Linked by Thom Holwerda on Fri 2nd May 2008 20:52 UTC, submitted by irbis
One of the biggest problems facing the European Union today is the fact that within its borders, 23 languages are spoken. This means that all the important documents have to be translated by a whole army of translators, which costs the taxpayer more than 1 billion Euros a year - and companies trading within the EU spend millions more. The EU-funded TC-STAR project aims to tackle this issue with technology: a system that eats speech in one language, and outputs that same speech in another.
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Member since:
2008-05-05
Quote: "Why are so many things in Esperanto called non-something?"
Take any article in Esperanto and count the number of mal-words in it. Look in the translation in English. You will find there a certain amount of un- or in- words. I bet you will find the numbers quite low in both cases.
Quote: "Why can't there be a simple short word for cheap"
There is! Esperanto a few synonyms.
kostly: multekosta, altapreza, kara.
cheap: malmultekosta, ĉipa.
and if you need it (in poems or songs) malaltapreza, malkara, malĉipa. Kara and ĉipa are considered "snobbish", but you may use them to show off.
Quote: "The derivation of words from 'root' words is very confused in Esperanto, and only superficially simple."
It is confused for those who don't understand it. In Esperanto the role of the context is greater than ido.
Esperanto has a very important rule for affixes that is lacking in Ido: the rule of "necessity and sufficiency". This makes the language much more flexible and pleasant to use. However Ido would probably be easier to translate automatically than Esperanto.
Quote: "Ido uses just the basic letters which are common to most countries using the Latin alphabet, instead of the artificial extra letters of Esperanto".
The letter in question are ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, ŭ, that can be alternatively written ch, gh, hh, jh, sh, or u without accent. So Esperanto can very well be written on any Latin keyboard. However, if you see my name written Remuŝ, you know I speak Esperanto. Anyway it does not require exceptional skills to write those letters.
Quoting: "Interlingua and Ido just sound more natural to me"
Ido sound much less natural than Esperanto to me.
Interlingua is a language meant to be easy to read (silently) for people who know a Romance language. It is much more difficult to use in normal conversation than Esperanto.
Remuŝ