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Sun 21 Sep, 2003 08:52 pm
There is no doubt that most people agree that the Language Barrier exists. It is also certain that again most people agree that one or perhaps the best solution to the problem is a Common Language for the World. Such a language must necessarily be an artificial one, for no existing National language can really pretend to be sufficiently suitable for the purpose. Further, no Nation can afford to modify
its native language enough to accommodate the rest of the world.
The perfect World Language must have at least five qualities which are absolutely necessary to help people learn a new language easily and quickly.
a) The alphabet must be simple, without strange characters and without accents for simplicity and with the computer in mind.
b) Each letter in the alphabet must have one and only one clear sound to avoid confusion; and every single letter must be pronounced.
c) This (b) makes the language 100% phonetic, which is also another must. This makes it easy to read and write as well as pronounce correctly every time.
d) The grammar must be as simple as possible, and without exceptions.
e) It must have an easy and simple way of economizing on vocabulary to enable the student to learn it more quickly.
f) The above five qualities must ALL be present.
The qualities mentioned above for a perfect World Language immediately rule out as unsuitable any and every existing National language for the simple reason that no National language can be changed or even modified. And that makes it necessary to use an artificial, made for the purpose language, which will naturally favor no Nation in particular. No one is expected to abandon his/her own native tongue; but every one is encouraged to next learn this proposed new World Language.
Several attempts have been made in the past; but the only survivor has been Esperanto, which has all the above qualities except that:
a)it has some unpopular accents;
b) it does not use the letters q, w,x, and y.
In July 2002, a small Chinese team led by HeYafu came up with a new solution to the language problem. To begin with, they recognized two basic facts. One, Esperanto has great merit. Two, Practically all Nations are trying to learn English. Now this beautiful and very rich language happens to have absolutely none of the above-mentioned qualities to recommend it as a perfect World Language; and yet it is spreading like wild fire throughout the world. So, in my opinion, it was very clever to fuse these two important facts into one, using English for many word roots and phoneticizing them as far as possible, and Esperanto for all its wonderful qualities, eliminating at the same time the two shortcomings mentioned above. In this way the student has the best of both worlds. He is learning a useful
World Language and at the same time he is preparing to learn English as well, thus hitting two birds with one stone in the shortest possible time and with as little effort as possible.
This New Language was originally named Ulango (U for Universal, and lango for Language). However, as the pronunciation of U presents a problem, the team accepted to change it to Mondlango, pure and simple. Thousands of people are already learning it. This new language, like a new born babe is naturally not perfect, but in time it is bound to grow and mature into the New World Language it deserves to be MONDLANGO.
I find the concept extremely interesting, but until Mondlango becomes the language of international business, I would guess that most folk will continue to learn English, if it is not their first language.
Why MUST these things be present, kulturo? Is it really so hard to learn natural languages? People seem to have accomplished it just fine so far.
It is certainly a very interesting and powerful idea to have a universal secondary language. I imagine that a concept like this will be more quickly adopted in countries that already must learn more than one language.
There is still an issue of enforcing it, making people learn a particular "universal" language. Unfortunately there will always be the people that say "my language is better so IT should be the universal". Those kinds of people are a big hurtle for a concept such as universal language to overcome.
So, why not esperanto since it already exists?
What an amazing idea. Gives a new 'hands up' for globalisation though...
No matter how simple and easy you make this language, it will always deviate into little regional dialects anyway, thus destroying your five neccessities. That's why no natural language has them - they're impossible to maintain. There is no universal language, and there never will be one.
I agree, Rufio. Conlangs usually have a loose word order, which means that different people will immediately speak in different manners.
dròm_et_rêve wrote:I agree, Rufio. Conlangs usually have a loose word order, which means that different people will immediately speak in different manners.
Yes, Esperanto has a loose word order,
But the basic word order in Mondlango is: Subject+Verb+Object.
No language will be impervious to change unless you define a finite set of proper sentences that can be used in it, at which point it stops being a language.