BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: robomatic
Date: 16 Jun 05 - 02:47 PM

I'll say.

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: PoppaGator
Date: 16 Jun 05 - 02:27 PM

Thanks so much ~ very interesting stuff!

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: Haruo
Date: 15 Jun 05 - 04:52 PM

Well, I'm back from a very successful ELNA convention in Austin, an experience marred only by the heat and the hassles with security going and coming (there were four flights involved, and at three of them we encountered security delays; in one case, TSA in my opinion mistreated my wife, though they probably were just "going by the book"). At least none of the hassles lasted long enough to cost us a flight connection.

PoppaGator asked (and I promised to reply to):

Your parents must have had some connection to Japan or some special reason to send you to Japanese school in Seattle and then to live in Tokyo for the following year. I don't mean to pry ~ you've been most forthcoming ~ but your story presents as many questions as it answers!

My parents didn't have any preexisting special Japanese connection, prior to the 1966-67 school year. (They were both active in FIUTS, and my mom founded and directed the English Conversation Classes for the Wives of Foreign Students at the University of Washington, so they had lots of contact with foreign students, but not any more with the Japanese than any of the dozens of other countries that had students (generally grad students) at the UW.) My dad was the American Baptist campus minister at the University of Washington from 1953 (while I was in utero) until his death in 1968. After 14 years at the post he was given a year's paid sabbatical, and was able to land a position at Waseda Hoshien, the Christian student center affiliated with Waseda University, Tōkyō, as a Visiting Fellow filling in for a missionary who was on furlough stateside. He had about a year's advance notice so we were able to spend the school year attending Japanese Language School on Saturdays. From the rental house that we called "home" at 2-17-40 Koishikawa, Bunkyō-ku, to the American School would have been over an hour's commute each way, but we were just three or four doors from 礫川学校 (Rekisen Shōgakkō), the third-oldest public elementary school in Japan, so it was a no-brainer, given their willingness to have us, that we would go there. I was put back two years, into 6th grade, and my siblings were each put back one year: Akio (Graham) was in 5th, Saburō (Alan) in 3rd, and Sumiko (Peggy) in 1st. In due course I graduated (my 6th-grade class photo) and became a first-year middle-school student (what we call a seventh-grader in the US) — and by default also a first-year student of English as a Foreign Language, an experience that probably primed me for Esperantism.

Haruo

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: PoppaGator
Date: 06 Jun 05 - 03:47 PM

I did confuse "Haruo" with "Masato Sakurai" for a while there ~ thanks for clearing that up. (Masato is someone else, not another name for you, right?)

Your parents must have had some connection to Japan or some special reason to send you to Japanese school in Seattle and then to live in Tokyo for the following year. I don't mean to pry ~ you've been most forthcoming ~ but your story presents as many questions as it answers!

A good friend of mine (American, of European ancestry) was an English teacher in Japan until his untimely passing about a year ago. He started out by giving informal instruction to businessmen, then returned temporarily to the states for graduate school, in order to qualify for a post as professor of English at a Japanese university. He married a Japanese woman and made a life in his new home. He told me that, while he (obviously) can converse in Japanese, he never learned to read and write adequately(!), so I can appreciate the huge differences between the two languages. And I'm sure that learning English presents as difficult a hurdle to a Japanese person as learning Japanese would for an English speaker.

The fact that Esperanto is relatively widespread in Japan, presumably because it is so much more easily learned than English by the Japanese, is a pretty good argument for Esperanto as a better international language than pidgin-English "Globish." Especially since we can readily assume that the same situation would apply for the huge numbers of Chinese about to enter the global economy and the international community of the Internet.

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: Haruo
Date: 06 Jun 05 - 03:17 PM

I'm not sure why the first one works and the other three don't; anyhow, you can use the working links at this post on Thinking Baptists where you can also peruse the letter I sent to Mr. Halpern requesting permission to use them...

Haruo

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: Haruo
Date: 06 Jun 05 - 03:11 PM

Oops, I copied that from bulletin board where they don't use html. Here:

Ro Su Haru O

That should work.

春男

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: Haruo
Date: 06 Jun 05 - 03:09 PM

Wow, it worked! (If you have Japanese support on your computer/browser, anyhow.) If not, I think these links will show each character, separately, being written in animated-GIF form by kanji-lexicographer Jack Halpern.

