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From: venu@umcp-cs.UUCP (Venugopala R. Dasigi)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: Esperanto
Message-ID: <3949@umcp-cs.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 20-Oct-86 22:09:26 EDT
Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.3949
Posted: Mon Oct 20 22:09:26 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 22-Oct-86 03:54:16 EDT
References: <102@ritcv.UUCP> <2081@ihlpa.UUCP>
Reply-To: venu@umcp-cs.UUCP (Venugopala R. Dasigi)
Distribution: net
Organization: University of Maryland, Dept. of Computer Sci.
Lines: 51
Keywords: highly phonetic, regular, easy, etc.
Summary: It's a nice idea - but artificial!

In article <2081@ihlpa.UUCP> normt@ihlpa.UUCP (N. R Tiedemann) writes:
>> Can someone please explain what Esperanto is?  I've never heard of it
>> . . .
>>         Steve Wall  @  Rochester Institute of Technology
>
>	Esperanto is a "universal" language that was invented by an international
>group of linguistics about 20 (I think) years ago. They intended for it to
>be the language that everyone in the world would learn and be able to communicate
>with. It incorporated different grammerical structures and words from most
>of the modern languages and invented some new ones to boot. To my knownledge
>it never made it past the linguistics conventions. It is not really spoken
>by anyone, and the only place one can learn it is from a book. If you go to
>any college library there will be a couple of grammer manuals on Esperanto.
>(I looked them up once at the UW in Madison.)
>
>		Norm Tiedemann
>		..ihnp4!ihlpa!normt
>		AT&T Bell Labs


Esperanto was invented late in the 19th century by a Polish person. It is
highly phonetc; once the spelling and pronunciation rules are mastered,
anyone can spell a word if he/she hears it and pronounce a word if he/she
sees it. Also, the grammar is simple, inflections are all regular, and words
belonging to a given part of speech end in the same letter. The vocabulary
is easy to master for any person speaking a European language. If one knows
his/her own native language and Esperanto, in principle, he/she should be
able to communicate with everybidy else! The idea is as simple as that and I
read in the introduction of some Esperanto book that there are more than one
million people in the world who can speak Esperanto!

Of course, language frequently reflects culture and an artificial language
as neutral as Esperanto is a problem in this sense. (That's why everybody
needs two languages, as mentioned above!) Also, any language evolves in time
and it is difficult to imagine an artificial language evolving in time!

I was instantly attracted by the very idea of esperanto when I first came
across it, but I sure would like to know the views of a "practicing
Esperantist." In particular, is it a practical idea in today's world? Are
there any associations that promote Esperanto? Are any governments doing
anything about it? (I understand there was some real interest on the part of
several governments initially...)

--- Venu Dasigi
-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------
Venugopala Rao Dasigi 
UUCP   : {seismo,allegra,brl-bmd}!umcp-cs!venu
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US Mail: Dept. of CS, Univ. of Maryland, College Park MD 20742.