"All the fiuent Klingon speakers can comfortably go out to dinner together," Lawrence Schoen, director of the Klingon Language Institute, cheerfully admits. There are about a dozen of them;
erm... Breton ascide, those are all dialicts of the same languge, one is more or less made up, one was dead for about 40 years and you got the name of one wrong.
Medieval German would probably have to come first for martial arts reasons, but yes, there are poems and chronicles in Welsh that I'd love to read in the original.
Ah, but would you learn Sindarin (more useful for everyday conversation) or Quenya (the more beautiful an scholarly)? And even then there are dialect choices. :-)
Hm. I was surprised to discover that I voted for esperanto but not klingon -- although that probably ought to be the case in general, I expected that I, and that my friends, would find Klingon more often. I'm interested to see everyone else did.
(I assume if -- as unlikely as it seems -- you could vote for both, you should not vote, or vote for whichever was useful more often.)
Of course, there might be times when it might be useful to know EITHER, eg. to keep notes which are not trivially decodable by someone else :)
I would expect Klingon to be more useful for the purposes of indecipherable note-taking. I understand that Esperanto is somewhat similar to Romance and Slavic languages in its grammar and vocabulary.
I have watched several TV shows and movies which include Klingon.
:) I have too, but I assumed (?) all of them were designed to have their optimum artistic effect when you find out what the Klingon means when and only when there are subtitles, and have no reason to doubt that, which means that even though I might have understood more, I wouldn't have said it was useful.
Whereas I have -- very very very rarely -- heard something in Esperanto without translation.
I hadn't realised the background speech in Gattaca was Esperanto - and I have read the SSR books, and had completely forgotten about the Esperanto in that!
I'd rather like to learn to write Arabic -- but that's mostly a matter of wanting to do the ornate calligraphy myself, for which a keyboard (even plus PhotoShop for shaping-to-fit-spaces) seems to be simply inadequate. Not that I ever mastered (or accomplished much in) the "grass script" sometimes used in Japanese poetry manuscript, mind you.
I've been in a couple of relationships that I'm pretty sure the other party would have taken the break up hints better/faster if I could have given them in Klingon. This is not true of Esperanto...
I find the idea of an official common language pretty silly, to be honest. If there is a common language then it will happen slowly, and will sprout dialects as it does so. I find it incredibly unlikely that there will ever single unified language spoken by everyone.
Thanks for your honesty. "[...]happen slowly [...]" You are right... much too slowly. "[...] sprout dialects" This is assuming that a language like Esperanto will evolve like natural languages did: thanks to illiterates. Analyze how Esperanto evolved during the last century, and you will notice it does follow another pattern.
A common language (as Esperanto) would be a blessing for humanity (well...assuming the values Esperantists are cherishing are taken with the language.)
"Something like Globish" or like Basic English, or Kitchen French or Vulgar Latin?
Why would a complete language not suit you as worldwide second language? What is missing is the political will.
However, something like Mandarin Chinese is even more likely. The disadvantage is that you must start learning now, or your grand children will be left behind.
A currency is a tool - it's not a system that people have learned from birth. To switch from one currency to another requires only minor effort, and it's not possible to continue to using the old currency when everyone else switches to the new one.
A language, on the other hand, is something that people would continue using, and you couldn't simple mandate that everyone switch to a different language, they'd simply continue with the old one. Any government that tried to tell people what language to speak would find itself out of power very quickly.
Mi parolas Esperanton jam de pli ol 60 jaroj, kaj neniam havis okazon paroli la Klingon-an au ech interesighi pri ghi. Auskultu foje podkaston en Esperanto che Radio Polonia: http://www.polskieradio.pl/eo/ au vizitu chiu-jaran kongreson: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Congress_of_Esperanto The point is 'universal bilingualism' - YOUR ethnic language for you + non-ethnic Esperanto for all, NOT 'one language for the world' as is presently happening with World English! Tá mé ag foghlaim na Gaeilge anois - tá sí teanga an-dúshlánach. There's some Irish for you too!
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I was discussing mandated common keyboards with a friend and Esperanto came up.
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From
I don't depend on QI for my information. Not that I've seen an episode in a couple of years.
You may be able to track down 6/7 people who can speak a few phrases - how many of them are actually fluent?
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Oh, hang on, wrong persona.
I mean, yes, why not? It would be an interesting survey.
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Disclaimer: might be garbled due to excessive recent use of 日本語 getting in the way of everything.
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(I assume if -- as unlikely as it seems -- you could vote for both, you should not vote, or vote for whichever was useful more often.)
Of course, there might be times when it might be useful to know EITHER, eg. to keep notes which are not trivially decodable by someone else :)
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And I've never encountered Esperanto in the wild, while I have watched several TV shows and movies which include Klingon.
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:) I have too, but I assumed (?) all of them were designed to have their optimum artistic effect when you find out what the Klingon means when and only when there are subtitles, and have no reason to doubt that, which means that even though I might have understood more, I wouldn't have said it was useful.
Whereas I have -- very very very rarely -- heard something in Esperanto without translation.
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Also, have you read any of Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat books?
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I hadn't realised the background speech in Gattaca was Esperanto - and I have read the SSR books, and had completely forgotten about the Esperanto in that!
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a more serious poll
results at http://multivote.sparklit.com/poll.spark/3142
3072 voted on " Which language should be the world's official common language? "
Results today (2010-04-14)
324 English
1964 Esperanto
247 "newly developed language"
Klingon should be mentioned here a few times
(adding your 43 votes here won't change much)
Re: a more serious poll
Klingon should be mentioned under
"Other existing constructed language" (100 voters)
Re: a more serious poll
Well, maybe binary :->
Re: a more serious poll
"[...]happen slowly [...]"
You are right... much too slowly.
"[...] sprout dialects"
This is assuming that a language like Esperanto will evolve like natural languages did: thanks to illiterates. Analyze how Esperanto evolved during the last century, and you will notice it does follow another pattern.
A common language (as Esperanto) would be a blessing for humanity (well...assuming the values Esperantists are cherishing are taken with the language.)
Re: a more serious poll
Something like Globish as a second language seems rather more likely.
Re: a more serious poll
As silly as switching to the Euro, or more?
"Something like Globish"
or like Basic English, or Kitchen French or Vulgar Latin?
Why would a complete language not suit you as worldwide second language?
What is missing is the political will.
However, something like Mandarin Chinese is even more likely. The disadvantage is that you must start learning now, or your grand children will be left behind.
Re: a more serious poll
A language, on the other hand, is something that people would continue using, and you couldn't simple mandate that everyone switch to a different language, they'd simply continue with the old one. Any government that tried to tell people what language to speak would find itself out of power very quickly.
languages
Auskultu foje podkaston en Esperanto che Radio Polonia:
http://www.polskieradio.pl/eo/
au vizitu chiu-jaran kongreson:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Congress_of_Esperanto
The point is 'universal bilingualism' - YOUR ethnic language for you + non-ethnic Esperanto for all, NOT 'one language for the world' as is presently happening with World English!
Tá mé ag foghlaim na Gaeilge anois - tá sí teanga an-dúshlánach. There's some Irish for you too!