Protecting the Diversity of Languages

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Many people know that protecting the diversity of living beings is a great factor in protecting the balance of our environment; but few people are aware that the diversity of languages is of the same importance as the diversity of living beings, because each language represents a national culture. As a language is a carrier of culture, its disappearance means the disappearance of a national culture and tradition. The disappearance of a language is of the same importance as the disappearance of a species of living beings. In any geographical region where there are many different living beings,there are many different languages.

Today, the whole world is being gravely affected by economic globalization. English, a national language which has only 380 million native speakers, is wrongly learned and used in many countries as a dominating language, supported by the economic and technological advantages of the USA, the UK and other countries. The wide use of English inhibits the development of other national languages and is now causing the failure and disappearance of the languages of small and weak nations.

In conditions of economic globalization exchanges between nations have become increasingly common. Surely there is a need for an international language that is learned easily and does not harm any country. This language should not be a national one. Why?

Firstly, because using a national language as an international one brings advantages for the nation concerned but disadvantages for others.

Secondly, because national languages are formed over a long period and include many irregular and illogical features. They are difficult to learn. For example, the pronunciation and spelling of many English words are not the same; there are a lot of irregular verbs and idioms which must be memorized one by one.

So, although many people learn English, only a few people know it well because of the difficulty of learning it; but what language should be an international one?

An international language should be:

Neutral, belonging to every nation and easy for every nation to learn. Perfectly logical, with accurate construction, without exception, unifying oral and written language, spelling and pronunciation. Have the capacity of expressing subtle differences of meaning, and be translatable into any national language.

For solving the problem of an international language many variants of planned languages have been created, among which Esperanto, published by a Polish oculist, Zamenhof, in 1887, has the most influence and value; but a modern view is that Esperanto has two obvious shortcomings:

One is that there are 6 letters with diacritical marks, which cannot be typed on a computer easily.

Another is that about 70% of Esperanto root-words came from Latin languages, which is too big a percentage. Today, more and more people are learning English, so an international language should contain more English roots.

To overcome these shortcomings, linguists have made great efforts and suggested different variants. Mondlango, created by Chinese linguists, was born in July 2002. Many people consider that Mondlango has inherited the advantages of Esperanto, yet overcomes its shortcomings.

Mondlango is a neutral international language; it doesn't overwhelm or displace any national language, but promotes the development of national languages. Each person uses his or her national language in his or her country, but uses Mondlango in international cases. So we needn't worry that the national language concerned will be pushed aside by mankind or vanish.

Therefore, promotion of Mondlango will not only facilitate the interchange of information, but also protect national cultures, conserving and enriching our multilingual world-culture, so that our global village will be more prosperous and multicolored.

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Kulturo, welcome to A2K.

Give us a sample of Mondlango please...

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OK! Here's a sample of Mondlango:

La Most Facila Asko en la Mondo

Iu tage un riculo metin Samo. La riculo askin: "Mi awdin ke yi esan tre saja ko nio esan disfacila por yi. Cu yi povan diri al mi, kial yi esan tia saja?"

Samo dirin: "Mastro, bonvolez ne koleri. If yi ne kreduz mia wordos, nun lasez mi aski yi un asko. If yi havan un grupo de xepo, ko mi sendan al yi alia grupo. Do kiom da grupos de xepo yi havan?"

"Ah! Tio esan la most facila asko en la mondo. Un plus un esan bi. Ayn humo konan ke mi havan bi grupos de xepo."

Samo lafin ko dirin: "Yi esan misa, Mastro. Bi grupos de xepo putan kume esan ankore un grupo. Tio esan la most facila asko en la mondo."

English translation:

The Easiest Question in the World

One day a rich man met Sam. The rich man asked: "I hear you are very clever and nothing is difficult for you. Can you tell me why you are so clever?"

Sam said: "Master, please don't be angry. If you don't believe my words, now let me ask you a question. If you have a group of sheep, and I send you another group. Then how many groups of sheep do you have?"

"Ah! That's the easiest question in the world. One plus one is two. Anybody knows that I have two groups of sheep."

