English vs. Esperanto

[Kevin Bealer]

Stewart Gordon wrote:
> Walter Bright Wrote:
> 
>> torhu wrote:
>>> Walter Bright wrote:
> <snip>
>>>> One reason English is successful is its shamelessness in 
>>>> adopting useful words and phrases from other languages.  
>>>> Sort of like what D does <g>.
>>> This isn't quite true.  English is 'successful' because of 
>>> the dominating position of the US, and earlier the UK.
> <snip>
>> I did say one reason - there are many.  Some languages look 
>> inward, not wanting to accept foreign words.  English, as you 
>> say, is mostly foreign words.  Like the blob, English tends to 
>> absorb whatever it comes in contact with <g>.
> 
> Interesting.  But where does that put Esperanto, with its basic vocabulary
 > being a mixture of languages but having compound words (and 
translations of
 > Latin abbreviations) all its own?
> 
> Stewart.

A few steps behind Klingon, I would expect.

But (slightly more) seriously, Esperanto seems like a cautionary tale 
for those who would design computer (and other synthetic) languages,
in that it tried to solve a compatibility problem without actually
motivating anyone to adopt it in any material way.  It has aesthetics
but no special 'killer features'.

Now, if esperanto had array slicing...

Kevin