sudanglo:Chainy, you can be as shocked as you like, but the Esperantist position (as opposed to the Raŭmist approach) is that national languages are unsuitable vehicles for international communication.

The 'Esperantist position'?! What on earth are you talking about?! Who decided that? You and your mates?

National languages are not at all 'unsuitable' for international communication - they are just more difficult to learn. But, if people can learn them and are happy to do so, then that should be supported. Esperanto should just be presented as an good option, not something that is opposed to all other languages. That really gives a bad impression and it's rather embarrassing, really.

sudanglo:The only way you can consistently argue that Esperanto is a good thing, but Globish is a not a bad thing, is if you limit your concept of Esperanto to that of a language hobby, using justifying arguments like Ed's - it's jolly for international holidays.

What?! 'Globish' and Esperanto can both be good things at the same time. If we all adopt your attitude, Sudanglo, then that will guarantee that Esperanto will always remain a hobby!

Chainy:

sudanglo:Chainy, you can be as shocked as you like, but the Esperantist position (as opposed to the Raŭmist approach) is that national languages are unsuitable vehicles for international communication.

The 'Esperantist position'?! What on earth are you talking about?! Who decided that? You and your mates?

Sounds like an another oni-ghost matter.

Chainy:

sudanglo:..the Esperantist position .. is that national languages are unsuitable vehicles for international communication.

The 'Esperantist position'?! What on earth are you talking about?!

Claude Piron (1:48-3:55, particularly 3:10-16) said that English was an unsuitable vehicle for international communication. See also his article Choosing an official language (section 4.10, last sentence).

Mind you, it depends on what one means by "international communication". For survival alone, Globish may be sufficient and also provide a foundation for learning English more fully, which can be important to people's careers. For more lofty purposes (like the "lively" conferences which Piron mentions), or for peacemaking diplomacy, or even friendship, Esperanto might turn out to be more useful.

Okay, so that makes it the Pironist position
I wouldn't say that a national language is unsuitable, but I would agree that it is not always the preferrable choice, when a choice can be made. When asked about it, I point out the flaws in choosing a national language, and I mention that there are alternatives that do not suffer from those flaws (the alternatives themselves might not be perfect either), but that's all, I do not even mention Esperanto unless pressed.

You Esperantists can do what you wish, I'm just saying what could happen should you go with a more aggressive action (ETA comes to mind).

What's "suitable" for international communication?

All is relative after all - agh, nevermind, too much complex thinking about this now

(I like Chainy's comment though on the subject, if we can get benefits from whatever languages we can, and no one's hurt, no probs yeah? Perhaps international communication is better for us if we're all polyglots. And EO's simply a choice for those whom it suits, from a certain point of view I guess)

ceigered:... Perhaps international communication is better for us if we're all polyglots. And EO's simply a choice for those whom it suits, from a certain point of view I guess)

The Maalouf-report comes to my mind again which recommends the combination of one personal adoptive language and one language of international communication. Keep in mind that the Maloouf report(pdf link) not uses the term "(the) International language" but "language of international communication". So, marking Esperanto the outstanding Lingvo internacio is contra-productive for promotion of Esperanto.

"...B - In order to allow cohorts of speakers to be formed, the European Union should advocate the idea of personal adoptive language. The idea is that every European should be encouraged to freely choose a distinctive language, different from his or her language of identity, and also different from his or her language of international communication..." (page 10)

Someones could change the language code to read the report at its own native language. I.e. change "de" to "mt" ktp.

http://ec.europa.eu/education/languages/archive/do...de.pdf

Miland:You said it. Globish sounds to me like Basic English with twice the vocabulary. 1500 words is the level of Juna Amiko, or perhaps pre-university studies of any foreign language. So a suitable comparison might be Esperanto as attained by progresantoj.

Globish thus sounds to me like a sound foundation in English as a second language, and adequate for survival.

However Esperanto in principle should be able to deal with any international discussion at any level, especially peace-making. Could Globish manage that with 1500 words?

I'm sorry I missed this, and thanks for the link! I thought Globish was just a nickname (as mentioned on the article in regards to the CSM) journalists used to describe the language used by the international community that's unique etc, I didn't know there was an actual thing called Globish!