Sam laughed and said: "You are wrong, Master. Two groups of sheep put together is still one group. That's the easiest question in the world."

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Thanks for the sample. I will keep the radar on for Mondlango.

In the meantime there is plenty of other wordplay on this forum in english... See you 'round?

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kulturo, welcome to a2k.

Mondalango sounds like fun.

Two or three things bothered me.

"Disfacila": sounds like newspeak to me. Not easy is not equal to uneasy is not equal to difficult.

"aski un asko": sounds poor.

"wordos": the same problem as Esperanto's "lerneja". Why use the most difficult word, where "skola" would have been better? Or "parolos", in this case?

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kulturo mondalango does sound like a lot of fun and it also sounds like has a french background. does it i am just wondering because i am in french. btw welcome to a2k

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Mondlango does seem interesting.. but to me it looks like a bit jumbled with some weird choices of English words put in... surely, it would have been more sage to put in compromises that sound similar to many words in other languages than to put in an English word. For example:

most--- Spanish and Portuguese: más
Italian and French: più; plus.
= seen as plus can be recognised by Italian and French speakers and similarised to plus in English, the word would be plü.

I agree with you on the negation front; not easy does not mean difficult: "the test was not easy but not difficult either". I use në (think née) attached to the adjective to convey the opposite of the adjective:

nëfacilant

(the -ant being the ending of all adjectives)

and ne (neh in never mind) to convey not ____:

Ne facilant sepf l'examen.

Despite this, it still seems like an interesting project... although an optomistic one. Do you think many people would pick up artificial languages?

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First of all, no language is illogical. If it were, our logically based minds would not be able to learn it. There have been many books written on the subject of English pronunciation and spelling that have not concluded that it is illogical in any sense. There are morphings of sounds and spellings to comply with our unique pronunciation rules, just as there is in any language. Upon hearing an unfamiliar English word, children who have been taught English well enough to grasp spelling rules will usually spell the word correctly, unless that word is borrowed from another language with different rules, or if there are two rules that clash due to the evolution of the language.

Secondly, English is not going to become the universal language, and languages will not stop being diverse. People are different by nature, not all identical drones. Even if English did "take over" as the "internional language," it would no doubt be supplanted by different dialects and creoles - as it has been in America. Clearly, it's not even possible to make standard English a national language, let alone an international one. Some dialects, creoles, and variations of English are different to the point where they cannot be mutually understood without some serious study involved.

Thirdly, in the interest of linguistics in general, I really despise unnatural languages being used in a natural context. The history of a language is important to the study of it's use, such as the fact that English only derives words from certain languages, that it was affected by others, and that others were affected by it. The context of a language shows how the language has evolved, how it has changed, and how the people who speak it have changed with it. The fact and way that people in other countries speak English shows how America (or possibly Britain) has interacted with them, and reveals history. Indians (from India) speak English with a British rather than American accent because of history - ebonics in America shows the evolution of the dialect from both English and West African languages, and has roots in both. Mush further from enriching culture, I think the conscious adoptation of any international language, especially a created one, would stifle culture rather than enrich it. To try and created a "world culture" would mean the end of culture entirely, and the death of the study thereof.

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For distinction and endangering of languages see www.terralingua.org

Yeah, of course English spelling has its rules. But first of all you have learn all those rules (and then learn the double amount of exceptions). Which is your mother tongue, Rufio?
Just like with French: if you know all those rules how to conjugate this verb and that tense, the grammar may seems to you very logical. But you have to KNOW the rules.

Both language types have their advantage and their disadvantage, hence a simultaneous usage would be best, or not?
Constructed languages are easy and neutral, while natural languages are difficult but open up a certain culture to you. Use an Aux Lang as a basis to communicate with any people whose language you don't know and learn those natural languages which you are interested in to widen your mind.

For me as an English learner, the fact that Aux Langs are independent from a certain country is very important. English learners learn years and years about some Anglophonic countries (Great Britain, US and at my school one year about Australia). Exchanges and holidays are frequently organized with just anglophonics - of course, because only by imitating them we can learn the correct usage of English!!
But if we learn the international language, shouldn't we learn about international stuff and get to know the world?

