Would You Support Esperanto?

[VetLegion]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
I think we should all be forced to learn Croatian, just to make VetLegion happy.

Fixed

[Cort Haus]

Yes, of course - in the same way that American is a different language to English.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by VetLegion
Hey, it's within our capabilities to adopt a neutral, well designed phonetic language with no exceptions or funny rules.

It's been done already. It's called Paninian Sanskrit.

Fixed rules, no exceptions, no weird crap, completely regular and fully defined grammar, and a completely phonetic script.

Originally posted by Barnabas
I like the idea of a new man made language, easy and completely regular.

Why a new one, when a perfectly good old one exists?

It even has a formal system of word derivation, which can be used to directly and seamlessly induct new words into the language, all the while retaining complete backward compatibility.

Originally posted by VetLegion
And if anyone thinks it would be too hard to learn a laguage nobody speaks, remember that Israelis resurrected a language that had no living speakers within decades. It's easy.

It's not easy, but it can be done. Organisations in India are trying, and they're getting excellent results. The number of people knowing it have risen from some 60,000 to nearly two million.

The old techniques for learning it were very tough, but the new ones make it easy enough for a person to be up and speaking the basic language in ten days.

[VetLegion]

Any links with videos to dowload? I want to learn Sanskrit so I can impress women better.

[aneeshm]

The problem with "natural" languages like English is that something written in such a language cannot be read more than three to four hundred years after the time of its writing.

Remember that if the entire world adopts the chosen language, then it will become the repository of the entire world's culture. That culture must be trivially accessible for the duration of that language's acceptance.

We need a language which is infinitely backward compatible. So far, only Latin and Sanskrit (forgive me for ignoring other classical constructed languages) make the grade. Even out of those, Latin's grammar is not as formal and regular as Sanskrit's, nor is its script as phonetic or as rich.







But in general, I'm against the idea of imposing one common language on the world. The problem here is that there are concepts which are not expressible in certain languages due to cultural constraints on the language.


Instead, I support a two-tier system of languages. Each distinct civilisation group should have its one "cultural" or "elite" language, in which civilisation-wide literature, scientific material, and other things which are common to the entire civilisation should be written or stored. Local languages, such as Hindi, Marathi, or Tamil, should evolve dynamically, and all literature relevant to that language's unique context and culture should be in that language.

That way, you have a common base for an entire civilisation which does not become old, but only grows with time, as new things are added (but no old things are lost, as the language is completely backward compatible, and never becomes archaic, and does not change in grammar), while on the sub-cultural or regional level, you have the normal cycle continuing.

Under such a system, every child in Maharashtra, for instance, would learn Marathi, and his social sciences curriculum would be taught in Marathi, whereas his three other subjects would be Sanskrit, and mathematics and science taught using Sanskrit as a medium. These last three would be common to all people across India, whereas the first two would be specific to the region or state.

Similarly, you can have a pan-Western language in the form of Latin (or Greek), with science and mathematics taught in that same language, whereas the social studies and the local language would be the other two subjects.

Now, I'm flexible as to the status of which language is to be used for social studies, mathematics, and science, and I don't mind either language (the pan-civilisational one, or the local one) being used. However, I think that science and mathematics really should be taught using the pan-civ language, as these are common to the entire civilisation and culture, and not bound by locality, whereas social sciences can be.









This is not really a new idea - this system existed in India for a long time, throughout the Mauryan and Gupta and even, to some extent, in Vijayanagaran times. This is what allowed a learned man from Gandhar (now in Afghanistan) to speak to another as far as Sri Lanka or Bali or Java without any trouble - they both knew Sanskrit. Even today, priests knowing the language have no trouble conversing with another of their own anywhere.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by VetLegion
Any links with videos to dowload? I want to learn Sanskrit so I can impress women better.

The biggest hurdle for you, in learning the language, will be learning the script. It gets much easier after that.

As for impressing women - I can't help you with your hurdles there.

[Barnabas]

Aneeshm, is sanskrit a rather monosyllabic language (like english) or one with long words (like spanish for example) ?

I prefer shorter words, you can say the same faster, or write the same, but in less pages.


All languages have strenghts and weaknesses, there is always something which is not possible to translate accurately into another language.
I think a langauge could be better for music or writing novels, and other for philosophy.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Barnabas

Aneeshm, is sanskrit a rather monosyllabic language (like english) or one with long words (like spanish for example) ?

As far as I'm aware, the average length of a word around two syllables (for the spoken language, that is). I presume that we count one consonant and its inherent vowel as a syllable? If we don't, and evaluate it using abugidas as a standard, then the average length of spoken words is one to three alphabets.

