Re: CHAT: Umberto Eco and Esperanto

At 7:46 pm +0000 8/6/99, Jim Henry wrote:
>On 8 Jun 99, at 2:05, From Http://Members.Aol.Com/Lassailly/Tun wrote:
>
>> Dans un courrier dat=E9 du 07/06/99 22:23:29  , Ed a =E9crit :
>
>> >  Really! I hadn't read his "search for the perfect language" book
>yet.
>> >   Is that where it all ends?  Esperanto?
>> >
>>
>> maybe he found out that you can't find out anything, so he'd better
>> support the most motivated auxlang activists. (;-) you know, i'm always
>> amazed esperantists are so convinced it is the best ial.
Mathias, I long ago ceased to be amazed - if you want to see bigotry at its
blindest, forget religion & enter the world of conIALs.

>Vorlin has neat features like deriving prepositions with -u,  well-
>defined morphophonemics, and always marking transitive vs.
>intransitive verbs clearly .
>
>Esperanto has neat features like Kalman Kalocsay, Raymond
>Schwartz, and Claude Piron.  I.e., people and books, plenty of
>them.
Er - I don't suppose the fact that Esperanto has been around for more than
a century & that Vorlin is a newcomer (and I'm not sure if it's been
completed yet) has anything to do with the number of users, books etc.

The IAL that comes closest in the modern world to anything like universal
use is English.  That has vastly more 'people and books' than Esperanto.
Does that make English even more perfect?

(BTW I'm *NOT* advocating English as _the_ IAL - merely observing a fact)

Ray.