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Should we start again?

Should we start again?

Should we start again?

(OP)
I just checked my PC and found 19 different varieties of English. I was rather taken with the idea of composing in Caribean English or in discovering whether every sentance in Australian English ends with a question mark.

But should we scrap all languages and start again?

Face it, we are using an evolved language that originated with the cave men.

The language we speak conditions our thought processes. We conciously think in our own language. More importantly we dream in our own language so does this suggest that our sub-concious works in our native language or that there is some translation program that converts our inner sub-concious musings into our native langauge for our concious minds to comprehend and communicate?

Think too, we think much faster than we can speak and we speak faster than we write.

If we designed a new language from scratch, what would our requirements be? that our spoken and written forms should be as fast as our thoughts?

What would this do to our thinking?

In this modern age, is our language holding us back?

JMW
www.viscoanalyser.com
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RE: Should we start again?

I believe there was an attemptat creating an artificial "universal" language.  It was called "Esperanto".

RE: Should we start again?

(OP)
Who knows what Esperanto is or why it was created or what purpose it serves. You won't find anything helpful here: http://www.tejo.org/info/pri_esperanto.php?lingvo=en.
It is a toy language as far as i can see.

Certainly there have been various attempts to simplify grammar and "rationalise" spelling and even to create new languages. There are numerous examples in literature as well as serious studies.

One story that interested me was the SF story "Flowers for Algernon". This shows the changes in ability to use the language as a result of mind enhancing experiments. I rather thought the converse would be intereting, to see the effects on mental capability of a purpose designed language.

JMW
www.viscoanalyser.com
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RE: Should we start again?

I have actually seen and heard Esperanto spoken. There are many users - hundreds of thousand perhaps millions. But I do not like it personally. A living and working language (why not English?) is the best way to communicate between different language groups. There might be political issues - always some that feel that their language should be used instead.

This forum is a good example. I guess that ten or twenty percent of the visitors have mother tongues other than English (I am one of them)but English works. It is not always the Queen's English, but does that really matter?

I think that we can communicate even if the language is not always perfect. If there is a misunderstanding, questions are put and answers given. I see no problem in that.

I sound conservative? I guess I do. Do not change something that works unless there are verrry good reasons.


Coming back to Esperanto. We have a local ironic paper (Groenkoepings Veckoblad)that has introduced their own universal language. It is called "Transpiranto" mainly because it is so hard to master. There are "transpirations" of well-known poems in the paper each month. They make great fun to read.

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