If a Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese) Esperanto

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Postby hanumizzle » 2007-11-19, 21:05

Draven wrote:
hanumizzle wrote:Your command of English bears almost no signs of the peculiarities of strict isolating grammars, such as that in Vietnamese.
I thought English grammar was very isolating already. Asians are generally bad at learning foreign languages because they insist on thinking in theirs. Though I have to admit I once had a hard time understanding the concept of using prefixes and suffixes to build words.


English is isolating, but it still has stuff like traces of a genitive case. Vietnamese has nothing along those lines. It's a very pure isolating language.

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hanumizzle wrote:I can quite frankly see you as the even more Western-oriented, more democratic, more inwardly Germanic version of Hồ Chí Minh.
Why him and not someone else??? :shock:
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There was some linguist/mathematician from Vietnam who learned Russian in three months, but I can't remember his name anymore.

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hanumizzle wrote:Did the Vietnamese really adapt the Latin alphabet to reduce Chinese influence?

Originally, the Portuguese (not the French!) invented the alphabet to translate the Bible and spread their faith. While Catholicism couldn't make any big impact, the alphabet thrived. The young people at that time were particularly fond of it, and I'm sure you can understand why - it can bring literacy to the poorest of folks, unlike those cryptic Chinese characters that only the rich can afford to learn. Of course, the aristocrats hated hated hated it; they called it ridiculous, barbaric, rebellious etc.


That follows. The Khmer-derived alphabets used by your neighbors are far more complex than their antecedents, such as a Devanagari and Malayalam, even taking tone and extra phonemes into consideration. As such, I have always suspected that they were deliberately with forethought to be difficult for 'commoners' to learn.
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Postby hanumizzle » 2007-11-20, 0:58

Daniel wrote:Why not make one conlang for each family group?

One conlang for Sino-Tibetan, one for Dravidian, one for Austronesian, etc?


That's also worth consideration. Hindi itself sort of arose as an common auxiliary language which shares features with other Indo-Iranian languages in its vicinity, as well as the external Arabic and Persian influences.
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Postby Presto » 2007-11-24, 0:51

Daniel wrote:Why not make one conlang for each family group?

One conlang for Sino-Tibetan, one for Dravidian, one for Austronesian, etc?

But then, er, Japanese and Korean... :roll:


I'm afraid that we Chinese have to learn producing consonantal clusters again, when Tibetan and Chinese languages are to merge together to form Neosinotibetan. :roll:

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Re: If a Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese) Esperanto

Postby polishboy » 2008-12-20, 17:06

Maybe it would be Korean?
It has only one irregular verb.

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Re: If a Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese) Esperanto

Postby ILuvEire » 2008-12-20, 19:28

arpee wrote:If a Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese) Esperanto project was made. How would the language be?

I know it would try to make Asian languages easier but what would be needed?

I suppose the tonal system would be gone to make it easier but what else would be different if Esperanto was made based on Asian languages?


Honestly, if you got rid of the tones and used Bopomofo/Hangeul/Latin characters for Mandarin, it would make a GREAT auxiliary language. It has a simple yet useful grammar.

Another good language would be Japanese, minus the Kanji. The grammar isn't too bad, and the phonology is pronounceable by all of the SE Asian languages.

I think probably, you could adapt Chinese grammar to Japanese phonology and writing system (it's already been done the other way, might as well even the playing field. :P).
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Re: If a Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese) Esperanto

Postby Tenebrarum » 2008-12-21, 5:08

ILuvEire wrote:Another good language would be Japanese, minus the Kanji. The grammar isn't too bad, and the phonology is pronounceable by all of the SE Asian languages.

The problem with Japanese phonology is that it's too limited, which makes every word sound similar to the next.

I don't know... I can never remember Japanese names. They 're all random strings of open syllables to me.
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Re: If a Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese) Esperanto

Postby ILuvEire » 2008-12-21, 5:23

ILuvEire wrote:Another good language would be Japanese, minus the Kanji. The grammar isn't too bad, and the phonology is pronounceable by all of the SE Asian languages.


Did I really say the grammar "isn't too bad." Wth? I must have been thinking of another language.
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Re: If a Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese) Esperanto

Postby Balaur » 2008-12-21, 8:42

ILuvEire wrote:Honestly, if you got rid of the tones and used Bopomofo/Hangeul/Latin characters for Mandarin, it would make a GREAT auxiliary language.

