From: slootman@nat1.uia.ac.be (Wim Slootmans)
Subject: Re: Los nin~os que hablan esperanto
Organization: U.I.A.
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 14:15:24 GMT


Mi pardonpetas la legantojn de s.c.latin-america, cxar mi ne verkis cxi
tion en la hispana.

I do apologize to the readers of s.c.latin-america for not posting this
in Spanish.

Dear Edelmiro,

Starting from a certain prejudice you seem to have a counter-attack for
every point one makes in favour of esperanto.  So maybe i'm stupid to
write this, because of course you will respond with some clever answers
again.  And since you are the linguist, you might know better some
things from a linguistic point of view, but that doesn't make you Mr.
God, or the all-knowing.   Anyhow you have a response for every point
made, but blinded by your need to selfconfirmation, you don't really
listen to the arguments of others, do you?
Well, i'm not a linguist, so i won't argue with you about the need of
this or that grammatical niggling property for a language to be called a
language.  But as a physicist, I do know a lot of LOGIC!  And I will
point to some arguing which seems to be ILLOGICAL to me.  And as far as
I know also linguists do need logic if they want to proove something!

1) Fact: The whole discussion of esperanto being a language seems to
concentrate on the existance of MONOlinguals. 

1) I say: Esperanto was never purposed to be a language for MONOlingual
use.  The purpose of esperanto is to offer a neutral, easier language
for the use as SECOND language in international communication.  As such
you are looking for something which was never ment to exist.  However
some people do raise their children bilingual, and so there do exist
native speakers of esperanto.

1 Comments:
Why neutral?
Imagine a Brazilian speaking to a US-citizan.  If they would speak
Portuguese, the Brazilian would be in a favorized position because he
knows portuguese better then the US-citizan.  But of course they speak
English and as such the US-citizan is in a favorized position.  However
if they would both do some effort and learn a neutral language like
Esperanto they could communicate without favorizing one or the other.
(Of course this idea of neutral language is not favorized by the old
colonial languages like English and French, who rather like people to
learn their language so they can patronize them afterwards.)

Why easier?
Esperanto has a regular grammar, stripped of a lot of irregularities
which characterize the so called natural languages.  As such it isn't to
interesting for linguist, since they can't make huge investments about
the origin of this or that property.  Neither can they get government
money for such studies, so they just don't look at it at all and ignore
it's existance.


2) Fact: Once pointed out that children do speak it from birth, you
started making strange comparisons.

> >If the editors think that Esperanto is not a language, then they ought to
> >explain why not, and what it is then.
> 
> Why should they explain it not a nartural language, I mean why should the top
> astronomers of the planet have to explain to anyone that the moon is not made
> of cheese?

Yep, that's more or less my field (i remind you that i'm a physicist).
Well as a matter of fact NOONE ever did claim that it was made of
cheese!  And none of the astronauts that were there ate some piece of
the moon.  But to give you a better comparison.  Some inventors claim to
have found the PERPETUUM MOBILE.  And their inventions are sometimes
printed in popular magazines, although they never really make one.
Nevertheless physicist are VERY OFTEN asked to proove why this or that
perpetuum mobile can't work.

But esperanto on the other hand works.  Just join one of the many
meetings or congresses where esperanto is the working language and you
will find out.  But of course you feel yourself too worthy to give it
try.  But i should know that you don't listen to this argument because
of this:

> >When people sit
> >round a table having a conversation in Esperanto, what are they doing if not
> >speaking a language?
> 
> They are speaking in bits and pieces of a few European languages.
 
I sea in your answer some desperate try to ignore esperanto as a
language.  The fact that people do speak it makes it language, what else
would you call it? It's not just bits of pieces of a few European
languages, since it has its own syntax, morphology, grammar,...etc.

> >When a book is originally written in Esperanto and then
> >translated into Japanese and sold with great success, what actually happened
> >according to those editors?
> 
> Well aparently they need a TRANSLATOR to put it from the esperanto fruit cake
> into Japanese.  After all you could translate Madonna's "Sex" into esperanto
>and then TRANSLATE it into Swahilli and you will have great success with it too.

You might be a linguist, but you are sure not a literary man!  You would
give all the credits for a succesfull book to the TRANSLATOR and none
for the WRITER???  If indeed Madonna's "Sex" was translated to Swahili,
you would say "Sex" itself was worthless, but it sold good because the
TRANSLATOR was very good??? 
Besides the original statement was about a book originally written in
Esperanto!  And you jump to a translation to esperanto, as if you
couldn't believe that books and poetry is written originally in
Esperanto.
So you are comparing apples with mellons wich is unscientific from a
logical point of view!
Besides, of course one does need a translator to sell the book in Japan and
not to make it better as you seem to think, but just because there are
more Japanese that speak Japanese than there are Japanese that speak
Esperanto!

3) Now i want to place next to eachother two off your statements, one
about Esperanto and one about Danish to explain to you why Esperanto
is spoken during more than 100 years already, in contrast to other
planned languages which all died together with there creator.

(about Danish)
> Yes but it insn't an artifcially engineered mix.  Loanwords can be found in
> all languages of the world.  There is no such thing as pure languages.  But
> loan words, once incorporated in the the social networks of people who talk a
> given language, are incorporated respecting the phonology and syntax of the
> host grammar.  For examples ...