Quote from "Esperanto and language awareness" by Mark Fettes; source: http://esperantic.org/~mfettes/aware.htm
"It [the study of Esperanto] avoids the danger of replacing a monocultural view merely with a bicultural one, and it can instead make a major contribution to helping students perceive the pluralistic nature of our new world (Sherwood 1982, 410)."

Quote from the Prague Manifest (source: http://www.esperanto.se )
"7. HUMAN EMANCIPATION
Every language both liberates and imprisons its users, giving them the ability to communicate among themselves but barring them from communication with others. Designed as a universally accessible means of communication, Esperanto is one of the great functional projects for the emancipation of humankind -- one which aims to let every individual citizen participate fully in the human community, securely rooted in his or her local cultural and language identity yet not limited by it.
We maintain that exclusive reliance on national languages inevitably puts up barriers to the freedoms of expression, communication and association. We are a movement for human emancipation."

Why are some languages spreading and some not? Interlinguists think the reason is economical and political power. Which other reasons could there be? Think of Greek in the Greek empire, of Latin in and after the Roman empire, of Chinese in Asia. Now it is English because the US has strong influence; once its economy and influence is shrinking, the study of English will be on the decline, too
If we would have to decide A PRIORI which language for a international language, we would chose the EASIEST one. But since we don't have the ability to chose a priori but are confronted with facts, we keep on learning the language which has the strongest lobby.
This is why I don't think that any Aux Lang would be more successful if it is closer to English. An Aux Lang doesn't have any power but the power of logic.

The article which had been most impressing to me is "Where is myth, where is reality?" by Claude PIRON (an esperantist, but you can as well place "auxiliary language" instead of "Esperanto"). (http://www.geocities.com/c_piron/17.html)

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Hel, as complicated as the English language is, billions of people seem to have figured it out.

I know a couple other lanugages - not fluently, but enough to know a fair amount of the rules. Sure, when you start out, the rules seem kind of arbitrary, but once you get in the habit of speaking the language they make sense. It's probably even better if you're fluent.

There's nothing wrong with constructed languages, but they don't have the depth of natural ones. So why go and convert the world to a constructed langauge? People can learn real languages, so there's no need. We speak natural langauges for a reason - you might find that people who start speaking a constructed language in everyday activities eventually alter that language and give it more depth. People can't live using only some sort of pidgin as a means of communication.

You can have a worldveiw without changing the language you speak. Changing your language to change your worldveiw is a little backwards.

The esperanto site is wrong, Just because I know English doesn't mean that I can't learn and communicate in any other language I want to. Anyway, languages aren't national - there are many different languages spoken within the borders of most countries, and there are countries that have speakers of the same language(s).

Obviously, languages should be preserved, but inventing an international language doesn't realize that goal.

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Yes of course you can learn English, if you are skilled enough, have time enough, if you're language is close enough to it and if you can afford visiting an English speaking country!

Me in personal I'd love to learn an international language (no matter which it is) because I love the world. But I don't see why I should learn years and years about the US and Great Britain - this isn't the world.
And I don't see why I have to learn a foreign language if others (native speakers) don't have to. Human Rights Declaration sais that all people should be treated equal, or not...

Of course English doesn't mean that I can't learn any other languages. But it obviously means that it is nessecarily everybody's first foreign language.

I think you can give depth to any possible language, and constructed languages actually are possible....

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You can learn about other countries without forcing them all to speak the same language for you.

Language is as much a part of culture as anything else. If you truly want to learn about another culture, you have to learn the language, because without that knowledge you will be missing vital parts of society anyway.

I know that constructed languages can be given depth. But it would be just that - given. If you want to see the world as it is and not as whoever made the language has crafted it to be, than it would be much better to learn the original language. Learning all languages takes time and effort, but it is worth the effort.

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Protecting the diversity of languages is not facilitated by creating a universal language.

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Protecting the Diversity of Languages

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