Toch weer antwoord: RE: Antwoord: Squeak Internationalization (vo orheen: Re: AW: AW: -- Whats this 'AW:' mean?)

Richard A. O'Keefe ok at atlas.otago.ac.nz
Mon Feb 4 23:20:49 UTC 2002


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	Subject: RE: Toch weer antwoord: RE: Antwoord: Squeak Internationalization
		 (vo orheen: Re: AW: AW:  -- Whats this 'AW:' mean?)
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	Date: Mon, 4 Feb 2002 23:30:45 +0100
	
	
	
	> -----Original Message-----
I wrote:
	> Bliss had seen war in Europe, and believed that the division of
	> languages was part of the problem.  He wanted to make a notation
	> that *anyone* could communicate in.

G.J.Tielemans at dinkel.utwente.nl replied:
	The dreanm he did share with Esperanto and Ino?
	
If "Ino" means "Ido", which from the little I've seen of it is basically
Esperanto-with-a-spelling-reform, yes, with one big BUT:

    Esperanto is very much a *European* language.  It's not just Indo-
    European, it's Western and Central European, with very little Slavic.

    Last I heard, if you ranked the world's languages by number of speakers,
    Esperanto was in the top 40.  I'm sure the familiarity of much of its
    vocabulary to speakers of European languages helped, but I'm also sure
    the *unfamiliarity* of its vocabulary to speakers of Malayo-Polynesian,
    Chinese, Afro-Asiatic, &c &c &c limited it.  If you are a speaker of
    a non-European language, and you want to learn a European language,
    you might as well learn one with as many other speakers as possible.

Bliss's system is a purely graphical notation with *no* phonetics.
If there's a symbol for someone standing, I could pronounce it "stand"
and a Maaori could pronounce it "tuu", and neither of us would feel that
the other's sound system or vocabulary was "privileged", neither of us would
lose face.

Of course, grammar remains.  In Maaori, "2" is arguably a verb, and that
kind of thing does show through.  But there again, Bliss's system has, as
far as I understand it, its own pidgin-style grammar, just as ASL has its
own autonomous grammar.

	> I agree on that: doggybag, OK, IQ, TV, SHIT, FUCK, are normal Dutch words
	these days  
	
TV is from "classical/scientific" vocabulary, not English.
The last two of those words are from common Germanic stock, and Dutch
already had very close relatives.  It's really like the way the American
word "bun" seems to be taking over from the English word "bum" in this
country.  (I _hate_ the way our language is being replaced by American.
American is a fine language, for Americans.)




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