18:06 - On constructed languages...
My brain gets stuck in one topic, and races to learn as much as it can about that one topic. For the past two weeks, it's been constructed languages. I realized that a lot of humor can be found in constructed languages...
Constructed languages
Q: What's a constructed language?
A: It's a vocabulary, grammar, and writing system made by someone (or a group) that has way too much time on their hands. If they're very, very lucky, and if they spend fifty years of their life pushing it on people, and their descendants spend another hundred years pushing it on people, it might possibly become as well-studied as, say, Serbo-Croatian.
Q: You can't just pick one word from one language, another word from another language, garble your grammar, and expect to get a real language, can you?
A: You've just described English perfectly.
Q: Why should I study them?
A: It gives you an excuse to babble at people, and ensure that absolutely no one understands you. And you get to wear a nifty green star on your lapel.
Q: What happens if I just wear the nifty green star?
A: People will babble at you incessantly.
Esperanto
Q: Saaaaaaaay, isn't Esperanto the language that blue-helmeted United Nations jack-booted thugs are going to force everyone to learn?
A: Yes.
Q: Are the jack-booted thugs cute?
A: The more Esperanto that you speak, the cuter they get.
Q: What is Esperanto?
A: Esperanto is the most popular auxiliary language. Despite it being created 130 years ago, and being spoken around the world, it hasn't broken into different dialects. At least, that's what Esperantists say.
Q: What's it good for?
A: People who want to sleep with at least one person from each country of the world.
Q: C'mon. There can't be that much sex at an Esperanto convention, can there?
A: Just as fabric stores are stripped bare by any furry convention, the same happens to stores selling blue helmets and military boots. Every possible sexual position (and many impossible ones) have words in Esperanto. Esperanto has words that can make Brazilians blush. There seems to be more books in Esperanto about erotica than any other topic.
Q: You're just saying that to get people interested, aren't you?
A: Hell, yes. When even the basic courses at Lernu! -- written for the world -- have homosexual characters. Another official course to teach the language is a romance novel. Heck, at least one thousand children have been born to parents who only share Esperanto as a language. What do you think?
Q: But the part about stripping bare stores selling blue helmets...?
A: Yes, that's a joke. Esperantists know to buy ordinary helmets, then paint them blue.
Ido
Q: What is Ido?
A: Ido is a dialect of Esperanto.
Q: Waitta minute. You said in the Esperanto Q&A that the language hasn't divided.
A: It hasn't. Esperanto ensures its purity. Anyone who doesn't speak the One True Esperanto is cast into the utter darkness, where the wailing, the gnashing of teeth, and the nose licks ever continue. At least, that's what Esperantists say.
Q: You just said that to piss off both the Esperantists and the Idoists, didn't you?
A: Yep.
Q: Okay, what is Ido, really?
A: Ido is a set of minor changes to Esperanto. Slight spelling differences, a few minor differences in grammar, and a few different words.
Q: What do Esperantists think about Ido?
A: They think that it's the spawn of Satan, the enemy of the One True Way, the Chaos that will Destroy the Earth, and a source of nifty ideas to steal.
Q: What do Idoists think of Esperanto?
A: They think that it's the spawn of Satan, the enemy of the One True Way, a bunch of old fogies that won't change with the times, and dammit why do Esperantists get all the new speakers?
Interlingua
Q: What is Interlingua?
A: Interlingua is an attempt to unify many European languages into one language.
Q: What did they do?
A: A group of linguists took a dozen European languages, ranging from Portuguese to Russian, and found the root words that were still held in common among them. They carefully chose the words most understandable to all the languages. They reunified the grammars, keeping it as simple as possible, but maintaining understandability among all the languages. Finally, they built a simple spelling system where each word can be spelled just as it's pronounced.
Q: What did they come up with?
A: Spanish.
Q: You're kidding me, right?
A: Okay. It has a slight Italian accent. Kinda like how a Spanish tourist would sound after he spent a weekend in Rome. Change the word for 'and' from 'y' to 'e', and make a few other cosmetic changes. But if you speak Spanish, look at the Interlingua page and tell me that it's not Spanish.
Klingon
Q: What is Klingon?
A: Klingon was created by Mark Okrand for the Star Trek movies and television show. It was popularized by Dr. Mark Schoen and the Klingon Language Institute.
Q: Who would study it?
A: Trufans with entirely too much time on their hands.
Q: Okay, is it any good?
A: Every sentence sounds like a cat coughing up a hairball and translates to 'Today is a good day to die.'
Q: When is that ever useful?
A: More times than you can imagine! Try this: What should a soldier's last words be?
Q: "Today is a good day to die."
A: What might the 250-pound man say?
Q: "Today is a good day to diet."
A: Oh my goodness, you've just spilled bleach all over your blouse. What are you going to do?
Q: "Today is---" saaaaay, shouldn't I be asking the questions?
A: Sorry!
Toki Pona
Q: What is Toki Pona?
