Comment by lcedp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lcedp | Hacker News Reader

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> Most contracted languages in existence are ridiculous.

You can call Esperanto ridiculous, but it's used in all aspects of life. It has a good poetry. I find its internet terms actually better then in some non-English languages. There are several native Esperanto speakers. For instance, George Soros.

> Esperanto is especially bad: it's just a jumble of Germanic and Romance languages

Well, English is a jumble of Germanic, Latin, and French. Doesn't make it bad though (I do love English very much, it's beautiful).

>... that is just as difficult for a native speaker of a non-Indo-European language to learn as the languages it steals from.

You are very wrong. See below.

> In actual fact, English as a lingua franca isn't all that bad. It's a creole (of sorts) and therefore has a relatively simple grammar. The drawback to English is the fact that it's a Germanic creole and that Germanic languages have a comparatively large number of phonemes to work with. It would probably be more useful to most people in the world if a choice were made to go for a creole with a more reasonable number of phonemes, such as Swahili, Indonesian/Malay or Tok Pisin. Until that happens, however, using English is quite a reasonable thing to do.

English is pretty hard language. It's harder to see this fact if you are a native speaker. But here are some benefits in learning of Esperanto vs English:

1) Much simple grammar with no exceptions. For instance, no irregular verbs. 2) Phonetic spelling. https://www.google.com/search?q=english+fish&safe=off&client... 3) Consistent word forming. For instance, compare: tree/forest/gamekeep vs arbo/arbaro/arbaristo, where 'aro' means collection, 'isto' means professional. 4) Tons of other goodies, I won't write it here.

I think you're missing the point. A creole language, which English is, after a fashion, is a language that comes about when speakers of different languages come together and come up with something that's intelligible to speakers of both languages(1). It is by its very nature simple. Grammatical complexity is very much reduced and the phonology converges on what is pronouncable by all speakers of the new language (and therefore is reduced in complexity as well.

Now I'll grant you that the differences between Old English and Old French aren't that large, which probably accounts to English being relatively complex for a creole language, but if you compare English grammar and phonology to that of related non-creole languages such as German, Danish or French, you'll find in English they're much, much simpler. Not as simple as in Indonesian/Malay (which jumbles Arabic, Sanskrit and a bunch of Austronesian languages) or Tok Pisin (which jumbles English and a bunch of mutually unrelated Papuan tongues) but at least as Germanic languages go, English is fairly easy to learn.

Of course Esperanto is a jumble as well, but it's a jumble that is entirely artificial. I'd argue that a natural creole such as English or Swahili is superior: it's developed over dozens of years by a large number of speakers of widely differing skill levels whereas Esperanto was thought up by a small number of highly skilled language experts.

I'll agree with you that for native speakers of Indo-European langues (like mine, which isn't English, by the way), Esperanto is easy to learn and use. But my point is it is not easy to learn for people who aren't native speakers of an Indo-European language and that if you're going to make these people learn an Indo-European language anyway, you might as well just make it English.

(1) technically speaking, that's a pidgin, of course. But once the pidgin starts having native speakers, it becomes a creole, so the point still stands

edit: typo

> Grammatical complexity is very much reduced...

English may be easy for e.g. German speakers but English is not simple. Its rules are complex.

English grammar is not simple. It has what (12?) tenses. (on the contrary Russian has basically 3 tenses) And it's full of exceptions. Why 'I see', but I'm looking at you. There's simply no reason. It's an exception. Thousands of them.

> ...and the phonology converges on what is pronouncable by all speakers of the new language (and therefore is reduced in complexity as well.

Let's just take 2 sounds. Th as in this: "This sound, and its unvoiced counterpart, are rare phonemes. The great majority of European and Asian languages, such as German, French, Persian, Japanese, and Chinese, lack this sound."

Th as in "thing": "Among the more than 60 languages with over 10 million speakers, only English, Standard Arabic, Spanish (Spain only), Burmese, and Greek have [it]"

> Of course Esperanto is a jumble as well, but it's a jumble that is entirely artificial.

