This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
This archive page covers approximately the dates between 13 Apr 2001 and 20 Nov 2005.
Can someone please put some IPA into that section on pronunciation so I know what the hell you lot are going on about! Nicholas 16:06, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
I moved a paragraph of personal experiences, which was too valuable to delete, to a "commentary" page under the name of its author. That brings up a policy question: should one create commentary pages like that for others, or just suggest that they do it themselves? I'm inclined toward the bolder option: do what you think is right, and let them fix it if they object. -- LDC
Where do manufactured languages created only to allow machine assisted inter-language translation fit in?
Added category on Artificial languages for these, feel free to add some.
There is, incidentally, space for an Interlingua wikipedia...
I wondered about words that were present in Germanic and Slavic languages (English, German and Russian) but not any of the Romance languages. Examples: Eng: Swine, De: Schwein, Ru: Svinyja (Il: svin/swin?) or Eng: Snow, De: Schnee, Ru: Sneg (Il: sneg?) (Both from common Indo-European roots). It would seem those words usually wouldn't be eligible as Interlingua vocabulary? (Of course, these concepts already have the suitable words "porco" and "nive".)
For some reason people want article to say that Interlingua is based on "European languages". It's clearly not, not was it intended to be: it's a Romance pidgin, common vocab with just enough grammar to hold it together. Gode even referred to those who wanted to make Interlingua a full-fledged language "Esperantists".
(I'm assuming that the above was Kwamikagami... you didn't sign the edit. nn;)
You shouldn't take Gode's comments as the true bible on Interlingua, when he neither created the language originally nor has been a factor in its evolution for the past 35 years.
Do you have anything against Interlingua? Maybe not directly, but a desire to push another interlanguage?
I take it you are an Idist... well, as long as we are both updating this page, shall we try to get it to featured article level? Almafeta 14:40, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
Wow. We've got lots to talk about -- and this is an awkwards place to do it. @_@ Anyhow...
Hey Almafeta, I just added "primary" to "allowing those familiar with one of the primary control languages to read and understand it at first sight." It really should be "one of the Romance control languages", because familiarity with English is insufficient to allow Interlingua to be understood at first sight, but I know you'd just revert it. At least this way it doesn't suggest that a German or Russian speaker will find Interlingua to be transparent.
However, I imagine a Catalan or Sardinian speaker would have no problem. What, really, is your objection to the rather obvious fact that Interlingua is a Western Romance language? And please don't tell me the absence of verbal inflections for person makes the grammar Germanic; that's no more true than the claim that Esperanto's agglutinative morphology makes its grammar Turkic.
I'm afraid your approach could backfire. If someone who only knows English reads your description, they'll understand that they should be able to understand Interlingua without study. Then they'll look at the sample text, and realize that's false. Since this is the one thing they can judge for themself, it may cause them to dismiss the entire article as unreliable. kwami 20:40, 2005 Jun 1 (UTC)
That bit about the number of users estimated at being from 50 to a few thousand is then followed by a statement that the Interlingua conference is attended by about 50 people. Where does the first number come from? I have no idea how someone could estimate the number of speakers based on the number that make the effort to attend a biannual conference. I find the number to always be at least four times that, and usually more. Mithridates 04:09, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
Excuse me for being frank, but this is the most slanted article I've read on wikipedia. The first example sentence of interlingua is clearly insulting Esperanto, and what's more, the article's section on pros and cons seems to be using weasel words and the straw man tactic. The article can be cleaned up to be something great, but as it stands now, it is propoganda.-- 67.184.163.248 00:46, 8 November 2005 (UTC)Ikiroid
I think so too, remove it. Roger4911 07:32, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Tommorrow , I promise. Neutrality at its extreme. -- Jondel 08:03, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
The table says that total speakers, divided into first language and second language, is only 1500 people.
Who decided what rules this table shall follow? Is there a template for languages which causes this? Then that template is very questionable.
I think languages should be measured/reported in how many who can: 1: Understand the spoken language. 2: Understand the written language. 3: Speak the spoken language. 4: Write the written language.
