# Is Esperanto a European Language?



## archibaldworthington

I think that the answer is yes, given its vocabulary and phonology. I know its not a particularly difficult question to answer, but I thought what would be the point of having created a language that presents itself as internationalist, so to speak, when it in fact has a bias towards learners who are native speakers of either Romance, Germanic, or Slavic languages?


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## bearded

archibaldworthington said:


> I think that the answer is yes, given its vocabulary and phonology. I know its not a particularly difficult question to answer, but I thought what would be the point of having created a language that presents itself as internationalist, so to speak, when it in fact has a bias towards learners who are native speakers of either Romance, Germanic, or Slavic languages?


 I agree that it was a rather absurd undertaking.


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## fdb

If I am not mistaken, the vocabulary of Esperanto is taken entirely from European languages, mainly German, English, French. It is "international" in the 19th-century sense of the word: prejudiced towards the languages of the colonial empires.


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## Epilio

archibaldworthington said:


> I think that the answer is yes, given its vocabulary and phonology. I know its not a particularly difficult question to answer, but I thought what would be the point of having created a language that presents itself as internationalist, so to speak, when it in fact has a bias towards learners who are native speakers of either Romance, Germanic, or Slavic languages?



 You're right, but let me pose a broader question: is it possible to create a neutral language?. If we consider the vast differences amongst language families it seems to be a quite arduous work. I'm not sure whether everyone could be satisfied.


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## entangledbank

I shelve my Esperanto at the end of my Romance section, the only other possibility being at the far end ('miscellaneous') with New Guinean, Aboriginal, and sign languages. It's basically deformed Romance with borrowings from here and there in Europe, which are mostly harmless (_kaj_ for "and", not _et_ - why, Ludovic?). I can't imagine how you could make it more international by bringing in things from Chinese or Hindi.

I've got a soft spot for Esperanto, but having had the good idea, it should have been made less eclectic and more truly neutral, given that it has to belong inside some culture: Latino Sine Flexione, in fact.


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## learnerr

entangledbank said:


> I've got a soft spot for Esperanto, but having had the good idea, it should have been made less eclectic and more truly neutral, given that it has to belong inside some culture: Latino Sine Flexione, in fact.


I have encountered a wonderful explanation of what Esperanto lacks that it needs; it was by J.R.R.Tolkien, and he worded that it is perhaps mythology. At first I thought that explanation to be absurd, but then... In case of, say, Quenya or Sindarin, we can know what is the framework of ideas that we should try to find out meanings for its words in; and if we know the framework, then we can know and feel better, more elaborate and full of additional meanings, the ideas of its words and phrases. In case of Esperanto, words are deprived of basically everything but their direct meanings. So was my feeling, at least, when I made a short contact with Esperanto; maybe I am wrong and there is some real "neutrality" on its own in this language, independent from "neutralities" of all its antecedent languages.


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## caelum

At best, Esperanto is neutral due to its lack of idioms and real culture, history, etc., but it is essentially based off of romance and Germanic languages, so international it really is not.


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## Odysseus54

archibaldworthington said:


> I think that the answer is yes, given its vocabulary and phonology. I know its not a particularly difficult question to answer, but I thought what would be the point of having created a language that presents itself as internationalist, so to speak, when it in fact has a bias towards learners who are native speakers of either Romance, Germanic, or Slavic languages?



It's really two questions.  

For the first one, I'd say that Esperanto, for what little I know of it, is an artificial language created from European roots, with a simplified artificial grammar.  So, the answer really depends upon the meaning you attribute to the term 'European'.

I would also say that the failure of Esperanto as a practical international auxiliary language does not stem from its being rooted in European languages and simplified linguistic conventions, as opposed to a more ecumenical approach.

Second and third etc. languages are first and foremost a means to communicate with a community of speakers other than one's own.  The interest to learn a language rather than another is not determined by the ease of learning, but by the size and importance for the learner of the community of speakers the language enables him to communicate with.

In this sense, Esperanto never had a fighting chance.  I believe it was just a late rationalist utopian project born of a minority reaction to what was really happening in Europe at the time.


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## Ben Jamin

bearded man said:


> I agree that it was a rather absurd undertaking.



Why absurd? The creation of Esperanto was based on many rational premises added a good dose of idealism, and some naivity. Would you make a better international language mixing in Chinese tones, Basque ergative constructions, Xhosa click sounds, Bantu hundreds of word classes, and God knows what more? 
*This* seems absurd to me. 

It should be noticed  that Esperanto is actually the only one artificial language that has achieved a relative success, but it seems that learning natural languages is, after all, not that difficult, and the Esperanto users are limited to enthusiastic idealists.