That would be disastrous. Mandarin already has plenty of homophones. You take away the characters, and there'd be no way to distinguish them in writing. You take away the tones, and you've just multiplied the number of homophones for each of the limited initial-final combinations by about four (not quite, but just look through a Chinese-English dictionary sorted by Pinyin and see for yourself).
Vă rog să mă corectați dacă fac o greșeală în orice limbă. // Вэ рог сэ мэ коректаць дакэ фак о грешялэ ын орьче лимбэ. // Please correct me if I make a mistake in any language. // Bitte korrigiert mich, wenn ich einen Fehler in irgendeiner Sprache mache. // 請改正我任何語言中的錯誤。 // 请改正我任何语言中的错误。 // Παρακαλώ να με διορθώνουν αν κάνω ένα λάθο σε οποιηδήποτε γλώσσα.

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Re:

Postby eskandar » 2008-12-21, 10:14

This is an absolutely insane idea. I'm very critical of Esperanto, but as a Standard Average European auxlang it makes sense. However, the SAE languages already have a large shared vocabulary, common linguistic heritage, and very similar grammar. In contrast, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese belong to three or four completely unrelated families, have wildly different grammars (though Japanese and Korean grammar are quite similar), and the only vocabulary they share is Chinese loanwords. Adding additional languages, especially South Asian languages, is even more ridiculous. It makes about as much sense as an auxlang based on Greenlandic, Czech, and Wolof. I think Daniel's proposal of "one auxlang per family" is somewhat more realistic. It would be relatively easy to create a Korean-Japanese auxlang, but it would be useless since both peoples would refuse to speak it. :lol:

hanumizzle wrote:
noir wrote:Then why stop at Burma? India, Bangladesh, Maldives and Sri Lanka can join in as well. :p

I was actually thinking along the same lines, but dared not go so far unless someone else mentioned it. I guess such a constructed language might cover the whole of Northern India and Bangladesh (Bengali-speaking) plus Andhra Pradesh because of Telugu's heavy Sanskrit influence. Maybe Pakistan as well, even if Urdu leans somewhat more towards Arabic and Farsi. I'm not quite sure about, for example, Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka.

If you're adding Northern Indian languages then there's no reason not to follow the continuum and add Persian...which opens the door for Kurdish and Pashto, amongst others...and you can continue in this fashion until you've added Western Europe into your "Asian auxlang." It's a slippery slope. Oh, and adding Telugu just makes things even crazier. Sure, there's a lot of vocabulary from Sanskrit, but those words are not necessarily recognizable cognates with Hindi or other Indo-Aryan languages.
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Re: If a Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese) Esperanto

Postby ILuvEire » 2008-12-21, 17:59

Balaur wrote:
ILuvEire wrote:Honestly, if you got rid of the tones and used Bopomofo/Hangeul/Latin characters for Mandarin, it would make a GREAT auxiliary language.

That would be disastrous. Mandarin already has plenty of homophones. You take away the characters, and there'd be no way to distinguish them in writing. You take away the tones, and you've just multiplied the number of homophones for each of the limited initial-final combinations by about four (not quite, but just look through a Chinese-English dictionary sorted by Pinyin and see for yourself).


I guess I should have been more specific. Get rid of tones, then borrow/create words for the homophones.

I'm not well versed in tonogenesis, but don't the tones some times come from diphthongs? Couldn't you change them back to diphthongs?
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Re: If a Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese) Esperanto

Postby Tenebrarum » 2008-12-21, 19:10

ILuvEire wrote:I'm not well versed in tonogenesis, but don't the tones some times come from diphthongs?

No, tones are traces of discarded codas and consonant clusters.
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Re: If a Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese) Esperanto

Postby Balaur » 2008-12-22, 0:13

ILuvEire wrote:I guess I should have been more specific. Get rid of tones, then borrow/create words for the homophones.

I'm not well versed in tonogenesis, but don't the tones some times come from diphthongs? Couldn't you change them back to diphthongs?

