard or risk
being `nonportable'.

The problem with `connotations' is that you can only choose from the set of
`Rich And Subtle Thoughts' which happen to exist in the available words.
From time to time the connotations change, invalidating the old sentences
(which is why Shakespeare's works have to have footnotes explaining the
connotations of words like `nice' and `annoy' in the 16th century).

Moreover, to express *new* RASTs requires complicated sentences to get
around the connotations of the English words.  This is often a problem for
scientists and mathematicians, who confuse people by carlessly tossing
around phrases like `uncountably many' or `almost everywhere' and the like.

Esperanto in the main encourages writers to make certain they are saying
exactly what they mean.  I often get caught out in English when someone
else has different connotations attached to a word than I do; this should
be less of a problem in Esperanto.  Esperantists often happily occupy
themselves for hours debating the exact meaning of phrases like `raison
d'etre', which is a good way to expand one's (English) vocabulary.


> I am disheartened enough by the disappearence of the subjunctive in
> modern English.  Don't even think about teaching Esperanto to my kids.

If `subjunctive' means what I think it does, Esperanto has one (sorry, but
I *do* tend to think of `-o words' and `the -us form of a verb' more easily
than the correct names when it comes to Esperanto 8-) ).  

Learning Esperanto is not mutually exclusive to learning English; in fact
learning Esperanto at an early-ish age might make it easier to assimilate
formal English grammar later.


Bill Wolfe:					billwolf@hubcap.clemson.edu
>     but where do we see Esperanto being taught?

Brazil, Japan, China, Russia, many European countries, ...


I don't want to start up a flame war on Esperanto (especially in
comp.std.internet...), just mention that it does have a few points in its
favour ...  

On the other hand, if you apply Mr Wolfe's criterion for dates to language,
you wouldn't end up with Esperanto but instead something like FORTH or LISP
with all the words replaced by numbers ...  8-(  :^)

pdc
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