Le meilleur est l’ennemi du bien, ‘The best is the enemy of the good’; Ever since Ido tried to ‘improve’ on Esperanto, many other constructed languages have come along, but none has achieved anything near to what Esperanto has accomplished

there are more than 30,000 book titles in Esperanto! And Esperanto has been around for more than 120 years! Most of the other attempts at a constructed language have fallen by the wayside.

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You can also find some word comparisons Esperanto-English-Russian-French, the Fakvortaro pri Sako, for quick reference.

If you ask the creator, he might create new WordPress plugins from other languages into Esperanto as well.

Technorati Tags: Esperanto, English, Conlang, IAL, International Auxiliary Language, Ido, Conference, Interlingua, Occidental, Novial, Slovio, Latin, Latine sine Flexione, EU, language policy, linguistic policy, EU language, Artificial language, natural language, linguistics, philology

To all of you well-minded Esperantists and the rest of artificial languages’ supporters:

First of all, thank you for your interest in Proto-Indo-European language revival. We appreciate your critics, whether constructive or (as usual) just annoying mails. To answer you all (we won’t do it individually),

* No, we are sorry, but we didn’t unite at Dnghu to support languages different than Proto-Indo-European or other natural Indo-European languages or dialects.
* No, we don’t think your games/experiments are usable, or fit, or even languages in the strictest sense, no matter the great critics/success/support/number of speakers/history/etc. you think it has or had.
* Either yes, we knew about your great inventions, or no, we didn’t, but anyway we are not interested in learning or supporting them, however great you think they are.
* You can read more about the usual questions emailed or posted to Dnghu about linguistic inventions in the Indo-European language blog by a co-founder.

Dnghu was created and works to discuss, talk, administer, give support, etc. to the widest variety of (Proto-)Indo-European studies possible, with the main objective of supporting PIE revival for the European Union, in the form of a Modern language. Please, don’t think we haven’t considered your old alternatives before trying to accomplish such a difficult and ungrateful task.

We are here to gather people to work together on our aim, not to convince you one by one about the advantages of reviving PIE.

Yours sincerely,

The Dnghu Team.

P.D. - Obviously, how Wikipedia, Digg or other collaborative websites classify (or write about) Proto-Indo-European or its revival is not necessarily what we actually are or are doing: You shouldn’t trust any content outside dnghu.org without reading what We say we are doing in our association.

Technorati Tags: Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, Lojban, conlang, artificial language, constructed language, auxiliary language, international auxiliary language, IAL, Indo-European, Europe, European Union, Europe, Europa, lengua, langue, Sprache, lingua, Proto-Indo-European, Indo-européen, langue indo-européenne, Indogermanische, Indoeuropäische, Indo-Europees, Indo-Europese, Indo-Europeu, Indo-Européia, indoeuropeo, indoeuropea, indoeuropejski, indoeuropeisk, indoeuropeiska, praindoeuropejski

Take the phrase “Canada has two official languages,” she says: It translates to “ma Kanata li jo e toki suli tu,” but the literal translation in Toki Pona is “Canada land has two big talks.”

In keeping with its minimalist mantra, Toki Pona is a language with 14 basic sounds - five vowels and nine consonants (j, k, l, m, n, p, s, t, w) - that combine to form a vocabulary of only 120 words.

Its minimalism is attracting a growing following of Toki Ponians. Since publishing the tenets of her language on the Internet in 2001, Ms. Kisa, 28 and based in Toronto, estimates several hundred people have dabbled in it - and at least 100 speak it fluently, mostly in online chat rooms and blogs.

A Colorado programmer is developing an apocalyptic computer game with Toki Pona as the spoken language. An Israeli-German singer and member of the Stuttgart Chamber Choir is including it in a concert of musical pieces composed in constructed languages, alongside Esperanto and Star Trek’s Klingon.

Its limited vocabulary may appeal most to mathematicians and computer scientists.

“It has the feeling of a logic puzzle - out of these 120 or so words you have to create all the concepts that exist in any language,” says Leonid Chindelevitch, a doctoral candidate in applied mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who has co-taught courses on Toki Pona and other constructed languages during the school’s annual independent activities period.

“It’s something you could see a planet of Ewok creatures speaking,” says Jacob Schwartz, a Boston computer engineer who led the MIT courses and has written an accompanying set of notes, A Brief History of Constructed Languages.

The phenomenon of constructing new languages - also called “planned,” “artificial” or “universal” languages - began in the 17th century, as dissatisfaction with natural languages led philosophers to ponder alternatives.

