Re: To Christophe (Uusisuom and Esperanto)

--- Shreyas Sampat <nsampat@...> wrote:
> Now, I don't know about the rest of you, but however
> well this mail may have
> been intended, it came off to me as rather
> condescending and perhaps even
> rude.  Daniel, are you a native speaker of English?
> I have a Finnish friend
> who uses non-standard forms very similar to yours.
> At any rate, I'll throw
> the rest of my replies below with text.
> (Incidentally, I may come off as
> "condescending and rude" as well; I'm sorry.  My
> writing style is not at all
> reader-friendly.)
Shreyas, your comments below are a bit difficult to
read - I'm not sure which are Daniel's and which are
yours at times.  It doesn't seem like either party
comes across condescending or rude, at least to this
3rd party.

> : Well, on the basis of that logic, I find Esperanto
> completely inadequate.
> : For one thing, I think it looks ugly. For another,
> it appears too much
> like
> : rehashed Latin or a bastardised form of Spanish
> and for another, the
> various
> : accents and marks make it awkward for feeding the
> language into computers,
> : word processing systems and the net, the most
> important communications
> : system in the world.
> On the other hand, I am unaware of anyone asking
> whether you found Esperanto
> "adequate", nor did I notice anywhere a comparison
> between your project and
> Zamenhof's in any but the most passing of ways.
> As for entering data into a computer, I don't know
> how diacritics affect
> that at all.  Typography is a side concern, and in
> my experience, it's no
> harder to input a sequence such as <aa> than it is
> <Egt;.  Doubled letters, in
> fact, may be a weakness, what with phonemic length,
> being that if a letter
> is struck too many times or not enough it may very
> well change the meaning
> of the piece of writing.  One might be able to
> deduce the *intended* meaning
> from the context, but if there are sufficient
> amounts of minimal pairs, this
> would cause spellcheckers to be somewhat less than
> useful.
Shreyas - Yeah, but like the u/y debate earlier, the
double letters characterize Uusisuom and are a vital
part of its uniqueness.  There are several natlangs,
English being one, which incorporate double letters
and that doesn't cause too much a problem.  What would
you have to say about many of the conlangs developed
out of a non-Latin alphabet?  Talk about typography
problems!

Daniel - Funny you do not care for Esperanto, as it is
quite a user-friendly, logical and attractive lang.
Only thing about it I do not care for is that it
resembles Spanish/French way too much.  That's my own
personal opinion tho'!

> : Here, Christophe, is the difference between 'u'
> and 'y':
> : 'u' pronounced like the 'u' in 'pUt'
> : 'y' pronounced like the 'ui' in 'sUIt'
> This is approximately equivalent to saying this:
> 'gross' is the texture of a frog.
> 'slimy', however, is characterized by the surface of
> a toad.
> You may speak a different dialect of English than
> the reader does.  Giving
> examples is ineffective.  We've been over this
> before, so now I'll drop it.
> Sorry again.
Shreyas' point abounds with truth here.
Unfortuantely, I for one, would not have enough
linguist background to know the correct notations like
someone like Yoon Ha does!  I think her notation on
phonemes in some of these other emails flowing about
really sets a standard for us conlang'ers, and I'd
like to hear some opinions from others out there on
how to give good/correct linguist notations!  If it
were me, I'd indicate my conlang sounds in a manner
quite similar to Daniel's...

> : Doubled letters are not particularly difficult
> either - simply 'hold' the
> : letter for a little longer if it appears doubled
> than if it is single.
> It's
> : worth pointing out that the word 'kekko' has no
> rival such as 'keko' to
> : complicate things, same for the word 'jaani' which
> has no 'jani' to
> compete
> : against. Therefore, in theory, if you really can't
> pronounce letters
> : doubled, you will be understood if you say 'keko'
> and 'jani' instead of
> : 'kekko' and 'jaani'. And in case you are wondering
> why use doubled letters
> : at all, it is because they help for one thing to
> distinguish between
> : nouns/adjectives on the one hand and verbs on the
> other which never
> contain
> : doubled letters.
> Typography again.
Shreyas - Yeah, typography maybe, but again that
"cultural juice" within those double a's & k's...

> : The reason I chose the colour purple to indicate
> anger is because the
> colour
> : red is used to denote embarassment (people DO get
> red when they get
> : embarassed in France as well, n'est ce pas?).
> These derivations are not
> : 'opaque', they may simply call on the learner to
> adapt, just like any
> : language calls on its learners to make some
> adaptations.
> They are also, as another reply points out, deeply
> rooted in metaphor, which
> is highly undesirable, or so I'm told, in auxlangs,
> though as an artlangy
> thing it would be mildly interesting to see colors
> with nonstandard
> emotional attachments (Here in the USA, I think
> embarrassment is pink,
> incidentally).
Shreyas, speaking as a 100%-raised & -bred Midwest
boy, I can vouch that in my neck of the woods at
least, we tend to correlate red with embarrassment
too.  Maybe other colors as well elsewhere, but I
would never say pink!  Where are you at??

> : 'I found more negative points than positive ones
> (about Uusisuom)'
> This isn't precisely the most wonderful thing to
> say.
Is the first statement from the creator of Uusisuom,
Daniel??  If so, Daniel - can you elaborate about more
negative points than positive ones?

> : Somehow, I just can't believe that's true, however
> biased against Uusisuom
> : you might be. There are some things that Esperanto
> can offer that Uusisuom
> : cannot, but there are many things that Uusisuom
> can offer that Esperanto
> : can't. Ultimately, it comes down a lot to personal
> taste and preference.
> This, however, is also not thunderingly perceptive.
> You can't believe that
> someone's opinions differ from your own?
Shreyas - isn't that what Daniel is saying is that
ultimately the decision depends on personal taste?
Your remark that that is not "thunderingly perceptive"
- is it really called for?  I mean, well over half the
people here are gathering for advice / idea-sharing on
languages they have created themselves upon their own
tastes.  Obviously, from the get-go, you know this
group will be consisted of a lot of personal opinions.
 Shreyas, what would you define as "thunderingly
perceptive" anyway?  Lots of stats on the balance
between consonants & vowels?  Lots of mathematical
formulae that may be irrelevant to a language, the
very essence of the culture of a people?  Granted,
Uusisuom may lack in places (although I cannot say as
I have not become that familiar with it yet), but
Daniel has made quite some progress with a
visually-attractive language, at least one might say.

> : Your mention of problems with pronunciation
> reminds me that because of its
> : international quality, ANY IAL is going to have
> different speakers
> : pronouncing certain words differently. I am sure
> your Esperanto is
> different
> : to a Russian's pronunciation. Only minor
> differences perhaps, and you can
> : understand each other (I hope) but the point is
> that you haven't made one
> : argument here that really 'holds water' as we say
> in English.
> On the other hand, there should be a standard that
> is clearly defined, so
> that it's clear exactly how everyone's accents
> deviate from it.
I guess I do not follow Shreyas' reply.  Uusisuom,
albeit the pronunciation guide may need some sprucing
up, appears to have a standard and be rather
straight-forward.  Maybe that is because I have
studied Finnish, I don't know.  Shreyas, if you
comment that he needs to implement some sort of
standard for Uusisuom pronunciation, then can you give
a good suggestion as to what?

Hope I did not interfere, guys; just interested in the
topic here...
Matt


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