Rick Harrison nos acaba de obsequiar con la transcripción de este magnífico texto en alt.language.artificial. Yo no habría sabido expresar de manera más clara y concisa por qué una auxilengua ha de ser diseñada a priori en lugar de ser simplemente una modificación de una(s) lengua(s) existente(s) (sean las lenguas romances o cualesquiera otras). El único punto con el que no estoy de acuerdo es con la aserción de que todo deba ser decisión de una sola persona: no creo que haya ni haya habido nunca nadie con la inteligencia, intuición e inspiración suficientes como para diseñar de arriba a abajo un idioma sin que se le cuelen errores. Y ahí tenéis al lojban para demostrarlo, que ha necesitado décadas de trabajo en equipo y numerosos tests por ordenador para corregir errores de diseño.
Ahora no tengo tiempo de traducirlo, así que lo copio sin más para al menos los que entiendan inglés: "This article appeared in ROIA, newsletter of the Ro language movement, in 1927. --- A FEW THOUGHTS ON WORLD-SPEECH by Caldwell Harpur Hayle, Cornwall, England If anyone can understand a language at first sight, that language is not fit to be the universal help-speech. For it must be very like some natural language. Therefore it must contain many irregularities. Most makers of artificial languages try to remove the knots in grammar. But they leave the word-stock like a heap of loose stones. Few try to make it a mosaic pavement. Ro is one of those few. And Ro does not expect to be understood at first sight. INTERNATIONAL WORDS. Words which are nearly the same in five or six European languages have no more claim to be in the Help-speech than any other word has. For (1) Most of them are actually known to fewer persons than many one-language words. Leucophlegmatic or decaphyllous may be in the dictionaries of English, Russian, Italian, etc. But hardly one percent of each nation know what they mean. Ro could easily make words just as easy for the scientist and easier for ordinary people. (2) They are mostly Greek and Latin, and therefore have the faults of Greek and Latin. Inebriety is the same as ebriety, but inflexible is the opposite of flexible. Words begin with pt-, ps-, phth-, ct- and other combinations which most moderns can hardly pronounce. The dictionaries tell you to pronounce "psychosis" (sychosis), the same as "sycosis," the skin disease. (3) The grammatical words like "accusative" are Latin mis-translations of Greek words which were not very well chosen to begin with. They are mostly bad misfits when applied to langauges very unlike Latin and Greek, such as English. (4) Often the likeness in two languages is misleading. "Eventually" in English and "eventuellement" in French mean very different things. NATURAL DEVOLOPMENT. Nature is not a model to be followed, but an enemy to be overcome. The City of Philadelphia was designed a-priori. A plan of it looks like a chessboard. The City of Birmingham was developed naturally. Houses and streets grew in acoordance with human needs. A plan of it looks like several starfishes badly mauled and tangled. It is easy to find your way in Philadelphia. It is difficult to find your way in Birmingham. The product of the theorist works much better than the natural product of practical men. And the same applies to language. BE ARBITRARY. The help-speech ought to be based, not on scientific principles, but on one man's arbitrary will. For every word in every language began in one man's arbitrary will. Scientific principle usually means grouping these wills in groups of seven or eight and finding a common factor for each group. But that only emphasizes the discordance between any two groups. The result is a language sprung from several thousand independent groups of arbitrary wills, and therefore discordant. If all spring from _one_ will, the result may be harmony if that will has even average skill. GOZO REBOFAZ IQ BIROD ROA:-- Uf ajar eluk rev ap roa ok zab reluv, am roa nela lagog uz birod kaymo-ro. Ukre ag elum cid jafol ay bikob ro. Ulre ag elum heteb cid lafnacaz. Al lafnacaz el vikno is at romibaz ov zuc ax bikob roaz. Cim kaybidaz ov kaybodo roaz vegec eb cobneb at cugnabz in rogaq. Ub adz hule at rogab-ledac jafol id cora ov ladol. Goza vegec eb kayef ag fasob dugap. Ro el zab ol am goza. Ud Ro nel ritec eb rivobo ok zab reluv." Saludos, Javier -------------------------------------------------------------------- IdeoLengua - Lista de Lingüistica e Idiomas Artificiales Suscríbase en [EMAIL PROTECTED] Informacion en http://ideolengua.cjb.net Desglose temático http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ideolengua/files/Administracion/top-ideol.htm Su uso de Yahoo! Grupos está sujeto a las http://e1.docs.yahoo.com/info/utos.html
