Miland:The fallacy here is that languages can die and be reconstructed, either with "Rosetta stones" or related languages that have survived. That was how the Egyptian hieroglyphs were deciphered. One that was done, the linguistic charecteristics of ancient Egyptian could be examined. Piron's thought experiment thus relates to documents in present languages (including Esperanto) which are recovered and deciphered.

In order to indulge in this thought experiment I must be able to think like the archeologist. I can not do so if there are illogicalities in 'my' history.

So if there are no present languages, then there would be no humans, because our civilization stretches to every corner of the map and includes all languages. You'd have to kill all humans everywhere to end the civilization. In other words, our civilization can't end unless the planet does. In which case, there would be no evidence to recover, let alone archeologists to decipher it.

Yes, languages can die and be reconstructed, but only if there are people around to do it!

EdRobertson:
2. The original design mistake of basing country names in Esperanto partly on ethnicities, partly on geographical units, resulted in some chaos. Over the years, speakers of Esperanto have gradually attempted to replace this chaos with a system of country names based principally on geographical units, and ending principally in -io, this process enjoying the overwhelming support of Esperanto speakers. In response to this, the "Palestrina school" and some other prominent members of the language's traditional planning authority, the Akademio (or Akademujo, if you prefer), have behaved as if Esperanto is still a project, and have insisted on the revival of the archaic suffix -uj-, in order to try and rescue chaos from order.

Just that the strange "i" suffix makes the language extremely difficult. I actually find it unfortunate that the Akademio no longer disapproves of it, but has even put it into the Listo de Rekomendataj Landnomoj as equal to -uj.

The system of countries based on nationalities and their locations has not ceased to exist by introduction of "i". No, this pseudo-suffix has only made it impossible to know which category a word is in. It is otherwise equivalent to -uj and does not change anything about the two-category system.

Ever read this? La landnoma sufikso -ujo en instruado

razlem:You'd have to kill all humans everywhere to end the civilization.

Languages can pass away without humans doing so, both because older languages evolve into new ones, and because they may co-exist with other languages that survive. Ancient Egyptian was unknown after it died out, yet humans survived ancient Egypt, and then reconstructed the language. The language had co-exited with demotic and ancient Greek. These evolved into languages that could be used to recover the original.
The major languages (with Esperanto texts), call them group A, might die out, yet have evolved into new ones, which I will call group B, and have co-existed with minor languages that survive, group C. From B and C (which Piron's archaeologists would possess), A could be reconstructed, and within them, Esperanto compared to the others.

Miland:

razlem:You'd have to kill all humans everywhere to end the civilization.

Languages can pass away without humans doing so, both because older languages evolve into new ones, and because they may co-exist with other languages that survive. Ancient Egyptian was unknown after it died out, yet humans survived ancient Egypt, and then reconstructed the language. The language had co-exited with demotic and ancient Greek. These evolved into languages that could be used to recover the original.
The major languages (with Esperanto texts), call them group A, might die out, yet have evolved into new ones, which I will call group B, and have co-existed with minor languages that survive, group C. From B and C (which Piron's archaeologists would possess), A could be reconstructed, and within them, Esperanto compared to the others.

Another possible scenario would be a great cataclysm that destroys 'most' of the human beings, but not all of them... Let's suppose than a couple million survives all over the planet... Not necessarily scientists and linguists, but common people... After some centuries (or even millennia) people could have repopulated the whole planet, but the languages originally spoken would have been lost (and mixed up into new ones).

I think that scenario is likely (even if not too probable) and fits Piron's article. Archaeologists of that era can study our time and try to deduce things, based on their theories (which can be different to ours).

Amike,

Daniel.

darkweasel:The system of countries based on nationalities and their locations has not ceased to exist by introduction of "i". No, this pseudo-suffix has only made it impossible to know which category a word is in. It is otherwise equivalent to -uj and does not change anything about the two-category system.

This whole thing about country names is a huge fuss about nothing. It's perfectly easy to use either -ujo- or -io- without any problems. There's a massive thread on this somewhere in the Lernu forums, so go there if you're interested...

Miland:Languages can pass away without humans doing so, both because older languages evolve into new ones, and because they may co-exist with other languages that survive. Ancient Egyptian was unknown after it died out, yet humans survived ancient Egypt, and then reconstructed the language. The language had co-exited with demotic and ancient Greek. These evolved into languages that could be used to recover the original.

Ancient Egyptian was not lost at all, it changed into Demotic and then into Coptic (which is still used today).

