EspeRanting « POWIP

28Sep/0937

EspeRanting

Esperanto, the manufactured "global language," derives its name from the Spanish word for hope, with the same Latin root as esperance. Naturally, then, in the Land of Hopenchange, it's being touted as a second language at Change.Org's website. Shit you is a thing that I do not do.

Of course, multi-culty Obama had to admit on the campaign trail that he didn't have a second language, though goodness knows young Americans ought to be required to learn one (an assertion that I happen to believe is true). How Obama managed to pass the language requirement at Columbia University is one of those topics shrouded in the mist of misssing records. But why Esperanto?

Esperanto was the brainchild of one-worlders. When I lived in Coyoacan in Mexico City, among the lunatics who spent their days passing out information in the Plaza in front of Cortez's palace, on the gazebo, were passionate advocates of Esperanto. I asked them kindly, in Spanish, why this was so important to them. They replied, in Spanish, that English, which has become, at least for the time being, the lingua franca of the world, was a racist, imperialist language. Which made me laugh, considering the place that La Malinche holds in their cultural mythos. Not long after this episode, some young Mexicans and I got into an argument in El Hijo del Cuervo, a bar on the plaza, because I had the temerity to be discussing Shakespeare, in English, with a Mexican-American friend. I had to push one of them over a hedgerow when they attacked my friend as we exited the bar.

Obama's agenda of undercutting American exceptionalism seems to extend even to language. Esperanto has no great literature. It's based in no nurturing culture. It is as artificial as Klingon, and perhaps less well developed. Its only true function is typically progressive, in that it lets its advocates feel superior to the benighted around them. Take a look at the link on the page, Esperanto has many traits. What language does not have many traits?

Esperanto is a language. It is neutral because it doesn't belong to any single group of people or country. It is international and mainly useful for communication among people from several countries. It is egalitarian and easier to learn than national languages. It evolves and flourishes just like other languages, and can be used to express every aspect of human thought and feeling. It is relatively young, pioneered by Ludoviko Lazaro Zamenhof in 1887. A unique, rich and living language it is highly esteemed by many people throughout the world.

There is no such thing as a neutral language. All languages function to filter and organize the welter of impressions we receive through our senses. You could say that English is a neutral language, because it is less "gendered" than the Spanish from which Esperanto is largely derived. English is international, as was French before it, and Latin before French. Esperanto may evolve in its peculiar linguistic hothouse, but I've seen little evidence that it flourishes. No language, in and of itself, "can be used to express every aspect of human thought and feeling," which is why Shakespeare was such a great creator of neologisms, and why English borrows so many terms and expressions from other languages. Esperanto has no innate advantages. To think so is poppycock.

But poppycock is what's on offer at Hopenchange. Perhaps there's an expression in Esperanto for "sour grapes." I wonder from where they derived it. Some expertise in any foreign language gives one access to a different mentality, and a different personality. There are many besides English, Spanish and Italian that I wish I had, but Esperanto's not on that enormous list.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Esperaguis XIV
October 1st, 2009 - 07:40

l’emaindish c’est moi.

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Claudio Torcato
October 9th, 2009 - 11:11

The Esperanto is not a language like Spanish. The fact that words derived from Latin means nothing. Different languages, including English, has something of Latin. Esperanto is agglutinative like the Germanic languages, has buildings of Russian and grammatical features of Mandarin. His sound is Italian. It is a language well built and very rich in the possibility of creating new words.

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Mee
October 11th, 2009 - 02:41

Esperanto almost ignores some languages not because of some idealistic motivation, but because, at the Zamenhof’s age studing “far” languages, or just finding a dictionary of those languages, was much more difficult than now. However i know some asian esperantists and they are quite satisfied of the language.

I’ve spoken with asian in english adn esperanto, and i must say, honestly, that in esperanto we spoken, in english we understand more or less what we wanted to communicate each other.

The unsaid truth is that english speakers are afraid that the world won’t learn their language, so that they also will have to really study a language.

Esperanto is neutral because NO state in the world would be advantaged of it, because it is no official anywhere.

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QuÃ©rÃ© Gabriel
October 16th, 2009 - 11:20

French: ‘prÃ©jugÃ© = English: ‘prejudice’, Esperanto: ‘antaujugho’, German:’Vorurteil’; Spanish:’prejuicio’;Breton and Welsh: ‘rakvarn’;
Russian:’predrassudock’ etc… I am 77 years old now, after, as a hoby, having been interested in different languages, my sole regret is to have started studying Esperanto too late for me (5 years). The varied forms of ‘prejudice’ are a personal gift to “Enoch_root”. May he honestly, earnestly, devote, let’s say 3 hours to the study of Esperanto before proclaiming nonsences.This wonderful language one can learn to speak and PRONOUNCE easily,( for a frenchman a tenth to a fifteenth of the necessary time which English requires, for equivalent results)… That is what I experienced. Now I teach Esperanto in Landerneau where I live.

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- Enoch_Root
  November 16th, 2009 - 14:45
  
  Professor – No offense – I am not particularly fond of the British for a slew of reasons. Yet, I can still appreciate the English language just fine.
  
