A recent comment on the post about the so-called Grin Report – which explained the benefits of having one common language for Europe -, gives (unintentionally, I guess) still more reasons to support a natural language like Proto-Indo-European over Esperanto and similar inventions:
Le meilleur est l’ennemi du bien, ‘The best is the enemy of the good’; Ever since Ido tried to ‘improve’ on Esperanto, many other constructed languages have come along, but none has achieved anything near to what Esperanto has accomplished
I agree. No artificial (‘constructed’) language has achieved what Esperanto has, and no conlang is “better” than Esperanto, because “better” in conlangs is indeed enemy of “good”, as it happens partly in social networks, both ‘systems’ (to call the thousand Esperantos something) based on concepts of “popularity ranking” and supposed “number of followers/supporters”: the more popular your system is, the more attention you will be able to attract – no matter how stupid it might be from a logical point of view, it is all a question of ‘relevance’…
In Proto-Indo-European reconstruction, on the other hand, “better” is indeed better than “good”, as a better reconstruction brings the language we want to speak nearer to how it was actually spoken 4.500 years ago by Proto-Indo-Europeans.
The difference between them, to put it easy, is that some of you might say “we are going to call the sun ‘suno’ in Esperanto”, while others could say “we are going to call the sun ‘soleil’ in Ido”, and so on and on, for ever and ever. The sun had only one name (maybe two) in Proto-Indo-European, and most (old) dialects show its derived term; but they might also show derivations from different original variants, or the original form might be still obscure. That’s why we need to improve our knowledge in Indo-European dialects and Proto-Indo-European reconstruction, just in case we need to replace the (now) common PIE reconstructed *sāwel with a different root, say *sōwl, or a source near to Gmc. zero-grade *sulnos, etc., because of a different Vedic Sanskrit or Tocharian attested word… In any case, we are saying “sun” as Proto-Indo-Europeans did, but it might be more correct to use a variant deemed nearer to the original PIE language, instead of what we use today. Therefore, better is better than good; but just good is also all right in PIE reconstruction for a modern Indo-European language of Europe.
I guess one has to undergo some kind of difficult abstraction to understand this, as many Esperantists don’t seem to get the point: maybe they aren’t always opened to stop speaking (or, better, stop defending) their ‘language’, while at the same time trying others to begin learning it. I can understand the Esperantist reticence to dismiss their wrongly-directed past efforts and hopes, but the time and work already wasted learning or supporting Esperanto won’t be recovered. They still have, though, the opportunity to make good use of their time and wish of a common language for Europe in the future: they only have to take the right decision, not taking on account past mistakes.
there are more than 30,000 book titles in Esperanto! And Esperanto has been around for more than 120 years! Most of the other attempts at a constructed language have fallen by the wayside.
I agree too. Every single conlang apart from Esperanto has failed. And I should add Esperanto has obviously failed as an international language, as you cannot seriously call “international” a ‘language’ that is spoken by some dozens of people in an ‘International Esperanto Convention’ once a year… I am sure more people are able to speak ‘languages’ like Sindarin or Klingon in a regional Lord of the Rings or Star Trek convention anywhere in the world, than Esperantists actually do speak Esperanto in their yearly ‘International Conventions’.
Anyway, entering in your “great numbers” argument, if that code called Esperanto was created in some hours by an illuminated ophtalmologist a 120 years ago, I don’t see how it can compete with a natural language like Proto-Indo-European, derived from an older prehistoric language, spoken for centuries, older than the oldest civilizations of Europe, derived into a thousand dialects still spoken today, and which has been studied and its reconstruction improved by expert linguists for more than 200 years.
To compare ‘number of book titles’, please do a quick search with Google and Google Scholar to see how many scientific research papers and books have been written about Proto-Indo-European, and how many centres and universities have professors teaching Proto-Indo-European to thousands of students each year, and then we can compare the same numbers about your inventions – you can even compare it with the whole number of papers and books which deal with all conlangs, not only Esperanto, if you want…
Also, if Esperanto is (in your words) the most successful conlang in history, and if, after 120 years of being such a great success, there are only (supposedly) 30.000 book titles – you can see I accept your inflated numbers, I don’t care anymore about veracity in Esperantist inventions, it would be a total nonsense to drive the discussion to your imaginary world of ‘facts’ about your ‘language’ – and (supposedly) some thousands of speakers in the world – while Proto-Indo-European, whose revival as a spoken language hasn’t been proposed until two years ago, has already more publications and actual speakers, most of them expert linguistis and philologists.
