Usuario:Dolichocephalus/Esperanto e Interlingua

Esperanto and Interlingua are two planned languages which have taken radically different approaches to the problem of providing an International auxiliary language (IAL). For more detail about the languages themselves, see their respective articles.

Although they are both classed as IALs, the intellectual bases of Esperanto and Interlingua are quite different. It has been argued that each language is a successful implementation of a particular IAL model. However, in both language communities there is a polemical tradition of using external criteria to critique the perceived opponent language (that is, judging Interlingua by Esperantic criteria and vice versa). In practical use, moreover, language usage in the two communities has sometimes shown convergences despite divergent theory.

Intellectual background

One cannot ascribe a single outlook to all Esperantists or all Interlinguists; however, the contrasting views of L. L. Zamenhof and Alexander Gode remain influential among Esperantists and Interlinguists, respectively. Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto, was motivated by several strands of nineteenth-century idealism, ranging from Comtean positivism to utopian internationalism. Esperanto, in his view, was a theoretically neutral instrument for communication, which could serve as a vehicle for idealistic values, initially Zamenhof's quasi-religion of homaranismo, later the interna ideo (internal ideal) of achieving "fraternity and justice among all people" (Zamenhof) through the adoption of Esperanto. Among modern Esperantists, this ideology has tended to reinforce a set of propositions about the language:

Esperanto's European character is purely accidental; proponents tend to stress its allegedly non-Western features for ideological reasons
Esperanto is, ideally, the universal second language, replacing all other languages in inter-ethnic communication; pro-Esperanto arguments tend to assume a future situation of widespread Esperanto use
The fina venko (final victory) of Esperanto, though a remote goal, remains a key ideological reference point
Esperanto is a vehicle for a specific internationalist and humanitarian ideology
Cultivation of an internal Esperanto culture is an important value for Esperantists.

By the mid-twentieth century, when Gode led the development of Interlingua, the ideals underlying Esperanto had come to seem naive. Influenced by Herder, Gode propounded a Romantic, anti-positivist view of language: languages are an aspect of the culture of a people, not an instrument to achieve a goal; an ideology cannot be attached to a language, except artificially. This implied, in his view, that a world language on the Esperanto model was either impossible or, worse, achievable only through totalitarian coercion. Unless imposed by force, a universal global language would presuppose a universal global culture, which does not currently exist and is not necessarily desirable.

On the other hand, Gode saw another sort of international language -- non-universal and non-culturally neutral -- as being entirely possible.

Learnability versus comprehensibility

Some speakers of Interlingua argue that, although Esperantists can communicate with other Esperantists, Interlingua is suitable to communicate with many more people than only speakers of Interlingua itself. Nevertheless, this design aim of comprensibilitate a prime vista (comprehensibility at first sight) is not without drawbacks. While Interlingua is easy to read for people familiar with a Romance language and educated speakers of English, it is less easy to learn to write or speak it, especially for those without such familiarity.

Interlingua's grammar is less regular than that of Esperanto – some verbs retain Latin double stems, and abbreviated forms exist for three of the most commonly used verbs. The number of root words used in everyday conversation is larger, because Interlingua makes less use of regular affixes:

Esperanto	Interlingua	English
sana	san	healthy
sano	sanitate	health
malsana	malade	sick, unhealthy
malsano	maladia	illness, disease
malsanulejo	hospital	hospital
saniĝi	recovrar	to become healthy, recover
sanigi	curar	to make healthy, cure
malsaniĝi	cader malade	to become sick, fall ill

To the reader who speaks English or a Romance language, only the middle column is recognizeable. The middle column is also more international. For example, a word like hospital exists in a great many languages, such as Afrikaans, Basque, Chamorro, Dutch, English, French, German, Hindi, Irish, Polish, Spanish, Swahili, Tagalog, and Urdu (even in Esperanto), but malsanulejo is unique to Esperanto.

But to a speaker who is not familiar with English, Romance, or the international vocabulary, the left column is easier to learn. This is because it uses a single root, san-, with the same derivations that are applied to other Esperanto roots. Not only do the related concepts of health and illness use the same root, but they are derived in the same way from the adjectives 'well' and 'sick': sana → malsana, sana → sano, malsana → malsano. Assuming these derivations are known from other words, only the root san- needs to be learned. However, the Interlingua terms for health and illness are not related, and are derived with different suffixes from 'well' and 'sick': san and malade, san → sanitate, malade → maladia. While maladitate may be used, most Interlingua speakers prefer maladia.

Interlingua proponents contend that differences between Interlingua words reflect differences in their meanings. If I eat too much junk food, I may be unhealthy, but that's different from catching an illness. The two Interlingua roots reflect this difference. The Esperanto compound mal-san-ul-ej-o, or not-healthy-person-place-noun, implies a place for people who are not healthy, when in fact a hospital is a place where sick and injured people are treated. Again, Interlingua expresses a distinct meaning through a distinct word form. This principal – that a difference in meaning implies a difference in form – avoids confusion and probably adds to ease of learning for speakers of any language.

In addition, Esperanto has a large number of synonyms, especially for newer words. Words for spam, for example, include spamo, spamaĵo, spammesaĝo, trudata reklamo, trudletero, and trudaĵo[1]. Interlingua simply uses spam. Thus, while many Esperanto words are formed from roots and affixes, it can be a challenge to guess which roots and affixes will be used, and how. In addition, some Esperanto speakers are concerned that their language simply has too many words, making it difficult to learn.[2]

Interlingua has many words as well, but for a reason: it conveys many ideas. For example, Interlingua's vocabulary covers not only day-to-day conversation, but also technical terminology and specialized areas of interest. Most learners can entirely disregard this specialized vocabulary. Thus, it presents no difficulty for them.

