qwertz:And who is "we"? The local community around you? You yourself?

New Orleans. Anywhere else and you'd likely need a translator:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmF120n6lZ8&featu...

razlem:

qwertz:And who is "we"? The local community around you? You yourself?

New Orleans. Anywhere else and you'd likely need a translator:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmF120n6lZ8&featu...

Thanks to narrow that "we".

razlem:

qwertz:And who is "we"? The local community around you? You yourself?

New Orleans. Anywhere else and you'd likely need a translator:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmF120n6lZ8&featu...

I can understand them fluently, but it just sounds like redneck claptrap.

I am an American too, and though I do not sympathize with redneckery in general, I do sympathize with them being thus exploited by the internet. Americans in general are being highly exploited and degraded by the internet. You become exploited without realizing it, not knowing how foreigners truly look at Americans.

This sort of really sunk in recently for me, and I would encourage Americans not to converse too much with Europeans or foreigners especially in English online, though I have seen Esperanto is no better, because even via Esperanto you can be exploited.

Assholes overseas still asked me if it was easy to get rich in the USA even in Esperanto, which is supposed to be a more neutral language. If an American speaks Esperanto, then its a good chance he or she is not here to promote the American way of life or talk about money!

novmik:Assholes overseas still asked me if it was easy to get rich in the USA even in Esperanto, which is supposed to be a more neutral language. If an American speaks Esperanto, then its a good chance he or she is not here to promote the American way of life or talk about money!

They could just be curious, mislead individuals. Anyway, I understand your pains, but the reason why this mystical, somewhat twisted view of Americans and American culture exists is because of how isolated Americans can be, vs. how much pop-culture is spat out from America, meaning everyone who isn't american only really knows the "America" that is shown in politics, sensationalist media, hollywood or Michael Moore documentaries (which are probably taken differently by non-americans).

This is a similar problem with Japan and previously with China, although thanks to chinese tourists and students, China's becoming more and more demystified (although now people probably just think of Chinese people as being quiet since they don't "talk" to us westerners, but that's due to language problems rather than unwillingness)

So, the only way to change this is for the average american to be on the same playing field as the average whatever-country-ian, and putting yourself (the average yank) out there so we understand you better (just like how Canadians tend to like coming to Australia, so we have realistic expectations of what Canada is actually like. We still think they have American accents though (strictly true)).

(Otherwise, you're doing the same thing as rednecks - hiding away due to misunderstandings, and then perpetuating more and more of them. And if that happens, we'll just end up thinking all americans are gun-totting redneck obscenely rich black rapper astronauts who invade other countries for their oil and could nuke the world into dust from the drivers seat of their SUVs ).

I hope I don't come across the wrong way here though. Australia and America have many parallels, like everyone seems to think we're no where near as advanced as we really are thanks to Simpsons (the prime minister does not float around in some lake in the outback, and the outback is not the whole of australia . We do have an invasion of amphibians up north though seemingly evolving at a stupidly high rate into "super toads" )

jean-luc:

ceigered:
Even more reason for uncontrollable and perhaps irregular changes to occur, if there's a large amount of "occasional" users, who for whatever reason like national language influence might start using things

Except that the fact it's used for international communication will tend to normalize the language to something common to all people (it's happening for english).

Which may result in irregularities, or things contrary to Esperanto's fundamento (may being a keyword).

ceigered:
Can we REALISTICALLY say that humans will not change Esperanto in ways that we might not want?

They will or they won't, why worry about that ?

I'm not worrying, I just don't want us to treat Esperanto like it's impervious to change or something mythological like that

Like I said before (If I remembered to say it ), I don't mind irregularities, and sometimes they provide more pragmatic uses, so I don't think we should stress regularity and perfection and other concepts.

I guess I'd like to say that I learnt Esperanto coz it's relatively regular, easy and fun. not because it's the definition, and I think that's all we need to "advertise". We shouldn't set ourselves up for failure

I understand your meaning, ceigered. People do have a tendency to change the way they speak according to the the community, personal taste, etc., and there's a possibility that it could happen to EO despite best efforts not to let it happen. I think they call it entropy; ordered systems eventually become chaotic (and vice-versa!), 'just because'.

Still I don't think that's any reason not to go for it, nor be too concerned about whether it will happen. People can be slangy and community-centric in their native languages, anyway. Also; don't you alter your spoken English when you talk to second-language speakers, and speak more clearly and regularly for their benefit? Also if someone misunderstands, I repeat what I said in a clearer, more direct way. Surely Esperanto encourages exactly that way of speaking, too.

@ 3rdblade (not quoting to reduce these long messages lol):

Well, I agree. I'm not against going for it, just not creating false expectations. Just let Esperanto be what it will be, and not try and shoulder an entire population's worth of speakers just so ones own purpose given to the language can be fulfilled...

Reading those articles by Piron, Jean-Luc, I am reminded of another way in which Esperanto is not just another language, and requires a different mind-set of any linguistically inclined soul who wishes to make it an object of study.

In the national languages 'correctness' is largely conditioned by usage and the native speaker (or at least the literate and reasonable well-educated native speaker) is viewed as authoritative with regard to what counts as falling within the compass of the language.

In Esperanto the situation is quite different. Those who have learnt Esperanto from an early age (the denaskuloj) have no greater authority over those who have read widely and practised the language (la spertuloj).

But a even greater difference arises from the fact that any Esperantist who creatively (according to the fundamental structure of the language) produces a neater way of expressing a certain idea - which expression previously had no usage - may find his mode of expression rapidly and widely adopted, and from the first use may meet approval by other speakers of the language.

This phenomenon may occur also in the national languages but never so often or readily as in Esperanto.

EDIT: When Chomsky says that Esperanto is not a language because you can't judge what is correct by referring to the native speaker he has a point. As a linguistic phenomenon Esperanto falls into a different category. The problem is that we do not have a convenient word for labelling this without invoking the word language.

@ Sudanglo:

I disagree with the idea of Esperanto being particularly different or separate again. Native English speakers are still often regarded as not necessarily being better than "spertuloj" (who may or may not be native speakers).

For example, take your English, and then compare it to say some random 20 year old university student, and I'm sure your English wins out since you've actively cultivated it and your vocabulary. And think about how many language courses where you're taught how to correctly speak the language, and find that so many native speakers don't speak that way - same thing for Esperanto (native speakers tend to speak a far more personalised version of their native language, which does not necessarily conform with what's right).

And English has had a similar situation to Esperanto in which many coinages or neater ways of expressing concepts are rapidly adopted, although since English is far older, and has had access to other vocabularies longer than Esperanto, there's less of such activity lately.

There was some show about the history of the English language and it was amazing how many words were coined or created in ways which are what we'd probably be inclined to call "Espernatic".

So I don't think Esperanto's necessarily a special case here. The culture of the current Esperanto community is however I guess exemplifies how languages evolve when you take out the wild-card influences that Esperanto doesn't yet have in the form of "uneducated laymen" (a rather harsh way to describe them, but "reasonably-educated yet not experts in their language of choice or birth" is too long ).

But what we do have in the Esperanto community, Ceiger, is a whole number of komencantoj (a very significant proportion of the speakers) whose Esperanto may not strictly conform to the standard rules of Esperanto.

But in no way, for example, has this led to the view that in correct Esperanto you may leave off the accusative for a direct object.

In any national language, if some 50% of the speakers habitually deviated from a 'correct' form, it would be difficult to argue that their usage was actually incorrect.

The fact that Esperanto is a second language for most and a constructed language with simple and all-pervasive regularities really does make it different.