Re: Incubus

Adam Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious said:
> When exploring Esperanto recently and seeing how close it is to
> Spanish, I was amazed.  When I saw the movie Incubus a couple years
> back, a movie entirely in Esperanto, I could not understand a word.  I
> came to the conclusion that it was because I'm only a freshman in
> Spanish I (even though I'm ahead of the class and my Spanish teacher
> has approached me about moving up to Spanish II) and I probably didn't
> know as much Spanish then as I do now, however, my Esperanto-speaking
> friend brought up how horrible their pronunciation is in the movie.  On
> the other hand, this is also one of my Japanese-speaking friends who
> told me that the pronunciation of dog is "inyu" whereas my dictionary
> says "inu."
> Is he correct?  If he is, then why is it the most well known Esperanto
> movie
> out there?

"Incubus" is probably the most *accessible* Esperanto
movie. It's available on DVD. There are usually copies
available on eBay. How many others are? And at least
for Americans, it stars William Shatner.

It's true that the pronunciation on the movie leaves
something to be desired. They obviously did not use a
dialog coach. But the filmmakers were not trying to
make an *Esperanto* movie. They were trying to make a
movie with the feeling of a foreign film.

I don't find Esperanto to be particularly close to
Spanish. I certainly wouldn't expect a Spanish-speaker
to understand spoken Esperanto any more than, say, an
English-speaker.

I've read several critics who dismiss Esperanto as
merely another Euroclone, but I think its rules of
word formation tend to make it a bit different than
most other Euroclone auxlangs. For example, most
Euroclones have some cognate of "scola" for "school",
yet the Esperanto word is "lernejo" which is formed
from "lern-" (learn) and "-ej-" (place). I believe
the promoters of Interlingua have claimed that it's
readable at sight to someone who knows English and
a Romance language (a debatable claim), but this is
not claimed for Esperanto. If you want to understand
Esperanto, you really need to study it.

--Ph. D.

Disclaimer: The foregoing is not to be construed as
a promotion or endorsement of Esperanto or any other
auxlang.