[url=http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/jwb/wwwhalsod?2187_%CF%A4]Ro[/url] [url=http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/jwb/wwwhalsod?0574_%BF%DC]Su[/url] [url=http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/jwb/wwwhalsod?2576_%BD%D5]Haru[/url] [url=http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/jwb/wwwhalsod?2542_%C3%CB]O[/url]

春男

Subject: The naming of Haruo
From: Haruo
Date: 06 Jun 05 - 03:05 PM

The answer is "sort of". "Haruo" is formally an Esperanto noun, that is, it consists of a pronounceable series of Esperanto letters [which also in this case happen to be English and romanized Japanese letters] including at least one vowel followed by the noun ending -o. However, to my knowledge it has no "meaning" in Esperanto except as a given name, and the only "Haruo" I know of in Esperanto is myself. (Doubtless there are others; "Haruo" is a rather common name in Japan and there are thousands of Japanese Esperantists. I just don't happen to know of any personally.) So your initial assumption that "Haruo" is a ("real") Japanese name is correct. On the other hand, the "correct" romanized Japanese name that refers to "a Japanese person with unusually polished English language skills and an intense academic interest in the English-language folk ballad tradition is actually "Masato Sakurai" ;-) . I was born in Seattle, in 1954, of NW European (Scottish, Norwegian and English) ancestry, and my given name at birth was, as my legal name still is, Leland Bryant Ross. I was given the name "Rosu Haruo" (let's see if Mudcat can do kanji: ロス•春男 , i.e. ロス • 春男 using a different encoding) during the 1966-67 school year (when I was in seventh grade) at the Japanese Community Center's Saturday Japanese Language School, a place designed to teach sansei kids how to speak enough polite Japanese to wow their issei grandparents. I didn't have any issei grandparents, so the next year I spent living with my family in Tokyo and attending actual Japanese public schools. The name I went under in those schools was Rosu haruo as given above, though I very soon adopted a kanji way of writing the "Rosu" (since a katakana family name is rather unimpressive): 呂須. The "meaning" (etymologically) of my kanji for "Haruo" is simple and straightforward: "Springman". The "Rosu" on the otherhand is enigmatic or stupid, depending on how you look at it; it means "backbone-ought" or "needsspine" or something like that. (Not a normal Japanese family name, just kanji to avoid the katakana, which incidentally are Japanese for LA — a proud Seattleite, the last thing I want to be known as is "LA Haruo"!)

I learned Esperanto in 1970, and for thirty years I was "Liland Brajant ROS'" in Esperanto circles, the whole time lamenting the unfortunate misshapenness of my name. It never occurred to me that in my Japanese name I had a perfectly good Esperanto name already groomed for use. But finally a few years ago when another Seattle Esperanto couple had a newborn granddaughter they were raising in Esperanto, I decided I had to have a well-formed Esperanto name so I wouldn't interfere with Natalie's upbringing when I visited, and at long last the realization struck. I already was Haruo in Japanese; why not in Esperanto? And so I have been ever since. I'm still stuck with several legacies of my "Liland" years: my website is (still) called "La Lilandejo" and a couple of my most relied upon email addresses are lilandbr @ scn.org and hotmail.com, and lilandr @ yahoo.com (though now my primary one is [e-mail].

My very out-of-date and incomplete Japanese webpages begin at this page and this and this one.

Haruo

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: PoppaGator
Date: 06 Jun 05 - 02:03 PM

I wonder: is the pseudonym "Haruo" an Esperanto word?

As I first began to encounter Haruo's posts, I assumed that it was a ("real") Japanese name, and that he (or perhaps she) was a Japanese person with unusually polished English language skills and an intense academic interest in the English-language folk ballad tradition.

I realize now that I was mistaken, but I am still curious about that most unusual name/handle and whatever it might mean....

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Jun 05 - 07:44 AM

To take the piss out of someone: to tease them, to make fun of them , to mock them.

The trick with communicating well isn't to use lots of words, it's the way you use them. Rather like musical notes.

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 06 Jun 05 - 07:08 AM

To take the piss out of someone: to tease them, to make fun of them , to mock them.

The trick with communicating well isn't to use lots of words, it's the you use them. Rather like musical notes.

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: Haruo
Date: 05 Jun 05 - 09:34 PM

I think "piss-taking" may be one of those lexical items that separate us from you guys. What does it mean? (In Globish, that is!)

Thanks, McGrath.

Haruo

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 05 Jun 05 - 07:54 PM

I think some people may have missed the piss-taking element here. Just have a look at this page from that site Mr Reed gave us, headed: Read the two documents below, in sequence as presented here, and then ask yourself the one and only key question: "If I wanted to help someone in Zanzibar or Oulan-Bator understand what is the idea behind globish, which of the two documents should I send?", followed by an "American version" and a "Globish version".

