Constructed international auxiliary languages. A greate idea with unachievable realisation.

[Def]

In XVIII century Euler critiqued the Newton's classical mechanics and constructed his own one. The main difference between their viewpoints was that Newton said "force is force, moment is multiplication of the force on some perpendicular distance", Euler said "force is force, moment is moment", i. e. Euler's "moment" is an independent from forces essence.

It was a very strong thought, but Euler had described it on Latin when he worked in St. Petersburg's academy of sciences. That's why his idea was unknown and was archived in Russian library.

In the end of XX century his tractate was revised, explicated and expanded to "Euler's mechanics" as refreshed and innovated branch of theoretical mechanics. It can solve all the Newton's mechanics' problems and some more (electricity, mechanics of microparticles, etc.).

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So, was it a mistake to write the tractate on Latin in XVIII?

Latin is a perfect, simple, beautiful language. It has a "dead" status that means only "it doesn't evolute". It is good to write scientific tractates on the dead languages because they are very stable and not difficult. But they are unpopular. Who knows Latin today?

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I was taught a lot in sciences and can research the novel fundamental knowledge. In what language should I publish my ideas? The candidates:
1) Native language (Russian) without grammatical mistakes
2) English with grammatical mistakes (like in the current message, but I can improve the skill later)
3) Esperanto. It is the most popular dead and constructed auxiliary international language.
4) Interlingua (Latin 2.0). It is a dead language constructed primary for writing scientific papers. It is a common and stabilized grammar and lexicon of French, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian.

The first, third and fourth cases are thrown aside because I want more potential readers. But I find the ideas of Esperanto and Interlingua very progressive. Particularly, I dislike Esperanto because it has letters with caps that have no place on keyboards, it has the exclusive sibilant Polish's sounds and it has not so easy using of suffixes. If Interlingua has a community like Esperanto has, I will write on Interlingua, but it hasn't. Today English is only one real language for scientific tractates.

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I want to know your opinions about the constructed international auxiliary languages.

 

[Esotera]

Spoiler: Relevant xkcd

Constructed languages like Esperanto are a nice idea in theory, but they rely on the fact that everyone has to learn the voculabary/grammar on top of their native language. This makes them rather pointless when most of the world's population can speak English or some other commonly used language.

Basically, it's all to do with critical mass. You could use Myspace for your social networking needs, but nearly everyone else uses Facebook so it's best to use that.

 

[JoJo]

Hm, I guess the problem with constructed languages is getting people to adopt them in the first place. I mean, there's little use in learning a language if very few people speak it, even the most popular Esperanto has at the highest estimates just 2 million people out of more than 7 billion of us. Even if Esperanto is supposedly designed to be easy to learn, it's simply more useful to learn a language like English, Spanish or Mandarin Chinese that has hundreds of millions of speakers worldwide. I can't see any constructed language being able to overcome that barrier, if a universal second language ever does arise I'd expect it to be a natural one.

 

[Zontar]

if a universal second language ever does arise I'd expect it to be a natural one.

I'm pretty sure English as it stands is already that. It's the most widely spoken secondary language as it is as well as being the language of trade. If it isn't already the universal second language, it's definitely going to be the one which becomes it.

 

[JoJo]

if a universal second language ever does arise I'd expect it to be a natural one.

I'm pretty sure English as it stands is already that. It's the most widely spoken secondary language as it is as well as being the language of trade. If it isn't already the universal second language, it's definitely going to be the one which becomes it.

English is certainly the closest, though with less than a third of the world's population speaking it you couldn't really call it universal yet. Perhaps one day, being a native English speaker I'm biased but I think it's a fairly easy language to get the hang of, without genders or different tonal meanings, hopefully if a non-English speaking nation becomes the new world superpower then it'll be too deeply ingrained to change for a long time, like Latin hanging around for all the time it did after the Roman Empire fell.

 

[Zontar]

if a universal second language ever does arise I'd expect it to be a natural one.

I'm pretty sure English as it stands is already that. It's the most widely spoken secondary language as it is as well as being the language of trade. If it isn't already the universal second language, it's definitely going to be the one which becomes it.

English is certainly the closest, though with less than a third of the world's population speaking it you couldn't really call it universal yet. Perhaps one day, being a native English speaker I'm biased but I think it's a fairly easy language to get the hang of, without genders or different tonal meanings, hopefully if a non-English speaking nation becomes the new world superpower then it'll be too deeply ingrained to change for a long time, like Latin hanging around for all the time it did after the Roman Empire fell.

