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:2006-01-10
I think you have summed things up neatly. The only case for not using English, at this point in time, as a second language is petty nationalism rather than common sense. I am sure the average European has enough self worth not to be culturally corrupted by choosing English as a second tongue.
Really I don't understand why anyone would be bothered what the source of their second language is whether it's German, French, or the "Great Satan" - English !
Member since:2008-05-03
Esperanto has many problems?
The only problem for me is that ignorance of Esperanto is holding the language back.
I use the word "ignorance" not prejudice.
For anyone not prejudiced against Esperanto however can I ask you to visit
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU
Member since:2005-07-24
You are missing the point entirely. I am not a resident of any European country but even I can see the problem very clearly. Standardizing upon any one of the national languages currently used within the EU gives native speakers of that language a very real and very unfair advantage over the others. Official documents will be issued in that language, which the residents of one country can easily read and understand, while those of other countries have to struggle a bit to understand, and perhaps misunderstand certain things. Forms are issued in that language, and more residents of one country respond because, hey, it's easy. Residents of other countries must exert more effort to understand and respond, and may choose to spend their time and effort on something else, their countries ending up under-represented. (A effect which will not be considered when statistics regarding those responses are presented to further arguments regarding rules or policy on other matters.)
It is not a matter of cultural corruption. It is very much a matter of one country having the upper hand on that most important of intangibles: communication.
Leaders of countries whose language was not chosen would be remiss in their duties *not* to oppose such a move.
The chosen language *must* provide a level playing field for all involved.
Edited 2008-05-05 14:30 UTC
Member since:2008-05-04
I think you have summed things up neatly. The only case for not using English, at this point in time, as a second language is petty nationalism rather than common sense. I am sure the average European has enough self worth not to be culturally corrupted by choosing English as a second tongue.
Really I don't understand why anyone would be bothered what the source of their second language is whether it's German, French, or the "Great Satan" - English !
I think you've misunderstood me. I am also a native English speaker, and I live in Australia (even though I am a dual European citizen). English is my primary language and I have nothing against the language itself, it isn't a "Great Satan" for me.
But we also have to acknowledge the immensely unfair privilege that English gives people. Did you know that 20% of the GDP of New South Wales can be attributed to the status of English? An economist called Francois Grim found that the United Kingdom benefited to the tune of 18 billion euro a year because of the status of English. Neither of those facts include the edge that native English speakers have in diplomatic or trade negotiations, or the fact that English-speaking countries tend to support each other (and they happen to be some of the most powerful countries in the world!). None of this is fair and if we can imagine something better, there is no need to discriminate between people purely because of the language we happen to speak at birth.
I could say nothing and enjoy the privilege I receive as a native English speaker, in the same way that I enjoy privilege as a straight white male student. But how is that fair?
Member since:2005-07-08
Hmm... As a side note. it seems that Ido, the third big auxiliary language could avoid some of the shortcomings of both Esperanto and Interlingua. For example, it doesn't have the non-standard letters of Esperanto that use breves and circumflexes. If Esperanto could get rid of that major headache, I might be more supportive of it. Yet Ido still keeps the extremely systematic and easy grammar of Esperanto. See here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_and_Ido_compared
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ido_and_Interlingua_compared
Too bad that the first world war almost destroyed the promising start of the Ido project.
Anyway, I don't believe that any of the current auxiliary languages could gain wide acceptance in international communication, like as an official language of some international organizations, before it would already have millions of active users and supporters otherwise, and so that it had already proven its wide acceptance elsewhere. However, English language already has that position in the world, like it or not, just like Latin had in the Middle Age western Europe.
Member since:2005-07-08
Another good article explaining the shortcomings and oddities of Esperanto and how Ido has overcome them in its own improved version of a constructed easy-to-use auxiliary language.