By the late 1800s, universal languages were acquiring subculture status, with some pushing their inventions with political zeal. Perhaps the most famous constructed language is Esperanto, invented in the 1880s by L.L. Zamenhof, a Polish ophthalmologist. Its name means “one who hopes,” and it was created to be a universal second language to promote international peace. Most Toki Poni speakers discover the language through Esperanto.

Ms. Kisa, a linguist who is fluent in five languages, devised Toki Pona as a coping mechanism during a bout of depression. Her motive unintentionally had good theoretical grounding in what’s called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which holds that language affects the way you think, how you see the world and how you behave.

She finds that her pared-down language is useful when trying to work through a problem. Thinking in Toki Pona strips away confusion and superfluous fluff. “It helps you see patterns, and how things are connected in different ways,” she says.

Pekka Roponen, a psychiatrist at the central hospital of Hameenlinnan, in southern Finland, is taking this therapeutic methodology one step further. He is studying the language’s usefulness in treating patients, having them keep track of their daily thoughts in Toki Pona.

“Classical languages can be used in your inner world to avoid something,” says Dr. Roponen, noting that the Finnish language is notoriously complex, and that the country’s suicide and depression rates are among the world’s highest.

Toki Pona, he adds, “is meant to focus on the positive, so negative thought patterns and cognitions can be transferred and eliminated by simply using the language.”

At the moment, Ms. Kisa is writing a manual of sorts to meet Toki Ponians’ demands for clarification on grammar and word usage, and to fill in some of the grey areas that have appeared as the language has evolved through use.

Ordering waffles with bananas and whipped cream, for example, takes some thinking. Ms. Kisa gives it a try: “Mi wile jo e pan pi sike mama waso e kili suwi jelo e telo mama soweli kon.” The literal translation of bananas, “kili suwi jelo,” is “yellow fruit.” Waffles translates to “pan pi sike mama waso” (cereal-grain-product of bird maternal round-things, i.e. egg cake)

In fact, “pan” - for cereal-grain product (wheat, rice, corn) - is one of a few new words Ms. Kisa will be adding in her book. She has decided against many other words suggested by users.

“It’s not meant to write treatises on philosophy,” she says.

Nonetheless, she’s flattered that there are Toki Ponians out there. “Thousands and thousands of people invent languages,” she says. “But with 99.9 per cent of them, the only speakers are themselves.”

Via The Globe and Mail

Technorati Tags: Europe, European Union, Esperanto, Conlang, IAL, International Auxiliary Language, Ido, Interlingua, Occidental, Novial, Slovio, Latin, Latine sine Flexione, EU, language policy, linguistic policy, EU language, Artificial language, natural language, linguistics, philology

• July 17: “Magic Carpet Made of Steel: Songs of America’s Railroads,” by Jeni K. Foster. The glory days of the American railway system are long gone, but hundreds of folk and popular songs remain to tell the story of our once-great romance with the rails. This interactive program shows how these songs reflect a particularly American sense of adventure, opportunity and freedom.

• July 24: “Dr. Esperanto and the Dream of a Universal Language,” by Jim Kopp. The historical and contemporary political, social and ethical issues surrounding the compelling notion of a universal language will be considered in this program. Kopp will provide a fascinating examination of historical and literary efforts as well as ways in which new technologies are changing language.

• July 31: “True Stories and Other Fictions in Northwest Oral History,” by Tom Nash. Where does history end and folklore begin? Nash looks at the elements of folklore embedded in supposedly nonfiction stories of frontier Oregon and the West.

The free series is open to the public and sponsored by the library, the Linn-Benton Community College Benton Center and the Benton County Historical Museum, and is made possible by the Oregon Council for the Humanities, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

For more information, contact the Benton Center at 757-8944 or the library at 766-6793.

Technorati Tags: Esperanto, English, Conlang, IAL, International Auxiliary Language, Ido, Conference, Interlingua, Occidental, Novial, Slovio, Latin, Latine sine Flexione, EU, language policy, linguistic policy, EU language, Artificial language, natural language, linguistics, philology

We pay € 17 THOUSAND MILLION each year into the British economy!

Dear Member of Parliament,

October 2005 saw the publication of a particularly interesting report, accessible in French in PDF Format, by the Swiss Professor François Grin.

The most startling conclusion of the report is that, due to the current dominant position of the English language, the United Kingdom gains € 17-18 thousand million each year, which is more than three times the famous British rebate, or 1% of its GNP. In other words, each of the 394 million non-English-speaking citizens of the EU, including those from the poorest new Member States, are subsidising the British economy!

This amount comes from the sale of books and other goods relating to the English language, from the 700.000 people each year who go to Britain to learn English, as well as from the savings that stem from the neglect of foreign-language teaching in British schools. This does not account for all of the languagerelated economic transfers to the United Kingdom but for 75% of them, which the author sees as the fruit of the hegemony of English and not just of the demographic weight of the language itself.

