I think it might be good to have a universal language, but I think it’s vanishingly unlikely that Esperanto or any other deliberately manufactured language will become one. The way languages get (anything like) universal is by being widely used, and the way languages get widely used is by being widely useful. I don’t see any plausible way for something like Esperanto to achieve that. English might become a universal language. Maybe, depending on how the world goes over the next few decades, Chinese or Russian or something. But it won’t be Esperanto. Pretty much everyone whose knowledge of Esperanto would make learning Esperanto valuable already speaks English.
Human augmentation may radically lower the difficulty of learning a new natural language. Maybe they’ll give us a drug that puts our brains back into child mode for language acquisition.
If that happened, then the market for conlangs might look interesting.
Child mode for language acquisition is a myth. It only helps with pronunciation. For every other aspect of language acquisition that has ever been studied, adults learn faster.
Edit: I mean adults learn faster per hour of effort, which is the relevant axis. In practice, children often learn faster per calendar year because they have nothing better to do.
I must admit that every linguist and developmental psychologist I have talked to has insisted that this is wrong, but they have not given me a single source. I believe that they correctly quote the textbooks, but that the textbooks repeat the myth without evidence. Here is a survey. (ungated pdf, but large)
Ooh there’s a cool idea, I hadn’t thought of that.
Another angle is the possibility that vastly-improved directly-implanted translators—a babelfish, basically—might make the whole thing moot. You learn your first language and then have absolutely no need, ever, to learn another. Language could be more or less frozen wherever it stands at the time. That’s if the technology is universally available—things get even more interesting if it was only available to the wealthy, or to citizens of wealthy nations.
Language could be more or less frozen wherever it stands at the time.
No it wouldn’t—language is for signaling, not only communication. There would probably be a common language for business and travel, but languages would continue to develop normally, since people would still want to use language to determine how they present themselves.
You’re right, that was a little overbroad. I was thinking specifically in terms of the death or spread of individual languages.
If I have a device that translates anything said to me and renders it into my own language in real time—Pierre says something to me in French and I “hear” it in English—I never have to learn language other than my first, and my first—whether it’s English or Tagalog or Swahili—is no more or less useful, no more or less universally comprehensible than any other.
So you’re right that languages would still develop internally—English speakers would still speak to other English speakers and alter the language among themselves as they do now—but the cross-pollination of languages and their growth or decline over time would be affected.
The native language of my own country is almost dead—on life-support, so to speak—because English was more useful. English was what you taught your kids if you wanted them to have any chance of success. If you could, you taught them English as a first language. With a universal translator that pressure would be removed. Why would anyone go to the trouble of always speaking to their children in their second language so that the children acquire it as their first?
The number of people who learned any given language as their first would be pegged to the population speaking that language at the point when the technology was introduced. So the only reason for a language to die would be if that population declined over time due to to emigration or low birth rates.
Of course this is all pretty woolly, given that it’s an imaginary technology, possibly centuries away from even being possible.
A babelfish is probably never going to be good enough to fully replace actually knowing the language; to start with due to different word order in different languages you’ll get something delayed and awkward. It will probably never capture slang and punning properly. Some languages can express some concepts very well, others struggle with those concepts and are awkward.
Babelfish are coming, and they will be very useful, but I kind of expect them to accelerate the drive towards everyone knowing a bit of English.
English has the advantage that England is no longer a very powerful country and I don’t think many important countries hate us that much. Therefore it feels more politically neutral to speak English.
I think Mandarin is the only realistic competition, but it will be hard for people outside of the far east to learn. And much of the far east currently feels like China is trying to dominate them, so they would rather use English.
I don’t see how those numbers, even if correct, mean that I’m being too pessimistic about Esperanto. I didn’t deny that some people speak it, or that it’s easy to learn. I said I don’t see any plausible pathway by which it becomes widely enough used to be a lingua franca.
The most interesting of those figures is the one about how many hours it takes to learn various languages. The link you gave doesn’t offer any direct support for the startling claim you make (apparently saying that Esperanto is 10x easier to learn than English); rather, it quotes someone else describing a study apparently done by the University of Paderborn’s Institute of Pedagogic Cybernetics. (On French students, so part of what this is measuring is similarity to French; that will no doubt be why German is alleged to be harder than English. I remark that Esperanto is more like French than English is—though probably not more like French than Italian is.) Unfortunately I can’t readily track down more information about this (it’s cited in an article by Flochon in a book by Guy Gauthier but, at least as quoted in the Grin report, doesn’t give any specifics about the study). I would want to know more before believing that the ratio is so very large.
