Comments on: Trüth, Beaüty, and Volapük

By: Enrique

Enrique — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 06:54:46 +0000

I would like to add a third “development” to the two mentioned by Penny Vos.

On 23 February 2012, Google added Esperanto to the languages that Google can translate.

http://translate.google.com

In this page, you can hear the reading of the text to translate, or the translated text. The reading in Esperanto is fairly good. The Google portal has already existed during several years:

http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=eo

The reaction of the Google translation team was very interesting:

http://thenextweb.com/google/2012/02/23/google-adds-esperanto-to-google-translate-making-it-the-64th-supported-language-neniel/

23 February 2012 Google adds Esperanto to Google Translate, making it the 64th supported language. Neniel!

Google implies that addition of the language a largely symbolic measure, designed to emphasize the fact that both Google Translate and the Esperanto language were created to further the goal of helping people understand one another. Google says that the team was actually stunned by how well the machine engine handled the language.

For Esperanto, the number of existing translations is

comparatively small. German or Spanish, for example, have more than 100 times the data; other languages on which we focus our research efforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but don’t achieve comparable quality yet.

Google attributes the ease of translation of the language to the fact that it was constructed in a way that was easy for humans to learn and therefore is easy for machines to translate. You can try out the new language on the Google Translate site now.

By: Penny Vos

Penny Vos — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 19:48:45 +0000

I don't think that this history is complete reference to two recent developments: 1.Esperanto has recently, just last year, been approved for teaching in Brazilian middle schools following positive remarks by the President about the desirability of Esperanto as a language for international communication. 2.The author of Australia's Language Policy recommends a "universal apprenticeship n learning languages" for all young Australians, and considers Esperanto to be suitable for the purpose. Materials have been designed to equip Australian primary teachers to teach the language to an effective standard in 100 hours of class time and the use of the Apprenticeship Language Learning (ALL)Strategy to make all young Australians multiculturally bilingual in primary school has been formally proposed to the designers of the National Curriculum.

By: Andrea Fontana

Andrea Fontana — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 18:39:02 +0000

The true reasons of the victory of Esperanto, and the fall of Ido, Volapuk, and others, were well undestood by Zamenhof himself. You can find them in his "Antaŭpaolo" (foreword) to the book "Fundamento de Esperanto" (Foundation of Esperanto). In that text we can see, that Zamenhof had genius intuitons about the social and pragmatic phaenomena of language use. Linguistics and Language Philsophy, in those times, were not as aware of such phaenomena, as Zamenhof intuitively was...

The Antaŭparolo of the Fundamento is stil today a text worth to be deeply studied...

Sorry for my "broken english"...

By: aniruddha banhatti

aniruddha banhatti — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 17:21:12 +0000

As her book about artificial languages, Arika Okrent's article contains large chunks of half-baked-poorly-researched knowledge and large volume of misinformation and subjective and personal opinions, like, Esperanto survives still because of luck, actually its survival being mainly due to logical and easily learnable structure, and as an Esperantist I believe it will spread more precisely due to its ease, still she is better than the silly french ex-precident Chirac, who said -Now that Esperanto is dead, English will be the world language, in accepting that Esperanto is living and flourishing by the day.

By: Jens S. Larsen

Jens S. Larsen — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 13:58:57 +0000

Esperanto did not get a head start. It was published in 1887, but struggled for its existence for at least a decade, and seriously took off only around the first world congress of Esperantists in 1905. Volapük appeared in 1879, took the world with storm during the 1880's, and then collapsed even more suddenly than it had been built up. Everyting about Esperanto and Volapük is different, not just the outward appearance.

By: David Wolff

David Wolff — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 13:18:54 +0000

Professor Sidney Culbert of the University of Washington researched the number of speakers of various languages, and is the source of the estimates of 1,000,000 to 2,000,000 speakers. Letters from him discussing the methods and results are at http://www.panix.com/~dwolff/docs/, see “Number of Esperanto speakers.”

By: Ian Fantom

Ian Fantom — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 11:14:24 +0000

A fair assessment, but what is not generally recognised is that the in-fighting in the Esperanto movement had nothing to do with linguistics. When the truth about the Ido-skismo was know there was a cry of 'trompo kaj perfido' (deception and betrayal). It was a coup against the Esperanto movement led by three Frenchmen. The highest profile one was Marquis Louis de Beaufront, who turned out to be plain M. Louis Chevrier. He had mysteriously been advancing the idea that Esperanto was 'just a language', with no philosophy, thus undermining Zamenhof's 'interna ideo', the inner idea of Esperanto. Yet the Esperantists could not come to terms with the idea that this was a French coup against the Esperanto movement, rather than just a few nutters who thought they had better linguistic ideas than Zamenhof.

The same idea is now being advanced by a mysterious organisation called 'La Esperanta Civito' under the guise of a pseudo-philosophy which they call 'Rauxmismo'. Again, the Esperantists cannot come to terms with the idea that this could be a coup against the Esperanto movement, but that it is just a few nutters who happen to be undermining the movement.