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Anyway, international English (Traditional Globish), or the dialect of English by Nerrière (Nerrière's Globish)... I'd say the "Traditional Globish" has a larger chance of fulfilling the role than Nerrière's Globish - perhaps ideas from Nerrière will contribute to the attitudes and speech patterns of "Traditional Globish" (and even native English speakers). Nerrière's Globish seems more suited to "stranger communication", e.g. business, trips, tourism, etc.

A big problem is that, as we've seen with the fall of imperialism in lieu of the equally dangerous nationalism, people don't like to feel "crowded" by someone else's culture, so English will always be demonised by some, who might go onto Esperanto. Some of them will then become disillusioned by Esperanto, and move onto something else. Some might feel it no longer matters, and go from Esperanto back to English... It's a really unpredictable subculture (probably related to the unstable nature of arguments used to reject XYZ language for ABC reasons).

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If we were talking about this Globish... Perhaps when hell freezes over (Depends... is being frozen more hellish than burning alive?).

It does look cool though, and thanks to his hard work, it's easy to use that "Globish" to create a con-script (constructed script ) for English that's phonetic.

P'rhaps of interest:

Japan CEOs Learn `Globish' to Expand Overseas as Economy Stalls

I sort of agree with Mr. Takanobu Ito. What these fellows mean by Globish however is... hard to tell. For Nerriere's Globish, it seems like there's no free resources other than his own, after all.

Another site that might interest others is Is Globish Actually BizEng 101? . It's written in Globish apparently, but to everyone here, to anyone who hasn't read the article, there's no way of telling. Yet apparently this Globish is easier? Perhaps rather than being a dialect, Globish is more a proposal of a name for International English, in conjunction with a new teaching method (e.g. focussing on a certain amount of words, on certain vocab/grammar etc).

Seems like the Tuscan -> Italian "split", if it can be called that.

EDIT: after reading more about that Globish thing in a sample of Nerrière's book, it seems a lot more reasonable than I thought. Wikipedia makes it sounds like 1500 is the limit for words, but the book's sample pages make things much clearer.

Chainy:

sudanglo:Chainy, you can be as shocked as you like, but the Esperantist position (as opposed to the Raŭmist approach) is that national languages are unsuitable vehicles for international communication.

The 'Esperantist position'?! What on earth are you talking about?! Who decided that? You and your mates?

National languages are not at all 'unsuitable' for international communication - they are just more difficult to learn. But, if people can learn them and are happy to do so, then that should be supported. Esperanto should just be presented as an good option, not something that is opposed to all other languages. That really gives a bad impression and it's rather embarrassing, really.

...

If we all adopt your attitude, Sudanglo, then that will guarantee that Esperanto will always remain a hobby!

Exactly right, Chainy. The position that Esperanto is the only "correct" solution is a creature of another century, when people believed all sorts of absolutist nonsense. That approach has been proved to be a failure, and a very long time ago at that. The problem is that historically the Esperanto movement has been so hidebound by tradition, and congratulating itself on how wonderful it was, that it didn't actually start thinking creatively about how to face up to reality until about 30 years ago, and the idea that anybody ever made mistakes in the past was anathema.

The truth is, our basic traditional premise has been self-defeating: we set as our goal becoming a worldwide second language for all (whether people like it or not); when this doesn't happen, we are seen to have failed and are therefore seen as pointless. In response, we exhort our members to try harder and burn them out, we get shriller in our condemnation of perceived enemies, or simply just lie about how significant we are.

We need to change the argument.

We need to start saying that people from different countries communicating is a good thing. It doesn't matter what method they use to do it, whether learning foreign languages, whether learning the languages of immigrant communities, whether learning threatened minority languages, whether using cut-down versions of languages of greater diffusion as linguae francae, or by learning Esperanto, that's up to them. They're all good, and to be encouraged. They all have their plusses and minusses. Esperanto's plusses are it's easy to learn, is neutral, is worldwide, is a working, living language, and its international get-togethers are a whole load of fun. Its minusses are that not enough people speak it, and it has undeservedly acquired a reputation that its speakers are a hysterical weirdo sect living in the past and not in touch with reality.

We can do something about those minusses, starting with the perceived one. Once we've done that, the other minus of not having enough speakers might start to remedy itself.