From: evans-ron@CS.YALE.EDU (Ronald Hale-Evans)
Subject: Ron Hale-Evans on Rick Harrison
Organization: (S)ingularity Magazine
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 19:51:59 GMT

Date sent: 14-AUG-1992 

Rick Harrison writes:
>I urge those of you who are interested in planned languages
>to save a copy of this essay on your personal computers, as
>it seems quite likely that (ahem!) certain factions will try to
>suppress it and you are not likely to see it on the net again.

Oh, PLEASE, Rick. I'm an Esperantist and I think you make some good points. To
show you there's no organised conspiracy by "(ahem!) certain factions" to
censor your work, I will shortly post your article to soc.culture.esperanto.
I will also post this response.

>The Esperanto movement should admit these flaws in a manly and
>scientific fashion, 

You use the word "manly" in this context in the first paragraph of your article
and complain that E-o is sexist? 

>1. The Strange Letters in the Esperanto Alphabet
>The alphabet of Esperanto contains six accented letters (c^ g^ h^
>j^ s^ u^) which are unique; they are not found in other languages.
>The use of unique characters in the alphabet of a proposed 
>international auxiliary language is a mistake.  The presence of
>these letters makes it much more difficult for people to produce
>newsletters, magazines, and books in Esperanto....
>When Esperanto text is transmitted over computer bulletin boards, 
>these accented letters cannot be sent directly, and there is no 
>agreement on how to represent them.  Some Esperantists represent "c^"
>as "cx", others type "^c" or "c^" while others use "ch" or "c<."

See the end of this message for a response to this.

>* similar phonemes
>Some critics have argued that Esperanto contains too many sound-units
>(phonemes) that are very similar to each other; for example, the
>sounds of c^, j^ and s^ are not very different from one another.  It
>has been suggested that it might be difficult to determine which
>phoneme had been uttered in a noisy environment, such as a crowded
>room or perhaps a radio channel on which the control tower was 
>talking to an airplane pilot.  

Sure, that's why "alpha bravo charlie" ("alfa bravo c^arli") was developed for
English. Why not something similar for E-o? Or maybe we could junk English for
international use. Of course E-o is right out as a successor. How about...
VORLIN (the language you invented)?????

Naaaaaaaaaah...

>* variability
>There are two main ways for new words to be created in Esperanto:
>by creating new compounds of already-existing roots and affixes,
>or by borrowing a word from another language.  As a result,
>there are often two or more words in common usage for a single
>concept; this makes the Esperanto vocabulary more variable than
>the vocabularies of most other planned languages and many natural
>languages.  For example, "cannon" can be expressed as _pafilego_
>(shooting-instrument-augmentative) or _kanono;_ "skeleton" can be
>_ostaro_ (bone-set) or _skeleto;_ and "false" can be _malvera_
>(opposite of true) or _falsa._

Many synonyms were introduced _because_ people complained, especially poets who
needed more compact and more numerous words for metered and rhymed poetry.

>* embedded sexism  
>Many critics have pointed out that Esperanto seems to be inherently 
>sexist because words referring to persons are assumed to refer to 
>males, and words for the female counterparts are formed by adding the
>suffix -in-.  For example, _frato_ = "brother" and _fratino_ =
>"sister," _patro_ = "father" and _patrino_ = "mother."

Apart from Eurocentrism, this is the criticism against E-o I take most
seriously. However, there have been a number of solutions proposed, as you well
know, and many people use them. For example, one can use -ic^- as a male suffix
and say "patric^o" for father, "patrino" for mother, and  "patro" for parent,
or one can use the vir- prefix and say "virpatro" for father.

>* other criticisms 
>Most Esperanto adverbs are formed by adding the suffix -e to another  
>root-word, e.g. bona = good, bone = well.  There are exceptions to
>this, however: the so-called "primary" adverbs which end in -au^, 
>such as _apenau^_ ("scarcely") and _morgau^_ ("tomorrow").  
>Having 
>two different adverb-indicating suffixes is clearly an irregularity.

Actually, words that end in -au^ are usually halfway between prepositions and
adverbs. In fact, I think most people would call them prepositions. I agree
that they're a little tricky, but I think they're more of a slight
inconvenience than anything else. Besides, no one is stopping you from saying
"morgau^e" if you want to.

>The derivational affixes have been criticized for various reasons.
>An uninitiated person would naturally assume that the prefix "mal-"
>means "bad," as it does in many international words; in fact it means
>"the opposite of."  

