P*rl in Latin, whither Python?

[Martin Christensen]

>>>>> "Lieven" == Lieven Marchand <mal at bewoner.dma.be> writes:
>> Not many Americans speak more than one language, and those who
>> speak more than two are truly rare. When I tell them that I am
>> currently learning my seventh most of them don't believe me.
Lieven> I think that's the biggest argument against Esperanto. Most
Lieven> people motivated enough to learn Esperanto are amateur
Lieven> linguists who speak a lot of languages, so I've never learned
Lieven> Esperanto since the odds of meeting someone with whom I would
Lieven> have no language in common but Esperanto is fairly small.

Now, that's an argument that bites its own tail if I've ever heard
one.

1) Esperanto is a nice idea, and it would be great if everybody spoke
   it.

2) Not many people speak Esperanto, so it's not immediately useful.

3) Because it is not immediately useful, I will not learn it.

The consequence of this is, as any dork can see, that it would be
great if we could all agree on Esperanto (or a language which will
do its job better), but people won't learn it because it too few
people speak it for it to 'fulfill its destiny'. Imagine us being in a
deadlock where we were still using imperial measurements and Roman
numerals because we were waiting for everybody else to adapt the
smarter system! What separates the boys from the men, so to speak, is
that the little guy keeps talking about how someone ought to do
something about everything, whereas the non-whiner does something
about it -- at least just does one thing that everybody else doesn't
do because they're waiting for the pioneers.

We see the same thing in the computer world. So many people think that
Windows and MacOS are crappy operating systems, but until everybody
else has converted they'll just stay with it.

Would this be a bad time to start on American elections? :-)

Lieven> If you want to test: my current set of languages in which I'm
Lieven> more or less conversant is Dutch, French, English, German,
Lieven> Latin, Old English, Old Norse, Icelandic. I have a few notions
Lieven> of Finnish.

Not bad. Why don't you put the hundred or so hours aside it will take
someone like you to learn Esperanto on a more than just useful level?
Given your skill and experience I see no reason not to.

Lieven> Actually, I've found I can usually puzzle out Esperanto from
Lieven> first principles and the languages I know. Interlingua is a
Lieven> bit easier though.

Interlingua might be easier to grok when one has no comprehension of
the basics of either language, but it has many irregularities, and its
grammar is far from as simple and elegant as that of Esperanto or,
say, Ido. Ido tries to improve Esperanto, but in my opinion it
introduces as many bad things as it corrects errors in
Esperanto. Altogether it's much more eurocentric than Esperanto is,
but it does show that Esperanto isn't perfect.

Martin

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