The joke being that the latter is written in straightforward literate English, whereas the former is...not. (Not written in literate American English for that matter, but in parody journalese.)

And for those people who don't like to click blue clickies, here is how the two versions start:

(American)This little tidbit of literary joy is amiable and a slam dunk to peruse, notwithstanding the fact that it has the overwhelming gall to propose a revamping of our methods of verbal exchange around the world.

(Globish) This book is easy to read and with pleasure. Still, it proposes a complete change in the way we communicate around the world.

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: Haruo
Date: 05 Jun 05 - 01:48 PM

I would take issue with only one paragraph in Mr. Parker's very well-thought-out and -stated essay. He writes:

For today's needs English is the only rational solution. If I were a Dane and my native language were Danish and if I had a child who I wanted to be able to take advantage of all opportunities which may present themselves, I would certainly advise my child to learn English. Esperanto would not be an option.

Of course English presents the best language-learning target, for economic and academic advanncement, for a random Danish child. However, the propaedeutic effect of learning Esperanto first makes the "Esperanto would not be an option" assertion false. If we're talking about formal language learning (say, in a school setting), there is a body of significant experimental evidence (not to mention tons of the anecdotal kind) to show that learning Esperanto for a while will significantly speed up the successful acquisition of English (or, probably, any other third language) later. English schoolchildren who took one year of Esperanto followed by three years of French scored better on French testing than a parallel group that took four years of French (and they had an additional language to show for it, one that would come in handy in many places where French would be useless). A similar study was done, with similar results, in Finland with Esperanto as a prelude to (I think) German. There have been other such studies. My essay "The Math Behind the Assertion that It Really Would Make Sense to make Esperanto the World's Default Second Language" lays the potential value of this advantage out in simplified-for-easier-assimilation "story problem" terms.

Haruo

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: PoppaGator
Date: 05 Jun 05 - 01:19 PM

refresh (so this stays alive through Monday morning for all the weekday-only cats).

That's a most persuasive essay (immediately above) by GUEST Mr Parker.

I was the first to mention Esperanto in this thread, I believe, and did so somewhat dismissively. I have found the ensuing discussion very interesting and instructive, and I want to help it remain visible and available to as many surfers, lurkers, and idly curious observerers as possible.

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: GUEST,H. Neal Parker
Date: 04 Jun 05 - 03:55 PM

It is easy to argue that the modern world needs an international language (just one!) by means of which everyone can communicate with everyone else. That need is present today and will become more pressing in the future.

For today's needs English is the only rational solution. If I were a Dane and my native language were Danish and if I had a child who I wanted to be able to take advantage of all opportunities which may present themselves, I would certainly advise my child to learn English. Esperanto would not be an option.

But the world is probably going to be around for awhile, and international communication is a long-term problem as well as a short-term problem. As a _long-term_ solution English leaves a lot to be desired. Like all natural languages, it is full of irregularities, and the spelling system is one of the worst --- maybe the worst. Since I am a native speaker of English, I have no direct experience about how difficult it is to learn the language, but my impression is that in comparison to other natural languages it is not especially difficult. It is more difficult than some, easier than others, but in comparison to a planned language with no irregularities and an intentionally simple structure, like, for example, Esperanto, it is much more difficult. It is sometimes said that for English speakers Esperanto is 5 times easier than Spanish and 10 times easier than Russian. I am not aware of any careful study of comparative difficulty, but I speak Spanish well and have studied Russian, and my experience suggests to me that those ratios are roughly correct. I also speak Esperanto.

In other words English is just not very efficient. If the goal is to teach everyone in the world (several _billion_ people) a common second language, each of learning is very important. The number of man-hours that can be saved by learning a simple language rather than a difficult one is enormous.

Whether a planned language can be sufficient for international communication is an empirical, not a philosophical, question. Esperanto has been in use for nearly 120 years, and the empirical evidence shows clearly that it is sufficient. There is lots of original literature in Esperanto, some of it good, some of it bad. Can one create literature of the highest quality in Esperanto? I don't know, but the question is irrelevant, since the goal of Esperantists is that everyone continue to speak his native language and learn Esperanto to communicate with anyone outside his own language community. Esperanto may become a great literary language, but that is not is primary purpose.

For those who think that English has already won, I point that a poll conducted in 2000 in the 15 countries of the unexpanded European Union showed that 53% can speak a second language. 41% of those speak English. In other words about half don't speak any second language, and often that second language is not English. A few years ago I had an interesting experience in southern Mexico. I was on a bus approaching San Cristobal, when I realized that I had neglected to copy the map and lodging recommendations from my Lonely Planet guidebook before I left the US. A middle-aged couple had the French version of that guidebook, and I wanted to borrow it briefly. I asked if they spoke Spanish or English, and they said no. I don't speak French, but somehow we became aware that we both speak German and were able to communicate quite adequately on a non-advanced level. I found out that they had worked in North Africa and also spoke Arabic. But not English.