Also it’s not about being similar to French and I don’t know why you think that. I’ve learned Esperanto and French and didn’t notice any similarities. Actually the Chinese were one of the biggest supporters, though that may be trending down.
It would be easy to grow Esperanto quickly. It would require some concerted effort, but there is a solid though small base around the world and there only needs to be some push to make it happen. Becoming the official language of the EU is one plausible avenue, but another one might crop up in the next few centuries.
it’s not about being similar to French and I don’t know why you think that.
Because (1) the study mentioned in the Grin report was conducted on francophone students and (2) while Esperanto is a proposal for a universal language, its structure and vocabulary are very decidedly European and indeed Romance. It is much more like French than Japanese or Mandarin or Korean, or even Sanskrit. Or, in fact, German.
I’ve learned Esperanto and French and didn’t notice any similarities.
That surprises me. Let’s try a little experiment. Go to the Wikipedia page on Esperanto (selected just because it’s an obvious thing to select, so you know I’m not cherry-picking) and find the first substantial quantity of Esperanto text. It’s this:
En multaj lokoj de Ĉinio estis temploj de la drako-reĝo. Dum trosekeco oni preĝis en la temploj, ke la drako-reĝo donu pluvon al la homa mondo. Tiam drako estis simbolo de la supernatura estaĵo. Kaj pli poste, ĝi fariĝis prapatro de la plej altaj regantoj kaj simbolis la absolutan aŭtoritaton de feŭda imperiestro. La imperiestro pretendis, ke li estas filo de la drako. Ĉiuj liaj vivbezonaĵoj portis la nomon drako kaj estis ornamitaj per diversaj drakofiguroj. Nun ĉie en Ĉinio videblas drako-ornamentaĵoj, kaj cirkulas legendoj pri drakoj.
The very first word (en) has approximately the same spelling, pronunciation and meaning as a French word. This is not a coincidence. The next word doesn’t (I think). The next (lokoj) is in fact cognate with French lieux with the same meaning. Next (de): French also has a word “de” with the same spelling and similar pronunciation, and a closely related meaning. Then Ĉinio; corresponding French is Chine, similar spelling, similar pronunciation. Maybe half the words in this passage have close French cousins. The sentence structures are very similar too. The writing system is almost identical—same repertoire of letters, similar set of accents, more or less the same punctuation.
If you took the same text and wrote it in, say, Tamil, it would be very much more different.
It would be easy to grow Esperanto quickly.
Easy for whom? What’s the actual sequence of events that would lead to it happening?
Becoming the official language of the EU is one plausible avenue
I think we may have different ideas about what constitutes plausibility. I agree it’s possible but I’d put the probability well below 1%.
Sorry, but the idea that Esperanto is somehow only easy for French speakers is plainly wrong. I don’t think you’ll find anyone who has learned it and another language who’ll disagree.
Actually Esperanto is in the same language family as many Asian ones:
Given the current status quo, it is impossible. However, I can imagine the political world developing into an atmosphere where Esperanto might be made the lingua franca. Imagine that American and British power continues to decline, and Russia and China and German, and maybe India, become more influential, leading to a new status quo, a stalemate. Given sufficiently long stalemate, like decades, Esperanto might once again become a politically viable situation.
Well, anything’s possible. But I’m struggling to imagine a halfway-plausible scenario in which this actually happens. In the situation you describe, what’s the actual mechanism by which Esperanto becomes widely used? I mean, let’s say we have a bunch of roughly equal Great Powers (perhaps they’re the Trump States, the Islamic Caliphate, the United States of Europe, China and Russia, with favoured languages The Best English, Arabic, German, Mandarin and Russian). Within each power’s sphere of influence its favoured language (or languages) will be dominant. So now imagine someone in, say, the Trump States. Obviously they need to know The Best English. They might want to learn Spanish in case their military service is at the Wall; or Russian, of course. But what’s going to make Esperanto more useful to them than those?
Are you thinking that Esperanto might be imposed as a lingua franca? That there’d be some sort of international treaty where all these mutually-mistrustful Powers agree that they will use Esperanto as a second language, or for negotiations, or something? Why would any of them do that?
I think it might be good to have a universal language, but I think it’s vanishingly unlikely that Esperanto or any other deliberately manufactured language will become one. The way languages get (anything like) universal is by being widely used, and the way languages get widely used is by being widely useful. I don’t see any plausible way for something like Esperanto to achieve that. English might become a universal language. Maybe, depending on how the world goes over the next few decades, Chinese or Russian or something. But it won’t be Esperanto. Pretty much everyone whose knowledge of Esperanto would make learning Esperanto valuable already speaks English.
