Re: A Conlang, created by the group?

Charles wrote:

> On Fri, 9 Oct 1998, Mathias M. Lassailly wrote:
>
> > Actually I realize it sounds very stupid, and maybe difficult to understand. But
> > anyway, I'm not Zamenhof :-)
>
> I have been re-reading a very interesting
> critique of Esperanto; and in this section ...
> http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto.html#f
> ... there occurs the following challenge:
The very first paragraph on that page makes me wonder whatkind of agenda the
author had. I'm no Esperantist (I
don't really
like it all that much, myself, though I know it somewhat), but when
the guy starts out a page saying "even Esperantists estimate there to
be barely a million Esperanto speakers in the world"*, which is showing
total linguistic ingnorance about speech around the world, and not
just that, but his analysis gets _worse_, that is a clear indication that
he is not to be trusted much.  A very large majority of his comments
have little, if anything, to do with _objective_ reality (although I will
say that he certainly has _lots_ of subjective stuff there).

In short, don't listen to people unless they are truth-seekers rather
than truth-provers, as this guy is.  All he wants to do is essentially
make up an intellectual sounding, but in fact linguistically misleading
validation for his own personal distaste of the language.

<aside to the author of that page> Come on! If you don't like a
language, don't try to push your own subjective feelings on people!
As Kant said, "Sapere aude!" Dare to know! </end of my own "ranto">

* (If he is a linguist, as his page appears to indicate that he is
[a masters, at that], he should know better than to belittle the
1 million speakers of Esperanto as anything less than a spectacular
achievement.  The overwhelming majority of the world's languages
have far fewer speakers than that by several magnitudes, and most
of them are far from the literate ones that most Esperantists are)

> > This is the inverse problem, overlooked by Zamenhof.
> > Language learners want to be able to communicate
> > with as little rote learning of vocabulary as possible.
> > English is rather good at this,
> > as it is rich in "metonyms" - coverterms like "house" or "clothes",
> > usable as stand-ins for more specialised terms
> > like "palace" or "sou'wester" as well as in
> > self-explanatory compound words like "treehouse" or "nightclothes".
> > If the 850 words of "Basic English" are sufficient for encyclopaedias,
> > any language designed from the ground up
> > could in principle get by with a one-page dictionary.*
First off, no reputable English-language encyclopedia usesthe 850 Basic English
wordset unless it is made for very
young
children.

I'm sorry if this post seems entirely offtopic, but I must say that I am
always wary of people who have pages like this, because they are
almost always motivated by anything but a respect for the language
involved, or those who practice it.   I don't think we should look to this
page as a source of "problems" which we would consequently
use in our constructed language except to see how _some_ people
have reacted to a language, and not just any language, but probably
the most controversial one of all, Esperanto.


=======================================================
Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: Deuterotom
Website: <http://www.angelfire.com/tx/eclectorium/>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."

"Why should men quarrel here, where all possess /
as much as they can hope for by success?"
 - Quivera, _The Indian Queen_ by Henry Purcell
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