Why Ido?
http://idolinguo.org.uk/whyido.htm
Just a few examples from the article:
Why are so many things in Esperanto called non-something? Why can't there be a simple short word for "cheap", for example, but it is instead an unnecessarily long and complicated word malmultekosta (= not-costing much) while in Ido it is simply chipa. I don't think that Esperanto makes things any easier for new learners by that method. Like the article says: "The derivation of words from 'root' words is very confused in Esperanto, and only superficially simple."
Also, Ido uses just the basic letters which are common to most countries using the Latin alphabet, instead of the artificial extra letters of Esperanto that use circumflexes and breves, making typing or printing Ido much easier than Esperanto.
My own favorites of the three most popular auxiliary languages (Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua) would be, either Interlingua or Ido. Although neither of the two is quite as popular as Esperanto so far, Interlingua and Ido just sound more natural to me, and in many cases also make learning and saying things easier than Esperanto does.
Edited 2008-05-04 07:36 UTC
Member since:2006-01-09
Member since:
2008-05-04
irbis, you seem to have a positive view of the benefits of a neutral international language for Europe. Although I don't think anybody is denying the political difficulty implementing this, hopeful people like you can make the impossible possible. The fall of the Berlin wall seemed impossible, as did the creation of the European Union, the adoption of the Euro and the metric system, yet with time they have been widely adopted (although admittedly the metric system took a lot longer). So keep your hope alive!
I think it is absolutely critical that international communication in Europe respects the linguistic diversity within Europe. It is not fair that the language of 12% of Europe's population becomes the lingua franca for all. Additionally, the number of people who speak English as a second language (and the highest estimates put this figure at less than half the population) would include only the intellectual elite in Europe, that is business people, academics, politicians, diplomats, high-ranking public servants etc. This figure is higher in urban areas than in rural areas.
With regards to your estimation of the number of Esperanto speakers, Linstedt's estimate might be nice and round (1000 native speakers, 10,000 fluent speakers, etc.) but it's certainly not based on much more than a guess. It's certainly not true that 10% of fluent speakers of Esperanto are native speakers, and my experience is that native speakers comprise only a tiny proportion of Esperanto's speaking population - we are talking about an interesting phenomenon, but certainly nothing more. While there is little doubt that there are around 1,000 native speakers of Esperanto (it wouldn't be hard to form a rough list), there are far more than 10,000 fluent speakers of the language, and far more than 100,000 who can speak it actively. Esperanto speakers are concentrated in Europe (especially Eastern Europe), China, South America, the Middle East and parts of Africa, so the proportion of speakers would be higher in Europe.
I agree that it doesn't matter whether Interlingua or Esperanto is widely used in Europe, if it is to be a neutral language. Unfortunately, Esperanto is the only non-ethnic language to have gained speakers in the hundreds of thousands. There would be only a few hundred fluent speakers of Interlingua, a thousand at the most. Volapuk never gained a wide following either, and it took only a few years for most of the Volapuk clubs in Europe to adopt Esperanto (Volapuk being an a priori language). Having attempted to learn both Interlingua and Esperanto, I am fluent in Esperanto but I found Interlingua harder for a range of reasons (admittedly, I only spent about ten hours trying to learn Interlingua). My basic comparison is that Interlingua has many irregular verb forms, declensions, a more complex alphabet and other irregularities that Esperanto does not have. It's main advantage seems to be that clever native speakers of Latin-based languages can understand the language without having to learn it (and this is true, I am a native French speaker and could understand Interlingua fairly well). On the other hand, learning to speak and write the language is more difficult than Esperanto. Additionally, native speakers of Germanic, Slavic, Finno-Yugraic languages and so on do not have this advantage. I would recommend Interlingua and Esperanto to anyone, but they have different purposes - Interlingua is useful to communicate widely to speakers of Romance languages, whereas Esperanto is useful as a universal second language. Having said that, if Interlingua for some reason became more popular than Esperanto, I would probably support Interlingua instead of Esperanto.
Ideas don't have to have a good chance of success to be worthy of support, but if they promote economic and social justice, language diversity, understanding between people, respect for cultural diversity and harmony then I will certainly support them.