  There was nothing inherently wrong with the cassette tape – it just isn’t as great as a cd. Doesn’t mean the content sucks.
  
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Tom Oak
November 16th, 2009 - 03:57

@Bob Reed: I have a feeling Noam Chomsky doesn’t necessarily love communists the way you think he does. In some crazy implausible alternate reality where the U.S. had collapsed first in the Cold War he’d be writing books from one of the remaining non-aligned outposts about manipulation of the public through state-owned media and suppression/misrepresentation of nationalist or anarchist or maybe even bourgeois revolutionaries. If pressed lightly he identifies as an anarchist or libertarian socialist so his function is basically to attack the dominant ideology that maintains a position of authority and highlight the misuse of that authority, you just see him as he is today because that happens to be neoliberalism.

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Meep
November 16th, 2009 - 05:38

I am making fun of attempts to “perfect” human language.

What people forget is that all “real” languages – used in real speaking communities, who will be creating new words as time goes on and changing the grammar, the way all living languages change – are never “clean”, “pure”, etc.

If you want an international language that people will speak globally, there are any number of languages that are already spoken internationally – spanish, chinese, english, arabic. The thing is if you dig deep in each of these, you’ll note all the dialects, and many of the flavors are mutually unintelligible spoken [though they all work pretty well as written languages]. “Book language” differs quite a bit from how language is actually used, and when you get people actually using this stuff all the “illogical” features will creep back in. John McWhorter has written a lot on that subject [I highly recommend McWhorter's "Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue" for a really interesting look at the development of the English language.]

English is actually pretty good about not having too much variance now between its dialects [this was not always so], and it really is a global language. Why reinvent the wheel, when you’ve got a jumbo jet at your disposal?

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QUERE
November 16th, 2009 - 10:23

One may wish that, sometime, in some ‘Perhapsland’, a valiant guy named Meep, will ponder over the fact that:
1/Esperanto does not aim at replacing any other language
2/It is a of verbal ‘lego’ the rules of which are quick to learn ( for a ‘frog’ like me, compared to English, one hour dedicated to Esperanto is the equivalent often the time of 10/12 hours spent over your “Actually pretty good English”
3/A l’Ã©poque de louis XIV il nous Ã©tait agrÃ©ables, Ã nous franÃ§ais, de constater l’universalitÃ© de notre langue! Sorry, have I to translate? Have I to ascend the stairs to your jumbo? Ok or all right, I like the idea of the ‘new wheel’ girating around nice ball bearings and
4/ the pronounciation of which is the most accurate and simple of ALL the spoken languages! A last confidence: well my English (which I like) is not that badly spoken, anyway, at times, hearing english speaking people I really doubt having studied it..
5/did you really consecrate an honest time (3 hours) to see how E-o works, before rejecting it with such, either ignorance or let me put it that brutal way, dishonesty?
An answer will be welcome, as you choose, in French, Breton, Spanish, German, Russian and of course Esperanto .
Bien Ã vous cher Meep

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mankso
November 16th, 2009 - 12:07

Thank you, Quere, for that! And Meep does not even seem to think it worth a mention that the whole point of Esperanto is as a NON-ethnic interlanguage. The use of any ethnic language automatically advantages and privileges its native-speakers, and discriminates against speakers of all other languages. Not so speak of its cost-effectiveness, when learning time is brought into the equation. Apparently the linguistic enslavement of 92-95% of the world’s population (i.e. non-native-speakers of English) is acceptable to him/her, as is the destructive world hegemony of one ethnic master-language.

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- Enoch_Root
  November 16th, 2009 - 14:52
  
  what is this “linguistic enslavement” you speak of? Does it involve reparations?
  
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Dan Collins
November 16th, 2009 - 16:18

You know, this whole business is ridiculous. You’ll forgive me, I hope, if I say that I am as skeptical of linguistic utopianism as I am of any other form of utopianism. That doesn’t mean that we are excused from attempting to improve ourselves, our societies, our discourse, and to those of you who wish to make of Esperanto a great language, I wish you all the luck in the world in your great project. I look forward to the day in which great novels and poems are written in Esperanto, translated into the languages that I know, and make me long to learn it.

For those of you, however, who wish to whinge and complain that it would somehow be fairer that Esperanto be taught generally in place of other languages, and that we owe it to you in some fashion, because of linguistic “hegemony” or “imperialism” and all of the other blather, please, shut up. This is Gramscian nonsense applied to language. We are all trapped in a world that we never made. All languages, even the artificially created ones, have biases. Human cognition and intellect have biases. We cannot “linguify” our way out of them. The Cratylus still appertains.

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Remush
November 18th, 2009 - 05:49

“I look forward to the day in which great novels and poems are written in Esperanto, translated into the languages that I know, and make me long to learn it.”

Dear Dan,
No, you wouldn’t: you’d find another excuse.
If what you say is true, search in Google with “original Esperanto literature”. But remember, no translation matches the original 100%.

The perfect language for everybody is a myth, but a good enough second language to get out of the trap is a reality.

Of course you do not resent language hegemony. The French didn’t either less than 100 years ago.

RemuÅ

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