(about Esperanto)
> >Esperanto isn't just a planned or artificial language, like
> >e.g. a hon the first book about 
> >it came in 1887 it contained less than a thousand words (I
> >don't remember an exact count).
>
> Which clearly shows how insane the project is.  How can anyone refer to the
> inmensity of our universe with a thousand roots? 

Wrong!  It was not insane, on the contrary it worked great!  True, you
can't refer to the universe with a thousand roots.  But Esperanto was
not fixed.  The 1887 book was merely a framework.  Once published
Esperanto started to evolve, it wasn't fixed you see.  Yes indeed,
it wasn't an artificially engineered mix.  Loanwords can be found in
Esperanto.  It's not a pure language.  But loan words, once incorporated
in the social network of people who talk Esperanto, are incorporated
respecting the phonology and syntax of the host grammar.  For example 
the word "lasero" when refering to a laser.  There was a need for this
loan since there was no Esperanto equivalent for laser.  Note however
that the word was borrowed into Esperanto to be genderless, as all
substantives in Esperanto.  So please note that languages can't mix
anything at will.  What are borrowed are lexical morphemes (i.e.
"roots"), and even they must accomodate to the Esperanto grammar!

(say this sounds familiar, doesn't it?)

Now this is what made Esperanto work.  It was not just a one man's
project.  It grew together with the people that started speaking it.
Just a pity that linguists don't take interest in this evolution.  They
could do great research on this evolution.  But one way or the other
they seem to be afraid to burn their fingers, because the general
attitude to constructed languages inter linguists is one of disapproval.
So, oh no, one couldn't break through this general attitude, and thus
you just keep running along this mean road.  You even don't feel worthy
to consider Esperanto as a language, after all "Is the moon made of
cheese?"

4) About the creator:
> Sure this occultist wasn't a language creator, it is clearly shown from the
> fact that there are no specially when they have
> to be debating daily whether to take this or that and put that in place of
> this, or whether to "admit" such and such word.  Clearly grammarians haven been
> telling people how to speak for centuries, and people have been speaking
> however they want, and esperanto "grammarians" are certainly following the
> steps of medieaval monks in this respect.

What do you know of Esperanto "grammarians"?  Have you met one?  Have
you read one of their works?  Are you familiar with the Academy of
Esperanto?  Clearly the Academy is rather registrating how people speak
rather than telling people how to speak.  This practice can hardly be
called the `steps of medieval monks'.  If you want to attack the
Esperanto Community on points like this you should be sure to be
documented firstly.

5) About code and binary: 
> >   To say if something is a language by looking at some
> >particular point in the grammar is rather silly. What matters
> >is if people succeed communicate using the language.
> 
> German codes effectively communicated during WWII, are they a "natural"
> language?

No, but then they needed a code-book to read the messages, didn't they?
Apart from beginners with dictionnaries, I haven't seen wandering around
esperantists with code-books.  Turning letters by means of a key into
code doesn't make the code a language.   Decoding is only possible to
exactly the same language.  You can't compare Esperanto with code.
Anyhow, do you know examples of litterature originally written in
German code?  Have you met Germans, who were able to speak in German
code?  I was in Germany before and noone spoke as :`cokoekjaol ldoekjg
lskuoelk  aldijelja'!
 
> >And the
> >esperantists succeed communicate using Esperanto. It is nonsense
> >to compare it to computer programming languages as you do. This
> >posting couldn't have been written in C or Lisp.
> 
> I'm sure that if you turn this posting into binary and you are well at reading
> binary you will soon understand what I have written.

What else is binary than some form of code, turning each letter in some
binary form, this makes the comparison as worthless as the one with
german code.

> >   Of course esperantists are not monolinguals as the goal for
> >Esperanto is not to replace any other language, but to offer a
> >good way for native speakers of different languages to speak to
> >each other.
> 
> No esperantists are not monolingual because they CAN'T be.

You say they CAN'T be because of some grammatical properties.  We say
the CAN'T be because of political and environmental properties.  Where
could a MONOLINGUAL esperantist live?  Hey, we are not a secte with
medieval monks devigating people only to speak esperanto.  We're people
like everyone else who have to go to school and grow up like anyone else
and so we have to know local languages as well, so forget about this
MONOLINGUALISM, it just isn't realistic in this environment.
 
> >Nevertheless native speakers of two languages of
> >which one is Esperanto are not rare. Personally I know two, and
> >I have heard of many others, which I don't know personally.
> 
> Let me remind you that not all bilinguals are native speakers of both
> languages.  In fact "coordinate" bilinguals are rare and eperanto will never
> have any.

Says who? You? Wright, all these statements you make are just your own
opinion, isn't it.  Instead of just stating this, you could at least
investigate it!  And it is not because it wasn't done before by one of
these 4000 members who had money enough to pay their fee to the Linguist
Organization of the USA, that it couldn't be done!
As a matter of fact a study will start in Rome towards Bilingualism
starting from birth and that study will include Esperanto.
I will look up the professors name if you like!

Wim Slootmans
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Wim Slootmans               e-po^sto: slootmans@uia.ac.be       |
| Antverpeno, Belgio                    slootmans@banuia61.bitnet |
| Kritikistoj pri Esperanto uzu ne alian lingvon ol la Esperanta. |
| Iu, kiu ne prenas la tempon por lerni Esperanton,               |
| ne povas ^guste priju^gi la praktikan valoron de Esperanto.     |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
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Newsgroups: soc.culture.esperanto