Still, some Esperanto speakers contend that more words must be memorized in Interlingua. So Interlingua words are recognizeable from their widespread occurrence in European languages, whereas Esperanto words are recognizeable from their regular derivation from a small number of roots.

Neutrality of vocabulary

The vocabulary of Esperanto is taken from Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages which makes it appear more neutral than that of Interlingua which in contrast for the most part consists of words with Latin origin (although there exist several loan-words where there is no appropriate word in a Romance language, but most of them were "latinized", eg. English blockade, German Blockade - > Interlingua "blocada"). However, most of the Esperanto words are as well derived from Latin. Alexander Gode, who was influential in the development of Interlingua, desired in part to preserve the international scientific vocabulary which was almost completely of Greek and Latin origin. Conversely, he also allowed into Interlingua words from any language, as long as they were international in scope.

The objective of the primary desire was impossible with so many roots. In the end, an Interlingua text was not comprehensible in its entirety for others than people familiar with a Romance language and educated English speakers. [3]

Neutrality of grammar

Both languages are generally considered to use Indo-European derived grammars, but Esperantists would claim greater neutrality due to its method of word formation (see below).

Neutrality of word formation

Interlingua forms its vocabulary based on a "consensus" between French, Italian, Spanish/Portuguese, English, German, and Russian words for the same concept. While Esperanto draws on the same roots, it includes additional German and Slavic roots. Both languages form new words through agglutination, but Esperanto more markedly. As an example, take the Esperanto word for hospital: mal·san·ul·ej·o which breaks down into smaller root words, mal (opposite), san (health), ul (person), ej (place), o (noun): thus, a place for a person with the opposite of health. This method of word construction allows for a larger vocabulary, using fewer root words.

However, it is incorrect to say that Esperanto is an agglutinative language, like Japanese, Turkish, Hungarian, or Finnish. Agglutinative languages do more than use many affixes to form words. They use affixes to express information that, in West Indo-European languages, is typically conveyed through adposition. As a result, words denote combinations of ideas that would be found in phrases or even sentences in a fusional language, such as German, or an isolating language, such as English or Chinese.

With respect to agglutination, Interlingua and Esperanto are very similar. They use agglutination widely in word formation – because they are highly regular languages – but in little else. Even the amount of agglutination is similar in comparison with the vast difference between extremely isolating languages, such as Chinese and Tahitian, and extremely agglutinative ones, such as Finnish and many Native American languages. Interlingua and Esperanto do differ in precisely how agglutinations occur. For example, Interlingua adds tense endings to the indicative form of a verb (dona → donar, 'to give'), while Esperanto adds them to the stem, (don → doni).

Orthography

The orthography of Esperanto is inspired by that of the Roman-alphabet Slavic languages, and is completely phonemic (one sound, one letter). Interlingua, by contrast uses an orthography established by its Romance, Germanic, and Slavic source languages. The procedure used sometimes favored English and the Romance languages, resulting in a little less phonemicity and a little more familiarity to speakers of those languages.

For example, the Esperanto kontakto and the Interlingua contacto mean the same thing and are pronounced the same, but are written differently, because the orthography of Esperanto is simpler — one sound, one letter —while that of Interlingua is more difficult. The letter "c" of Interlingua, for example, can have the sound of /k/ or /ts/ (alternatively /s/) depending on the following letter. Such details make Interlingua more difficult to learn and speak for non-Romance native speakers, but at the same time easier to read for speakers of Romance or Romance-influenced languages: the letters show the history of the Romance influence.

Expressiveness

Supporters of Interlingua note that their language not only conserves the natural aspect of Western languages, but also their rich, subtle treasury of meanings. Interlingua flows regularly from its Romance, Germanic, and Slavic source languages, and thus it possesses their expressiveness.

Esperanto, by its liberal use of affixes and its flexible word-order, is equally as expressive as Interlingua (or indeed any natural language), but is more internationally neutral. Certainly Esperanto is a product of rational construction, not historical evolution, but after the prolonged usage of more than 100 years, it has become a living human language.

Number of speakers

Many Esperanto speakers assert that their language is the only constructed language during the last century to have more than some thousands of speakers. Only one other constructed language possibly passed this mark: Volapük, which allegedly had 200,000 speakers in 1890. Although no census has ever been undertaken, Esperanto speakers frequently place their numbers at somewhere between 100,000 to 3 million speakers.

Most Interlingua speakers consider any estimate of a million or more for Esperanto to be an exaggeration, and several have suggested that the actual number amounts to several thousand. If it is more than a million, the number of Interlingua speakers is certainly smaller, although people able to understand Interlingua at a useful level may be numbered in the hundreds of millions.

Sample texts

English

Our Father, who art in heaven, etc...

Interlingua

Nostre Patre, qui es in le celos,
que tu nomine sia sanctificate;
que tu regno veni;
que tu voluntate sia facite
super le terra como etiam in le celos.
Da nos hodie nostre pan quotidian,
e pardona a nos nostre debitas
como nos pardona a nostre debitores,
e non duce nos in tentation,
sed libera nos del mal.

Esperanto

Patro nia, kiu estas en la ĉielo,
via nomo estu sanktigita.
Venu via regno,
plenumiĝu via volo,
kiel en la ĉielo, tiel ankaŭ sur la tero.
Nian panon ĉiutagan donu al ni hodiaŭ.
Kaj pardonu al ni niajn ŝuldojn,
kiel ankaŭ ni pardonas al niaj ŝuldantoj.
Kaj ne konduku nin en tenton,
sed liberigu nin de la malbono.

External links

[[Categoría:Esperanto]] [[Categoría:Interlingua]] [[en:Esperanto_and_Interlingua_compared]] [[nl:Vergelijking van Esperanto en Interlingua]] [[pl:Esperanto a interlingua]]