This is true, though the only superpower that is realistically in a position to surpass the US in our lifetime is a united EU, so that would partially perpetuate English and the dominant language of trade, and bring German to the forefront but still significantly behind.

 

[Def]

English is certainly the closest, though with less than a third of the world's population speaking it you couldn't really call it universal yet. Perhaps one day, being a native English speaker I'm biased but I think it's a fairly easy language to get the hang of, without genders or different tonal meanings, hopefully if a non-English speaking nation becomes the new world superpower then it'll be too deeply ingrained to change for a long time, like Latin hanging around for all the time it did after the Roman Empire fell.

If comparing to other native languages, English looks simple. But it has many difficulties if to look at it deeply. Some last awkward features I've met:
1) Irregular pronunciation. In this case I like Germany and Italian: if I'm reading unknown word I can say it correctly, if I'm hearing unknown word I can write it with 95% of success.
2) Irregular commas. In this case I like Russian: it has very strong rules for punctuation.
3) Articles. The rule for placing "the" has at least 30 items.
4) It is hard to recognize the part of speech: noun, verb, adjective, etc. In this case I like Russian.
5) Many times of verb, twenty six.
There are also minor difficulties like using of at/on/in when to refer to dates/times.

I hope English will not be a language for international communications in the future. It will be nice to have Italian instead if to choose among native languages.

 

[Veylon]

If comparing to other native languages, English looks simple. But it has many difficulties if to look at it deeply. Some last awkward features I've met:
1) Irregular pronunciation. In this case I like Germany and Italian: if I'm reading unknown word I can say it correctly, if I'm hearing unknown word I can write it with 95% of success.
2) Irregular commas. In this case I like Russian: it has very strong rules for punctuation.
3) Articles. The rule for placing "the" has at least 30 items.
4) It is hard to recognize the part of speech: noun, verb, adjective, etc. In this case I like Russian.
5) Many times of verb, twenty six.
There are also minor difficulties like using of at/on/in when to refer to dates/times.

I hope English will not be a language for international communications in the future. It will be nice to have Italian instead if to choose among native languages.

Don't worry. The rough edges of English are gradually getting ground off as people refuse to learn it's baffling grammar and instead substitute whatever sounds right. We've already jettisoned 'whom' and are merging they're/their/there into a single world. I'm also seeing a reduction in irregular verbs as the older rules are forgotten; brought becoming bringed, for instance. Then there's the strong tend towards spelling stuff phonetically, which makes it easier to pronounce. I'm sure there are more improvements to English on the way!

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

It's funny that most people say that either English or Chinese will be the lingua franca of future humanity, considering that the former breaks its own rules more often than not and the latter has its own host of problems (like being a tonal language and having a ridiculously-complex writing system).

 

[Zontar]

It's funny that most people say that either English or Chinese will be the lingua franca of future humanity, considering that the former breaks its own rules more often than not and the latter has its own host of problems (like being a tonal language and having a ridiculously-complex writing system).

Well, given that English is already the lingua franca, having already replaced French in that position and becoming more prominent in it then any other has in human history with no real contenders for the position outside of German in Europe of Mandarin in East Asia, I don't think we need to be asking ourselves if it will be the major language of the future, given how that's already assured lest we have a world reshaping disaster which isolates everything and kills most of off.

As for Chinese, seems to be more a retread of the 80s idea that everyone would need to know Japanese in the future because of their significant in the world economy then due to anything else, which goes to show we don't actually learn from history, even if it's history most of us where around to see.

 

[BeeGeenie]

Latin is not simple or perfect by any stretch of the imagination; it's just dead. As in not enough people speak it anymore for it to be useful.
Esperanto isn't dead, there are some children who speak it as their first language, and it has begun evolving just like any other language.

Constructed languages are nice, in theory, but impractical. Language is far too fluid to try to control, and even constructed languages will begin to change if enough people use them.

If you want your writing available to a large audience, you have to write in a language that they will understand.
Then again, if your work becomes popular enough in your native language community, then I'm sure people will want to translate it.

If we do ever have a truly universal language, it will almost certainly be a natural evolution from the dominant languages of today. The international nature of communication in the modern world can facilitate the blending of languages, just as isolation once caused languages to branch out from their common ancestors.

 

[Brian Barker]

It is unfortunate that there is much ignorance about Esperanto. Indeed many ill-informed people describe Esperanto as "failed" - others say that if human beings were meant to fly, God would have given them wings.

Esperanto is neither artificial nor a failure however.

