it seems people usually understand “nothing” as dark, black. in the techno subculture, where “we don’t show off” — people choose no colour — black colour. in other words - blank, empty.
wait, but blank means white in a number of languages. first i know it from esperanto, where blanko is white. ‘blanc’ in french means white. ‘blanco’ in spanish. ‘bianco’ in italian.
so emptyness, depending on perception, can be black or white. or other colour?
indeed, if we think in rgb colourspace way, then nothing — 0, 0, 0 is black. however, in cmyk way, nothing is when you print nothing on a white paper. so nothing is actually white. so is the paper. in number of languages empty list of paper is blank.
#perception #colour #language #techno #esperanto #french #spanish #italian #zero #nothing #empty #culture
the problem with esperanto, i understand today, is that, if many people adopt it, and it’ll become really alive, if tumblr kids will write in it, they’ll screw the language up, it won’t be the language without exceptions, because humans are the creatures who treat languages freely, so it would loose its essential properties of the language which is easy to learn, has no exceptions, etc.
#esperanto #language
#esperanto on #freakonomics http://freakonomics.com/podcast/why-learn-esperanto-special-feature/
I suggest to those of you, who speak know Epseranto, to open a separate stream on Diaspora (or other place) and write there exclusively in Esperanto. You can translate what you usually write in your native language or English and write it once more in Esperanto.
That will
— allow you to practice, use the language online. — create a small Esperanto “bubble”, which newcomers can join, read everyday posts in Esperanto, try to comment in that language. — make a small contribution to create Esperanto culture online.
it requires efforts, but it’s important for making it practically useful, adds one (or 0.001) more reason to learn the language.
#esperanto
In Esperanto, to form a new word, it is generally preferred to compound two or more existing roots than to borrow a word from another language. This is recommended in order to keep the number of “primitive” roots low and thus to maintain its learnability.
I like this approach.
#esperanto
I woudl like to quote this post, instead of resharing because I don’t agree with everything there. I don’t think we have to forget our native languages, that’s why comparison to the switch from facebook to diaspora, which was made there seems deeply not right to me. I personally value my language, and it doesn’t make me feel good when I acknowledge threats it has.
Also, I have to say that I also fear simplicity in design. Simplicity can mean gaining flexibility and expressiveness, like in case with Oberon operating system and language, and it can mean something like Newlang, the language which was simple but was designed in order to rule those people.
Simplicity can also mean “don’t know what pointer is” which, I believe is wrong, because every programmer should know what pointer is. Simplicity can mean making phonemic orthography, and I am opponent of that. That approach, taken by communists, in my opinion, damaged Armenian orthography and language.
So I believe, simplicity does not always mean good design. However, good design is very often simple. Now the quote.
English vs. Esperanto:
English:
You sang nicely, AND You have sung nicely, AND You had sung nicely, AND You did sing nicely , AND You did use to sing nicely, AND You were singing nicely, AND You used to sing nicely.
Esperanto:
#esperanto #design #simplicity #comparison #english #orthography #phonemic_orthography #language #armenian #oberon #programming #pointer #flexibility #expressiveness
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gSAkUOElsg
#esperanto
these are interesting arguments - why to learn Esperanto: http://www.2-2.se/en/index.html #esperanto