For interlingua these numbers are: 1: 600 millions, 2: 600 millions, 3: 1500, 4: 1500.
Maybe we should point out also how easy it is to learn to speak and write interlingua. I subscribed to Panorama for a number of years and could read it. I had to look up a few words because I never learned a romance language well, but I have use for these words when trying to understand romance languages in general besides learning interlingua, so I have use for this knowledge outside IL.
I could probably write IL if I tried. I have dictionaries to help with words I don't know, and I know how to build sentences in romance languages. It would take just a little effort to produce IL-compatible text.
There is a big difference between active speaking and passive listening, you need a lot more experience to speak a language than to understand it.
I can take myself as an example: I understand perfectly swedish, english and german, and I understand most of what they say in spanish, french, italian and dutch.
I speak and write only swedish and english well.
I have watched german television for 20 years but I never speak or write german, so I make a lot of grammatical mistakes when I use the language actively. Understanding is another mental process than to formulate your own sentences. (Especially if the other language has a more complicated and antiquated grammar than your own language.) That's why the numbers have to be reported separately for speaking and understanding, for writing and reading. Roger4911 07:59, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
November 2005 (UTC)
But that's clearly and adequately covered in the text. You wouldn't give the population of Polish as "80 million (easily understood by another 200 million)", would you? The point of tables like these is to facilitate comparisons between articles, which means the information should be similar between articles. kwami 08:46, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
The numbers for how many people can understand, read and write the language are the important numbers. That makes it possible to compare the advantages of different languages in a rational way. Roger4911 08:58, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Reply by Roger J:
> "It would be quite misleading to count people who have never heard of Interlingua as "knowing" it!
Did I use the undefined word "knowing"? No, I used real measurable data. We can set up a test for reading and comprehension in a language, for example. Those who pass that test can read and understand what they read in that language.
Further, if you count first and second languages you favorize big languages, and you don't get accurate numbers for a particular language. Somebody who knows several languages well will not be counted besides his first and second language. This categorization is made by somebody who knows languages from a perspective of first/second language. A typical primitive way to view languages. In Europe a lot of people speak 3 or more languages, and not just as a "second language" but really well.
It is especially important to report these numbers correctly for a language like IL, which is made to be readable and understandable to a lot of people without having to learn anything first. Roger4911 08:58, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
I'll let you get the last word on this issue, you do it so well.
Roger4911 16:17, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
I am an Interlingua enthusiast and despite this would like to revert to Kwamikagami's version. I am putting to vote some of the pointers below , hopefully so that we can all achieve an amicable consensus. Please separate themes in your arguments. Divide et impera. Divide and conquer. Please avoid useless imbroglios.
Roger: What is an imbroglio? Could you please use english here? Roger4911 13:19, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
n 1: an intricate and confusing interpersonal or political situation [syn: embroilment]
Imbroglios occur when dispute participants like to bring in another unrelated point of discussion is brought in before the point being discussed can be resolved. It's like throwing in a monkey wrench into the discussion machine/process. -- Jondel 10:01, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't know if Interlinguans are propagating a myth and if they are they should stop. I don't see the German based grammar, but then I don't know German. The strength of Interlingua is because it is Romanced based. The combination of Latin-based languges like Brazillian(Portuguese), Spanish, French(in Africa) and Italian should make Interlingua popular. A lot of French is Latin (and some German). Many latin words are said to be found in German. Many scientific words will use latin making interlingua recommendable.-- Jondel 10:22, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Roger: No use for me to vote, four Jondels and one kwami on the other side Roger4911 13:19, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
I do not agree. It is obvious from the talk page that Kwamikagami has been critical to interlingua for a long time. He has tried all he can to make IL look bad. Such a person should not edit this page at all. Be positive, let esperanto friends edit the esperanto page and let Interlingua friends edit the IL page. Roger4911 01:17, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Roger: You are a young enthusiast, used by Kwami to achieve his goals. He suggests something and you fall for it. Roger4911 13:19, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Roger, I'm rather puzzled. This is the kind of POV warring you see in the Urdu vs. Hindi pages, or on Macedonian, by people who know little of language. True, I personally prefer Esperanto. But I've also ordered Goode's books, studied IL, and subscribed for a brief time to Panorama. I enjoyed it, though it didn't captivate me. And I'm critical of Eo as well - I'm the one who's always insisting in the Eo articles that Eo is an inherently European language, that it isn't easy for non-Europeans to learn, and reverting the POVers who try to claim it's "universal". The latest debate I've had over there is with someone trying to say that Eo is more like Turkish or Swahili than European languages because it doesn't have ablaut, when I think it would be less misleading to say that Eo has done away with certain aspects of European grammar, not that it's 'universal'. I take the same stance here. We had a real POV war for a while with some people trying to claim that IL isn't Romance, but pan-European, just because German was a secondary control language. I'm glad that at least is over.
