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Re: Uusisuom, Unilang, auxlang discussions in CONLANG

From:Christophe Grandsire <christophe.grandsire@...>
Date:Thursday, April 26, 2001, 9:16
En réponse à Daniel44 <Daniel44@...>:

> > I have great difficulty finding any reference to these languages in most > general dictionaries. >
Then you don't look correctly. I took the nearest dictionary I could find (a simple French "Petit Larousse Illustré" of 1994, the most basic general dictionary you can find in France), and I found "espéranto", "espérantiste" and "volapük" in the common nouns section as well as "Zamenhof" in the proper nouns section. But nothing about Ido, Interlingua, Novial, etc...
> > As I would understand it, Esperanto is what Zamenhof saw as his version > of > an IAL. It may well be that he spent years chopping off the odd 't' or > adding the odd circumflex, but I think a large part of the language was > crystallised in his mind very early on. >
Before saying such nonsense you should at least try to know what you're talking about. The notes of Zamenhof before and after the outcome of Esperanto have been published and can be easily found or ordered. And in them you could see how much evolution there was in his thinking about an IAl. For the little I saw, I could even tell you that the primary form of what would become Esperanto resembled your Uusisuom, as for grammar at least.
> > This is what provoked my strong reaction. Whatever else you might say > about > the Uusisuom language, it is not inadequate. >
If anyone can find it inadequate for any reason, then it is, since an auxlang is supposed to be able to be used by *everyone* for international communication. Personally I find Uusisuom completely inadequate for me: I can't pronounce correctly half of the words of this language (I have no idea what is the difference between your 'u' and your 'y', I never heard there was a difference, and geminate stops are very hard for me - it took me ten years to pronounce correctly a double 'tt', and I'm still not sure I'm doing it correctly, while I'm considered by all my foreign language teachers as someone who learns languages very easily -), while I can do for Esperanto, though it is already quite difficult. Many of the word derivations escape me (purple associated with anger? It doesn't even make sense, when you're angry your face gets red, not purple. When your face gets purple it's when you're choking) so what's the point of making such derivations if the meaning is not transparent. It makes the language opaque and less regular. Of course, you're gonna wipe out my arguments saying that it's not "constructive criticism" or that it's not "much of a criticism". Well, to me it is, and you can say as much as you want that your language is adequate as an auxlang, it's not gonna change any of my objective arguments (yes, they are objective, whatever you may think).
> > The only thing I would ever ask of anyone is to take a good objective > look > at Uusisuom and consider it on its actual merits. >
I did, and even then found more negative points about it than positive ones. Having an objective look at Uusisuom doesn't mean that we will suddenly all agree with you. For that, it would be necessary that *you* have an objective look at Uusisuom, which is impossible since you are the creator of the language. Still, I can see how you believe in what you say and the least thing I can do is to wish you success. let's wait for ten years and we will see where is Uusisuom. Only then we can really know whether it could succeed or not. Christophe. http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Replies

Daniel44 <daniel44@...>To Christophe (Uusisuom and Esperanto)
Yoon Ha Lee <yl112@...>