Statistics available on the internet indicate that only about 2% of the people in India, a British colony for many years, speak English, although almost all of the educated elite speak it. Esperanto aims to be for everyone, not just the elite.

So if Esperanto is the greatest thing since sliced bread, why has it swept the world already? Remember that big ideas take a long time to establish themselves. The idea of the metric system is nearly 350 years old, and it still hasn't conquered the world's biggest economy. But it will.

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: Haruo
Date: 03 Jun 05 - 02:14 PM

There have been literally thousands of reasonably well-constructed invented languages published in the last four or five hundred years. There are probably a dozen "simplified versions of French" out there. You can make your own easily; just limit yourself to three verb tenses, one mood, and one personal ending (say, use the "empty set" je X form for all verbs. Use the feminine forms of articles and adjectives to the exclusion of the masculine. Say "Vivez le France! Vivez le femme!" a lot. L'eurofrançais.

Now, Solresol is a language that actually deserves the attention of Mudcatters: a language where linguistic information is conveyed by musical pitch and all words are made up of the syllables of the do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-si scale. It was quite the rage during the mid-19th century, Victor Hugo was big into it.

Haruo

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: gnu
Date: 03 Jun 05 - 09:51 AM

CC... Jacques the Sailor?

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: GUEST,Brian
Date: 03 Jun 05 - 09:21 AM

Hi,
I have heard about Globish, simple English and Basic English.
Is there a simplified version of French too?
Thanks

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: Haruo
Date: 03 Jun 05 - 03:47 AM

Somewhere I have an introductory Klingon textbook in Esperanto. FWIW. I'd rather learn Tlingit.

Haruo

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: semi-submersible
Date: 02 Jun 05 - 09:15 PM

Do you by any chance mean Klingon?

I heard an anecdote about the guy Paramount hired before the third Star Trek movie to invent a "language" (out of the nonsense phrases the enemy characters made on the first two films). Just for fun, he designed the Klingon language without a verb "to be." (Some languages don't use it.) Then when he brings his complete lexicon to the studio for the first time, one of the Klingon stars comes up to him: "Oh, good, you can translate this line for me: 'To be or not to be...'"

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 02 Jun 05 - 07:26 PM

Kilgon has become a defacto 'lingua franca' (there English goes again pinching a foreign phrase and giving it a new related expanded meaning!) among a certain class!

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: Haruo
Date: 02 Jun 05 - 02:26 PM

Sorry, Doug, I get touchy about folks dissing what I consider my language of preference. (I can assure you I would not go to Texas for a week for the opportunity to speak English!) As for Esperanto hijacking the thread, it had long since been hijacked by proponents of Latin, Russian, Spanish, French, etc., as well as pooh-poohers of Esperanto. Globish fell by the wayside after the very first post, except for one suggestion that sIr jOHN had invented it and three posts dealing with its pronunciation.

But I can rectify that. Here are two articles to read on Globish:

If you can't master English, try Globish by Mary Blume in the International Herald Tribune

Useful language learn quick now! by Ben MacIntyre in The Times of London

Like Basic English (which is the wheel Globish apparently reinvents, or the deity of which it is an avatar?) Globish is harder to use than English unless you know no English but Globish. It also allows the use of myriad English idioms ("feel put down", for example) so long as they consist of Globish "words". Unlike Esperanto, which actually works better than English (for some purposes, and potentially for many) and is easier to learn, Globish will not work as well as whatever level of English the user can muster, and is harder to maintain.

Haruo
who points out further that a "conlang" site (such as the one you reference for the Porpoise poetry) is not by any stretch of the imagination synonymous with an Esperanto site. (Even though many conlang afficionados are competent in, and utilize, Esperanto.)

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: GUEST,Doug (sans cookie)
Date: 02 Jun 05 - 12:43 PM

Hi Haruo,

I guess 'hijacking' is too harsh. Thread driftish? --The question was a call for Globish. The thread became one about Esperanto. Similar, yes; on point, no. But I just used that as a way of wedging in the Porpoise Poetry, so don't take offense. I've enjoyed all your posts to Mudcat.