A: Toki Pona is a minimalist language created by Sonja Elen Kisa. It's got a tiny vocabulary and a simple grammar.
Q: Is it any good?
A: No matter what you say in the language, it translates into "Awen't I ky00000000000te?" It's the perfect language to caption pictures from ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
baaaaabyanimals. Lab scientists are using it in breakfast cereals where 100% sugar isn't sweet enough.
Q: Are there any problems with Toki Pona?
A: Toki Pona isn't compatible with any low-carb diet.
Q: C'mon, be serious.
A: Well, it's a perfect language if you think that numbers should be counted as 'one', 'two', 'three', 'many'.
Loglan/Lojban
Q: What is Loglan or Lojban?
A: 1010011101101010101100110101001010101010
Q: Huh?
A: It follows the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis that the way people think is strongly affected by their languages. Loglan/Lojban is an attempt to force humans to think more logically.
Q: How well does it work?
A: How well do ANY attempts to teach humans to think more logically?
Q: Are you going to make any jokes about Whorf being a Klingon?
A: No, that would be too easy.
Final words
Q: So, if I were to learn constructed language, which should it be?
A: Esperanto.
Q: C'mon. Aren't you supposed to say something like, "Well, if you admire warrior culture, you should learn Klingon, and if you want to be understood by millions of people who don't speak your artificial language, you should learn Interlingua--
A: No, you should learn Esperanto.
Q: --and if you're a linguist you should learn Ido and gosh, if you like computers you might want to learn Loglan or Lojban---
A: No, you should learn Esperanto.
Q: But why?
A: Language is nothing unless you communicate. Without communication, it's just symbol-pushing. Esperanto has millions of people worldwide that speak it, tens of thousands of books, tens of thousands of web pages, a thriving music scene, tens of radio programs, dozens of magazines, a few films, and an attempt to build an Internet television network. In short, it's useful. No other auxiliary language comes close.
Take care, all!
Do the various languages Tolkien came up with count?
I got -- I think it was ``Ask Mister Klingon Language Person'', some one of those web sites that were amusing and whimsical back in, like, 1996 -- to give me a proper translation of ``My hands are soaking in dishwashing liquid?'' (Note this is doubly a pop culture reference, to commercials and to a cartoon; two points for identifying the second reference.)
It sounded pretty good (the printout is somewhere in storage), but apparently the Klingon translation literally parses as ``This substance that my hands are in? Does it not cleanse the dishes?'' which ... is kind of in the neighborhood of the original, I guess. It does sound more operatic, though. I always knew Klingons were drama queens.
In all seriousness, is anything actually done in Esperanto, or is it simply a linguistic novelty? I have no problem with Esperanto... or Klingon, or Quenya. I don't think I'd want a treaty negotiation conducted in any of those languages, though... having hundreds of millions of speakers of a language does, in fact, have its advantages.
What can I do in Esperanto that cannot be more easily accomplish in English? (substitute "French", "German", etc. as needed)
You can learn it in a lot less time than any natural language. It takes about three years to become fluent in most natural languages, but about six months in Esperanto.
(I have been a professional Spanish-English translator. I've studied German as well. After two weeks of studies, I read Esperanto about as well as I do German now. Of course, it helps that two of the major sources of words for Esperanto were Romance languages and German.)
The other half of it is that it really is a global language. The radio stations with Esperanto news come out of China, Korea, Poland, Italy, and Australia. The biggest Internet information sites are from an American and a Brazilian. It gives a different, and fairly global, view of the world -- one that no national language does. (I admit: it's not very used in Africa, and doesn't incorporate their worldview much.)
O.K., the office was the World Esperanto Association, so it doesn't really count :) . We could probably have gotten along in English (or, eventually, Dutch), although a few of them would have been at a real disadvantage.
But on a more realistic note: I helped smuggle medicine to a Cuban friend through Esperanto, and later helped him defect. (In that case English might also have worked, although Esperanto's obscurity helped him evade notice. Plus we met through Esperanto correspondence.)
As for the language itself: It's hard to describe how well it compares, both positively and negatively, to English. I'd say its structure gives it a much greater capacity for wordplay, and even in common usage one finds oneself combining words in ways that aren't possible in English -- or even German.
On the other hand, English is better for conveying class and cultural differences through word choice -- viz. T.H. White's point about "pork" vs. "pig" in "The Once and Future King". (English-based "pig" is for when the Saxon serf is doing the work, French-based "pork" is for when the Norman lord gets the bounty.)
And now, the first movie in Esperanto.
The advantage of Esperanto is that it's very regular and modular. It makes it easy to learn the pronunciation and grammar and since you assemble words from parts in a consistent manner, it's easy to figure out how to say something - and then interpret it. Most people figure out conversational Esperanto in as little as 100 hours.
The biggest weakness is that it uses letters with circumflex markers - and until recently that was hard to do on most computers - so we've seen strange ways of typing them like c^ or ^c or cx.
