Re: The 2nd language issue

Hello luri and gerry,

Andrew here.

It's a bit hypothetical to argue about what second language a benevolent
dictator would impose on the world, since we don't have a benevolent
dictator. But I would guess one reason why esperanto is difficult to learn
is because it has no native speakers (precisely Iuri's reason for likeing
it). If I want to improve my French, I stay in France for a fortnight, and
my (spoken) French improves in leaps and bounds. There's nowhere I can go to
improve my esperanto in the same way - at least not while enjoying such a
good holiday!

I still hold out the hope that in another millenium we might have a European
lingua franca which somehow hybridises features of existing languages.
Unfortunately, I don't think this is very likely to happen, but it would
resolve Iuri's concerns about discrimination.

My wife has taught English as a foreign language, and she tells me our
absurd spelling system is a major obstacle to foreigners trying to learn the
language. Some languages (eg French) retain spellings from the way words
were pronounced a few hundred years ago. English spelling, however, is far
worse, seeking to reflect spellings of cognates in other languages, up to
2000 years ago. Moving to a phonetic system would help millions of people.

How have other languages (eg Geeerman, Polish) managed to end up with a more
phonetic system? Have the language pronunciations been more stable over
time? An alternative explanation, that standardised spelling is only recent
for many languages, would imply that in 200 years these languages will be as
hard to spell as French, although, I hope, they can never get as bad as
English!

-----Original Message-----
From: Gerry Reinhart-Waller <waluk@...>
To: cybalist@egroups.com <cybalist@egroups.com>
Date: 09 January 2000 02:21
Subject: [cybalist] Re: The 2nd language issue

>Hi Iuri,
>What you say is correct to an extent. Esperanto turns out to be a
>difficult language to learn. In concept, Esperanto is ideal; in
>workability, quite forboding. The reason I like the use of English as a
>common language is because it seems to be one in which many folks on the
>web can communicate -- perhaps if it weren't for English, you and I
>would NOT be able to email. As well, English is also the language of
>the .com companies in Silicon Valley (which helps boost the stock
>market) and for the most part, English just might be the language of
>"peace".
>
>gerry
>
>Iuri Gaspar wrote:
>>
>> Hello!
>>
>> >And this is how I would like to see the languges
>> >(and folks) of the world -- having BOTH a personal language(s) and a
>> >common language.
>>
>> That's my opinion also.
>> However, I'm against the trend which claims that English should be
>> that 2nd language. Nor any other ethnic language.
>> Some languages were created for that purpose, as you should know.
>> Of those I had the privilege to learn and use Esperanto, which
>> I'm very fond of. Of course I defend Esperanto as the 2nd language
>> for all, but I accept other thoughts.
>> The thing I profoundly disagree is the usage of a language which has
>> native speakers as a 2nd language for all the human beings in world.
>> That, in my opinion, is language discrimination, and I'm against it.
>>
>> Once again sorry for any mistake, but the thing is I can never know
>> when an english word has one or two "d" or "l" and so on ;-)
>>
>> Friendly,
>> Iuri Gaspar
>> iuri@...
>> UIN 1376369
>> http://www.terravista.pt/Guincho/1458
>> http://members.xoom.com/gaszpar/
>>
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>Gerald Reinhart
>Independent Scholar
>(650) 321-7378
>waluk@...
>http://www.alekseevmanuscript.com
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