Re: OT: Auxlangs (was Re: "Esperanto V.2")
| From: | Jörg Rhiemeier <joerg_rhiemeier@...> |
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| Date: | Friday, March 24, 2006, 22:04 |
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Hallo!
On Fri, 24 Mar 2006 09:31:24 +0000, Chris Bates wrote:
> I'm not planning to make one, but I think one is.. and auxlanging is
> not (IIRC) banned from this list, merely trying to convert people to
> specific auxlangs.
Yes. There is nothing wrong with discussing auxlang *design* here;
people are cautious about it, though, because such threads easily turn
into auxlang *advocacy* threads, which are not welcome here.
> The reason I think an auxlang is an interesting
> project is that I can only think of one intended auxlang (Lojban) that
> aims for power and expressiveness instead of simple easiness to learn.
Many Lojbanists will deny that Lojban is an auxlang :) But as far as I know,
the people who made it suggested that it could be used as an auxlang, and
it is indeed a worthwhile IAL candidate.
> Now, I'm not a major fan of how Lojban does that, but at least they
> don't take the attitude that the only attribute an auxlang needs is to
> be easy to learn... it seems to me that you only learn an auxlang once,
> but if it's successful you have to use it for years and years. So what
> you want is not as simple as possible, but a powerful expressive
> language well suited to expressing intricate nuances of the business and
> political world especially. I'd like to see auxlangs with interesting
> new ideas and features, instead of all the bare bones clones of European
> languages that everyone else seems to favour.
I concur with you that an IAL must have the full expressive power of a
natlang. A language that can only express such simple concepts as
"How much is the fish?" is useless as an IAL. What is needed is a
language that can handle *all* registers of human communication, i. e.
a language in which legal documents and scientific treatises can be written;
and if it can also handle fiction and poetry, only the better (well, if you
can write legal and scientific texts in it, you'll most likely be able to
write fiction and poetry in it as well).
But I think you *can* have the full expressive power of a natlang together
with a simple, easy-to-use grammar.
Greetings,
Jörg.
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