Esperanto, why bother?

[Cainntear]

Cursive dates back to when people still wrote with quills.

Yes, and was still popular in Zamenhof's time because the fountain pen was an evolution of the quill.

Cursive, joined-up writing and print can all be written with pencils, fountain pens and ballpoints. Joined-up writing isn't faster than cursive.

Anything that requires an omnidirectional nib can't be written will with quill-based tech.

The Germans were still using the Kurrent script at Zamenhof's time, and that's even less legible than Latin cursive scripts.

The existence of a more difficult script than Latin is a side issue -- it doesn't say that Cyrillic was less suitable than Latin.

[Cainntear]

Fair.

Whilst aye, there is no guarantee on what a Chinese Zamonhof would do but you can at least ascertain what is likely based on his philosophy. They're not directly comparable scenarios.

But what was his philosophy? What we've seen here is other people's assumptions and assertions of his philosophy, not references to what he actually said and why.

His purpose was to create an easy to learn & flexible language that serves as a Universal second language, without delving into anyhing else we know that much and I don't think we need to know more for my point to stand. Using the Chinese script would be contrary to this goal.

"
1) Zamenhof wanted to do good.
2) I know that isn't good.
Therefore Zamenhof wouldn't have done it.
"

That's a bigger leap of logic than you think.

Your understanding of the issues isn't universal and there's no guarantee that Zamenhof would have seen it that way. Zamenhof was a doctor, he was natively bilingual, and his high school language list would be considered fairly average if he was a member of this site today. The state of the art in linguistics then was far less advanced that what even the most basic member here would know (have you heard talk of "subject and predicate", for example?)

Zamenhof didn't do everything right, hence Volapük being a better language. Esperanto only won out because Zamenhof presented a fixed target that would never change.

To an extent, Esperanto's success is a case of "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good", and if Esperantists could say as much, I'd have a lot more time for their views. The way I see it, they're more likely to say that it's perfect, which it absolutely is not.

I learned joined-up handwriting in school rather than cursive, but I know of cursive enough to be familiar with it, but had never seen anything comparable to what I've seen of Cyrillic cursive. Though my comment about Cyrillic cursive was mostly facetious and was kind of poking fun at it. But I except there may be latin cursive just as unreadable, but I've never seen any examples that are.

All good. I can't remember where I saw the examples, but reckon it must have been the History of English module. What I'd say about a lot of cultural artefacts is that they have a shared history and certain countries tend to "freeze" their culture and identify with it -- for example, most traditional music and/or dance styles in Europe are all part of a European culture, but then Basques, the Scottish, whoever end up holding onto one style slightly longer than the pan European fashion and then start to identify it as "theirs". I've seen Russian cursive and I identified that as being another example of a cross-border technical style artefact that was preserve in Russia as an identity marker.

Tangent that jumps to mind re History of English: the reason we spell "mother" and "son" with O rather than U is because the cursive forms of muther and sun were hard to read -- ıııııther and sıııı, more or less, so scribes joined the top of the U into something that would have looked a bit like a modern handwritten "a" [Note that on my screen, the "a" has a hook over the top, but that's not how I'd write it myself!] Pretty ever U sound written as O is due to people misreading scribes handwriting because they weren't aware of the reason they wrote like that.

Whereas, with the Chinese script, you'd have to have a pretty stubborn and unwavering cultural bias to not see that using it would be counter to the purpose behind the language you're creating. And I've not seen anything to suggest that Zamonhof was this. A Chinese Zamonhof would be aware there's simpler systems than the Chinese script.

Have you seen anything to suggest he wasn't? So far you've just given an opinion, which doesn't strike down the question.

But I think there is a fair argument to be made between chosing Latin & Cyrillic. I don't think me saying Latin was widespread is me having a Western European bias, it's more that Western Europe had colonized much of the world.

Ah, so you're saying that Latin is a more neutral character set because the colonial powers that invaded lands and enslaved the local populace brought Latin characters with them...?

[tractor]

Cursive dates back to when people still wrote with quills.

Yes, and was still popular in Zamenhof's time because the fountain pen was an evolution of the quill.

What you said was this:

The thing is that cursive was designed to be written with fountain pens,

and that's wrong, because it's older than fountain pens.

Cursive, joined-up writing and print can all be written with pencils, fountain pens and ballpoints. Joined-up writing isn't faster than cursive.

Anything that requires an omnidirectional nib can't be written will with quill-based tech.

I don't understand what you're trying to say here. Are you saying that joined-up writing or print can't be written with a fountain pen? If so, you're wrong.