I won't touch this one, as I think Don Harlow has argued quite nicely for mal-
recently on Conlang.

>The diminutive suffix -et- 
>and the augmentative suffix -eg- are also too similar to each other.

I've never had _any_ problem with these.

>5. The Muddled Morphology
>The term "morphology" refers to the ways in which root-words are
>created and combined with other root-words and various affixes.
>In constructed languages which have carefully-designed morphologies, 
>there is no chance of a word appearing to contain an affix 
>when it does not in fact contain that affix; there is no chance 
>of a single root-word looking and sounding exactly like a combination 
>of two other root-words; and there are no irregularities in the 
>derivations (e.g. conversion of a noun to an adjective or verb and
>vice versa).  Unfortunately, Esperanto does _not_ have a well-planned 
>morphology, and all of the possible irregularities mentioned above
>are abundant.

The only language I am aware of in which ambiguity does not exist is Lojban,
and that because it was checked with a computer syntactic parser. Zamenhof,
alas, had no such tools available.

>* unpredictable derivations
>In English (and many other "natural" languages), most verbs can 
>either be transitive or intransitive, depending on context.  For 
>example, "boil" is intransitive in "The water will boil" but 
>transitive in "I will boil some eggs."  Unfortunately, Esperanto
>verbs are not so flexible.  

These questions of language crop up only in higher levels of competency. If you
are not writing the Great Esperantujan Novel but just chatting with another
Esperantist and you say "la akvo bolig^is", I don't think anyone is going to
attack you with an axe.

>6. Glitches in the Grammar
>The grammar of Esperanto has some features which are undesirable
>in an international auxiliary language.  The most frequently
>criticized feature is the inflectional ending -n, which must be added
>to every noun that serves as the direct object of a verb and to every
>adjective which describes such a noun.  Apart from personal pronouns,
>flexion to indicate the direct object does not occur in most of the
>world's languages; 

And it's the feature of E-o I consistently have the most trouble with when I
speak E-o quickly. On the other hand, it provides great flexibility of word
order, which makes for great freedom of expression. Even though I have trouble
with it, I'm not sure I'd change it.

>Even worse, Esperanto sometimes uses the accusative _idiomatically,_
>e.g. _la duan fojon,_ _tagon post tago._  

Every living language has idioms, Rick.
 
>Amazingly, some intransitive verbs can take an object having the
>accusative ending -n, for example _li venis Londonon_ and _mi
>alvenos hejmon._  

Personally, I find the "amazingly" gratuitous here. 

>7. Semantics
>It is generally agreed that, in a planned language, each root-word
>should have only one form (i.e. there should be no allomorphy) and
>only one meaning (i.e. there should be no polysemy).  Fortunately
>Esperanto has avoided allomorphy (although this irrational feature
>does exist in some poorly-designed constructed languages, e.g.
>Loglan and Lojban).  

What planned language _do_ you like? Oh yeah, I forgot: Vorlin, which will
outlive Esperanto and echo mightily down the corridors of history like Novial,
Interlingua, Occidental, Glosa, Interglossa, Ido, Intal, Eurolengue... 
                                                   
>_antau^_
>can mean "in front of" or "prior to;" _de_ can mean "owned by" or
>"done by" or "from." 

These have more to do, methinks, with metaphor in European languages than with
E-o in particular. For example, one can use "before" the same way one uses
"antau^" in E-o, and French "de" as one uses E-o "de".

>8. The Milieu
>* a language used as a religion
>The behavior of the more fervent Esperantists may be sufficient 
>argument for prefering any language other than Esperanto as the 
>global auxiliary tongue.
...
>Unfortuantely, Esperanto attracted (and continues to attract) a
>number of people who treat it more as a religion than as a means of
>communication.  These _fervoruloj_ view the initial version of
>Esperanto as a sacred scripture, and anyone who questions its
>sanctity is regarded as a heretic.  

Sure, Rick, and "certain factions" are going to suppress your document and make
sure it never shows up on the Net again. If Esperanto is a religion, is Vorlin
a conspiracy theory? :-)

>* questionable claims
>The claim that almost all words are readily recognizable is 
>questionable in light of the _a_priori_ correlatives and words
>which have been severely distorted during adoption; for examples
>of the latter, consider Esperanto's _bubalo

I don't make the claim that almost all E-o words are readily recognizable. What
about for the Japanese? Also, I believe the Latin for "buffalo" is something
like "bubalus". "Bubalo" is hardly a distortion.