Moreover, Esperanto is actually easier to learn than any natural language, mostly because of lack of cultural burden.


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## bearded

I think it was 'absurd' because I agree with above #1 and #8.


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## Ben Jamin

bearded man said:


> I think it was 'absurd' because I agree with above #1 and #8.


I understood that you meant that an international language must not have any national bias, and that's why Esperanto was absurd. The post # 8 was not sent yet.
I didn't agree with you, because I think, that the "bias" is without any significance, as you can't create a perfectly neutral language that suits all native speakers of all languages of the world. 

But I agree with Odysseus' statement: "I would also say that the failure of Esperanto as a practical international auxiliary language does not stem from its being rooted in European languages and simplified linguistic conventions, as opposed to a more ecumenical approach." 

This statement clearly contradicts #1, so I don't understand how one can agree both with #1 and #8.


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## bearded

Dear Ben,
#1 says that _esperanto _presents itself as an international language, whereas in reality it is only based on European languages; #8 talks about a _failure of esperanto as a practical international auxiliary language_. That does not seem to be such a contradiction to me. I think _esperanto_ is a failure both from a practical auxiliary point of view and from a cultural point of view (since it has no tradition, no history etc., and furthermore its lexicon is limited to a few language groups).
Probably it is the overall idea of creating a successful and really international language that is wrong and impossible altogether. That is my opinion, but I know there are people who think differently, and in the world there is room enough for me and for them.


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## Brioche

bearded man said:


> . I think _esperanto_ is a failure both from a practical auxiliary point of view and from a cultural point of view (since it has no tradition, no history etc., and furthermore its lexicon is limited to a few language groups).



Esperanto is a created language.
 How can any created language have a tradition or a history?
By your assessment, all created languages are ipso facto failures.


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## learnerr

Brioche said:


> How can any created language have a tradition or a history?


It can have a created tradition and a created history. Nothing impossible.
As J.R.R.Tolkien rightly said, what Esperanto misses is "mythology".

Consider it this way: when you hear an English word "table", you think not only of the (usually wooden) plate, elevated with the help of something, most commonly four legs of wood, but also of something else. That's because for a mind, it is entirely no difference whether a trait of your experience belongs to some circle or not: it leads you wherever its experience, associated with the things that you're thinking of, leads it. So, this word's being English is one trait among many, and this trait does tell a lot, because it is possible to treat the world, while trying to handle it, in many ways, and thus choose words and expressions in many ways; so, how in a given language it is common to treat the world when choosing words for it, tells something, and not only does it make a difference, but this trait is also an important one for the workable mind, because it helps me to find out how _I_ should treat the world while listening to such words.

In Esperanto this information is, or at least was, mostly lacking, and there seems to be no way to impose one way over others; _tablo_ is just _tablo_, no 'cultural burden': these things are all _tablo_ not because of internal tradition, inspired by a common principle, but out of intelligent imitation. However, when one tries to develop such principles — not intelligent principles, but proper of human workable mind, — and enunciate them through something, like "mythology" or whatever else, then _bingo_, we've got a language with an inner tradition… It's all creatable, no irrepresentable mystery about it. Vitalism is out of price in the modern era!


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## Ben Jamin

learnerr said:


> It can have a created tradition and a created history. Nothing impossible.
> As J.R.R.Tolkien rightly said, what Esperanto misses is "mythology".
> 
> Consider it this way: when you hear an English word "table", you think not only of the (usually wooden) plate, elevated with the help of something, most commonly four legs of wood, but also of something else. That's because for a mind, it is entirely no difference whether a trait of your experience belongs to some circle or not: it leads you wherever its experience, associated with the things that you're thinking of, leads it. So, this word's being English is one trait among many, and this trait does tell a lot, because it is possible to treat the world, while trying to handle it, in many ways, and thus choose words and expressions in many ways; so, how in a given language it is common to treat the world when choosing words for it, tells something, and not only does it make a difference, but this trait is also an important one for the workable mind, because it helps me to find out how _I_ should treat the world while listening to such words.
> 
> In Esperanto this information is, or at least was, mostly lacking, and there seems to be no way to impose one way over others; _tablo_ is just _tablo_, no 'cultural burden': these things are all _tablo_ not because of internal tradition, inspired by a common principle, but out of intelligent imitation. However, when one tries to develop such principles — not intelligent principles, but proper of human workable mind, — and enunciate them through something, like "mythology" or whatever else, then _bingo_, we've got a language with an inner tradition… It's all creatable, no irrepresentable mystery about it. Vitalism is out of price in the modern era!