Human augmentation may radically lower the difficulty of learning a new natural language. Maybe they’ll give us a drug that puts our brains back into child mode for language acquisition.
If that happened, then the market for conlangs might look interesting.
Child mode for language acquisition is a myth. It only helps with pronunciation. For every other aspect of language acquisition that has ever been studied, adults learn faster.
Edit: I mean adults learn faster per hour of effort, which is the relevant axis. In practice, children often learn faster per calendar year because they have nothing better to do.
I can definitely vouch for the pronunciation part, but is the rest really true? Source?
I must admit that every linguist and developmental psychologist I have talked to has insisted that this is wrong, but they have not given me a single source. I believe that they correctly quote the textbooks, but that the textbooks repeat the myth without evidence. Here is a survey. (ungated pdf, but large)
And very scary as well.
Ooh there’s a cool idea, I hadn’t thought of that.
Another angle is the possibility that vastly-improved directly-implanted translators—a babelfish, basically—might make the whole thing moot. You learn your first language and then have absolutely no need, ever, to learn another. Language could be more or less frozen wherever it stands at the time. That’s if the technology is universally available—things get even more interesting if it was only available to the wealthy, or to citizens of wealthy nations.
Second language might still be necessary for the cognitive development effect.
No it wouldn’t—language is for signaling, not only communication. There would probably be a common language for business and travel, but languages would continue to develop normally, since people would still want to use language to determine how they present themselves.
You’re right, that was a little overbroad. I was thinking specifically in terms of the death or spread of individual languages.
If I have a device that translates anything said to me and renders it into my own language in real time—Pierre says something to me in French and I “hear” it in English—I never have to learn language other than my first, and my first—whether it’s English or Tagalog or Swahili—is no more or less useful, no more or less universally comprehensible than any other.
So you’re right that languages would still develop internally—English speakers would still speak to other English speakers and alter the language among themselves as they do now—but the cross-pollination of languages and their growth or decline over time would be affected.
The native language of my own country is almost dead—on life-support, so to speak—because English was more useful. English was what you taught your kids if you wanted them to have any chance of success. If you could, you taught them English as a first language. With a universal translator that pressure would be removed. Why would anyone go to the trouble of always speaking to their children in their second language so that the children acquire it as their first?
The number of people who learned any given language as their first would be pegged to the population speaking that language at the point when the technology was introduced. So the only reason for a language to die would be if that population declined over time due to to emigration or low birth rates.
Of course this is all pretty woolly, given that it’s an imaginary technology, possibly centuries away from even being possible.
A babelfish is probably never going to be good enough to fully replace actually knowing the language; to start with due to different word order in different languages you’ll get something delayed and awkward. It will probably never capture slang and punning properly. Some languages can express some concepts very well, others struggle with those concepts and are awkward.
Babelfish are coming, and they will be very useful, but I kind of expect them to accelerate the drive towards everyone knowing a bit of English.
English has the advantage that England is no longer a very powerful country and I don’t think many important countries hate us that much. Therefore it feels more politically neutral to speak English.
I think Mandarin is the only realistic competition, but it will be hard for people outside of the far east to learn. And much of the far east currently feels like China is trying to dominate them, so they would rather use English.
I think you’re being too pessimistic about Esperanto:
There are about 2 million speakers worldwide [4]. For a language only 100 years old.
It was recently added to Duolingo [5], a great resource for learning.
The Esperanto wikipedia is ranked #32 in terms of number of articles. [1]
It’s taught in 69 universities in 24 countries, several offering bachelors or PhD degrees. [7]
Prominent people are fluent in Esperanto, like the president of Austria [8]
After Britain leaves, only Ireland will speak English in the EU, giving Esperanto an opening. [11]
Esperanto is so easy to learn:
-> 2000 hours studying German = 1500 English = 1000 Italian = 150 Esperanto [6]
-> you can get it for free if you learn it along the way of learning English [9][2][10]
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/List\_of\_Wikipedias
[2] http://www.aaie.us/wordpress/?page\_id=42
[4] http://www.esperanto.net/veb/faq-5.html
[5] https://www.duolingo.com/course/eo/en/Learn-Esperanto-Online
[6] http://www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/rapports-publics/054000678/index.shtml
[7] https://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto\_en\_universitatoj
[8] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/30/AR2007033000824.html
[9] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic\_value\_of\_Esperanto
[10] ‘A language teaching experiment’, Canadian Modern Language Review 22.1: 26–28
[11] http://e-d-e.org
I don’t see how those numbers, even if correct, mean that I’m being too pessimistic about Esperanto. I didn’t deny that some people speak it, or that it’s easy to learn. I said I don’t see any plausible pathway by which it becomes widely enough used to be a lingua franca.
