Other languages (part 2)
March 31, 2010
I’m reading again Lojban for Beginners, to continue with my study. I slowed down with my learnings with Smart.fm because all that vocabulary slips my mind. (I want to start writing, but without some things, like connectors or attitudinals, I can’t write anything I want.)
Of course, I can’t forget the most widely known conlang ever existed (as it was commented in the past post): Esperanto. It’s by far the conlang with the largest community. According to the wiki:
Total speakers Native: 200 to 2000 (1996, est.);
Fluent speakers: est. 100,000 to 2 million (in about 115 countries)
That’s just astonishing.
It was created in 1887 (!!!!) by L. L. Zamenhof, to be an international auxiliary language. He took many elements from the European languages (syntax, vocabulary, etc.) to develop it.
However, it’s criticized partially because of that: it’s not that culturally neutral, as it has not elements from oriental languages.
There are a few languages with this same objective. After the invention of Esperanto, other languages like Ido, Interlingua, and Afrihili (a language to be used in all Africa).
Of course, not every conlang was intended to be an international auxiliary language; some were invented as a scientific experiment (most of them based on the Sapir Whorf’s hypothesis). Lojban it’s one example, though it can be used as an auxiliary as well.
Sonja Elen Kisa is a linguist who developed Toki Pona (the funny yellow no-eyed guy there => it’s its logo), based on Taoist philosophy, trying to be as minimalist as possible. It has only 120 words, that represent simple concepts. It’s grammar is really simple (just a few rules), and more complex concepts can be achieved combining the basic words (for example, Toki means language and Pona, good). And is really easy to learn!
She has also designed Oou. The reason for developing it is unclear to me… it’s just insane. It has no consonants at all, and 11 vowels. It has only a few words (each one has several meanings), and a really strange alphabet. Here are some examples (with their corresponding meanings) extracted from its page:
[]*_ []=!&_ ?
I take drugs.
I help drugs.
I eat trees.
You help trees.
I eat the sofa.
You help the sofa.
etc.=_ ^^/~ ?
I love you.
You love me.
I love myself.
I avoid myself.
I avoid you.
I flatten myself.
I flatten you.
etc.
March 31, 2010 at 20:15
…it says Oou was engineered specifically to cause insanity. If that isn’t enough explanation, I don’t know what is.
Interestingly, the eleven vowels are all present in the union of the phonologies of English and German.
March 31, 2010 at 20:28
Now that you mention it, it’s a good cause, and Oou really achieves it!
April 1, 2010 at 5:09
When I first had the opportunity to learn Esperanto (in my University days) I would have been even more interested in something like Loglan (now Lojban) if that had been a practical option. I had more free time then, but I am seriously considering trying my hand at Lojban, now, even if it is clearly a difficult language to master.
Anyways, I think I’ll come by your blog for at least a while.
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On to some comments about Esperanto:
You said that,
“[Esperanto] was created in 1887 (!!!!) by L. L. Zamenhof, to be an international auxiliary language. He took many elements from the European languages (syntax, vocabulary, etc.) to develop it.
However, it’s criticized partially because of that: it’s not that culturally neutral, as it has not elements from oriental languages.”
Well, the foundations of most of the vocabulary is indeed largely European, but the grammar and syntax cannot fairly be described this way.
You might find these articles — by Claude Piron, who was for over a decade a professional translator for the UN and WHO (translating Chinese, English, French, Spanish, and Russian) before moving on to a research career in Geneva — to be worth a read.
Esperanto, a western language?
http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/westernlanguage.htm
Esperanto: european or asiatic language?
http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/europeanorasiatic.htm
In short, he argues that while the vocabulary of Esperanto is largely derived from European languages, the grammar most definitely is not.
I myself for some time was concerned that Esperanto was “too European” for a proper “International Auxiliary Language”, though I liked the idea and had enjoyed the university Esperanto Club. I even dropped Esperanto for a while, till I encountered a group of several asian Esperantists at the Calgary Olympics. I thus had the opportunity to discus the topic in some depth with non-European Esperantists, they argued most convincingly to the contrary. They went on to suggest that if they were satisfied, I would perhaps be just making excuses for not treating it more seriously, in the future.
(They pointed out that Zamenhof had in fact at least attempted to create “pure”, neutral vocabulary by randomly assigning meanings to a mechanically-generated list of words and morphemes — but subsequently found that the vocabulary generated this way was quite difficult to remember, even though he had created it himself, so he fell back on using Esperanto-ized versions of words common to as many European languages as possible. My Asian friends also noted that this approach could not be applied to Asian languages.)
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As for number of speakers, the 2 million figure is probably the closest to the mark (and the only one arrived at by actual research — including proficiency testing). Culbert defined a “speaker” as meeting the standard of Foreign Service Level 3 (“Professional proficiency”). Determining who/how many actually speak a language is always, once one starts counting non-native speakers, a difficult matter to ascertain, but Culbert’s figures for other languages were considered reasonable. Still, the 2 million is roughly comparable to that of certain small european languages such as Latvian — well in the top fifty or one hundred languages, but still not very many.
April 1, 2010 at 12:35
I know one fluent Esperanto speaker, there is a small and relatively inactive community of speakers in my town.
I also recently learned there is a sign language for Esperanto. Finding information about it online is extremely difficult, but a dictionary is here:
http://www.signbank.org/SignPuddle1.5/index.php?ui=11&sgn=54
Fascinating stuff, but Lojban meets my own goals in this regard.
April 1, 2010 at 22:01
I don’t believe there is a sign-language version of Esperanto. There is an Esperanto braille , and an International Blind Esperantists League (Ligo Internacia de Blindaj Esperantistoj).
There is however, an international sign-language called Gestuno, specifically created by and for deaf signers from different backgrounds to be able to speak to each other in international contexts, since “natural” sign languages around the world don’t resemble each other any more than spoken languages do. I hear that signers don’t like it very much.
There is also a recent project (Signuno), to create a “signed-Esperanto”, based on Gestuno (much as there is a “signed-English” based on American sign-language) which is not so much a language as it is a manual coding of the spoken language. (This would appear to be what you linked to)
I hope this reply was useful, rather than merely pedantic
July 7, 2010 at 18:36
Look up Signuno.
April 7, 2010 at 15:26
Since you brought up the topic of Oou, I just noticed it has multi-meaning words that contain polar opposites and other ambiguities only resolvable by knowing the true message in advance. (I/you), (love/avoid), (now/never). Contronym exist in English, it would be even more insanity inducing if all the words in Oou were contronyms.
April 17, 2010 at 20:50
I think that the unrelated meanings of the words makes even more difficult to understand a phrase (and then, get insane even faster), because if it is like you said, the possiblity to get the correct meaning is bigger.