Příspěvky: 33
Jazyk: English
T0dd (Ukázat profil) 18. února 2011 0:33:07
It's interesting to me that the Ido movement and some others complained about the "Slavisms" in Esperanto, such as the -J plural. To my ear, this gives the language great character. And even though the -AŬ words seem out of place in the scheme of things, they too add something to the sound of the language.
There's a point that I often repeat in discussions of this sort. Esperanto is a work of art. Whatever his shortcomings as a linguist, Zamenhof had a prodigy's "ear" for language. Without really knowing what he was doing, he managed to find a way of harmonizing opposing tendencies in pronunciation, spelling, naturalism vs schematism, and "Romancism" vs "Germanism" and "Slavism". This balance is what makes it so appealing to so many of us.
marcuscf (Ukázat profil) 18. února 2011 2:11:33
- 1 letter → 1 sound (if you consider affricates as 1 sound)
- 1 sound → 1 letter
- strictly regular accent (stress)
- tabelvortoj
Other conlangs usually to break one of these features and I can't understand why.
For instance, using I/U as semivowels instead of J/Ŭ or Y/W really annoys me. How can we tell if "ui" is ŭi or uj? In Portuguese it is uj, in Spanish it is ŭi, and these are very closely related languages. A conlang should have a good solution for this.
RiotNrrd (Ukázat profil) 18. února 2011 2:15:29
T0dd:I've always rather liked the look of Esperanto, with its "hats."I do too. Every now and then someone tries to come up with an "improvement" that involves doing away with the hats, and I always think "Why?" I think they give the language character. They don't look artificial to me at all.
When I say that Esperanto looks very artificial here and there, I'm actually talking about individual words. Overall, I think Esperanto looks as real as any natural language.
T0dd:Esperanto is a work of art. Whatever his shortcomings as a linguist, Zamenhof had a prodigy's "ear" for language. Without really knowing what he was doing, he managed to find a way of harmonizing opposing tendencies in pronunciation, spelling, naturalism vs schematism, and "Romancism" vs "Germanism" and "Slavism". This balance is what makes it so appealing to so many of us.This is my feeling as well, and to me also partly explains why Esperanto was successful where conlangs created by people who do (supposedly) "know what they're doing" have failed.
Knowing the rules of music doesn't make one a musician. You can understand music theory inside and out, be able to write out the circle of fifths in your sleep, know what chords work well at replacing other chords, know every scale imaginable, etc., etc., etc., and still not be able to compose a melody worth listening to to save your life.
Some of the most gawdawful music I've ever heard has been written by people with PhD's in music. It might be interesting from a technical point of view, but from a listening point of view - total fail. The actual ART of music is something that rests on music theory, but somehow rises beyond it.
Zamenhof no doubt had an artistic touch. The conlangs created by linguists who (in theory) "knew better" - knew how languages SHOULD be constructed - came up with languages that are perhaps interesting from a technical point of view, but...
They knew the rules. But they weren't artists to the same degree Zamenhof was.
danielcg (Ukázat profil) 18. února 2011 4:39:09
Regards,
Daniel
RiotNrrd:T0dd:I've always rather liked the look of Esperanto, with its "hats."I do too. Every now and then someone tries to come up with an "improvement" that involves doing away with the hats, and I always think "Why?" I think they give the language character. They don't look artificial to me at all.
marcuscf (Ukázat profil) 18. února 2011 10:01:28
danielcg:I agree, and another thing I cant't understand is why they don't at the same time propose to do away with the dot over the i and the j.- Because they come "for free" when you press the i or j key (they are considered to be part of the letter);
Regards,
Daniel
- because they are used with a dot in most languages (a well know exception is Turkish, which has dotted and non-dotted i);
- because non-ASCII characters are sometimes hard to use.
It is not an opposition to diacritcs, it's an opposition to non-ASCII chars.
darkweasel (Ukázat profil) 18. února 2011 15:20:12
marcuscf:... just that Zamenhof couldn't have known about ASCII because it didn't exist yet.
It is not an opposition to diacritcs, it's an opposition to non-ASCII chars.
The encoding has to adapt to the language, not the other way round. I've never heard of any proposals to remove the letters ä ö ü ß from German ...
marcuscf (Ukázat profil) 18. února 2011 20:05:39
I don't know much about printing tecnology in the 1880's but if hats weren't a problem in those pre-ASCII times the h-method wouldn't exist. However, typewriters could put any diacritic over any letter, this wasn't a problem for them.
darkweasel (Ukázat profil) 18. února 2011 21:03:50
marcuscf:How many conlangs succeed at having their unique chars in a standard encoding? Maybe 1 or 2 krom Esperanto? Maybe none?How many conlangs have unique characters at all?
danielcg (Ukázat profil) 19. února 2011 0:11:32
Regards,
Daniel
darkweasel:marcuscf:How many conlangs succeed at having their unique chars in a standard encoding? Maybe 1 or 2 krom Esperanto? Maybe none?How many conlangs have unique characters at all?
danielcg (Ukázat profil) 19. února 2011 0:14:22
Lack of these letters in the ASCII set of characters is a defect of this set, not of the language.
The second objection, however, may hold some water.
Regards,
Daniel
marcuscf:
- Because they come "for free" when you press the i or j key (they are considered to be part of the letter);
- because they are used with a dot in most languages (a well know exception is Turkish, which has dotted and non-dotted i);
- because non-ASCII characters are sometimes hard to use.
It is not an opposition to diacritcs, it's an opposition to non-ASCII chars.