The Germans were still using the Kurrent script at Zamenhof's time, and that's even less legible than Latin cursive scripts.

The existence of a more difficult script than Latin is a side issue -- it doesn't say that Cyrillic was less suitable than Latin.

I totally agree, and since Kurrent is a Latin based script, someone used to this handwriting, could be tempted to use it also when writing Esperanto, making the text almost illegible to anyone only accustomed to normal Latin cursive.

[Sae]

Fair.

Whilst aye, there is no guarantee on what a Chinese Zamonhof would do but you can at least ascertain what is likely based on his philosophy. They're not directly comparable scenarios.

But what was his philosophy? What we've seen here is other people's assumptions and assertions of his philosophy, not references to what he actually said and why.

His purpose was to create an easy to learn & flexible language that serves as a Universal second language, without delving into anyhing else we know that much and I don't think we need to know more for my point to stand. Using the Chinese script would be contrary to this goal.

"
1) Zamenhof wanted to do good.
2) I know that isn't good.
Therefore Zamenhof wouldn't have done it.
"

That's a bigger leap of logic than you think.

Your understanding of the issues isn't universal and there's no guarantee that Zamenhof would have seen it that way. Zamenhof was a doctor, he was natively bilingual, and his high school language list would be considered fairly average if he was a member of this site today. The state of the art in linguistics then was far less advanced that what even the most basic member here would know (have you heard talk of "subject and predicate", for example?)

Zamenhof didn't do everything right, hence Volapük being a better language. Esperanto only won out because Zamenhof presented a fixed target that would never change.

To an extent, Esperanto's success is a case of "don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good", and if Esperantists could say as much, I'd have a lot more time for their views. The way I see it, they're more likely to say that it's perfect, which it absolutely is not.

I mean this doesn't really show me why it's a leap of logic. I've already accepted there is no guarantee he would see it that way, because we are talking about something hypothetical here about a guy we don't personally know, I just think it given motives we do know about it'd not make a good case for a Chinese Zamonhof to stick with a Chinese script. A guy wants to simplify language, we throw in a variable that means his native or preferred script is not simple, and it's a question of whether he'd stick to it, and based on what we know, there's no shortage of simpler scripts available to him and a good incentive to not use his native script and also options to do what a neighbouring country did.

Unless I am wrong about this motive, but everything I read about him and Esperanto says it was as such. He wanted a simple and flexibile language. Nobody has presented a reason why this would plausibly be different when approaching the script of the language without making additional assumptions about him. Unless I'm missing something?

I'm not saying he'd get it perfect or do everything right. I just don't think it's a good comparison when it's more likely he'd not adopt a Chinese script if his goal was to create something simpler and growing up in China at the time would not make him ignorant of alternative systems, especially as a multilinguist (which Zamonhof was).

Whereas, with the Chinese script, you'd have to have a pretty stubborn and unwavering cultural bias to not see that using it would be counter to the purpose behind the language you're creating. And I've not seen anything to suggest that Zamonhof was this. A Chinese Zamonhof would be aware there's simpler systems than the Chinese script.

Have you seen anything to suggest he wasn't? So far you've just given an opinion, which doesn't strike down the question.

We know his goal with Esperanto was to be simple and flexible.
We don't know that he was so stubborn and unwavering of a cultural bias that he would refuse to give up a difficult-to-learn script that would hinder not help his goal with Esperanto. His cultural bias was to Europe, a culture bias to East Asia would still give him such scripts.

And "you don't know he wasn't" is not so effective as a counter. If we don't know this information about him, we would not make this assumption about him.

Fortunately we have occam's razor, we'd only need to entertain the idea if there was something to suggest that okay he might.

What we do know is that it wouldn't be simpler to go with this writing system. But we don't have a like-for-like comparison here.

Of course, it makes this comparison trickier, but then my view is that it's not a good comparison.

But I think there is a fair argument to be made between chosing Latin & Cyrillic. I don't think me saying Latin was widespread is me having a Western European bias, it's more that Western Europe had colonized much of the world.

Ah, so you're saying that Latin is a more neutral character set because the colonial powers that invaded lands and enslaved the local populace brought Latin characters with them...?

Faaaaaaaaaaar from it. Colonialism is something I hate about this country's past.

I am saying it is widespread because of it. It's not a judgment on whether or not it should be used, but it is a reason to pick a script, but not the only one and is maybe the one I can see comparison against Chinese script, but the point is that the biase here would have to be strong enough to trump your goal of making a simple-to-learn flexibile language. Not that I think it is more neutral. I was on the side that doesn't think Esperanto is neutral in one of the other discussion and I agree it has European biases. And yes, there would be biases if Zamonhof was Chinese.