Well, if you changed everything, then it would no longer be Mandarin, just a constructed language. You were suggesting that Mandarin would make a good auxiliary language. I generally agree with that, but I don't think anything should be changed about it.
Vă rog să mă corectați dacă fac o greșeală în orice limbă. // Вэ рог сэ мэ коректаць дакэ фак о грешялэ ын орьче лимбэ. // Please correct me if I make a mistake in any language. // Bitte korrigiert mich, wenn ich einen Fehler in irgendeiner Sprache mache. // 請改正我任何語言中的錯誤。 // 请改正我任何语言中的错误。 // Παρακαλώ να με διορθώνουν αν κάνω ένα λάθο σε οποιηδήποτε γλώσσα.

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Re: If a Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese) Esperanto

Postby ILuvEire » 2008-12-22, 6:22

Balaur wrote:Well, if you changed everything, then it would no longer be Mandarin, just a constructed language. You were suggesting that Mandarin would make a good auxiliary language. I generally agree with that, but I don't think anything should be changed about it.


You're right. I'm thinking too big anyway. Out of "Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese" half have tones (more than that i you consider that Chinese probably means Cantonese, Mandarin, Min etc.). Is Mandarin not used as an auxiliary language between them anyway?
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Re: If a Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese) Esperanto

Postby Balaur » 2008-12-22, 8:03

Mandarin is used as an auxiliary language between the Chinese languages, but probably not between Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. I imagine English might be used. Either that or they just don't communicate often.
Vă rog să mă corectați dacă fac o greșeală în orice limbă. // Вэ рог сэ мэ коректаць дакэ фак о грешялэ ын орьче лимбэ. // Please correct me if I make a mistake in any language. // Bitte korrigiert mich, wenn ich einen Fehler in irgendeiner Sprache mache. // 請改正我任何語言中的錯誤。 // 请改正我任何语言中的错误。 // Παρακαλώ να με διορθώνουν αν κάνω ένα λάθο σε οποιηδήποτε γλώσσα.

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Re: If a Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese) Esperanto

Postby Tenebrarum » 2008-12-22, 14:11

Balaur wrote:Either that or they just don't communicate often.

It's the second case. That's why an Asian lingua franca is totally unneeded.
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Re: If a Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese) Esperanto

Postby ILuvEire » 2008-12-22, 16:33

Draven wrote:
Balaur wrote:Either that or they just don't communicate often.

It's the second case. That's why an Asian lingua franca is totally unneeded.


Do you mean the general population, or everyone? I imagine that you guys have to do business with each other... :hmm:
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Re: If a Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese) Esperanto

Postby Tenebrarum » 2008-12-23, 15:24

ILuvEire wrote:
Draven wrote:
Balaur wrote:Either that or they just don't communicate often.

It's the second case. That's why an Asian lingua franca is totally unneeded.

Do you mean the general population, or everyone? I imagine that you guys have to do business with each other... :hmm:

The thing is East Asia is not a contiguous landmass like Europe where tiny countries are packed together and nearly every of them has a separate national language, with some even manage to have several.

East Asia's geography is much more handicapping: Japan is an archipelago, South Korea is situated on the end of a peninsula , China is very big and couldn't care less about her neighbours culturally, Vietnam is technically Southeast Asian and dimensions apart from the big cold developed North. And the linguistic situation in all 4 of them is really simple: one central official language, the rest are solidly obscure.

So yeah, not much cultural traffic.
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Re: If a Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese) Esperanto

Postby Kasuya » 2008-12-23, 20:34

A more interesting question would be "how long until Mandarin becomes the lingua franca of East Asia?" 8-)

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Re: If a Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese) Esperanto

Postby Formiko » 2008-12-23, 21:15

lichtrausch wrote:A more interesting question would be "how long until Mandarin becomes the lingua franca of East Asia?" 8-)


How long until it overshadows English? I believe most people could learn the spoken form of Mandarin rather quickly.
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Re: If a Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese) Esperanto

Postby Tenebrarum » 2008-12-24, 4:48

lichtrausch wrote:A more interesting question would be "how long until Mandarin becomes the lingua franca of East Asia?" 8-)

Formiko wrote:How long until it overshadows English? I believe most people could learn the spoken form of Mandarin rather quickly.


China is 1000 years past its prime. And you guys seriously think the Japanese, the Koreans and the Vietnamese would support Mandarin? I certainly don't.

I'm sorry to hit you with the cold hard fact, but in Asia, English is the only foreign language that matters. Mandarin is used in China. The end.
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