François Grin who is a professor at the University of Geneva and a specialist in the economics of language, has released an extensive dossier in which he analyses the language policy of the European Union. The study was commissioned and published by the French Haut Conseil de l’évaluation de l’école (High Council for School Evaluation) - an independent public body which evaluates and analyses the state of teaching in France.

The report poses the question “What would be the optimum choice for working languages in the European Union?

A more equitable system would save the EU at least € 25 thousand million annually!

The Swiss economist proposes a comparison between three possible scenarios:
1. English as the sole language,
2. multilingualism,
3. Esperanto as an internal working language the EU institutions.

The third option, Esperanto, comes out as the least expensive and most equitable, but Grin believes it is not currently viable because of the strong prejudices against Esperanto based on simple ignorance. He believes, however, that it is strategically possible for a new generation, on two conditions:

a sustained large-scale information campaign throughout the EU about language inequality and
Esperanto,

the cooperation of all Member States in the campaign.

This could lead to net annual savings for the EU of approximately € 25 thousand million! “That is directly and manifestly to the advantage of 85% of the population of the 25 states”, Professor Grin claims.

Read in Indo-European language blog.

Technorati Tags: Europe, European Union, Esperanto, Conlang, IAL, International Auxiliary Language, Ido, Interlingua, Occidental, Novial, Slovio, Latin, Latine sine Flexione, EU, language policy, linguistic policy, EU language, Artificial language, natural language, linguistics, philology

* Esperanto is an artifcial language invented by one man, as there are hundreds of them. Europaio (as a modern Indo-European) is a unique, natural, reconstructed language.
* Esperanto hasn’t been ever spoken but for some erudite meetings. Indo-European was spoken by a prehistoric community, and its dialects are now spoken by half the world’s population; also, many classical language students in European Universities have attended (Proto-)Indo-European courses as obligatory subjects to obtain their degrees.
* Esperanto’s aim a century ago was to be spoken as the only IAL; some are still waiting. Europaio’s not-so-ambitious aim is to become the EU’s common language, to help further integration into a single country; we haven’t even begun to promote it, and our idea is quickly dismissed by some.
* Esperanto’s clones - or, better, Volapük clones - are infinite, and the newer are supposedly better than the older ones. Indo-European (or better late PIE) was and is only one, although different approaches can be made to its writing and syntax system - as with any other natural language.
* Esperanto was made by a conlang fan, as all other constructed languages. We don’t see Indo-European revival as a cultural experiment, or as a personal hobby - we rely, in fact, on more than two centuries of IE studies; we think Europaio will match the European linguistic needs for real cohesion, and will mean an overwhelming social, economic, educational and political integration movement if it succeeds. We are far from considering all this a game or a hobby.

Technorati Tags: Esperanto, conlang, Europe, European Union, EU, international, auxiliary, language, IAL, Indo-European, neutral, single, only

I think it’s time to show a position more critic towards the adoption of Esperanto as International language. If you are an innocent lover of Esperanto, and you have a weak heart, then you shouldn’t visit it…

It is British Justin B Rye’s site Espe-ranto, and there you can find assertions like the following:

Esperanto was invented by an oculist from Bialystok, Dr Ludwig L Zamenhof (aka “Doctor Hopeful”, hence the name) in 1887. Even its proponents estimate there to be barely a million Esperanto speakers in the world (largely Central/Eastern Europe); cf Albanian with almost five million, Mandarin Chinese with 1000 million, and English with (depending how you count) 500 to 1500 million. Even Klingon appears to be outselling Esperanto round here.

Most people I know despise Esperanto, but largely for daft reasons - “Everyone speaks English nowadays anyway”, “It sounds a bit foreign”, “It has no cultural identity of its own”, etc. I, on the other hand, dislike it for being:

* Just good enough to inspire anti-revisionist fanaticism!
* Just bad enough to strike the general public as risible!
* Easily improvable enough to inspire constant half-baked “reforms” whose inventors argue amongst themselves!

So the result of Zamenhof’s labours is that it’s inconceivable that any artificial “Interlang”, however good, could succeed.

Technorati Tags: English, Esperanto, language, adoption, auxiliary, international, conlang, invented, critic, artificial

International Language: Past, Present and Future. With Specimens Of Esperanto and Grammar, by W. J. Clark.

It is a bit old, but still worth the reading, not to repeat the same comparisons (with Latin, Greek, English, French, etc.) over and over again.

Technorati Tags: International language, language, international, Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, English, Latin, Greek, French, Grammar, essay