What have I said here that anyone could take issue with? That Esperanto wasn't one of the first constructed languages? (There were dozens before it, spanning centuries. Solresol and Volapük were both successes in their day, though I doubt anyone ever held a conversation in Solresol.) Calling IL 'naturalistic' rather than 'developed' or 'simplified'? (As I argue above, 'developed' is an inherently POV word, while I'm not sure that IL would fit people's conception of 'most simplified' unless we disambiguate that as well.) Not calling it 'natural'? (Of course it's not natural. It's a construct. I assume the writer meant 'naturalistic'.)
That it may not be instantly comprehensible in all its details to everyone acquainted with a Romance language? (I'm going on my own experience there, but come on - do you expect me to believe that you immediately recognized which pronouns where neuter and which were masculine "at first sight"?) That its equal use to a Frenchman and a Japanese is proven by its having booklets published in Japanese? (What does that have to do with the nature of the language?)
How is any of this anti-IL propaganda? I don't make the language look bad. And if you're wise, you'll realize that having a propaganda tract written only by diehard ILers will turn people off - like the reader above who said he'd never seen such a biased article.
One of the problems Eo's had is what are called 'perpetual beginners'. These are people who study Eo for years and never achieve fluency. Why is this such a problem? I believe it's due to propaganda and overmarketing. Eo is marketed as the easiest solution to international communication. It's claimed that it can be picked up in a matter of hours. (Ring any bells out there? Isn't that just a little bit like "Understood by 600 million people" and "understandable at first sight"?) Well, people start learning it thinking these things are true, and of course they've been grossly mis-led. Sure, maybe a polyglot can pick up Eo in hours, but it would take most linguistically naive people weeks to get just the basics, and much much longer (with a lot of effort and study) to be able to converse fluently. We're talking a couple years for most people, and people don't put in that kind of time. They start, get discouraged, start again, etc. Decades later, they're still struggling. This isn't helping the language movement any, and is a disservice to those people. So yes, I am anti-propaganda with Eo, and I am anti-propaganda with IL. If you want a good article, and one that inspires any kind of confidence in your audience, you need outsiders to come by every once in a while and point out the BS. kwami 09:11, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Kwami has taken command of this page, and we must wait for more reasonable people to show up before we can write a good article on interlingua. Roger4911 13:19, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm surprised, and disappointed, that POV issues have popped up again. Kwami and I had worked hard from both sides to try to get a good article written... le sigh. Almafeta 00:46, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
It seems that many users are posting messages here. They keep trying to get hardcore proof that a language they found simple is easy regradless of anything else. There is no language which everyone finds easy to learn. People fit different learning styles, and different languages appeal to different paradigms of thinking. Some people will turn away from languages that they see as simple or easy because they believe it is an insult to their intellect, or it doesn't show their skills. I know people who began taking french in order to prove to others that they could perfectly pronounce a language with so many differences from their own. I know people who have learned japanese and latin, not because they will ever use it in business and politics, but because it envelops an exuberant culture that is admired by their peers. Since the politicians and businesspeople will not learn it because it doesn't drive the economies, and because Esperanto and Interlingua strive to be ultimately NPOV culture-wise, I can't see why these languages would appeal to a large, diversified population anyway. It makes me sad, because, I love learning these languages, and I'd hate to see them never get to expand their population of speakers.-- Ikiroid 22:43, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