But lack of the cultural burden, idiomatics, and the like, is an advantage for an international language that is created with simplicity and ease of learning as objectives. Think only about the absurd number of words that one has to remember when speaking about "flocks" of various animal arts: "pride of lions", "pack of wolves", "school of fish", going up in hundreds of useless words. Why shall for instance English be a better international language with its schizophrenic spelling, lack of proper future tense, with all confusing modal and auxiliary verbs will shall, would and should, etc. 

Natural languages are patchworks of imperfect and inadequate solutions, loved only by those who have learned them from early childhood.


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## learnerr

Ben Jamin said:


> But lack of the cultural burden, idiomatics, and the like, is an advantage for an international language that is created with simplicity and ease of learning as objectives.


Here I agree with you. Honestly, I think that an idea of a one-man-made international language is a self-contradiction. If this language is assigned a culture, like entangledbank suggested, then why should everyone acquire that culture and not another? If that language is entirely business-targeted, only to discuss things of importance for business action, then learning it is somewhat against human nature, one would feel so void about it; and again, why this language and not another? So, I just replied Brioche on her specific point: whether artificial tradition is at all possible.

As for setting all words as alike as possible in their behaviour, such language is, for my feeling, a very imperfect and inadequate language, even for learning. In addition, this principle cannot be applied to perfectness: there is always a room for the question, why one solution and not the other, and so mistakes of learners, and criticism of discontented people, are always on the way. For international communication, it is easier to simply have some mistake-resistent natural language: one makes mistakes and does not care about it.


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## apmoy70

entangledbank said:


> I shelve my Esperanto at the end of my Romance section, the only other possibility being at the far end ('miscellaneous') with New Guinean, Aboriginal, and sign languages. It's basically deformed Romance with borrowings from here and there in Europe, which are mostly harmless *(kaj for "and", not et - why, Ludovic?)*. I can't imagine how you could make it more international by bringing in things from Chinese or Hindi.
> ...


Well he used the ancient Greek copulative conjunction *«καὶ» kaì* --> _and_ (he even used the reconstructed classical pronunciation _kaj_); in MG we pronounce it *«και»* [ce]


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## Ben Jamin

learnerr said:


> For international communication, it is easier to simply have some *mistake-resistent natural language*: one makes mistakes and does not care about it.



Which languages you deem  being more "mistake resistant" than others? I can't really imagine any natural langauges that can really comply with this requirement. Do you think about langauges with little or none inflection?

Besides, I'll repeat my opinion, that the failure of Esperanto has nothing to do with it's cultural base (or lack of such) or shortcomings of structure.
We shall also remember that there exist "natural artificial languages", like Swahili or Pidgin English that have had quite a considerable local success.


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## learnerr

Ben Jamin said:


> Which languages you deem  being more "mistake resistant" than others? I can't really imagine any natural langauges that can really comply with this requirement. Do you think about langauges with little or none inflection?


I think that English is such language. One could as well mix up all _should_ and _ought to_, and simply say "a group of wolves" when talking to his colleagues of his travel (is this a right word for a cotraveller? I don't know! But it doesn't quite matter here). Native speakers could feel it's wrong, but otherwise no harm would be done.
Not sure whether this has to do with inflection or with something else.


> Besides, I'll repeat my opinion, that the failure of Esperanto has nothing to do with it's cultural base (or lack of such) or shortcomings of structure.


As for its failure as an international language, I agree: there are enough reasons for its failure even without such ones. But I was talking of a different failure or rather pseudo-failure, since such goal was not initially declared: failure to make a really interesting language. It's about the art of language creation.


> We shall also remember that there exist "natural artificial languages", like Swahili or Pidgin English that have had quite a considerable local success.


Here, I think, the following matters. The choice of words, expressions etc necessarily follows some principles. That's always so, no matter what language is considered. These principles may either be some intelligent, reason-driven thing, or they may be induced by some ideas that are first-hand important for a mind as a workable machine. In the first case, the language appears "non-natural", in the second case, the language appears "natural". Since the basics of how the mind works with its elementary ideas are unknown to us, we may reproduce such principles of importance to language use only unknowingly, that is in an unconscious process, like mixed languages are made. Or, one might try to actively seek to find and make such principles behind a language, half-unknowingly of how he does it, like Tolkien did with some success.