I'm glad you admire the rhyme scheme. The translations need work.

doug

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: Haruo
Date: 02 Jun 05 - 06:55 AM

Doug, I'm not sure how you manage to interpret responding to an invitation as hijacking, but I do appreciate the porpoise poetry you posted. At least I guess it's poetry — it seems to rhyme ;-)

Haruo

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: PoppaGator
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 04:46 PM

Greetings, Esperantists:

I've been down with some kind of flu or summer cold for several days, so I have not been keeping up with this discussion. I appreciate the information that I've received from Haruo via PM, and from several more of you via links in this thread.

Please be assured that I will look into this material; I admire the effort to create a "neutral" international language, and I am especially impressed that so many people over the years have made such great efforts to advance the cause of Esperanto. I should know more about it than I do, and intend to learn at least a little more. Thank you.

That said, I still don't really expect to become a convert, just a more knowledgerable and sympathetic observer. Of course it is patently unfair that US English is the current ipso facto international language, but fairness (and morality in general) does not seem to have much to do with the sociopolitical evolution of the human race. Rightly or wrongly, English seems to be much better positioned than Esperanto to take over the world ~ not because it "should" or because it's the "best" choice, but simply as a function of power.

And not just political and economic power, either, although that's certainly important: English has a certain linguistic power in its proven flexibility and adapatability. If a concept or object exists for which there is no woird in English, English will incorporate any word or phrase from any other language and make it its own.

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: darkriver
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 03:52 PM

Well, it looks like Esperanto has already hijacked this thread, so I don't feel too badly about mentioning the really global language--Porpoise. And it was at an Esperanto Web site that I found this translation of Porpoise Poetry (and let's take all the remarks about it having no porpoise as a given and move on, okay?):

Porpoise Poetry Revisited

Multaj homoj skribis al ni por demandi pri la "Porpoise Poetry" de S-ro F. Foceno en la lasta numero de Vortpunoj. Ni, kompreneble, turnis nin al Profesoro Mifaras Bontrompon je la Porpoise Linguistics Institute. Jen lia responda^jo:

In recent email with the Editorial staff of Vortpunoj, I received the
following message which is purported to be poetry written by a porpoise.
My assignment was to produce a translation of the meaning of the poem,
with the understanding that the poetic nature of the original might be
lost.

This task was considerably more difficult than the usual run-of-the-mill assignment translating geckos or cockroaches. Although non-standard transliterations are quite common, in this case the choice of
transliteration scheme nearly rendered the task impossible.
Representing porpoise speech entirely with the characters "E" and "e"
meant that much of the nuance of the individual words was lost.

However, I believe I have accomplished the task. Standard
representation of porpoise speech, which consists of a
pitch/volume/duration triplet for each squeak. Of course, the original is lacking in all three of those values. However, we made the simplifying assumption that the number of "e" characters correspond to a duration, we also assumed that the capital "E" characters indicated a higher volume than the "e" characters. We created for each squeak an estimated *range* of possible values, based on our simplifying assumptions. Then, we ran a computer matching program that generated every possible word that the might be indicated. In several cases there was only one possible word. Based on these we could eliminate some of the possibilities for other words, in some cases due to grammatical impossibility and in others on consistancy in meaning.

Here are the results of our efforts:

Glossary

E               I-see-it [via echo-location]
                seaweed
                tentacle
Ee             good-luck!
EeEeEeEe       right [correct, exclamation of agreement]
Eee             thermocline
Eeee            behold or to-bite-the-flukes of
EeeeEeeeE       underneath-and-to-the-right
EeeeeEeeeeE    go-for-it [exhortation to strive, whatever the odds]
Eeeeeeee       so-near-and-yet-so-far [exclamation on the unatanable]
                you've-almost-got-it
                you're-almost-there
Eeeeee          look-out [exhortation to take care]

> Eeee! Eee! EeeeEeeeE?
Behold! Look underneath that thermocline and to the right!

> EeEeEeEe.... E E E!
Right.... I see it! There's [seaweed or tentacle] there!

> Eeeeeeee. Eeeeeeee.
So near and yet so far!

> Eee! Eeee! EeEeEeEe! E!
At the termocline! Look! You can get it! The [seaweed or tentacle]!

> EeeeeEeeeeE? Ee!
Go for it! Good luck!

> Eeeeeee. Eeeeee. E! E!
You're almost there! Look out! I see it! The [seaweed or tentacle]!

> E! E!
I see it! The [seaweed or tentacle]!

E E E!
I see it! The [seaweed or tentacle]! I see it!

The Web site, btw, is
http://www.geocities.com/raredata/conlanghumor.txt


Doug

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: Haruo
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 03:47 PM

Urp; "arguments the he" in my last post should read "arguments know he".