Artificial != bad. We have tons of artificial things in our life that are awesome!

> it's developed over dozens of years by a large number of speakers of widely differing skill levels whereas Esperanto was thought up by a small number of highly skilled language experts.

That what happens when you let naturally develop: "In general, English spelling does not reflect* the sound changes in the pronunciation of the language that have occurred since the late fifteenth century."

> I'll agree with you that for native speakers of Indo-European langues (like mine, which isn't English, by the way), Esperanto is easy to learn and use. But my point is it is not easy to learn for people who aren't native speakers of an Indo-European language and that if you're going to make these people learn an Indo-European language anyway, you might as well just make it English.

Esperanto is several times faster to learn than English for anybody (given similar conditions). Linguists say it and I second that based on experience.

> English grammar is not simple. It has what (12?) tenses. (on the contrary Russian has basically 3 tenses) And it's full of exceptions. Why 'I see', but I'm looking at you. There's simply no reason. It's an exception. Thousands of them.

This is actually not such a great example. Yes, English can express 12 tenses, but it doesn't have them in the sense that Russian, Italian or Czech do with affixes and declensions and what have you.

> Let's just take 2 sounds. etc

In this, of course you're right, but I didn't dispute this fact: English is a Germanic language and as such has a much larger number of phonemes than most other languages in the world (though it has far fewer than other Germanic languages, such as Dutch, Swedish and Norwegian, which have an - by global standards - insane number of vowels). Like I said, English isn't ideal, but it could have been worse. German, Polish or French (which has the added bonus of written French and spoken French being essentially two entirely different languages)would have been much worse. Indonesian/Malay, Tok Pisin or Swahili would have been much better in this regard, but alas, we have English.

> "In general, English spelling does not reflect* the sound changes in the pronunciation of the language that have occurred since the late fifteenth century."

Right. The ortography of English is atrocious and difficult to learn, even for native speakers. So there's that. It's definitely a point against English and it's a matter of taste whether this detracts significantly from its good points.

> Artificial != bad. We have tons of artificial things in our life that are awesome!

This, I think, is our true bone of contention. My argument is Esperanto brings very little to the table an organically developed Western European creole doesn't already have. You're free to disagree, of course, which brings me to:

> Esperanto is several times faster to learn than English for anybody (given similar conditions). Linguists say it and I second that based on experience.

Do you have sources for this? I'd be very interested to see the research on this. I would think the chief difficulty in learning a language that is wildly different from your native language is the fact that it's, well, wildly different from your native language, but I am very much open to evidence that learning a language from an entirely different language family than your own becomes easier if that language is rigorously structured and cleaned up instead of being merely an example of a worse is better organic jumble.

> Like I said, English isn't ideal, but it could have been worse.

I agree. Of course it could've been more complex. But it could be also so much easy. (BTW, I love English as it is. including sound, grammar and pronunciation).

> Do you have sources for this? I'd be very interested to see the research on this. I would think the chief difficulty in learning a language that is wildly different from your native language is the fact that it's, well, wildly different from your native language, but I am very much open to evidence that learning a language from an entirely different language family than your own becomes easier if that language is rigorously structured and cleaned up instead of being merely an example of a worse is better organic jumble.

Ok, now I see your point! Regarding evidence, first let me assure you that whoever has been learning second language and spent just a week looking into Esperanto will need no evidence of the mentioned fact. You don't need much evidence that it's more easy to add Arabic numerals than Roman. After my introduction to English I tried study German, and then Esperanto. When I read the latter's grammar rules and word formation rules I just thought "wtf, can a language be so straightforward?!".

Maybe because it's so obvious for anyone spending week of learning Esperanto I haven't heard of experiments trying to prove it. But were experiments to confirm interesting effect that "studying Esperanto for one year and then, say, French for three results in greater proficiency in French than studying French for four years" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperant...

Here is interesting video regarding simplicity of Eo by credited expert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU

Here's just how Chinese Monk speaks Eo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZcwpCgzMUk

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