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  | This entry has been viewed 1749 times. |
| Entry by 799 | 19.02.02, 05:47 CET |
Let me first say that I find this all very exciting...nevertheless, I have a few problems with Europanto:
1. Ignoring for the moment the problem of Slavic languages, if Europanto is to be the bridge between Romance and Germanic languages, English is already such a bridge. Its core is Germanic, but most of its vocabulary comes from Latin--in this way it doesn't really favor one over the other.
2. More importantly, getting back to my topic heading, what are we native English speakers to do? We have no extra words to throw into our language, so it seems like a conversation in Europanto with a non-native English speaker would be a very one-sided affair. Are we expected to unnaturally throw foreign expressions into our speech?
3. Perhaps the most difficult issue I have with Europanto is that it might eventually discourage people from learning other languages as they are meant to be spoken. After all, if the Italian and the Frenchman can get along fine with Europanto, why learn each other's language? Granted, this is a problem with English already, but it may be exacerbated by Europanto.
Still, I'm all for throwing in expressions from one's propre langue if that will aid in comprehension...which is really what Europanto's about. One of the great strengths of English is its willingness to incorporate words from other languages; perhaps a more "internationalized" English is a better and more pragmatic aim than an entirely different tongue.
Parfois, I'm having mucho fun reading all la Europanto literature!
-Luke
(Palo Alto, California, USA) |
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