Docs in Esperanto -including a deep analyse of langs/thoughs

dp · 2004-07-23 13:27:17

zeppelin wrote:

Esperanto idea is dead, because everyone knows (some) English these days.

no it is not - and no also this is wrong in my eyes (see down)

zeppelin wrote:

Languages are TOOLS.

very true :-)

zeppelin wrote:

Tools gets replaced by better ones

yes - and as a biologist, i see similarities:
your replacement-thingy is what is called selection by evolution (seems to work also on "things", also on "virtual things", cool, eh?)

the thing is that selection can also make mroe than one species to exist - that evolves to diversity - keeping compatibility between the pieces must be made artificially (=be constructed by humans), because selection takes long and can be bloody - esperanto is a bridge in my eyes

zeppelin wrote:

imagine this:
Aliens contact us, if they are clever they would talk to us in English. I 'm a native Greek, but that's the truth.

you forget spanish, protuguese, chinese, japanese and other majorities - english is one of them, but in my eyes, only really dominant on the internet (i'm from centre of europe, and around me no country speaks english natively - i have to go to england to hear it / use it en masse)

zeppelin wrote:

English is these days, the EARTHIAN.
that could change in the future, but for now IT IS.
so esperanto and other like small english can kiss my as$

:-)

ok, the problem was this:

we have

english,
spanish,
portuguese,
french,
german,
(we let asiatic langs aside temporarely, as it is too complicate to make one language of asiatic+the european langs - maybe this is a task for esperanto2 ? ;-) )

and we need a language to make all of them happy without favouring any of them: esperanto

by saying english is earthinan, you force a lot of people addapting - not really nice :-)

les Français n'aimen't pas parler anglais - wie die meisten anderen leute, die nativ lateinische sprachen sprechen - ups sorry i switched a little, but both of these langs are also earthian and should be understood, right? (if not, then esperanto can step in as the bridge for worlds :-) )

got the point why i think that the idea of esperanto is a good one? :-)

mcubednyc · 2004-07-23 16:06:49

dp wrote:

the thing is that selection can also make mroe than one species to exist - that evolves to diversity - keeping compatibility between the pieces must be made artificially (=be constructed by humans), because selection takes long and can be bloody - esperanto is a bridge in my eyes

Well, this is what I don't understand: Why must there be "compatibility"?

dp wrote:

ok, the problem was this:

Nor do I understand why it is a problem that we have English, Spanish, Portugese, etc. This is a good thing! This is a great thing! Why do you want a monoculture? Isn't this a problem with computing today -- the dominance of one platform?

dp wrote:

and we need a language to make all of them happy without favouring any of them: esperanto

Who is unhappy? What are they unhappy about? Non capisco!

dp wrote:

les Français n'aimen't pas parler anglais -

Then let them speak French, to paraphrase Marie Antoinette (attributed). The French take great pains to preserve French as a language -- IMO, they go way overboard, but that's neither here nor there. The point is, why would any given Francophone (or Italian or Norwegian or Englishman, etc.) want to learn Esperanto as opposed to any other the other living, breathing, vital languages already spoken by (in most cases) millions of people? You seem to think that the diversity of human language is a problem to be fixed; I don't understand what the problem is. I think it is something to be celebrated, and explored, and such pursuits should be encouraged.

dp wrote:

but both of these langs are also earthian and should be understood, right? (if not, then esperanto can step in as the bridge for worlds :-) )

Both of those languages are understood, by the people who want to understand them. It seems much more useful and desireable to me to increase those numbers, than to direct people to a non-organic, artificial language that relatively few people have any passion for. Here we have countless culture centers that do a great job of that -- for example:

http://www.goethe.de/uk/ney/enskurse.htm
http://www.nyu.edu/deutscheshaus/

where you can not only do language studies, but culture studies also, or just go to see films or art exhibitions or hear music. IMO, places like these (the Asia Society, Alliance Francais, etc.) encourage a much greater degree of meaningful communication than would be possible if those resources were applied to the promotion of Esperanto.

More languages! Mutating languages! More dialects! More people speaking more languages! Diversity! Hurray! :-)

dp wrote:

got the point why i think that the idea of esperanto is a good one? :-)

No, sorry, I still don't. It sounds to me like something that a gang of soulless bureaucrats in a windowless room somewhere in Geneva would think is a good idea. It also sounds like something George Orwell would have had a field day with. :-)

dp · 2004-07-23 16:34:38

i really like diversity - hey, i'm living in a country where 7mio people speak more than 300 dialects - it's really cool :-)

unfortunately one life is not enough to learn all the languages (call me lazy) available to have access to the writings from all of the sources written in them - therefore it can be usefull to have a unique lang for the written things

i'm not direcly for speaking esperanto, because it is much more fun to communicate with your arms/hands and legs to understand each other, if you are in a foreighn country - but the written things would be much simpler this way (especially because esperanto has a clear structure in it for how to write things without much exeptions (because it was constructed and not evolved out of using it))

having docs in esperanto would mean that a lot of people would understand who do not know the langs the docs are in - and also those who do not know esperanto would understand parts of it (on the other hand: writing esperanto is much more difficult and needs training i lack)

i do not mean that the diversity of language is a problem to be fixed (well, with atomic weapons, it can be fixed very fast) - no, i see the chance in esperanto as an add on for the people to write in to understand each others docs (like the romans used latin to unify the empire - most of the people didnt speak latin but their own lang, but they wrote and read latin to understand each other [=my interpretation - not == with all historical interpretations of the rom.empire, i know])

did i explained better this time?