By: Gonçalo Neves

Gonçalo Neves — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 10:34:28 +0000

This is a great article. However, there is some piece of wrong information about Ido language. First of all, it was not designed by “a group of Esperantists”. Some of the scholars who participated in its conception and development were not Esperantists. The word for “ball” in Ido is not “balon” but “balono”. And, last but not the least, Ido hasn’t “died out”. Without being a corpse, a ghost or a zombie, I use it everyday with people from several countries. Being small doesn’t mean being dead...

By: Hermann Philipps

Hermann Philipps — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 07:56:39 +0000

This article about Volapük may have its funny aspects, but it is incomplete. Volapük never died. It was moderately reformed around the 1930s, and there is an unbroken chain of “Cifals” (chiefs of the Volapük community) from Johann Martin Schleyer to today’s Brian Bishop. Lots of materials are available for people interested in learning and reading modern Volapük (see: http://www.xn--volapk-7ya.com/). Native speakers of English may consider umlauts as somewhat awkward, but French, German, the Scandinavian languages including Finnish, plus Hungarian, the Turkic and Mongolian languages etc. etc. have no problems with them, and even English has the ä and ö (bad, word). So perhaps this criticism about umlauts in Volapük refers to the letters äöü which are not easily accessible on English keyboards.

With regard to “failure”, Esperanto is just another example when considering the original purpose of uniting whole mankind under one common language.

In fact, Volapük is a fascinating language well meriting the attention of language lovers.

By: Robert

Robert — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 21:11:08 +0000

Interesting article, but misinformed about Ido which has not died out. There are currently three printed magazines in the language, plenty of Internet forums, and a wide variety of websites in or about Ido, such as http://ido.li (in Ido) and http://idolinguo.org.uk (in English and Ido).

By: Christophe

Christophe — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 07:25:37 +0000

Volapük had all those things as well, and eventually failed. So did Ido, Interlingua, and many others. So it's not those features that separate Esperanto from unsuccessful IALs.

Rather, I believe that it was Zamenhof relinquishing any rights to the language, his focus not only on practicality but also on beauty (there's a reason so many of his original texts were poems, which speak not only to the mind but also to the heart of people), and the timing of Esperanto's appearance (right at the time when the Volapük community was disintegrating, resulting in plenty of people already sold to the idea of an IAL, but without one to use, since Schleyer had forbidden them to use Volapük unless they'd do it his way, and thus more than ready to adopt Esperanto when it'd just appeared) that gave Esperanto a head start that no other IAL afterwards got.

By: Christophe

Christophe — Thu, 25 Oct 2012 07:18:53 +0000

Actually, Hildegard von Bingen's Lingua Ignota precedes this language by about 2 centuries, so it still is the world's first invented language (that we have evidence of). Still, it's nice to hear of such an early conlang not of Western origin.

By: Thorfin

Thorfin — Wed, 24 Oct 2012 04:55:00 +0000

Just the name Volapuk makes me smile. Many years ago in Salt Lake City one of the TV stations, KTVX-4 had a Friday night horror movie show. "Nightmare Theater" hosted by someone calling himself "Dr.Volapuk."

By: Esperanto vs. Volapük

Esperanto vs. Volapük — Sat, 20 Oct 2012 16:41:24 +0000

[...] article is here, the pointer is from [...]

By: Mark A. Mandel

Mark A. Mandel — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 23:23:25 +0000

As a linguistic researcher, a lifelong Esperanto-speaker and sf fan, and a longtime student of Klingon, I can assure Blake that that isn’t the case.

A small number of people are capable of conversing in Klingon. Arika Okrent guessed in her book “In the Land of Invented Languages” that there might be 20–30 fluent speakers. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klingon_language#Speakers)

Estimates of Esperanto speakers range from 10,000 to 2,000,000 active or fluent speakers, as well as perhaps a thousand native speakers, that is, people who learned Esperanto from birth as one of their native languages. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto)

tlhIngan veQbeq marqem la’Hom — Heghbej ghIHmoHwI’pu’! Subcommander marqem, Klingon Sanitation Corps Death to Litterbugs!

By: Adam Green

Adam Green — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 15:49:24 +0000

Thanks! All fixed up.

By: Blake

Blake — Fri, 19 Oct 2012 15:23:38 +0000

Klingon probably has more speakers.

Dunno about Elvish.

By: Jonathan Cooper

Jonathan Cooper — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 23:53:10 +0000

Fascinating article – thanks. However, I think there may be a typo in one sentence: "There were hundreds of invented languages that came before Volapük the hundreds that came after, and almost no one has heard of any of them." Word #11 ("the") should be "and", I believe.

By: Nicole

Nicole — Thu, 18 Oct 2012 20:49:23 +0000

I do think that the success of Esperanto has something to do with the ease it can be learnt: no irregular verbs at all, phonetic spelling, use of affixes to reduce the number of words to be memorised, etc.

By: Mustafa Demiray

Mustafa Demiray — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 22:48:01 +0000

Hi, We have published a book on the world’s first invented language, Baleybelen, it’s mean “The language of Muhyi”, by Muhyi-i Gulseni, a XIV century sufi in Istanbul. http://www.klasikyayinlari.com/ebooks/default.aspx?kitapid=31 The book was edited and published by Ph.D. Mustafa Koc Kind Regars