[Wikipedia-l] Europanto

Wed Apr 12 02:39:22 UTC 2006

Of all people, I think I understand this concept more than most. Of
course languages evolve. It's quite natural.

If it didn't make Wikipedia seem "less respectable", in fact I would
advocate writing en.wiki in modern colloquial English.

In fact, some people have been irritated with me because I often
justify my own "misspellings" as linguistic evolution rather than
mistakes - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=nessecary for
example yields 211,000 results (although this is very small when
compared to the 1,190,000,000 results for the "correct" spelling, it
is nonetheless significant).

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=ackward yields 225,000 (as
compared to 46,700,000; I don't tend to spell the word that way myself
but I have noticed that many people do).

http://www.google.com/search?q=accidently
http://www.google.com/search?q=accomodate
http://www.google.com/search?q=amature
http://www.google.com/search?q=arguement
http://www.google.com/search?q=beleive
http://www.google.com/search?q=calender
http://www.google.com/search?q=catagory
http://www.google.com/search?q=cemetary
http://www.google.com/search?q=changable
http://www.google.com/search?q=collectable
http://www.google.com/search?q=commited
http://www.google.com/search?q=concensus
http://www.google.com/search?q=momento+-%22un+momento%22+-%22momento+decisivo%22++-%22el+momento%22+-%22momento+de%22+-%22del+momento%22+-%22do+momento%22+-%22%C3%BAltimo+momento%22+-%22este+momento%22+-%22um+momento%22+-%22momento+del%22+-econ%C3%B3mico+-sobre+-entre+-ahora+-despu%C3%A9s+-tambien+-ning%C3%BAn+-cuando+-cual+-usted

etc.

However, while language change is generally only somewhat chaotic and
is governed by some specific rules, and every language is at any given
point tied down to a great degree (for example, even though English is
constantly changing, you still can't say something like "I not likes
me it much the no chocolate"), no language is ever in such a state of
linguistic chaos as Europanto is right now and will, in all
likelyhood, always be.

And while it's true that there are different ways of saying the same
thing in pretty much every language, how many of them would you use in
writing? How many of them are natural? I mean, I could certainly say
"Ahh, chocolate? Yes, I truly love that food", but could I say it
without context? If I used it to _start_ a conversation people would
think I was positively insane. There are always limitations on how you
can say something in any real language.

In Europanto, there aren't really any. You can fool around with
synonyms and word order so much that it is truly not a language
anymore.

Mark

On 11/04/06, europanto <europanto at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Yes, and ... do you have to be afraid of that ? ;o)
> Languages are not dead or frozen things.
> They all evolve. They also tend to take words from their fellow ones.
> ( French purists seem to be frightened when they see English words
> invading "their" language, but they don't see how many French
> words can be found in English )
> And you know, even in a single language, there are dozens of ways
> to express an idea, with different words and grammar rules.
> For example ( sorry, in French. I'm not good enough in English for that ) :
>
> -"J'aime les confiseries au chocolat plus que les autres."
> -"Les sucreries chocolatées sont mes préférées."
> -"De toutes les friandises, celles qui sont au cacao incarnent mon péché
> mignon."
> -"Les bonbons ... miam ! Les bonbons au chocolat ... miam miam !"
> -"Mes papilles me le disent, bravant mon désarroi
> Au pays Gourmandise, le chocolat est roi"
>
> ( => I prefer chocolate sweets  )
>
> smh
> --
> View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Europanto-t1056989.html#a3858151
> Sent from the Wikipedia General forum at Nabble.com.
>
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"Take away their language, destroy their souls." -- Joseph Stalin