During a short period of 126 years Esperanto is now in the top 100 languages, out of 6,800 worldwide. It is the 22nd most used language in Wikipedia, ahead of Danish and Arabic. It is a language choice of Google, Skype, Firefox, Ubuntu and Facebook. Google translate recently added the language to its prestigious list of 64 languages.
Native Esperanto speakers, (people who have used the language from birth), include World Chess Champion Susan Polger, Ulrich Brandenberg the new German Ambassador to Russia and Nobel Laureate Daniel Bovet. Financier George Soros learnt Esperanto as a child.
Esperanto is a living language See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88YPPl6jJEQ
Their online course http://www.lernu.net has 125 000 hits per day and Esperanto Wikipedia enjoys 400 000 hits per day. That can't be bad

 

[neil_nachum]

In my experience the Esperanto community attracts three large groups of people. 1) People who love languages and 2) Dreamers, those who hope for a better future. This a continuous product of the loving zeal of its founder, L.L. Zamenhof. I personally belong to both above groups and therefore have been active in the Esperanto community since discovering Esperanto as a teenager 41 years ago. This group includes a variety of humanist, religious and political ideologies. 3) A third group might be the smallest: those people who understand that World Languages, like Latin, French, German (the forgotten one) and English all had periods of Military Supremacy, but since humanity is so imperfect all the native communities are doomed to mistakes and downfalls, sometimes to the point of extinction. Part of the Esperanto community, all literate and mostly trilingual, would like to see the end of this cycle of domination and violence that comes with military and cultural dominance. My personal opinion: As far as most people now knowing English: Some former British colonies having English as an Official Language, like Pakistan, have 75% of their females illiterate. Wouldn't that diminish the English or Globish-sayers to a joke? Ditto to Brian B.

 

[Def]

In my experience the Esperanto community attracts three large groups of people. 1) People who love languages and 2) Dreamers, those who hope for a better future. This a continuous product of the loving zeal of its founder, L.L. Zamenhof. I personally belong to both above groups and therefore have been active in the Esperanto community since discovering Esperanto as a teenager 41 years ago.

If you love languages, especially Esperanto, would you say something about Lingva Franca Nova? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lingua_Franca_Nova

Suddenly I discovered that LFN is a new single psychologist's genial realization of Interlingua's main idea (a simple Ligva Franca for all Romanic) without its defects. For example, this is a book by Charles Dickens (1843) with the parallel translation to LFN http://lfn.wikia.com/wiki/Un_canta_de_natal/0

There are only 200 persons who can speak and write it. If it is better than Esperanto in theory and practice, I want it will evolute to the global language of international communications and knowledge archiving.

Why I think it is better in a very short look: it hasn't letters with caps (I can use usual keyboard layout), it has only 22 letters, it hasn't uncommon letter's sounds and their dependencies from near-standing letters or position in words, it hasn't exceptions in its grammar, it has a vocabulary from Romanic that is better than Esperanto's mix, those 200 persons and others may evolve it while Esperanto is closely controlled by the private group, it has better (but weaker) abilities for word-constructing while newbies in EO usually make unreadable word-constructions but think they are correct, it was grown from pidgins and Creoles (it was grown from practice).

Now, how to make it popular and then natural?


Only 2% of computer users use Linux-based operating systems only because 2% use them while they are great. Only few developers learn to program Ada language only because few developers use it while Ada is great. Only 200 persons use LFN because only 200 person use it while LFN is...

 

[Brian Barker]

@JoJo Even if Esperanto is supposedly designed to be easy to learn, it's simply more useful to learn a language like English, Spanish or Mandarin Chinese that has hundreds of millions of speakers worldwide. I can't see any constructed language being able to overcome that barrier, if a universal second language ever does arise I'd expect it to be a natural one.[/quote]


President Barack Obama wants everyone to learn a foreign language, but which one should it be? The British concentrate of French, the Australians study Japanese, and the Americans prefer Spanish.

Yet this leaves Mandarin Chinese and Hindi out of the equation. I think we should move forward and teach a common, neutral and easily learnt language, in all nations worldwide. This indeed would be a courageous step.
The case for Esperanto should be more frequently aired :

 

[Thaluikhain]

Yet this leaves Mandarin Chinese and Hindi out of the equation. I think we should move forward and teach a common, neutral and easily learnt language, in all nations worldwide. This indeed would be a courageous step.

What is "neutral", though? Who decides that?

In any case, there are quite a few competing universal languages out there, and most are relatively obscure. Worse, geographically, speakers are scattered, there's no place where it's actually particularly useful to know.