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Written vs Spoken

de Alkanadi, 7 iunie 2016

Contribuții/Mesaje: 32

Limbă: English

erinja (Arată profil) 14 iunie 2016, 12:40:06

Alkanadi:
erinja:It would never generate slang and exceptions.
What if there were a large influx of beginners?

English speakers are now starting to imitate the English of immigrants because we are outnumbered. For example, "I don't know why is that." This is because of a large influx of beginners.
There have ALWAYS been an influx of beginners in Esperanto and it has never had a strong influence on anything. You have to remember that beginner speech is obviously defective and people don't go out of their way to imitate it. You also have to remember that most people don't remain beginners in Esperanto for long. Most of them either learn the language well enough to overcome their initial errors, or drop Esperanto entirely. "Eternal beginners" are a big enough phenomenon that we have given them a name, but no one would imitate their speech.

And American and Canadian English have both always had a lot of beginner speakers but the influence on the grammar has been minimal, the influence manifests mainly in addition of vocabulary from foreign languages.

I don't know where you live that "I don't know why is that" is considered normal speech but I live in an area with a high population of immigrants and no one says that (and native speakers do not imitate the speech of immigrants - this would actually be considered offensive, that you are somehow mocking people without a strong command of the language).

Alkanadi (Arată profil) 15 iunie 2016, 09:31:39

erinja:
Alkanadi:What if there were a large influx of beginners?
There have ALWAYS been an influx of beginners...
What if there were a LARGE influx of beginners?

It will create a situation where the blind lead the blind. It will create a situation where good speakers are severely outnumbered. It will create more "eternal beginners".

It is like a small leak in a dam that doesn't seem like a problem because it is small, but that causes the dam to burst.

Bruso (Arată profil) 15 iunie 2016, 09:46:52

Alkanadi:
What if there were a LARGE influx of beginners?
Isn't that what happened when Esperanto got started?

Alkanadi (Arată profil) 15 iunie 2016, 10:42:00

Bruso:Isn't that what happened when Esperanto got started?
I don't know. But, it is irrelevant because it was a different time where the spread of information was centralized.

Alkanadi (Arată profil) 15 iunie 2016, 10:43:37

PS. I doubt that experienced speakers came up with Kio nova?. It is beginners that made it popular to speak in this type of slangy malesperanto.

erinja (Arată profil) 15 iunie 2016, 14:34:12

Alkanadi:PS. I doubt that experienced speakers came up with Kio nova?. It is beginners that made it popular to speak in this type of slangy malesperanto.
Like I said - no one imitates beginners, and if a beginner imitates another beginner, not realizing it is wrong, they will realize their mistake soon enough, as they learn, and an experienced speaker will never imitate them in any case. No one wants to sound like a beginner.

You will occasionally find slang but it's generated by experienced speakers, not beginners, and it's either grammatical in a way that isn't obvious to a beginner (but is obvious to an experienced speaker who knows the ins and outs of grammar), or not quite grammatical in specific ways that do not resemble beginner errors.

I believe you said you saw that expression in an advertisement for the EAB summer course. I know the people who run the summer course and who are likely to have written that ad. They are not remotely beginners, and they likely wrote the ad in a fun and informal way to make the course sound fun and informal (which it is. Great course, sign up, everyone).

"Kio nova" is clearly a shortened version of "kio estas nova", but even without "estas", we still have an adjective describing a noun (kio - noun, nova - adjective), so grammatically it's not worse than saying "good thing" or "brown dog".

And early Esperanto was ALL beginner speakers. Today we have far fewer beginners. And you seem to be assuming that we have many more beginners around today than we have in the past, and that simply isn't true, and even if it were true, it wouldn't change the way we speak the language. Like I said - no one wants to sound like a beginner. There is no shame in BEING a beginner but if you are not a beginner and you sound like a beginner, that's actually embarrassing.

Alkanadi (Arată profil) 16 iunie 2016, 10:01:19

erinja:I believe you said you saw that expression in an advertisement for the EAB summer course.
I never heard of EAB before.
And you seem to be assuming that we have many more beginners around today than we have in the past, and that simply isn't true...
If it isn't true then the language will soon die.
...and even if it were true, it wouldn't change the way we speak the language.
If there is a large influx of beginners, I am sure you will one day give up and adopt their method of speaking.

There are many historical examples of pidgins that were created by foreign migration, and then later the native population adopted the pidgin (partially or fully) to the point where the native language disappeared.

sudanglo (Arată profil) 16 iunie 2016, 16:22:25

Alkanadi, you are not taking account of the sociolinguistics of Esperanto.

There is a strong social pressure in the Esperanto community to conform to correct/standard Esperanto - even more so than the comparable social pressure to speak correctly that exists in national language communities.

The only circumstance under which I could imagine that beginner's speech might change Esperanto grammatically is if the fina venko arrives by decree and the world dictator suddenly forces everybody to speak Esperanto.

It is a very old argument dating from the early days of Esperanto - when proportionately there were very many beginners - that the language would 'inevitably' break up into different dialects.

I didn't happen then, it won't happen now.

Kirilo81 (Arată profil) 16 iunie 2016, 19:43:11

Alkanadi:There are many historical examples of pidgins that were created by foreign migration, and then later the native population adopted the pidgin (partially or fully) to the point where the native language disappeared.
Interesting claim, please give me one-two examples.
With refard to the topic erinja and sudanglo are totally right.

DuckFiasco (Arată profil) 18 iunie 2016, 00:54:26

a blue berry (a berry that is blue)
a blueberry (fruit)

a black board (a board that is black)
a blackboard (to write on)

a set-up
to set up

If you can distinguish these pairs while speaking English with how your stress changes, you can do the same with Esperanto's compound nouns ridulo.gif Usually the word pieces undergo some change as well: tero + jaro = terjaro.

As a speaker of Esperanto for close to 13 years now, the way Esperanto makes compound nouns has never caused a misunderstanding for me, so don't worry.

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