Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ucbvax!decwrl!hplabs!otter!pdc From: pdc@otter.hple.hp.com (Damian Cugley) Newsgroups: comp.std.internat Subject: Re: All numeric representation of dates Message-ID: <3690001@otter.hple.hp.com> Date: 31 Aug 88 23:38:29 GMT References: <622@uwovax.uwo.ca> Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK. Lines: 117 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 -- /-------------------\/-------------------------\/------------------------\ | Damian Cugley =@= || pdc@hplb.lb.hp.co.uk || ...!mcvax!ukc!hplb!pdc | | HPLabs Bristol UK || pdc%otter@hplabs.HP.COM || ...!hplabs!otter!pdc | \-------------------/\-------------------------/\------------------------/ (#disclaim 'His feet are the wrong size for his shoes.')