And there ARE movies in Esperanto - and if you watch Red Dwarf - read the signs in the background - they're in Esperanto. :) If you check out the movie 'Midnight on the Galaxy Express' - a very despressing, but brilliant anime, you'll see a race of alien humanoid cats who live on a world where everyone writes in Esperanto.
"Nuqdaq yuch Dapol?"
which means:
"Where do you keep the chocolate?"
I thought that was entirely too appropriate for me!
Re: constructed languages
Loglan is pretty much dead. It's all lojban now. (Which is loglan in lojban but still.)
I find there are quite a few things in lojban that I can think of more easily because it's distilled down into a word rather than a phrase or a paragraph. There are times that I want people around me to know lojban and there are times when I teach it to them so as to get a concept across. I'm tolerated...
Nice little potted summary - but what about Volapuk, or Glossa, or Solresol? Nor *any* of the Elvish languages? And they're just the more popular ones that spring to mind!
You're right, though. E-o is the way, and it's not exactly taking the world by storm.
ROTFLMMAO[/english]
tre amuza, mi opinias. XD mi scivolas, kio okazus se oni afiŝis ĉi tion en
mi interesas pri Ido kaj Toki Pona... mi esploris iomete pri Toki Pona, sed mi timas ke se mi espolras tro multa ke mi komencos studi ĝin. jam mi studas tro multaj da lingvoj mi pensas! XD
....mi scivolas, se homoj vere kredus tiujn aĵojn (iom da la enhavo de via enskribo). XD
----
very amusing, in my opinion. XD i wonder what would happen if one posted this in
i'm interested about Ido and Toki Pona... i somewhat researched about Toki Pona, but i fear that if i research too much i'll start studying it. i think study too many languages as it is! XD
....i wonder if people would actually believe those things (some of the contents of your entry). XD
If Interlinguia is a viable pidgin-European, I suspect I want to learn that a lot more than I want to learn Esperanto.
For example, Esperanto makes such a big deal out of how logical and simple it is that verbs don't have to agree with their subjects (mi estas, ili estas, etc.), and this is a very good thing, since irregular verbs are one of the big bugbears in learning any new language. After all, in English, "I am, you are, he is" conveys no more information than "I be, you be, he be", but is more complicated.
But then why does Esperanto insist that adjectives must agree in number and case with their nouns? "Bonaj hundoj" conveys no more information than "bona hundoj" would, and resolves no ambiguity, so why is this rule there? We get along fine in English without saying "goods dogs". Why is not agreeing OK for verbs but not for adjectives?
Another thing that bothers me about Esperanto is its inconsistent approach to cases. Granted, most natural languages have way too many of these. Esperanto generally does a good job of replacing them with prepositions. But then there's the accusative case, which gets pressed into service as a sort of universal non-nominative case, even though 95% of the time it is used it also conveys no information. "Mi vidas la bonajn hundojn", sure, but "Mi vidas la bona hundoj" would cover the same ground with no ambiguity. The argument that the accusative allows flexible word order is true, but a bit spurious, since Esperanto doesn't make this universal ("la domo de Mario" can't become "Mario la domo" or "Marion la domo", for example).
The accusative of motion is useful ("Mi kuras in la domo" and "Mi kuras in la domon" are different), but it seems excessive to have a case just for this, especially since there already is a preposition "al" used for "to" in instances where a sentence already contains an accusative ("Mi sendas al li la leteron"), and the case essentially just avoids using a double preposition ("in al"). Similarly, the use of the accusative to substitute for an obscure preposition ("Mi venos lundon") duplicates the function of the already-defined obscure preposition ("Mi venos je lundo").
Why allow most cases to be represented by prepositions but then have a case to substitute for some of those prepositions? Or at least why not reserve the case only for those times when it does substitute for a preposition instead of calling it "accusative" and then requiring it for every direct object, even when that conveys no information?
For these reasons, I've been more partial to Ido, but there you run into the same problem you do with natural languages: if you don't learn the version with the quirks, you have nobody to talk to; and if you try to ignore the quirks, you stand accused of being uneducated or using bad grammar. Tell a room full of Esperanto purists that "Mi parolas Esperanto" should be just fine (and is proper Ido), and they will hiss an "n" at you. :)
I kind of view Esperanto as the VHS of the artificial language world. It's better than nothing, and it's not as good as it could be, but if 95% of the people who know an artificial language know this one, it's probably better to use VHS rather than try to demand that everyone else use Betamax. :)
Novial, anyone?
It'll get you across one of the largest continents (the most culturally diverse and barbaric, literally) from coast to coast. That's got to be worth something.
Go to http://www.spacecast.com , scroll down and click on Klingon 101. It's hysterical! :)
Kari
article for Esperanto USA
I think your whole "just learn Esperanto" argument is a little too utilitarian though. Some folks just like to invent conlangs because they are beautiful. It doesn't matter if, like the conlangs of Tolkien, they are never used to communicate in a widespread community. They are works of art and love in and of themselves.