Mike Jones's blog
En la nova Wells-vortaro, por la anglalingva vorto “compote” estas donita “komposto”, sed estu “kompoto”.
I recently had a conversation with an ESL colleague about words in English that have a double form: Germanic and French (apparently a legacy of the Norman Conquest). I decided to compile a list. It came to fifteen (15) items. I titled it “GF Double-Sourced English Vocabulary”, and included the following explanation:
“GF Double-Sourced English Vocabulary consists, by definition, of pairs of synonyms, or near-synonyms, one of which is of Germanic origin, and the other of French (technically: Latin) origin.”
I have uploaded this document, which is in Microsoft Word 2007, to my “gallery” in Ipernity, and announced it there in a blog post there. Here is the link to the blog post there:
http://www.ipernity.com/blog/101198/374316
I put the vocabulary into a table, and I think I can simply dump the whole document, table and all right here. Let’s try:
GF Double-Sourced English Vocabulary
(In the Public Domain. No rights reserved.)
Esperanto is the most impressive outreach program ever devised.
There is an item, now of long standing, of further fractionalization of English which, so far as I am aware, no one has yet related directly to the language barrier, and the increased difficulty of the task of learning English, namely, the fact that grammar checkers are notoriously wrong, and so are seriously misleading to any learner of English who depends on the grammar checker to, uh, check grammar. Someday grammar checkers will no doubt make the grade (pun intended), but it’s hard to say when. As the saying goes, prediction is risky business, especially when it concerns the future. For example, top scientists in the early 50’s said to the government, “Shower us with money, and we’ll give you controlled hydrogen fusion in two or three years.” The government did so (Project Sherwood), but we STILL don’t have it. (Having it would be an awesome thing. It would mean electricity “too cheap to meter”!)
When it comes to keeping in touch, nothing can touch Esperanto.
(15.Jan.2012, Taiyuan China)
For years now I have pointed out that English alone would not be sufficient for the world, regardless of the status or even (non-)existence of Esperanto. Here is what I said herein about that:
I have uploaded to my Ipernity account a document (in MS Word 2007 format) titled “A Short Intro to General Topology”. (I will be scanning the document into PDF format soon, and uploading that version as well.) The document is 19 pages in length. It is in English, but includes a note in Esperanto for the librarian. Here is the note:
Por la bibliotekisto:
Ĉi tiu verko estas en la angla, pri La Ĝenerala Topologio, parto de la Matematiko.
titolo: Mallonga Enko al La Ĝenerala Topologio
(En la Publika Regno. Neniuj rajtoj rezervitaj.)
There is a cute (joking?) post in one of the Ipernity accounts (that of Nicole) showing how English, or at least Australian English, may be morphing into Esperanto. Here is the link:
http://www.ipernity.com/blog/158659/366089
Some time ago, I myself pointed out that if all the public informational English-language signs in China were to be magically suddenly changed to Esperanto-language signs, it would make little difference to the English-speaking visitor to China:
One of the weaknesses of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution was the obvious fact that the incipient form of certain complex structures would be useless for too long for it to evolve to its full form. This Catch-22, namely, that the required incubation period for a needed structure would be way too long if left to its self to develop, was recognized by Zamenhof in the case of Esperanto. That is, he recognized that people would say, “It’s a great idea in theory, but if other people don’t speak it, it’s not practical for me to learn it.” That is why he conducted his coupon-campaign, in which people were requested to sign a coupon stating that if 20 million (I think the figure was) other people would make a similar promise, the signer would also promise to learn Esperanto.
Here is a great quotation, whose accidental application to Esperanto is obvious:
“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.” – Daniel Burnham, Chicago architect. (1846-1912)
Esperanto is certainly a case of “a noble, logical diagram” (with its “internal idea” corresponding to the “noble” aspect of the diagram), and the staggering things that our grandsons will do is reminiscent of Zamenhof’s assertion, “La nepoj vin benos, se vi pacience eltenos.”.