>large languages, (which basically would make the languages equally difficult and little accessible for everyo
Hi guys! I made major changes to the Pronunciation section (including retitling it). I've been active in Interlingua since 1997 and am currently a board member of the American Society for Interlingua. This is my first stab at editing the Wikipedia, so forgive if I've made any technical errors or committed any faux pas. -- CJGB, 16 November 2005
Is there a reason why you don't want the grammar parts to be in bold of facer, vader and ir to be in bold e.g. vadera , vadeva, facera, etc in the table in your copy edit? -- Jondel 01:45, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
Why does the sample text discuss Esperanto? Defensive comparisons with Esperanto are one thing, but this is a bit much! I think IL needs to stand on its own. If someone has a nice illustrative text in IL, I can translate it into Eo for a trilingual text. Or we could get some nice non-introspective Eo text and translate it into IL. Either way. kwami 21:18, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
Removal of sample texts about Esperanto references are fine by me. Typical samples are Our Lord's prayer(already there) and Declaration of Human Rights. There were a lot of objections to Our Lord's praver over at the Spanish Wiki for my Chabacano article because it was interpreted as evangelizing(propanda). Hamlet's soliloquy looks fine. I was thingking of adding a few phrases like 'How are you?' , 'Where are you going?' etc.-- Jondel 03:40, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
I agree that this isn't the right place of massive Eo/Ia comparisons. There's an actual Interlingua-Esperanto article, which could be expanded and made more neutral (it leans to Eo at present, though the author admits he's not the right person to give the Ia perspective). Also, they would be appropriate on the main International Auxiliary Language page, which seems a bit underdeveloped to me.
I agree the French page needs work. Hopefully we can develop the English Interlingua pages to the point that the French wiki-istas will translate it.-- CJGB 01:44, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
This archive page covers approximately the dates between 13 Apr 2001 and 20 Nov 2005.
Can someone please put some IPA into that section on pronunciation so I know what the hell you lot are going on about! Nicholas 16:06, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
I moved a paragraph of personal experiences, which was too valuable to delete, to a "commentary" page under the name of its author. That brings up a policy question: should one create commentary pages like that for others, or just suggest that they do it themselves? I'm inclined toward the bolder option: do what you think is right, and let them fix it if they object. -- LDC
Where do manufactured languages created only to allow machine assisted inter-language translation fit in?
Added category on Artificial languages for these, feel free to add some.
There is, incidentally, space for an Interlingua wikipedia...
I wondered about words that were present in Germanic and Slavic languages (English, German and Russian) but not any of the Romance languages. Examples: Eng: Swine, De: Schwein, Ru: Svinyja (Il: svin/swin?) or Eng: Snow, De: Schnee, Ru: Sneg (Il: sneg?) (Both from common Indo-European roots). It would seem those words usually wouldn't be eligible as Interlingua vocabulary? (Of course, these concepts already have the suitable words "porco" and "nive".)
For some reason people want article to say that Interlingua is based on "European languages". It's clearly not, not was it intended to be: it's a Romance pidgin, common vocab with just enough grammar to hold it together. Gode even referred to those who wanted to make Interlingua a full-fledged language "Esperantists".
(I'm assuming that the above was Kwamikagami... you didn't sign the edit. nn;)
You shouldn't take Gode's comments as the true bible on Interlingua, when he neither created the language originally nor has been a factor in its evolution for the past 35 years.
Do you have anything against Interlingua? Maybe not directly, but a desire to push another interlanguage?
I take it you are an Idist... well, as long as we are both updating this page, shall we try to get it to featured article level? Almafeta 14:40, 10 May 2005 (UTC)
Wow. We've got lots to talk about -- and this is an awkwards place to do it. @_@ Anyhow...
