Re: Language superiority, improvement, etc.

On Thu, 15 Oct 1998, Scott Jann wrote:

> On Thu, 15 Oct 1998, Tom Wier wrote:
>
> > Tom Wier wrote:
> >
> > > The underlying logic behind saying _any_
> > > language is superior and that of racism are at heart the same.
> >
> > I'd like to clarify this a bit:  I was not imputing any kind of racist
> > motivations on others here, but that I think it is inherently wrong-headed
> > and needs to be rethought before we can proceed.
>
> It seems to me the relationship of conlangs to natlangs is like
> genetically engineered organisms vs. naturally produced ones.  What if you
> could make your child not have a predisposition for alcoholism, cancer or
> blindness?  Or what if you give the child the ability to run twice as
> fast as anyone else?  Is that child superior?
We will get nowhere with these inappropriate analogies.
Language when seen as a tool is obviously improvable,
and some features are better or worse, and overall utility
is more or less, according to the user's priorities.
A better analogy is a car or programming language.
Sure, you can do almost anything in Fortran or a Turing
machine, but it would be silly to say all such
languages are equally good. And you can ride a donkey,
but horses are demonstrably *better*.

As for natlangs, over time they must tend to a common,
rough equality of overall usefulness, for reasons far
beyond the scope of my laziness to even attempt to detail.
Lexicon can expand at will. Grammar can be a mess though,
and if one were to search for the "best" inter-language,
some would serve better than others depending on criteria.
It is unlikely that we or anybody else will agree on
any criteria, though. So all our languages are safe ...