>, lernejo, limo,
>nacio_ compared to Ido's _bufalo, skolo, limito, naciono,_ or
>compare Esperanto's _g^emelo, buroo, kurbo_ to Interglossa's _gemini,
>bureau, curvo._ Despite claims to the contrary, Esperanto offers
>neither the recognizability of a well-designed _a_posteriori_
>language nor the grammatical regularity of a well-designed
>_a_priori_ language.

OK, what about "respekto", "plumo", "au^tomobilo", "telefono", leafing through
my dictionary at random? And are _all_ words in Ido et al. as easily
recognisable (to Europeans, of course) as the ones you mentioned? I guess the
"lin" for "language" in "Vorlin" is much more recognisable than "lingvo". NOT!
:-)  In fact, I'd say it's not much more recognisable than "puek" in
"Volapuek" (nominally from "speak").

>The claim that there are 2 million or more Esperanto speakers in
>the world is also highly questionable.  It is unlikely that there
>are many fluent Esperantists in the world who are not members of
>some Esperanto club, but the number of organized Esperantists
>(members of the Universala Esperanto-Asocio and affiliated groups)
>is only about 110,000.  

The figure of two million did not originate with the Esperanto movement, but
with an almanac which hired an expert to determine the number of speakers of a
large number of world languages. He gave a similar number for Icelandic.
Perhaps there are only 110,000 speakers of Icelandic too? By the way,
_offhand_ I can think of at least three people I know _personally_ with a
fairly good command of E-o (my wife among them) who are not members of any E-o
club, two of whom most local club members do not even know. This suggests that
there may be, even if not two million, a population of at least several times
the membership of UEA that can speak E-o. 

>Even this figure is suspect, as organizations
>involved in crusades and "lost causes" have a tendency to exaggerate
>their membership numbers for public consumption.
                         
This is nothing more than an argument _ad hominem_: impugning the character of
the E-o census-takers in order to call their statements into question, with no
real evidence whatsoever.

>The argument that one should support Esperanto rather than another
>planned language simply because Esperanto has more followers is
>specious.  At one time, slavery had more supporters than the
>anti-slavery movement, and it may have seemed that nothing could
>be done about it.  But a handful of brave people started the ball
>rolling, and slavery has now been abolished in most civilized
>nations. Likewise, a handful of compulsive truth-tellers could
>make it clear to Esperantists that they must either correct the
>glaring defects in their language or get out of the way and yield
>the floor to serious interlinguists.  The evolutionary situation is 
>clear: Esperanto must either CHANGE OR BECOME EXTINCT.                  

I'm not going to fall into the trap of "surely you're not comparing E-o with
slavery!", but perhaps the analogy is not so clear-cut. Earlier you put forward
the argument that E-o fails partly because it uses accented letters that are
not available to most typesetters. Well, how's this?

"The argument that one should change Esperanto because most typesetters cannot
print its accented letters is specious. At one time, slavery had more
supporters than the anti-slavery movement, and it may have seemed that nothing
could be done about it. But a handful of brave people started the ball rolling,
and slavery has now been abolished in most civilized nations. Likewise, a
handful of compulsive truth-tellers could make it clear to typesetters that
they must either correct the glaring defects in their typesetting systems or
get out of the way and yield the floor to serious font designers. The
evolutionary situation is clear: modern typesetting systems must either CHANGE
OR BECOME EXTINCT."

In fact, many languages are difficult for Anglophone typesetting systems. Think
of Czech, not to mention Chinese. Fortunately, this is being remedied. There is
a new standard being put forth which I for one hope will eventually replace
ASCII: Unicode, which can handle English, Esperanto, Czech, AND Chinese, and
most (they claim all) other Terran languages.

By the way, if it takes a full-blown Abolition movement to change E-o, why do
you say it _must_ change? Sounds like there are a lot of people who like it
pretty much the way it is. And even though I myself have some problems with
Esperanto, I support it for use as a world interlanguage because I think it's
the language with the best shot. They don't call it "the international language
that _works_" for nothing.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 
I don't want to die; existence is one of my strong points!
Ron Hale-Evans--Email: evans@binah.cc.brandeis.edu, GEnie: R.HALE-EVANS
-- 
I don't want to die!  Existence is one of my strong points!
Ronald Hale-Evans... evans-ron@cs.yale.edu, evans@brandeis.bitnet
                     tinfoil@world.std.com, GEnie: R.HALE-EVANS
Newsgroups: soc.culture.esperanto