Hey Almafeta, I just added "primary" to "allowing those familiar with one of the primary control languages to read and understand it at first sight." It really should be "one of the Romance control languages", because familiarity with English is insufficient to allow Interlingua to be understood at first sight, but I know you'd just revert it. At least this way it doesn't suggest that a German or Russian speaker will find Interlingua to be transparent.
However, I imagine a Catalan or Sardinian speaker would have no problem. What, really, is your objection to the rather obvious fact that Interlingua is a Western Romance language? And please don't tell me the absence of verbal inflections for person makes the grammar Germanic; that's no more true than the claim that Esperanto's agglutinative morphology makes its grammar Turkic.
I'm afraid your approach could backfire. If someone who only knows English reads your description, they'll understand that they should be able to understand Interlingua without study. Then they'll look at the sample text, and realize that's false. Since this is the one thing they can judge for themself, it may cause them to dismiss the entire article as unreliable. kwami 20:40, 2005 Jun 1 (UTC)
That bit about the number of users estimated at being from 50 to a few thousand is then followed by a statement that the Interlingua conference is attended by about 50 people. Where does the first number come from? I have no idea how someone could estimate the number of speakers based on the number that make the effort to attend a biannual conference. I find the number to always be at least four times that, and usually more. Mithridates 04:09, 14 July 2005 (UTC)
Excuse me for being frank, but this is the most slanted article I've read on wikipedia. The first example sentence of interlingua is clearly insulting Esperanto, and what's more, the article's section on pros and cons seems to be using weasel words and the straw man tactic. The article can be cleaned up to be something great, but as it stands now, it is propoganda.-- 67.184.163.248 00:46, 8 November 2005 (UTC)Ikiroid
I think so too, remove it. Roger4911 07:32, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Tommorrow , I promise. Neutrality at its extreme. -- Jondel 08:03, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
The table says that total speakers, divided into first language and second language, is only 1500 people.
Who decided what rules this table shall follow? Is there a template for languages which causes this? Then that template is very questionable.
I think languages should be measured/reported in how many who can: 1: Understand the spoken language. 2: Understand the written language. 3: Speak the spoken language. 4: Write the written language.
For interlingua these numbers are: 1: 600 millions, 2: 600 millions, 3: 1500, 4: 1500.
Maybe we should point out also how easy it is to learn to speak and write interlingua. I subscribed to Panorama for a number of years and could read it. I had to look up a few words because I never learned a romance language well, but I have use for these words when trying to understand romance languages in general besides learning interlingua, so I have use for this knowledge outside IL.
I could probably write IL if I tried. I have dictionaries to help with words I don't know, and I know how to build sentences in romance languages. It would take just a little effort to produce IL-compatible text.
There is a big difference between active speaking and passive listening, you need a lot more experience to speak a language than to understand it.
I can take myself as an example: I understand perfectly swedish, english and german, and I understand most of what they say in spanish, french, italian and dutch.
I speak and write only swedish and english well.
I have watched german television for 20 years but I never speak or write german, so I make a lot of grammatical mistakes when I use the language actively. Understanding is another mental process than to formulate your own sentences. (Especially if the other language has a more complicated and antiquated grammar than your own language.) That's why the numbers have to be reported separately for speaking and understanding, for writing and reading. Roger4911 07:59, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
November 2005 (UTC)
But that's clearly and adequately covered in the text. You wouldn't give the population of Polish as "80 million (easily understood by another 200 million)", would you? The point of tables like these is to facilitate comparisons between articles, which means the information should be similar between articles. kwami 08:46, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
The numbers for how many people can understand, read and write the language are the important numbers. That makes it possible to compare the advantages of different languages in a rational way. Roger4911 08:58, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
Reply by Roger J:
> "It would be quite misleading to count people who have never heard of Interlingua as "knowing" it!
Did I use the undefined word "knowing"? No, I used real measurable data. We can set up a test for reading and comprehension in a language, for example. Those who pass that test can read and understand what they read in that language.
Further, if you count first and second languages you favorize big languages, and you don't get accurate numbers for a particular language. Somebody who knows several languages well will not be counted besides his first and second language. This categorization is made by somebody who knows languages from a perspective of first/second language. A typical primitive way to view languages. In Europe a lot of people speak 3 or more languages, and not just as a "second language" but really well.
