Mesaĝoj: 81
Lingvo: English
tommjames (Montri la profilon) 2011-decembro-20 10:13:38
Comments that denigrate the efforts of others do nothing to further the cause of promoting Esperanto and end up making this community look like the weird ones.+1
sudanglo (Montri la profilon) 2011-decembro-20 10:27:56
To group Esperanto with the conlangs (artificial language projects) is as bad as bracketing together astrology with astrononomy.
One is a language with a long history, a substantial literature and a significant body of speakers, the others are playthings or academic indulgences.
Hauxkins (Montri la profilon) 2011-decembro-20 12:34:18
There is a form of tacit lay politics involved in Esperanto - by learning it you are supporting the idea of IALs - but the most political my Esperanto group gets is moaning about the buses!
Personally, I loved the book. The craziest person in there was Charles Bliss, in my opinion..
Miland (Montri la profilon) 2011-decembro-20 12:55:34
sudanglo:..astrology..playthings or academic indulgences.I wouldn't regard Lancelot Hogben's Interglossa (or its ido Glosa) in this way. Historically they haven't been as fortunate as Esperanto, but I would regard them as serious attempts to create an AIL. Hogben even compiled a full dictionary, but it remains in an archive of unpublished papers in the University of Birmingham.
lgg (Montri la profilon) 2011-decembro-20 12:57:27
It has nearly to none native speakers, and even several thousands of people worldwide who can speak it don't care at all about language idea of transnational communication measure, but just hone their feelings of being elite member of some secret order. They are actively opposing everything that can give to Esperanto a competitive advantage. They divide the native languages (and speakers thereof) into first and third grades.
Such bigotry is a normal business for invented languages, and seeing Esperanto following that suit let us to classify it as such.
Miland (Montri la profilon) 2011-decembro-20 13:12:00
lgg:Esperanto is nothing better then other conlangs..So why did you decide to learn it?
1Guy1 (Montri la profilon) 2011-decembro-20 13:14:52
lgg: It has nearly to none native speakers .You sure have missed the point of Esperanto.
erinja (Montri la profilon) 2011-decembro-20 14:03:52
Comments that denigrate the efforts of others do nothing to further the cause of promoting Esperanto and end up making this community look like the weird ones.I agree that we shouldn't denigrate the efforts of others.
But I disagree that this community isn't the "weird ones". Other conlang communities are possibly much more normal than us because they are smaller. We get strange hangers-on, possibly with mental health issues, who seem to get interested in Esperanto because it's the only way they can find someone willing to talk to them. Esperanto speakers are accepting to a fault.
The Esperanto-speaking community has many awesome people that are a pleasure to meet. You meet them and you feel so glad that you learned Esperanto, because they are so interesting and fun to hang out with, and you never would have known them otherwise.
It also has some extreme weirdos. Anyone who tells you differently either hasn't attended any large-ish Esperanto events or is lying.
The weirdo probably isn't that guy over there with the guitar and the dredlocks and the patchwork clothing. It's probably the one who looks quite normal. Then this person joins your group and won't leave, or won't stop talking, and they tell you their secret hobby, or their paranoid ideas, or the fact that they photograph the back of every car they ever drive behind, and would you like to see the photographs of the cars they drove behind on their trip from France to Poland?
tommjames (Montri la profilon) 2011-decembro-20 14:15:32
sundanglo:astrologyStill at it I see.
You could certainly argue that the existence of a literature, large number of speakers and a culture puts Esperanto a cut above other constructed languages, and that this should be recognized by those who engage in public discussion, promotion (or even derision), of our language. I'm pretty much of that opinion myself. But really, to group "the conlangs" together and compare them to pseudo-scientific mysticism seems pretty unfair to me. It ignores what in many cases are quite considerable linguistic (scientific) achievements on the part of the authors, the real value those languages have for the people who involve themselves with them, and moreover it scoffs at Esperanto's own heritage as a former "language project", which at the time of its inception had no significant speaker base or culture to speak of!
The comparison is all the more deficient given that astrology and the like do have sizable user bases, unlike the languages you seem to want to denigrate. Having a small or non-existent user base does not make a language on par with pseudo-science. Neither does it say anything about the language's linguistic properties, or ability to perform a function along the lines of Esperanto's purported purpose.
1Guy1 (Montri la profilon) 2011-decembro-20 14:57:43
erinja: the fact that they photograph the back of every car they ever drive behindYou mean everybody doesn't do that?