Haruo
who thinks there are at least a couple of "good arguments" for Esperanto hidden under the babelpiscine exterior of GUEST Sebastian's post

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: Haruo
Date: 01 Jun 05 - 01:55 PM

I mentioned this thread in the Yahoo! Group Reago (a forum devoted to responding to misinformation about Esperanto and related matters (such as International English) and received the following from a distinguished Esperantist (a psychiatrist and former UN translator), Dr. Claude Piron [snipping an apology for not joining Mudcat to post it himself]

Al tiu, kiu serchas bonajn argumentojn, chu vi bonvolus indiki, ke li au shi povas iri al www.geocities.com/c_piron , kie shi au li trovos artikolojn, kaj science seriozajn, kaj humure amuzajn, pri tiu temo ?

which is to say, "Would you be so kind as to let the one [PoppaGator, but it's an open invitation to all] who is seeking good arguments the he or she can go to www.geocities.com/c_piron, where she or he will find both scientifically serious and amusingly humorous articles on that topic?"

Enjoy.

Haruo

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: GUEST,Sebastian
Date: 29 May 05 - 04:40 AM

Hello!
Hazardous I got the information about this discussion (via Esperanto...). Let me please inform you, that there are many persons in the world who are uzing Esperanto. For example in Hungary Esperanto is the third-often learned language at school.
Until now are nearly 1000 projects of planned languages known. Esperanto is the _ONLY ONE_ who really successed and is now used in the whole world.

Of course it may be, that you until now not yet conscious met a person, who speaks it to you - because you aren't speaking it by yourself. Why anyone should speak to you in Esperanto?

Go on, surf on the net, and you will discouver millions of pages about and in Esperanto. Start for example here: www.esperanto.net or learn a little bit Esperanto: www.lernu.net / www.ikurso.net. Then you are perhaps in a better state to estimate the positive aspects of Esperanto.

By the way: Excuse my not-so-good English. I spent over 6 years in school to learn a bit (did you have to spent the time for learning German as a foreign language too?). 2 years ago I started with self-learning Esperanto and now I speak it MUCH better than English and daily use it (and I teach Esperanto also...). Unfortunately you don't speak Esperanto so it isn't very helpful to write to you in Esperanto...

You know, why languages are spreading or not? It's related to power over folks or a power struggle. I can't explain it good in English. But the important thing is: A language like English is not getting the actual "worldwide language" because it is the best language (by the way: Does a best language exist? How it looks? Would you like a garden full with only red roses? Wouldn't it be better having many various flowers? Same way with languages. The diversity is always important.). We here in Germany HAVE to learn English, because people think, that only with English you will have a future in Economics... Formerly the latin language was the most important, then the french, now english, tomorrow chinese?
It is not very clever deciding one NATIONAL language be the worldwide language. That ever will be unfair to most of the people, who don't speak it as a mother tongue. Specially, if are existing better solves like Esperanto.

I have to finish ;-) If you like, you can write to me at esperanto (at) kirf. net, preferably in Esperanto, but I will also understand English (if it is not too complicate) ;-)

Kore salutas el Emden, Germanujo

Sebastian

By the way: If you had been used Google before demanding about the existence of Esperanto, you would know it a little more better (and I am very certain, that this is very bad grammar ;-))

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: Kaleea
Date: 29 May 05 - 01:47 AM

I was once in an opera where creatures from outer space invaded. It was called "Help, Help, The Globolinks" by Gian Carlo Menotti. I didn't realize that the language of the Globolinks was so well known.

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: Haruo
Date: 28 May 05 - 02:40 PM

Good to see you post here, Don. Although I know better (after all, there are dozens of Esperanto-speakers from age 4 on up right here in the Seattle area) I sometimes feel a bit lonely in some online forums. (Worse in the Baptist ones than in the music ones though, I'll admit.) And thanks for reminding me about Kazohinia. Hope you'll be in Austin!

Haruo

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: donh
Date: 28 May 05 - 01:55 PM

Note to Poppagator: you quote the fact that you've "never met [an active Esperanto speaker] anywhere, ever, despite spending four-and-a-half years in college, plus some part-time graduate school". I hear that all the time, but it's usually wrong -- the only way you know is if you've asked everybody you've met if they speak Esperanto, and I've never met anyone who's actually done that. Chances are good that you have met one (or even more).

Note to Haruo: Vojaĝo al Kazohinio by Szathmári has been published in English, as Kazohinia, by Corvina in Budapest.

Note to all: since I understand that this is supposed to be a music forum, I should capture the opportunity to point out that the book service of the Esperanto League for North America has about five shelves of music CDs in Esperanto, from rock to folk to choral works.

