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Has anyone else noticed...

by sandman85, October 8, 2007

Messages: 9

Language: English

sandman85 (User's profile) October 8, 2007, 5:08:18 PM

I've been doing some translations for technology-related things, and I've realized that probably around 90% of the words come from English... ekzemple:[LISTO]
Import - Importi
Comment - Komento
Category - Kategorio
Archive - Arhxivo
etc..[/list]It's getting quite annoying... lango.gif

Mendacapote (User's profile) October 8, 2007, 5:43:29 PM

Those words don't come from English, they come from Latin (the first two words) and from Latin and Greek (the last two words).

Papej (User's profile) October 8, 2007, 5:45:54 PM

It could all come from French as well, which was the international language at the time Eo was created :

* Importi - import
* Komento - commentaire
* Kategorio - catégorie
* Arhxivo - archive

and so on and so forth shoko.gif)

sandman85 (User's profile) October 8, 2007, 7:37:32 PM

I don't mean just from English, though.. isn't Esperanto not supposed to favor any individual/family of languages? What about taking the words from Chinese, or Arabic, or Russian, or German?

mnlg (User's profile) October 8, 2007, 8:48:27 PM

sandman85:isn't Esperanto not supposed to favor any individual/family of languages?
Z wasn't a skilled glottologist; he had to make do with what he knew. ridulo.gif You might find what you look for in lojban, whose vocabulary comes from more diverse languages.

Stefano B (User's profile) October 8, 2007, 11:38:59 PM

mnlg:
sandman85:isn't Esperanto not supposed to favor any individual/family of languages?
Z wasn't a skilled glottologist; he had to make do with what he knew. ridulo.gif You might find what you look for in lojban, whose vocabulary comes from more diverse languages.
Lojban looks very interesting. Do you think it's gaining popularity?

sandman85 (User's profile) October 9, 2007, 2:03:19 AM

mnlg:
sandman85:isn't Esperanto not supposed to favor any individual/family of languages?
Z wasn't a skilled glottologist; he had to make do with what he knew. ridulo.gif You might find what you look for in lojban, whose vocabulary comes from more diverse languages.
Oh, I'm definitely not interested in leaving Esperanto. I was just curious ridulo.gif

awake (User's profile) October 9, 2007, 3:00:04 AM

Stefano B:
Lojban looks very interesting. Do you think it's gaining popularity?
I think that the internet is giving new life to many small languages like that, even ido and volapuk have come back somewhat. But, those languages have such small numbers of speakers to begin with, you are very limited in what you can do with it. Someone (probably on this forum) once made a very insightful comment.

If you Join an ido forum, you can use ido to talk about ido. If you join an Esperanto forum, you can use Esperanto to talk about fishing.

I suspect there's more than a grain of truth to that, and that it applies to many other constructed languages as well. Also, of those who do know lojban, I suspect the venn diagram intersection among those who also know Esperanto is probably quite large. I'd be curious to know if that guess is right.

In any case, I do think Lojban looks like a very interesting project. It might be fun to learn some day.

mnlg (User's profile) October 9, 2007, 6:19:52 AM

Stefano B:Lojban looks very interesting. Do you think it's gaining popularity?
I don't know, I'm not within its community yet.

It's more of an experiment than a language, even though it is rich enough to be used as a language. It is much stricter than Esperanto and there are fewer resources on the internet, but I hope to finish learning it one day.

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