Crosszone contact

[Seeker]

Usually people in foreign countries (for example, tourists) pick up bits of the language by seeing what the natives call things. For example, John might point at his eyebrows and call them eyebrows. To cut to the chase, if I met a foreigner in cantr am I allowed to act things out in other languages? For example: "*He points at his eyebrows* Eyebrows." wouldn't make sense at all, because the pointing part is still in English. Can I change the "*He points at his eyebrows*" into another language?

[Lumin]

For example: "*He points at his eyebrows* Eyebrows." wouldn't make sense at all, because the pointing part is still in English. Can I change the "*He points at his eyebrows*" into another language?

Actually I think most foreign-language players do understand at least some English. (Or at least a higher percentage than the English players who can also speak, say, Dutch or German or something.)

But whatever the case, it'd be best to write emotes in whatever language all players present are most likely to understand, even if the chars themselves don't speak it.

http://www.cantr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=87728

[Jos Elkink]

Just be careful when you meet Esperantists

[Okud]

Just be careful when you meet Esperantists

*evil laugh* Yes, they are bloodthirsty barbarians. They are actualy cross-bred with bears, an you can only hit one of them in a day when they come in a pack.


No kidding, what'd'you mean, Jos?

[Sho]

Being crazed language evangelists, they'd probably argue that the "language all players present are most likely to understand" is Esperanto, which of course looks like Catalan gone mad, so mass fun would result. Did I say fun? I meant chaos.

[Jos Elkink]

One of the reasons for the existence of Esperanto is that they don't like the 'imperial nature' of everybody speaking the language of one particular country, namely England ... So they tend not to appreciate if you talk English to them.

[Okud]

.. hmm, maybe the hardcore Esperantists. Anyway, since Esperanto is the easiest-to-learn language in all Cantr, it would only make sense that the other guys learn Esperanto when a contact is made.
Or maybe just like in RL the most numerous and avanced will stick to their own tongue and the others will have to learn.

[Jos Elkink]

Or maybe just like in RL the most numerous and avanced will stick to their own tongue and the others will have to learn.

Well, given the current growth rates, that means only a few months before we all have to learn Polish

You're right ... Esperanto is really quite easy to learn. I tried only for about two weeks, but was amazed how far I got. I do think it's very much European based, though, despite their cosmopolitan aspirations. There are loads of people in Japan that know Esperanto, I know that, but it just looks so much Latin-based.

[Junesun]

Or maybe just like in RL the most numerous and avanced will stick to their own tongue and the others will have to learn.

Well, given the current growth rates, that means only a few months before we all have to learn Polish

You're right ... Esperanto is really quite easy to learn. I tried only for about two weeks, but was amazed how far I got. I do think it's very much European based, though, despite their cosmopolitan aspirations. There are loads of people in Japan that know Esperanto, I know that, but it just looks so much Latin-based.

Yes, Esperanto is very easy to learn and yes the vocabulary is very much European-based. I think it's a good thing, because imagine a truly neutrally-concepted language, incorporating an equal share of words or features from each of the world's languages. That would boil down to about 2 words from each language, if we assume a total vocabulary of approximately 14,000 words. There would be enormous pronunciation and grammar difficulties of course, but let's just explore this scenario from the point of view of vocabulary, because it is easier to predict.

The average Western European knows one Romance language (French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese...) and one Germanic language (English, German, Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian...). That means that in an ideal setting, he will be able to recognise 36 words of the new language. I say ideal because it assumes that if you speak one language of the Germanic language family, for example English, you can automatically recognise any possible 2 words chosen from German - if that was actually the case, there would be no need for English-German translators. But let's assume the best of cases, for the sake of argument.

The average Eastern European knows one Slavic language (Polish, Slovenian, Czech, Ukrainian...) and one Germanic language. In an ideal setting, he will be able to recognise 42 words of the new language.

The average Chinese knows two Chinese dialects and English. In the best of cases, he will be able to recognise 50 words of the new language.

The average African knows his tribe's language and the official language / lingua franca of his country (which is usually the language of the European country whose colony the country was, despite attempts to promote local languages). Not more than recognisable 50 words.

In fact, you can try all possible nationalities, separate or together, the number of words any member of them could recognise never comes close to 100, much less surpass it. That's nothing in a language of approximately 14,000 words. You would have to assume an individual who has learned more than 10 languages and each of them from a different language group in order to even come close to recognising 2% of the vocabulary of the new language. The vast majority of vocabulary would be completely unrecognisable, alien and hence very difficult to learn. I'd even wager to say it would be more difficult to learn than any single natural language, because of the lack of logical connections such as interest - to interest - interested - interesting.

Now, assume the same people from all over the world trying to learn Esperanto. Vocabulary-wise, Esperanto is composed of roughly 80% Romance languages, roughly 20% Germanic languages and the rest Slavic and Greek (doesn't quite add up because the borrowings from Greek are mostly words that were incorporated into Romance and Germanic languages as well, such as "biology", "democracy" and the like, also a speaker of a Germanic language will be able to recognise international words borrowed from Latin, so the factor is actually more than 20% even for somebody who only knows English). Under the same assumption as before, people from Western Europe will recognise almost 100%, people from South America 80%, people from Africa 20-80% and all the rest at least recognise 20% (see above). That means anybody will recognise between 20% and 100% of Esperanto words, whereas in a truly mixed language incorporating an equal share of words from all languages, even accomplished linguists will hardly recognise more than 2% of the words. Hence Esperanto's claim to be international and easy to learn for anybody, even though the vocabulary is European. And reality proves it right, because places with particularly many Esperanto speakers are China, Brazil, Eastern Europe, Iran and Japan, not the USA, UK, France and Spain.

[Jos Elkink]

Thanks for the extensive explanation, Judith ...

Time for an Esperanto course on the Cantr forums, to make the Esperanto zone bigger?

[Coramon]

Wow... very talented explanation.

[Jos Elkink]

Wow... very talented explanation.

She's just showing off what she studies at university

(Yes, it's a talented explanation ...)

[Junesun]

Wow... very talented explanation.

She's just showing off what she studies at university

(Yes, it's a talented explanation ...)

Thanks.

As for an Esperanto course on the forum: only if a lot of people are interested. I believe that the free courses at http://www.cursodeesperanto.com.br and http://www.cs.chalmers.se/~martinw/espe ... lerni.html are quite good already. I studied using the latter and found it a great tool to acquire knowledge of all grammar items, a large vocabulary and sufficient fluency of expression. I can see why some people prefer cursodeesperanto.com.br though: the software allows for more interactivity and multimedia, for example it includes Esperanto songs. In exchange, this program doesn't focus as much on the understanding of texts; it's word- and sentence-driven.

[Jos Elkink]

Maybe a kind of brief / simple course, which draws heavily on links to those other sites? That way you can bring it more to the attention of Cantr players, without doing much work in terms of designing a course ...

[Okud]

Esperanto for Cantrians, that should be fun:

Give the notes back, nespawn! = Returnu la notojn, novulo!
etc