An unusual case where Esperanto could’ve helped

(Sube estas traduko de ĉi tio en Esperanto)

An Italian made a YouTube video in English. Another Italian made a video in response. He wanted those who watched the first video to be able to understand his own, so he used English too. But his English was not strong.

If we would use Esperanto as the international language instead of English, this would have been better. The first Italian’s Esperanto would probably still be better than the second’s, but the second’s Esperanto would be better than his English. So, the second could express his thoughts more easily and more clearly.

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Italo faris filmeton en la Angla. Alia italo faris filmeton por respondi. Li volas, ke tiuj, kiuj spektis la unuan filmeton, povas kompreni la duan, do li antaŭ uzis la Anglan. Sed la Angla de li ne estis bona.

Se ni uzus Esperanton anstataŭ la Angla por la lingvo internacia, ĉi tio estus pli bona. La Esperanto de la unua Italo kredeble ankoraŭ estus pli bona ol tio de la dua, sed la Esperanto de la dua estus pli bona ol la Angla. Do, la dua povus pli facile kaj pli klare esprimi pensojn liajn

The idea of Esperanto

First let’s start with busting a myth:

Esperanto is not meant to replace natural languages.

Esperanto is the world’s most widely spoken constructed language.

The idea behind Esperanto is that everyone should learn it as their second language. Then, when two people who don’t share another language want to communicate, they can use Esperanto. Moreover, they will be on relatively equal footing since the odds are neither of them are a native Esperanto speaker.

(There actually are native Esperanto speakers. According to Wikipedia, there were about 350 in 1996. You can hear some of them on YouTube: Esperanto: Like a Native)

To this end, Esperanto is designed to be easier to learn than natural languages. There are studies that show that it really is, and that learning Esperanto first can help when learning additional languages.

Esperanto isn’t perfect, but finding consensus on perfect is much harder than finding consensus on “good enough”. Esperanto’s creator himself created an improved version, but it couldn’t gain the traction that Esperanto had. Among constructed international auxiliary languages, Esperanto has been most successful.

I think English speakers in particular should support Esperanto as the world’s international language. While English seems to be the current lingua franca, it wasn’t the first. (As “lingua franca” itself attests.) It won’t always be. You can be guaranteed that if the next one isn’t Esperanto, it is going to be harder for you to learn than Esperanto.

If you’re interested in Esperanto, here are some starting points I recommend:

• The first book (unua libro) of Esperanto in English
• Duolingo†
• The grammar from the Fundamento de Esperanto in English
• The exercises from the Fundamento de Esperanto
• Lernu.net

Of course, there is much more, but those are places to start.

†The web version of the Duolingo Esperanto course includes some helpful grammar notes that are missing from the app. In any case, while I find Duolingo very helpful, I find it isn’t enough by itself to learn a language.

IPhone and sentences

The word “if” is not normally capitalized. If it comes at the beginning of a sentence, however, it is.

The word “iPhone”, despite being a proper noun, is not normally capitalized. IPhone, when it is the first word of a sentence, however, ought to be capitalized.

Spelling reform

The problem with those who are argue for English spelling reform is that they think everything should be spelled the way as they pronounce it. But not every native English speaker pronounces everything the same way. Arguably, one of the primary reasons English spelling became more uniform was so that speakers from different areas (even within the same country) could read each other’s writing.

Not why English is hard to learn

While such idiosyncrasies are what makes languages interesting, this has nothing to do with the difficulty of learning English. Why?

• Oxes
• Gooses
• Mouses
• Mans
• Foots
• Tooths
• Brothers

A new English speaker is unlikely to say “methren”. These are the mistakes they are likely to make. In context, you are going to understand these “incorrect” plurals. (And “brothers” isn’t even incorrect.) Mastering these irregular plurals is one of the least important aspects of learning English.

Pronouns tend to be irregular in any language. That’s because they’re used a lot. Which also means that they are the irregular words that students will most quickly master.

Compare this to the inflections of the Romance languages or the two syllabaries plus Kanji used to write Japanese. Although, I have found that the difficulties of different languages don’t matter much in the end. If, in addition to study, you use the language everyday, you will learn it. If you don’t use the language regularly, you will struggle no matter how “easy to learn” it may be.

OED price

From “Oxford English Dictionary ‘will not be printed again’”

Despite its worldwide reputation, the OED has never made a profit. The continuing research costs several million pounds a year. “These are the sort of long-term research projects which will never cover their costs, but are something that we choose to do,” Mr Portwood said.

Huh? So, if the price isn’t covering its costs, why price it so high? Better yet, why not price it high enough to cover the costs?

I always wished I could justify the cost of the OED. Or even a subscription to the online version. It’s kind of annoying to know a price that I can’t justify doesn’t even cover the costs.

Olympic pronunciation trivia

The J in “Beijing” is actually pronounced more like the normal English pronunciation of J rather than “zh”. Not that it matters.