Originally posted by Barnabas

I prefer shorter words, you can say the same faster, or write the same, but in less pages.

That's where the more literary form of the language comes in. It's much conceptually denser than ordinary speech.

I've seen a Sanskrit text of ten lines (a third of a page), and its translation into English will be something like an entire page. It's a very meaning-dense language when written using accepted convention.

Originally posted by Barnabas

All languages have strenghts and weaknesses, there is always something which is not possible to translate accurately into another language.

That's very true. That is why I suggested the idea of every distinct "civilisational group" having its own "common" or "formal" or "elite" language, like we have Sanskrit, instead of the entire world having only one language.

Originally posted by Barnabas

I think a langauge could be better for music or writing novels, and other for philosophy.

As I said above, I agree. More likely, a language can be remarkably suited to one culture, and equally unsuitable for another.

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by aneeshm
The problem with "natural" languages like English is that something written in such a language cannot be read more than three to four hundred years after the time of its writing.

What does this mean?

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by BeBro


What does this mean?

This means that I can't casually read something in English if it was written more than three to four hundred years ago, I have to be a scholar to understand or appreciate it fully. The languages changes far too much. The same problem exists in Marathi or Hindi or Bengali or any other prakrit ("Natural") language.

The result of this is that the high culture of an older era, maybe even the golden age, expressed in that language, becomes the preserve of the few, and is no longer trivially accessible to its own speakers. How many people, as Barnabas points out, can read Shakespeare as easily as they can LOTR or Harry Potter, or any other contemporary literature? And I'm sure that 500 years hence, Harry Potter and LOTR will be the preserve of a few people, and will have dropped out of common cultural circulation.

OTOH, languages like Sanskrit don't become archaic or old - a person knowing it can as easily read something written two thousand years ago as he can read something written yesterday, with no special study or effort required.

[Barnabas]

That people nowadays have problems reading Shakespeare

[BeBMan]

Originally posted by aneeshm


This means that I can't casually read something in English if it was written more than three to four hundred years ago, I have to be a scholar to understand it fully. The languages changes far too much. The same problem exists in Marathi or Hindi or Bengali or any other prakrit ("Natural") language.

Well, then you have a prob, because reading German 13th century poems back in school wasn't that hard. Admittedly it's much more difficult if you say 8-900 yrs ago (though not impossible), but 3-400 yrs should be no big prob.

edit: also just looked into Hobbes, it's in German but has some excerpts of the English original, and they are not so far away from today's English.....

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by BeBro


Well, then you have a prob, because reading German 13th century poems back in school wasn't that hard. Admittedly it's much more difficult if you say 8-900 yrs ago (though not impossible), but 3-400 yrs should be no big prob.

Let's fix the standard at 2000 years, shall we?

Ideally, it should be designed for forever. But a record of more than 2000 years isn't too shabby, I think. Both Sanskrit and Latin meet this standard, IIRC.

[Odin]

Originally posted by BeBro


Well, then you have a prob, because reading German 13th century poems back in school wasn't that hard. Admittedly it's much more difficult if you say 8-900 yrs ago (though not impossible), but 3-400 yrs should be no big prob.

edit: also just looked into Hobbes, it's in German but has some excerpts of the English original, and they are not so far away from today's English.....

IIRC German is a more conservative language (slower rate of change) then English is. Modern Dutch and Modern German are more similar to thier Old Low Franconian and Old High German predecessors respectively then Modern English is to Anglo-Saxon.

[Barnabas]

I can read El Quixote and most spanish golden age literature (XVI and XVII centuries) with no problems, (except those written in the culteranismo style, which were very hard to read even in that time)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Culteranismo

Culteranismo is characterized by a very ornamental, ostentatious vocabulary and a message that is complicated by a sea of metaphors and complex syntactical order. The name blends culto ("cultivated") and luteranismo ("Lutheranism") and was coined by its opponents to present it as a heresy of "true" poetry. This movement seems to use as many words as possible to convey little meaning or to conceal meaning. It is also associated with Latinized syntax and mythological allusions. Culteranismo is in stark contrast with conceptismo, which is another movement of the Baroque period that is characterized by a witty style, games with words, simple vocabulary, and conveying multiple meanings in as few words as possible. The most well known author of Spanish conceptismo, Francisco de Quevedo, had an ongoing feud with Luis de Góngora in which they both criticized the other’s writing and personal life.

English seems to have changed a lot more than spanish this past 500 years, for me reading Shakespeare or the king james bible is about as difficult as reading El cid Campeador which was written in the XIII century.