The most interesting of those figures is the one about how many hours it takes to learn various languages. The link you gave doesn’t offer any direct support for the startling claim you make (apparently saying that Esperanto is 10x easier to learn than English); rather, it quotes someone else describing a study apparently done by the University of Paderborn’s Institute of Pedagogic Cybernetics. (On French students, so part of what this is measuring is similarity to French; that will no doubt be why German is alleged to be harder than English. I remark that Esperanto is more like French than English is—though probably not more like French than Italian is.) Unfortunately I can’t readily track down more information about this (it’s cited in an article by Flochon in a book by Guy Gauthier but, at least as quoted in the Grin report, doesn’t give any specifics about the study). I would want to know more before believing that the ratio is so very large.
You should better look at the wikipedia page I linked:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto
Also it’s not about being similar to French and I don’t know why you think that. I’ve learned Esperanto and French and didn’t notice any similarities. Actually the Chinese were one of the biggest supporters, though that may be trending down.
It would be easy to grow Esperanto quickly. It would require some concerted effort, but there is a solid though small base around the world and there only needs to be some push to make it happen. Becoming the official language of the EU is one plausible avenue, but another one might crop up in the next few centuries.
Because (1) the study mentioned in the Grin report was conducted on francophone students and (2) while Esperanto is a proposal for a universal language, its structure and vocabulary are very decidedly European and indeed Romance. It is much more like French than Japanese or Mandarin or Korean, or even Sanskrit. Or, in fact, German.
That surprises me. Let’s try a little experiment. Go to the Wikipedia page on Esperanto (selected just because it’s an obvious thing to select, so you know I’m not cherry-picking) and find the first substantial quantity of Esperanto text. It’s this:
The very first word (en) has approximately the same spelling, pronunciation and meaning as a French word. This is not a coincidence. The next word doesn’t (I think). The next (lokoj) is in fact cognate with French lieux with the same meaning. Next (de): French also has a word “de” with the same spelling and similar pronunciation, and a closely related meaning. Then Ĉinio; corresponding French is Chine, similar spelling, similar pronunciation. Maybe half the words in this passage have close French cousins. The sentence structures are very similar too. The writing system is almost identical—same repertoire of letters, similar set of accents, more or less the same punctuation.
If you took the same text and wrote it in, say, Tamil, it would be very much more different.
Easy for whom? What’s the actual sequence of events that would lead to it happening?
I think we may have different ideas about what constitutes plausibility. I agree it’s possible but I’d put the probability well below 1%.
Sorry, but the idea that Esperanto is somehow only easy for French speakers is plainly wrong. I don’t think you’ll find anyone who has learned it and another language who’ll disagree.
Actually Esperanto is in the same language family as many Asian ones:
http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/europeanorasiatic.htm
Given the current status quo, it is impossible. However, I can imagine the political world developing into an atmosphere where Esperanto might be made the lingua franca. Imagine that American and British power continues to decline, and Russia and China and German, and maybe India, become more influential, leading to a new status quo, a stalemate. Given sufficiently long stalemate, like decades, Esperanto might once again become a politically viable situation.
Well, anything’s possible. But I’m struggling to imagine a halfway-plausible scenario in which this actually happens. In the situation you describe, what’s the actual mechanism by which Esperanto becomes widely used? I mean, let’s say we have a bunch of roughly equal Great Powers (perhaps they’re the Trump States, the Islamic Caliphate, the United States of Europe, China and Russia, with favoured languages The Best English, Arabic, German, Mandarin and Russian). Within each power’s sphere of influence its favoured language (or languages) will be dominant. So now imagine someone in, say, the Trump States. Obviously they need to know The Best English. They might want to learn Spanish in case their military service is at the Wall; or Russian, of course. But what’s going to make Esperanto more useful to them than those?
Are you thinking that Esperanto might be imposed as a lingua franca? That there’d be some sort of international treaty where all these mutually-mistrustful Powers agree that they will use Esperanto as a second language, or for negotiations, or something? Why would any of them do that?