Miland:The major languages (with Esperanto texts), call them group A, might die out, yet have evolved into new ones, which I will call group B, and have co-existed with minor languages that survive, group C. From B and C (which Piron's archaeologists would possess), A could be reconstructed, and within them, Esperanto compared to the others.

henma:Another possible scenario would be a great cataclysm that destroys 'most' of the human beings, but not all of them... Let's suppose than a couple million survives all over the planet... Not necessarily scientists and linguists, but common people... After some centuries (or even millennia) people could have repopulated the whole planet, but the languages originally spoken would have been lost (and mixed up into new ones).

Guys, if anyone survives the catastrophe, be they common people or scientists, they're going to know that English, Spanish, and Esperanto are not related to Chinese.

I'll use a real world example. Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Mayan and Old Chinese all used isolating ideograms. Does that mean the three are related? Of course not. They developed independently on different sides of the world. It is better to hypothesize that written human language uses ideograms before alphabets/abjads.

So back to Esperanto-Chinese. Esperanto isolates like Chinese, but has nothing else in common with it other than that feature. There are dozens of other languages that isolate. An archeologist would not jump to the conclusion that all these languages are related, but would likely postulate that the 'ancient' human languages all shared some degree of isolation. It does not mean Esperanto is equally easy for everyone to learn, nor does it mean that Esperanto was created with the worldwide community in mind. Esperanto was created by an elitist European with European languages, meant for Europe.

I quote Zamenhof himself in Unua Libro, "Such words as are common to the languages of all civilised peoples, together with the so-called “foreign” words, and technical terms, were left unaltered. If a word has a different sound in different languages, that sound has been chosen which is common to at least two or three of the most important European tongues,"

razlem:Guys, if anyone survives the catastrophe, be they common people or scientists, they're going to know that English, Spanish, and Esperanto are not related to Chinese.

They would... but you think they would be really passing on that kind of information to the new generations, when they are struggling to survive?

I think all we know about languages (and other fields of science) would be lost in just a couple of generations... and would be relearned after a long time.

razlem:I'll use a real world example. Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Mayan and Old Chinese all used isolating ideograms. Does that mean the three are related? Of course not. They developed independently on different sides of the world. It is better to hypothesize that written human language uses ideograms before alphabets/abjads.

Why are you so sure they are not related? It is likely that all languages evolve from only one language (or from a very small set of languages, which, by the way, may have influence each others). Do you really think that languages evolved only AFTER man had traveled around the whole world?

Amike,

Daniel.

henma:They would... but you think they would be really passing on that kind of information to the new generations, when they are struggling to survive?

I don't see why not. But without the specifics of this catastrophe (what it was, who was affected, etc) we would never know for sure.

henma:I think all we know about languages (and other fields of science) would be lost in just a couple of generations... and would be relearned after a long time.

I don't believe so. The ancient languages were around for thousands of years, and were only spoken in that small region. English, Chinese, and Spanish (among other major languages) are spoken by significantly greater populations around the world. I doubt such information would be lost, even if only a few million people remain.

henma:Why are you so sure they are not related? It is likely that all languages evolve from only one language (or from a very small set of languages, which, by the way, may have influence each others).

I'll rephrase: It is extremely, extremely, extremely improbable that the languages are related. Because isolates can exist in relatively dense linguistic regions (Basque, Korean, Indian Languages, Native American languages), it is far more probable that the 3 developed independently (they share no roots, the ideograms differ in meaning and shape, etc.)

henma:Do you really think that languages evolved only AFTER man had traveled around the whole world?

Written language, yes, which is the only form of linguistic evidence we have. Spoken language surely was used before the African migration, but no one knows for sure whether those languages were related or isolates (or if they could be classified as 'languages' at all).

The language has the potential to evolve higgledy-piggledy

Think about that Ceiger - by what mechanism could this occur?

How could you get irregular plurals, irregular verbs, grammatical gender, divergence of spelling and pronunciation, and all the other chaos of natural languages, in Esperanto.

The argument that Esperanto is a language and therefore must develop along the same chaotic lines as national languages is totally specious.

The laws of linguistics are not like the laws of Physics.

Piron's argument is not that Chinese and Esperanto are related. It is that Esperanto has a feature (isolation) which means that it cannot simply be classified with European languages.

But there is another reason why Esperanto is suitable as an international language. Such a language ideally builds on preparation in people's minds; Zamenhof rejected a language based on random simple syllables, for this reason. Now speakers of Romance or Germanic languages as first languages do have an advantage in learning Esperanto. But the majority of people in the world have had exposure to English, French or Spanish as a second language. In Eastern Europe, the structure of those languages is also a preparation for Esperanto. The isolating characteristic of Esperanto gives an advantage to speakers of those languages that have the facility.

In other words, the majority of human minds are prepared for Esperanto to some extent.