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: Haruo
Date: 28 May 05 - 12:58 PM

I know we're down here in the BS's where a musical tie-in is not mandatory, but still I thought it might be useful to provide PoppaGator and others links to a few Esperanto music sites. First off, let me mention my own humble website, La Lilandejo, with a collection of Esperanto movement songs here and my general songlist (where the Esperanto ones are identified by flag) here. I am also the editor of the largest online Esperanto Christian hymnal, TTT-Himnaro Cigneta (with indexes for English-speakers of hymns by English title and Christmas carols/hymns by English title). By the way, I am probably the most active present-day Esperanto hymnwriter in the USA; fourteen of my texts (including three originals) are in the wonderful ecumenical hymnal Adoru.

Now to halt the blatant self-promotion ;-) ... There is a growing Esperanto wikisongbook, potentially sort of a user-edited DT in Esperanto. A great deal of information on Esperanto music is in the Esperanto Wikipedia (Vikipedio), including links to several online Esperanto radio stations that play Esperanto music daily. The Brazilian Music Express offers Net-accessible mp3s of over 100 Esperanto songs, mostly from current groups/albums.

Haruo

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: GUEST
Date: 28 May 05 - 10:12 AM

If you drop the 'L' mg is fluent.

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: GUEST, puss
Date: 28 May 05 - 06:06 AM

As for which language is the sexiest - it depends how sexy the person speaking it is.

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: Haruo
Date: 28 May 05 - 05:48 AM

John in Kansas wrote

There is in fact a subset of English called (brilliantly) "International English" that is mandatory for writing of operation and maintenance manuals for many products produced for US Military, FAA, and NATO use. The vocabulary is strictly limited to a specified set of words, and my recollection is that it's only a very few (2 or 3?) thousand words. It appears that NATO agreements were the source for the idea, although I've never seen a detailed history of it.

which reminds me of the little known fact that there was a period in the fifties and sixties (of the past century) — I'm not sure of the precise timeframe — when Esperanto was used by the American military, under the nom de guerre "The Aggressor Language", as a simple foreign language for the "enemy" in war games to use without either having to learn a "full-fledged" language or alienating whatever country we chose the language of. One of our local Seattle-area Esperantists, Max Manowski, actually learned his Esperanto in that context to start with (though he of course broadened both his vocabulary and his viewpoint after discharge).

Haruo

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: Haruo
Date: 28 May 05 - 05:41 AM

Hi PoppaGator,

I don't spend much time browsing the BS threads, so I was unaware of this one until Ebbie PM'd me today. I am indeed an active Mudcatter (I joined in September of 2000) and at least two of my recent posts topside have mentioned Esperanto: this one in the NW Folklife thread and this one in the "Aloha 'oe" thread.

I can't post at great length at the moment because I'm busy preparing to fly to Austin, Texas, for the annual convention of the Esperanto League for North America June 9-13. (Any 'Catters in the Austin area, I'd be happy to meet you; the convention is at Concordia University.) At the convention, I will publish my Esperanto translations of Melville's Jimmy Rose and Harvey Cox's "Jesus and the Koran"; declaim my Esperanto version of Brannan's "Where the Lion Roareth and the Wang-Doodle Mourneth"; give a talk (with demo) on how to make and eat sushi; lead a Christian worship service and participate in an interfaith one; present a talk on American Indian Literature; and hopefully get in some good old Esperanto folksinging. In the light of your comment that you'd "study Irish or Yiddish before taking up Esperanto. They may be "dead languages" (or almost-dead), but at least they both have interesting and worthwhile literary traditions" it is interesting that the theme of the Austin convention is "Literaturo". The featured guests will be the Chinese Esperanto author and translator Laŭlum and the South African (now resident in Texas) Esperanto poet Edwin de Kock. The notion that Esperanto does not have an interesting and worthwhile literary tradition is one of many erroneous notions about the language and its community. Esperanto literature has had a significant impact on the literary culture of the Far East, playing a particularly important role in left-labor, communist and feminist circles in both China and Japan. Ba Jin, a Chinese literary lion and vice president of the People's Republic, wrote a novel in Chinese that was a response to the original-in-Esperanto novel "Printempo en la aŭtuno" by Julio Baghy. Laŭlum (who will be in Austin) in turn translated Ba Jin's novel into Esperanto. Borrow Esperanta Antologio (through InterLibrary Loan if your local library doesn't have it) for a nice immersion-method 800-page introduction to a century of original Esperanto poetry. The fact that Baghy's Viktimoj or Szathmári's Vojaĝo al Kazohinio or Pič's Litomiŝla Tombejo hasn't been published in English does not in fact mean they are not significant and interesting novels written in Esperanto. Studying the differences between Newell's and Zamenhof's Hamletoj (and between each and Shakespeare's or Gide's) is an interesting exercise from a number of angles. None of which is to disparage the literary traditions of Irish and Yiddish, both of which I highly esteem though the former I can't really read.