So I don’t get your point on the advantages of learning Esperanto at all: maybe you Esperantists are still working on a ‘language’ that only you Esperantists want to learn to be able to speak with each other only, like some kind of a secret, super-dooper code only you understand – but, indeed, so easy that you cannot expect to speak without being understood by others… If so, maybe it’s time for some of you practical Europeans to get rid of this ‘art’ called conlanging, if your aim is really to speak a common European (or even international) language, and begin thinking about learning and speaking a common, natural language like Proto-Indo-European, that cannot be “substituted” by other ‘language’ inventions, however ‘better’ or ‘easier’ they might be considered by their fans…
A similar fate awaits Indo-European, which, in its attempt to be more “naturalistic,” has actually become more difficult to learn, with its four conjugations of the verb, for example.
First of all, we never said it is easy, as, in fact, Indo-European is far more difficult than Esperanto and other wrongly-called ‘languages’ formed by simple invented rules+vocabulary, you are right – my nephew says “pa” and “ma” when she wants something: English is more difficult than her ‘language’, so should I write my post in it, and create a group to promote it, only because she and other kids think a “ma & pa” language code is enough to be called ‘language’ and to communicate everything they want to others…?
Following your argument, I have to say Indo-European could probably be considered more difficult than other real, natural languages like English or French. However, you miss two very important points, showing you – like many Esperantists which repeat such perennial equivocal arguments until exhaustion – strive to see the project as “just another Esperanto”, thus perpetuating your mistakes and misconceptions about language and peoples, and possibly the mistakes and misconceptions of others who might read your ‘reasons’:
1) There is no such “attempt to be more naturalistic“: Proto-Indo-European was a natural, spoken language, and it evolved into different dialects, which are the ancestors of modern Indo-European languages. We want to revive an old language, not to create a conlang; to put it easy for you again, we want to speak a real language, not to decide how we will call the sun, or how we will say sentences like “excuse me, can you speak Esperanto?”, that is, if we will prefer “escuso mi, cano tu spik Esperanto?” or an ‘easier’ or ‘better’ (?!) “pardoni me, poti ju parlo Esperanto?“, discussing which one of the thousand possible combinations of sounds is “easier”, or “more beautiful”, or “better”, or (to sum up) which one sounds less stupid for the future learner…
2) The fact that one language is considered ‘more difficult’ than other is in no way an obstacle to speak a language: that’s an important point you Esperantists miss the whole time, ever since the creation of your artificial monster. People began to speak Hebrew again – a modern version of the old, death language called Hebrew – because they wanted, even though your Polish idol was already promoting the “easy Esperanto” as the international language of the future at that very time. People throughout the world have said a big NO to seriously speaking absurd inventions like Volapük or Esperanto in the past 120 years because that’s people’s will. And people will decide if and when they want to speak Indo-European, no matter how “easy” or “difficult” it might be for them or for you.
The difference between Esperantists and Indo-Europeanists, I guess, is that you can spend your time learning how the grandmother of most modern languages was (and mother of some Classical languages, like Sanskrit, Latin or Greek), trying to speak nearly as Proto-Indo-Europeans spoke, waiting to see if the Indo-European language revival has success in the European Union – and knowing that, if it doesn’t succeed, you will still be far better of for learning any modern Indo-European language -; or you can get stuck in your wrong ideas about your ‘party’ or ‘group’ being “right” in trying to speak the ‘best language in the world’ or ‘the easiest language‘, learning a mix of grammatical rules + words that one man or a group of people have imagined they can call ‘language’…
But don’t be afraid, these reasons won’t convince most of you Esperantists and ambitious IAL-conlangs searchers; most of you will keep insisting in speaking your successful creations, that’s normal and people will always have a reason to speak Esperanto, Ido, Interlingua, Latino sine flexione, and any other ‘historical’ self-made one-minute crap they can find or create: This is a) partly due to Zamenhof‘s sad marketing success in convincing other people to call his creation a “language”, and b) partly due to the fact that people necessarily follow the Universal Law of Persistence of Error, and no matter how absurd their old positions might reveal themselves after some time, there will always be a reason to follow the mistaken idea, because of e.g. ‘history’, ‘tradition’, ‘proud’, ‘group pressure’, etc. or the uttermost direct and voluntary ignorance.
If this Universal Law happened and happens with the latest and best peer-reviewed scientifical papers, and I see it everyday in the newest editions of important books on Biochemistry or Physiology, what can we expect from those who share an extravagant idea – the splendid ‘conlanging aiming to achieve the “perfect IAL”‘ idea – which is for Linguistics, if compared to Medicine, like a bad version of homeopathy…?