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## Ben Jamin

learnerr said:


> I think that English is such language. One could as well mix up all _should_ and _ought to_, and simply say "a group of wolves" when talking to his colleagues of his travel (is this a right word for a cotraveller? I don't know! But it doesn't quite matter here). Native speakers could feel it's wrong, but otherwise no harm would be done.
> Not sure whether this has to do with inflection or with something else.
> 
> As for its failure as an international language, I agree: there are enough reasons for its failure even without such ones. But I was talking of a different failure or rather pseudo-failure, since such goal was not initially declared: failure to make a really interesting language. It's about the art of language creation.
> 
> Here, I think, the following matters. The choice of words, expressions etc necessarily follows some principles. That's always so, no matter what language is considered. These principles may either be some intelligent, reason-driven thing, or they may be induced by some ideas that are first-hand important for a mind as a workable machine. In the first case, the language appears "non-natural", in the second case, the language appears "natural". Since the basics of how the mind works with its elementary ideas are unknown to us, we may reproduce such principles of importance to language use only unknowingly, that is in an unconscious process, like pidgin languages are made. Or, one might try to actively seek to find and make such principles behind a language, half-unknowingly of how he does it, like Tolkien did with some success.



 I think that the success of Swahili or Pidgin English was due mostly to the urgent need of having such a language, than to any inherent qualities of those languages themselves. Consider for example the utterly impractical feature of New Guinea Pidgin using long, wordy descriptions for almost any concept expressed with one word only in most other languages.


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## learnerr

Ben Jamin said:


> I think that the success of Swahili or Pidgin English was due mostly to the urgent need of having such a language, than to any inherent qualities of those languages themselves.


I was not saying the opposite. The inherent qualities, whatever they are, had to develop in a natural process, they had to be a result, not a cause.


> Consider for example the utterly impractical feature of New Guinea Pidgin using long, wordy descriptions for almost any concept expressed with one word only in most other languages.


What I was talking of was not whether a language is practical or not (and, as far as I understand from the Wikipedia article, they abbreviate such descriptions when they feel they're a burden to them). It is about how a language would feel: as natural or as non-natural.


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## entangledbank

apmoy70 said:


> he used the ancient Greek copulative conjunction *«καὶ» kaì*



Well I know that now; though I must say, as a child I knew the Esperanto word much earlier than the Greek. And then I thought: why that one word from Greek? I can't think of any other. That's the odd, unbalanced eclecticism of Zamenhof's choices. Okay, sometimes there was no convenient Romance word: he wanted _avo_ for "grandfather", so for _birdo_ "bird" he turned to English rather than try to make something of _uccello, oiseau, pájaro_. Mostly he borrowed from English or German, possibly a few Slavonic. One Greek word.


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## learnerr

For me, the most strange choice was _mal_- for the sense of a default antonym (_malbona_, etc). I always thought _anti_- would be more conforming to Zamenhoff's principles. "Mal" made me think rather of "badly", "in a bad way".

Also, I was very surprised when I learned that _esti_ was not a transitive verb there, but this has huge correspondences in Latin, Greek, and in some Slavic languages (in Russian these are very tiny, though, which is why my confusion), so not that surprising after all.


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## francisgranada

There are many other "strange" things in Esperanto, for example words like _malsanulejo - _hospital (to be fair, _hospitalo _is also possible). I think it's much easier to remember a separate word like _hospitalo_, than to rembemer how to compose/create a word like this from _sano _(health). Or _patrino _for mother is also unnatural to me, I'd prefer a separate word (e.g. _matro_) because this _-ino_ is not a desinence of gender, but a suffix. I wonder if there are natural languages where the term for _mother _is derived from that of _father _...


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## Ben Jamin

francisgranada said:


> There are many other "strange" things in Esperanto, for example words like _malsanulejo - _hospital (to be fair, _hospitalo _is also possible). I think it's much easier to remember a separate word like _hospitalo_, than to rembemer how to compose/create a word like this from _sano _(health). Or _patrino _for mother is also unnatural to me, I'd prefer a separate word (e.g. _matro_) because this _-ino_ is not a desinence of gender, but a suffix. I wonder if there are natural languages where the term for _mother _is derived from that of _father _...


I agree that "patrino" is a miss. But "malsanulejo" has lots of parallels in natural languages (krankenhaus (GE), sykehus (NO), sairaala (FI), and so on). Many languages prefer to construct new words from existing ones, making them self explanatory. English is an opposite example, it shuns such words. This makes the English vocabulary less accessible.

The word "hospital" is derived from a Latin word meaning "guest", you would never guess what it means without a dictionary.


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## francisgranada

Ben Jamin said:


> ... But "malsanulejo" has lots of parallels in natural languages (krankenhaus (GE), sykehus (NO), sairaala (FI), and so on). Many languages prefer to construct new words from existing ones, making them self explanatory ...


I agree, finally in my mother tongue hospital is _kórház _("deseas-house"). What I wanted to say is that the costruction _mal+san+ul+ajo_ for a non-native D) is bit complex and not an obvious/intuitive way how to create a term for _hospital_. Perhaps, that's why also _hospitalo _does exist in Esperanto.


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