But I do not agree that if your goal is to simplify a language that you wouldn't do it when the script isn't simple, especially when you'd be aware of alternative scripts that are easier and alternative approaches to scripts. But all in all, that it's not a good comparison.

[Lisa]

A chinese Zamenhof, educated in chinese, would have probably loved chinese script; but (not being oblivious) I'm sure he would have seen the script as a barrier as a universal language. He might have then come up with a simplified version (although that would be a very time-consuming job). However, I'm not sure someone whose primary language background was a regionally dominant, high status language, would have seen any need for different universal language. Zamenhof grew up and lived in an environment where multiple languages were spoken by different groups without an obvious dominant language, which would makes the problems of needing to communicate, and the challenges of learning other languages, into the kinds of problems that were worth dedicating your life to solving.

Would French Zamenhof not just have said, let them speak french?

[Le Baron]

Would French Zamenhof not just have said, let them speak french?

The government would have instructed him that this was the correct (and legal) solution.

[Doitsujin]

Zamenhof didn't do everything right, hence Volapük being a better language. Esperanto only won out because Zamenhof presented a fixed target that would never change.

This kind of argument clearly shows that you've never read the Volapük grammar book. Esperanto won out, because it was the easier language.

Tangent that jumps to mind re History of English: the reason we spell "mother" and "son" with O rather than U is because the cursive forms of muther and sun were hard to read -- ıııııther and sıııı, more or less, so scribes joined the top of the U into something that would have looked a bit like a modern handwritten "a" [Note that on my screen, the "a" has a hook over the top, but that's not how I'd write it myself!] Pretty ever U sound written as O is due to people misreading scribes handwriting because they weren't aware of the reason they wrote like that.

This sounds a lot like a folk etymology. Do you have any scientific references for this dubious claim?

[leosmith]

This sounds a lot like a folk etymology. Do you have any scientific references for this dubious claim?

Do you trust Wikipedia?

[Doitsujin]

This sounds a lot like a folk etymology. Do you have any scientific references for this dubious claim?

Do you trust Wikipedia?

I stand corrected.

[Cainntear]

I'm not saying he'd get it perfect or do everything right. I just don't think it's a good comparison when it's more likely he'd not adopt a Chinese script if his goal was to create something simpler and growing up in China at the time would not make him ignorant of alternative systems, especially as a multilinguist (which Zamonhof was).

A multilinguist growing up in China... what languages would they know?

Let's say he was multilingual in Chinese and Japanese -- he may well have dismissed syllabaries as complication, because Japanese has three different writing systems (katakana, hiragana and kanji) and it's not a matter of one or the other -- you're switching between them all the time. He studied Latin and Greek -- the equivalent classical languages over there would probably have used ideographs... old Chinese definitely among them. Would he have decided that Latin script was better just because the Vietnamese had been invaded by Portugal?

And consider this: do we know that he had deep knowledge of scripts?

As far as I can see online, his classical languages didn't include Church Slavonics. Did he know that Cyrillic was created by one person who was attempting to improve on the model set by Latin and Greek characters and create a new script that was superior and not loaded down by historical associations?

Did he reject Cyrillic because he was unaware of this, and was he viewing Latin as superior because of its association with Romans?

We know his goal with Esperanto was to be simple and flexible.
We don't know that he was so stubborn and unwavering of a cultural bias that he would refuse to give up a difficult-to-learn script that would hinder not help his goal with Esperanto.

Would he have recognised it as a problem, though? Plenty of people will defend Chinese script to the hilt with spurious self-serving arguments about its superiority.

Fortunately we have occam's razor, we'd only need to entertain the idea if there was something to suggest that okay he might.

Occam's razor is not about psychology though -- it's about physical sciences.

But I think there is a fair argument to be made between chosing Latin & Cyrillic. I don't think me saying Latin was widespread is me having a Western European bias, it's more that Western Europe had colonized much of the world.

Ah, so you're saying that Latin is a more neutral character set because the colonial powers that invaded lands and enslaved the local populace brought Latin characters with them...?

Faaaaaaaaaaar from it. Colonialism is something I hate about this country's past.

I am saying it is widespread because of it. It's not a judgment on whether or not it should be used, but it is a reason to pick a script, but not the only one and is maybe the one I can see comparison against Chinese script, but the point is that the biase here would have to be strong enough to trump your goal of making a simple-to-learn flexibile language. Not that I think it is more neutral.

Exactly, and you haven't claimed that, but others have, so I'm grateful that you've brought the conversation to a point where its neutrality can be basically written off.