Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!uwm.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!aplcen!haven!uvaarpa!mcnc!ecsvax.uncecs.edu!dgary
From: dgary@uncecs.edu (D Gary Grady)
Newsgroups: comp.society.futures
Subject: Re: Global Cultural Prototype
Summary: More Esperanto misconceptions addressed
Keywords: Esperanto
Message-ID: <1989Oct15.145436.9654@uncecs.edu>
Date: 15 Oct 89 14:54:36 GMT
References: <3366@ccnysci.UUCP> <2145@avsd.UUCP> <18291@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> <1989Oct13.142526.13122@uncecs.edu> <1489@intercon.com> <18357@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU>
Reply-To: dgary@ecsvax.uncecs.edu.UUCP (D Gary Grady)
Organization: Datalytics, Inc.
Lines: 67

In article <18357@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU> chou@cory.Berkeley.EDU.UUCP (Pai Chou) writes:
>Some one asked me information about Esperanto.
>Here is some intro from the book
>"An Introduction to Language", 4th edition,
> by Victoria Fromkin and Robert Rodman, Chapter 7,
> pp 287-288; copied without permission from the publisher
>
>
>Since the
>seventeenth century, scholars have been inventing
>artificial languages with the hope that they would achieve
>universal acceptance and that universal language would
>bring universal peace.

Very few artificial languages have been advanced with that aim.  With
respect to Esperanto, the idea probably grows out of its association
with groups favoring international peace and understanding, and what
Zamenhof (its inventor) termed the "interna ideo" that motivates many
people to be interested in it.  No one (to my knowledge) has ever
seriously proposed that a univeral language would bring peace, but it
has been more reasonably suggested that international understanding
wouldn't hurt.  This is a radical idea?

>despite the claims of its 
>proponents, it is not maximally simple.

True enough.  Attempts to "simplify" it by fiat have been largely
ignored (which is one attribute one would expect of a living tongue).

>A modification of Esperanto, called _Ido_ ("offspring" in
>Esperanto), has further simplified the language by
>eliminating the accusative case

I'm pretty sure that Ido retains the accusative when it comes at the
front of the sentence ("Esperanton kreis Zamenhof").  This preserves a
stylistic advantage of Esperanto but adds complication, in the form of
exceptions, to the grammar.  Ido's spelling is less consistent and its
vocabulary less based on the Esperanto idea of forming new words by
compounding old roots - the single biggest advantage to the language in
learnability terms.

>Esperanto is essentially a Romance-based pidgin with
>Greek and Germanic influence, albeit a highly developed
>one with an immense vocabulary.  It therefore remains
>"foreign" to most people; speakers of Russian, Hungarian,
>Hausa, or Hindi would find Esperanto as unfamiliar as
>French or Spanish.

Nonsense, according to native speakers of Russian, Hungarian,
Chinese, etc. I've heard.  Indeed, for years Russia had the largest
community of Esperanto speakers in the world, and Esperanto is very big
in Hungary as well, not to mention China and (to a lesser degree) Korea
and Japan.  I suspect the authors are going by what they think the case
might be rather than relying on any research.

>Language problems may intensify social and economic
>problems, but they do not generally cause wars, unemployment,
>poverty, pollution, and disease..

Gee, no kidding!

Gary
-- 
D Gary Grady
(919) 286-4296
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