It is especially important to report these numbers correctly for a language like IL, which is made to be readable and understandable to a lot of people without having to learn anything first. Roger4911 08:58, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
I'll let you get the last word on this issue, you do it so well.
Roger4911 16:17, 9 November 2005 (UTC)
I am an Interlingua enthusiast and despite this would like to revert to Kwamikagami's version. I am putting to vote some of the pointers below , hopefully so that we can all achieve an amicable consensus. Please separate themes in your arguments. Divide et impera. Divide and conquer. Please avoid useless imbroglios.
Roger: What is an imbroglio? Could you please use english here? Roger4911 13:19, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
n 1: an intricate and confusing interpersonal or political situation [syn: embroilment]
Imbroglios occur when dispute participants like to bring in another unrelated point of discussion is brought in before the point being discussed can be resolved. It's like throwing in a monkey wrench into the discussion machine/process. -- Jondel 10:01, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
I don't know if Interlinguans are propagating a myth and if they are they should stop. I don't see the German based grammar, but then I don't know German. The strength of Interlingua is because it is Romanced based. The combination of Latin-based languges like Brazillian(Portuguese), Spanish, French(in Africa) and Italian should make Interlingua popular. A lot of French is Latin (and some German). Many latin words are said to be found in German. Many scientific words will use latin making interlingua recommendable.-- Jondel 10:22, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
Roger: No use for me to vote, four Jondels and one kwami on the other side Roger4911 13:19, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
I do not agree. It is obvious from the talk page that Kwamikagami has been critical to interlingua for a long time. He has tried all he can to make IL look bad. Such a person should not edit this page at all. Be positive, let esperanto friends edit the esperanto page and let Interlingua friends edit the IL page. Roger4911 01:17, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Roger: You are a young enthusiast, used by Kwami to achieve his goals. He suggests something and you fall for it. Roger4911 13:19, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Roger, I'm rather puzzled. This is the kind of POV warring you see in the Urdu vs. Hindi pages, or on Macedonian, by people who know little of language. True, I personally prefer Esperanto. But I've also ordered Goode's books, studied IL, and subscribed for a brief time to Panorama. I enjoyed it, though it didn't captivate me. And I'm critical of Eo as well - I'm the one who's always insisting in the Eo articles that Eo is an inherently European language, that it isn't easy for non-Europeans to learn, and reverting the POVers who try to claim it's "universal". The latest debate I've had over there is with someone trying to say that Eo is more like Turkish or Swahili than European languages because it doesn't have ablaut, when I think it would be less misleading to say that Eo has done away with certain aspects of European grammar, not that it's 'universal'. I take the same stance here. We had a real POV war for a while with some people trying to claim that IL isn't Romance, but pan-European, just because German was a secondary control language. I'm glad that at least is over.
What have I said here that anyone could take issue with? That Esperanto wasn't one of the first constructed languages? (There were dozens before it, spanning centuries. Solresol and Volapük were both successes in their day, though I doubt anyone ever held a conversation in Solresol.) Calling IL 'naturalistic' rather than 'developed' or 'simplified'? (As I argue above, 'developed' is an inherently POV word, while I'm not sure that IL would fit people's conception of 'most simplified' unless we disambiguate that as well.) Not calling it 'natural'? (Of course it's not natural. It's a construct. I assume the writer meant 'naturalistic'.)
That it may not be instantly comprehensible in all its details to everyone acquainted with a Romance language? (I'm going on my own experience there, but come on - do you expect me to believe that you immediately recognized which pronouns where neuter and which were masculine "at first sight"?) That its equal use to a Frenchman and a Japanese is proven by its having booklets published in Japanese? (What does that have to do with the nature of the language?)
How is any of this anti-IL propaganda? I don't make the language look bad. And if you're wise, you'll realize that having a propaganda tract written only by diehard ILers will turn people off - like the reader above who said he'd never seen such a biased article.
