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From: dgary@uncecs.edu (D Gary Grady)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Global Cultural Prototype
Summary: Esperanto not pure romance; proposal
Message-ID: <1989Oct13.142526.13122@uncecs.edu>
Date: 13 Oct 89 14:25:26 GMT
References: <3366@ccnysci.UUCP> <2145@avsd.UUCP> <18291@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: dgary@ecsvax.uncecs.edu.UUCP (D Gary Grady)
Organization: Datalytics, Inc.
Lines: 35

In article <18291@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> chou@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Pai Chou) writes:
>Esperanto is a Latin/Romance/Spanish based language.

Esperanto is based on Romance, Germanic, and Slavic vocabulary and
grammar; there is no direct Spanish influence whatsoever.

>I don't think having one single language for all people can work, especially
>if the language is an artificial one.

Esperanto is no more "artificial" than modern Hebrew; witness the way
the Academy of Esperanto is blithely ignored.  It is a living
Indoeuropean language and the charge of artificiality is leveled at it
principally by folks who have only a vague notion of what it might be.

But I agree wholeheartedly with another poster who observed that English
is far more widely taught than any language in history.  You can't
impose Esperanto - or any language - by fiat, and English has largely
won in the marketplace.

However, I do think that Esperanto should be the first foreign language
studied by most people.  It's less likely to put off a beginner, it's
learnable in far less time, and (most important) experiments at Columbia
University and Sheffield University strongly suggest that it is possible
to teach Esperanto and a second Indoeuropean language in about the time
it would take to teach the second alone.  That is, Esperanto doesn't
cost anything (provided you're going to learn another language anyway),
so why NOT learn it?

Gary

-- 
D Gary Grady
(919) 286-4296
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