tlhIngan-Hol Archive: Sun Oct 10 21:23:01 1993
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RE: This 'N' That
>and I think we may well see the day when we overtake Esperanto. ...
Not any time soon. Klingon is seriously lacking in the vocabulary
department for one, and you have to contend with the fact that Esperanto
is frighteningly popular in countries like Japan and China, where learning
European langauges has always been a problem. The Japanese really like it
because of their cultural 'neurosis' against making any type of error
in public. English, as you all know, is one of the most difficult
languages to learn as a foreign speaker. Esperanto is MUCH simpler to
learn than Klingon, English, or Japanese.
I honestly doubt we'll see that day, and the gods know i hope it
doesn't happen. The Klingon language was never intended for the
function Esperanto serves. It would be a sad waste of effort to devote
such study to Klingon when a far better mechanism exists: Esperanto.
Klingon is an interesting linguistic 'toy', but please don't delude
yourselves into thinking that it could hope to be an international language.
Esperanto has a rather broad ORIGINAL literature (original in that the
works were written in Esperanto, not translated from another langauge), no
to mention translations of many major works.
This was not intended to be a flame, and if it seemed as such, forgive me.
I think that the international/intercultural language problem is a very
serious one. I have studied and gained competence in 6 or 7 langauges
because of this problem. We need a unified solution, not another 'new'
langauge.
Klingon is a great 'toy', and its differences from any human language
surely make for interesting study, but please leave the international
human language arena to something better suited for the task.
Esperanto was designed for just that task, over 100 years ago. It is
still here, and still quite strong.