Or read Ulrich Lins's La Danĝera Lingvo about the persecution and martyrdom of Esperantists through the years (both Hitler and Stalin interned and interred many many Esperantists).

I have been an active Esperanto speaker for more than thirty years, and while I don't think Esperanto is "poised to depose English" or anything, I also don't think we're any less well positioned now than we were when I was new at it. Although it is true that in the death of John Paul II we lost our most prominent public speaker; as far as I know Benedict doesn't speak Esperanto, though perhaps he'll learn it in time for the Urbi et orbi...

Anyhow what with Folklife this weekend and then Austin in two weeks I won't have much of a chance to follow this post up for awhile, but I look forward to rejoining the debate after the middle of June.

Haruo

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: PoppaGator
Date: 27 May 05 - 03:27 PM

I feel sure that "Globish" is pronounced with a long "O," for two reasons: (1) it seems pretty obvious that we're referring to the globe (i.e.,. the planet earth), not some "glob," and (2) if it were to be pronounced with a short "O," it would have been spelled with a double "B," thus: "Globbish."

Ebbie (and Haruo), I don't mean to be mean or disrespectful, and would be glad to "listen to" (that is, read) a good advocate's arguments in favor of Esperanto. I'm sure it would be quite interesting. However, I have serious doubts that there's a real-life future for it, and I'm afraid that I would be difficult to dissuade, no matter how hard I might try to keep an open mind.

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: GUEST,Mrr
Date: 27 May 05 - 03:26 PM

Sounds fascinating.

One of the issues between the French and the Americans is that they are both completely convinced that their language is the best.

The problem is, they are both right!

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: Ebbie
Date: 27 May 05 - 03:07 PM

"BTW Joe - it is Globish as in Globe, and it doesn't shine as in Glow"
Mr. Red

This American also wants to know! Does one pronounce it as in globe or as in blob?

PoppaGator, there is a Mudcat Esperantist who is acive in it and a good advocate for it. Haruo hasn't posted lately, I think, but I'll bet he's not far away.

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: PoppaGator
Date: 27 May 05 - 01:39 PM

My apologies, semi-sub. I am truly unaware of any active Esperantists; in fact, I've never met one anywhere, ever, despite spending four-and-a-half years in college, plus some part-time graduate school. Are these surviving Esperantists actually active somewhere outside the ivory tower of academe?

I took enough Latin in high school to recognize that the word Esperanto would mean something related to hope. Well, I'd hate to discourage anyone from keeping hope alive (any hope), but I think English ~ US English ~ has already won the battle for international-language status.

I'd study Irish or Yiddish before taking up Esperanto. They may be "dead languages" (or almost-dead), but at least they both have interesting and worthwhile literary traditions.

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: semi-submersible
Date: 27 May 05 - 12:18 PM

PoppaGator may have given up on Esperanto (now over a hundred years old) but Esperantists are still active as well as hopeful. (The name of the language comes from the word for hoping.) I've seen 'em here at the Mudcat, too.

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: LilyFestre
Date: 25 May 05 - 05:35 PM

Mir auch!!!!!!!

Mein erste Jungen Freund hast deutsche versagen.
Er heisst Johann. Ich heisse Monika.
:)

Michelle

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: Kim C
Date: 25 May 05 - 04:50 PM

Ich liebe deutsche.

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: mooman
Date: 25 May 05 - 03:57 PM

Another vote for Russian here!

Peace

moo

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: GUEST,Allen
Date: 25 May 05 - 02:29 PM

Agreed, Russian is the most beautiful language in the world, especially if reading Pushkin.

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: robomatic
Date: 25 May 05 - 11:30 AM

Tom ho' ichema

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: CarolC
Date: 25 May 05 - 11:20 AM

Spanish and Italian are definitely sexier than French. But French is much more romantic than either Spanish or Italian. In our case, romantic was the better choice than sexy for courting.

Subject: RE: BS: Any one speak Globish? This is serious..
From: robomatic
Date: 25 May 05 - 06:58 AM

I think Russian is way sexier and more poetic than Spanish, French, or Italian, but they are also fine languages.

Remember what Russian did for the 'heroine' of "Fish Called Wanda"?