Translate

Friday 22 February 2013

Language Of Diplomacy

In the 1920's the old League Of Nation's (the forerunner of today's UN), tried to suggest that the international language of diplomacy and trade be Esperanto - today there are estimated to be few more than 2,000 Esperanto speakers in the UK and maybe something between 500,000 and two million worldwide ....

Esperanto - A Failed Experiment
Esperanto - Failed

it was a failure.
 
One reason was national chauvinism, led by 'quelle, surprise' the French, who steered by the 'Academie Francaise', resisted any efforts to have an international language, unless of course it happened to be French (they still harbour dreams that French will one day become the 'Language Of Diplomacy' .... again), so the language never got accepted, and maybe the last chance for 'man to speak unto man' was lost.

However now there is 'SaypU' ... which hopes to use a modified Roman alphabet of 23 letters (dropping "c", "q", and "x"), and adds a reverse e or E (- ɘ or Ǝ), for the sound schwa ...... the brain child of Jaber George Jabbour, a Syrian banker living in the UK, he hopes it will allow people to speak unto people via phonetic Inglish .... which isn't Indian English (which is sometimes mockingly also called 'Inglish' for its often quirky terminologies).

Phat chance ... the French will nevur egrii with it ...

3 comments:

  1. It really is not right to call Esperanto a failure. I see Esperanto as a remarkable success story. I'm one of tyhe 2000 Esperanto speakers in the UK. Esperanto may not be perfect, but I've used it successfully in Africa, South America and Europe, and it does the job.

    Take a look at learn.esperanto.org.uk

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Well Mr Chapman, I concede that its certainly remarkable that you found another Esperanto speaker, in everyday circumstances in Africa, South America, and Europe .... especially as the odds against it must be stacked. I on the other hand, speak English and manage to find another English speaker everyday circumstances in most parts of the globe.

      The difference is that English in one form or another, is spoken by 375 million people as their first language, and an estimated range of between 470 million to over a billion as second language speakers. If you were looking for a world language by range & numbers then it would be English, although by numbers Chinese (including variants), or Spanish may rival this.

      Delete
  2. Actually Mr Barker, I wasn't promulgating English as the 'lingua franca' in the post ... I was actually just pointing out the latest attempts to establish a 'babel fish' language with 'SaypU' .... I then recounted a brief mention of the last serious attempt and failure to do so with 'Esperanto'.

    However there is also no denying the fact that there are three putative languages seriously competing for the role right now, English, Mandarin (if you count dialects), and Spanish. In another hundred years they will probably end up in balance, with North America and Europe having 'English', South America (and the southern half of the USA) using Spanish), and Asia opting for Mandarin.

    Finally, this is not a democracy of languages, and ultimately there may be only a few main languages spoken in the world ... The general consensus is that there are between 6000 and 7000 languages currently spoken, and that between 50-90% of those will have become extinct by the year 2100

    The winners will prove to be the languages which have the most utility, not the ones its most fair to pick .... there will not be a non-national language picked. Esperanto had its moment and for a variety of reasons that moment passed.

    ReplyDelete

All comments are welcomed, or even just thanks if you enjoyed the post. But please make any comment relevant to the post it appears under. Off topic comments will be blocked or removed.

Moderation is on for older posts to stop spamming and comments that are off topic or inappropriate from being posted .... comments are reviewed within 48 hours. I don't block normal comments that are on topic and not inappropriate. Vexatious comments that may cause upset to other commentators, or that are attempting to espouse a particular wider political view, are reviewed before acceptance. But a certain amount of debate around a post topic is accepted, as long as it remains generally on topic and is not an attempt to become sounding board for some other cause.

Final decision on all comments is held by the blog author and is final.

Comments are always monitored for bad or abusive language, and or illegal statements i.e. overtly racist or sexist content. Spam is not tolerated and is removed.

Commentaires ne sont surveillés que pour le mauvais ou abusif langue ou déclarations illégales ie contenu ouvertement raciste ou sexiste. Spam ne est pas toléré et est éliminé.

Followers

Blog Archive

Its a Pucking World

Its a Pucking World
Dreamberry Wine Cover

About Me

My photo
A middle aged orange male ... So 'un' PC it's not true....