Dusty · 2004-07-23 17:39:53

kakabaratruskia wrote:

Thanks for the info. I'll try to read it.
Edit1: I've read it, and in fact it is interesting. I have to admit that I'm still a grade-two thinker. Maybe some day I'll improve. If you know more stuff like this, please tell me about it. I'm interested in becoming a grade-one thinker, and I think I should read.

Sounds familiar.

You might be interested in "Prisons we choose to live inside" by Doris Lessing. They were a series of lectures, but are available as a book now. I'm personally also interested in Zen and Taoist scripts, but I don't know if that's related. "Cosmic Consiousness" By Richard Bucke is also an interesting read, though to be honest I didn't like it. Henry David Thoreau's "Walden" is a real sit back and thinker too.

It must be really weird to think with images. I can't do that, even if I try. I think I never will, maybe I'm already screwed.

I prefer to look at it as a sign of genius.

My sister says when she listens to music the words create vivid pictures in her head. When she plays music she "sees" it. For me, I only hear harmony (or lack thereof); I "feel" it. She's got a great head fro remembering lyrics and tunes, I can't.

Another thing is reading. Because I can't understand the words unless I explicitly hear them in my head, I could never learn to speed read (faster than 600 wpm, anyway). My Mom never hears the words, she only sees symbols when she reads, she reads a lot faster than me.

Now that you got me thinking on it again though, I wouldn't say I only think in words, as in speech or language. I would say I think in sounds. Some of my thoughts are composed of musical notes or nonsense sounds.... though such thoughts have significance to me, it would be utterly impossible to convey them to somebody else, as there is no common language to describe them.

dp: I don't think you can use phrases like "we all..." when discussing how we think. It's impossible to know how other people think, even if you ask them, they mostly just say "I dunno, uh, I just think". But I know for a fact that the way thoughts are composed in my head is very different from the way some other people describe their thoughts. For example, I don't think in symbols and pictures and sounds, as you suggest, though you must do. I find it a very taxing job to try to visualize a situation or picture or symbol in my head. If I do try to visualize something I have to actually "paint" the picture using thought-words...

Make sense, no? We need a psychoanalyst in here to explain things, but I personally think most of them are too screwed up to be much help anyway... :-D

Dusty

kakabaratruskia · 2004-07-23 18:10:41

zeppelin wrote:

English is these days, the EARTHIAN.
that could change in the future, but for now IT IS.

This does not say exactly that , even though I don't know it's accuracy.
http://www.davidpbrown.co.uk/help/top-1 … ation.html

Dp, I admit that you probably know a lot more than me in Biology (probably in everything too), but I got bored reading your post, as you had the absolute trouth. I don't think that is the way to go. The nazi party killed 6 million jews in a move like that. I don't mean you're bad intended, or anything. Just that you maybe have to reconsider that you will never, in your entire life know what is going on inside of someone elses head. In fact it's very narsisistic to think you know what someone else is thinking. Sometimes you are almost sure that someone is lying to you, but you cannot know without evidence. Anyway, thanks for your wisdom. Hope I get to read the post later.

Dusty, I agree with you on most the things you are saying , and think it's very interesting to know another free thinker like you, that has ideas like mine. In my school there are very few, and most grade-two/three thinkers ar communists that will kill you if you say something they don't like (don't know if you are a communist, but it's a bit harder for you to kill me over the internet )
Thanks for the titles, I'll try to find them. Anyway, right now, I told my dad I wanted to read Nietzche, and he bought every Nietzche book on the planet, so I have plenty to read. Maybe later I'll give you some titles too. Stay in tune.

PS: I hate quoting, cause I always mess up, and the code "

" appears in the text, so I just put the names.
PS2: By the way, Dusty, my dad is a psychoanalyst. I've talked a lot about this stuff with him, and he told me, he could never say something about what someone else is thinking, he can just give opinions, cause he can never know something for sure. He can give opinions when he has followed the person for some time, and in some strict way, and then they can be considered "truths", even though they're just interpretetions. He won't tell you what you are feeling, because he won't know. He can just comment what he thinks you are thinking. He cannot tell for sure what you're thinking. That would be too narcissistic.

And where were all the sportsmen who always pulled you though?
They're all resting down in Cornwall
writing up their memoirs for a paper-back edition
of the Boy Scout Manual.

Arch Linux

#26 2004-07-23 13:27:17

Re: Docs in Esperanto -including a deep analyse of langs/thoughs

#27 2004-07-23 16:06:49

Re: Docs in Esperanto -including a deep analyse of langs/thoughs

#28 2004-07-23 16:34:38

Re: Docs in Esperanto -including a deep analyse of langs/thoughs

#29 2004-07-23 17:39:53

Re: Docs in Esperanto -including a deep analyse of langs/thoughs

#30 2004-07-23 18:10:41

Re: Docs in Esperanto -including a deep analyse of langs/thoughs

#31 2004-07-23 20:21:30

Re: Docs in Esperanto -including a deep analyse of langs/thoughs

#32 2004-07-23 20:34:31

Re: Docs in Esperanto -including a deep analyse of langs/thoughs

#33 2004-07-23 20:44:50

Re: Docs in Esperanto -including a deep analyse of langs/thoughs

#34 2004-07-23 20:46:10

Re: Docs in Esperanto -including a deep analyse of langs/thoughs

#35 2004-07-23 20:57:59

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#36 2004-07-23 21:14:28

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#37 2004-07-23 21:14:43

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#38 2004-07-23 21:24:03

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#39 2004-07-23 21:52:52

Re: Docs in Esperanto -including a deep analyse of langs/thoughs

#40 2004-07-23 22:06:00

Re: Docs in Esperanto -including a deep analyse of langs/thoughs

#41 2004-07-24 17:51:30

Re: Docs in Esperanto -including a deep analyse of langs/thoughs

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