One of the problems Eo's had is what are called 'perpetual beginners'. These are people who study Eo for years and never achieve fluency. Why is this such a problem? I believe it's due to propaganda and overmarketing. Eo is marketed as the easiest solution to international communication. It's claimed that it can be picked up in a matter of hours. (Ring any bells out there? Isn't that just a little bit like "Understood by 600 million people" and "understandable at first sight"?) Well, people start learning it thinking these things are true, and of course they've been grossly mis-led. Sure, maybe a polyglot can pick up Eo in hours, but it would take most linguistically naive people weeks to get just the basics, and much much longer (with a lot of effort and study) to be able to converse fluently. We're talking a couple years for most people, and people don't put in that kind of time. They start, get discouraged, start again, etc. Decades later, they're still struggling. This isn't helping the language movement any, and is a disservice to those people. So yes, I am anti-propaganda with Eo, and I am anti-propaganda with IL. If you want a good article, and one that inspires any kind of confidence in your audience, you need outsiders to come by every once in a while and point out the BS. kwami 09:11, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
Kwami has taken command of this page, and we must wait for more reasonable people to show up before we can write a good article on interlingua. Roger4911 13:19, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
I'm surprised, and disappointed, that POV issues have popped up again. Kwami and I had worked hard from both sides to try to get a good article written... le sigh. Almafeta 00:46, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
It seems that many users are posting messages here. They keep trying to get hardcore proof that a language they found simple is easy regradless of anything else. There is no language which everyone finds easy to learn. People fit different learning styles, and different languages appeal to different paradigms of thinking. Some people will turn away from languages that they see as simple or easy because they believe it is an insult to their intellect, or it doesn't show their skills. I know people who began taking french in order to prove to others that they could perfectly pronounce a language with so many differences from their own. I know people who have learned japanese and latin, not because they will ever use it in business and politics, but because it envelops an exuberant culture that is admired by their peers. Since the politicians and businesspeople will not learn it because it doesn't drive the economies, and because Esperanto and Interlingua strive to be ultimately NPOV culture-wise, I can't see why these languages would appeal to a large, diversified population anyway. It makes me sad, because, I love learning these languages, and I'd hate to see them never get to expand their population of speakers.-- Ikiroid 22:43, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
>large languages, (which basically would make the languages equally difficult and little accessible for everyo
Hi guys! I made major changes to the Pronunciation section (including retitling it). I've been active in Interlingua since 1997 and am currently a board member of the American Society for Interlingua. This is my first stab at editing the Wikipedia, so forgive if I've made any technical errors or committed any faux pas. -- CJGB, 16 November 2005
Is there a reason why you don't want the grammar parts to be in bold of facer, vader and ir to be in bold e.g. vadera , vadeva, facera, etc in the table in your copy edit? -- Jondel 01:45, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
Why does the sample text discuss Esperanto? Defensive comparisons with Esperanto are one thing, but this is a bit much! I think IL needs to stand on its own. If someone has a nice illustrative text in IL, I can translate it into Eo for a trilingual text. Or we could get some nice non-introspective Eo text and translate it into IL. Either way. kwami 21:18, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
Removal of sample texts about Esperanto references are fine by me. Typical samples are Our Lord's prayer(already there) and Declaration of Human Rights. There were a lot of objections to Our Lord's praver over at the Spanish Wiki for my Chabacano article because it was interpreted as evangelizing(propanda). Hamlet's soliloquy looks fine. I was thingking of adding a few phrases like 'How are you?' , 'Where are you going?' etc.-- Jondel 03:40, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
I agree that this isn't the right place of massive Eo/Ia comparisons. There's an actual Interlingua-Esperanto article, which could be expanded and made more neutral (it leans to Eo at present, though the author admits he's not the right person to give the Ia perspective). Also, they would be appropriate on the main International Auxiliary Language page, which seems a bit underdeveloped to me.
I agree the French page needs work. Hopefully we can develop the English Interlingua pages to the point that the French wiki-istas will translate it.-- CJGB 01:44, 20 November 2005 (UTC)