And of the links you gave, not one is peer-reviewed. You gave a Wiki, somebody’s webpage, a second-hand quotation of a Usenet discussion, and an extract from an online apologia for Esperanto.
Sorry, try again.
Grammar complexity is not a quantifiable thing. Where one language may have a complex morphological system, another may have a complex tonal system but little morphology, whereas another may have few morphemes and no tones but a complex syntax. Who is to say which grammar is the most complex? And it’s not a PC thing; besides, is it “better” to have a more or less complex system?
Please. You did not take an introductory linguistics class, or if you did, you didn’t pay a minute of attention. If you had, you wouldn’t have come up with gems like this:
The arbitrariness of linguistic signs is a basic fact of language, going back to Saussure; while all languages have a tiny minority of signs that are iconic, designed to directly represent the thing the sign represents, most signs are wholly arbitrary, in ASL, English, or Dyirbal. Further, if you had taken a basic linguistics course, you wouldn’t have made the mistake of referring to letters above, since you would understand that writing systems are secondary at best in linguistic analysis - they are at most a niche interest to linguists, and linguists make a clear distinction between “sounds” (which are what morphemes and words are made of) and “letters” (which are only relevant in the small niche area of analyzing writing systems.)
“Entomology” is the study of insects.
I’m not pointing out these minor mistakes to pick nits, but to point out that it’s pretty clear that you seem to have limited acquaintance with matters that are second nature to linguists. That’s fine - saying you don’t know all that much about linguistics is like saying that I don’t know much about astronomy. That’s fine for both of us - no worries, we all have our areas of expertise. But your continual insistence on arguing basic matters with those of us with linguistics training is irritating; trying to explain why it doesn’t make sense to compare grammars in terms of complexity requires some in depth understanding of what grammar is, and you don’t seem to be amenable to listening anyway. Just like it would be pretty presumptuous for me to try to tell an astronomer the composition of the Horsehead Nebula, it’s pretty presumptuous of you to try to claim that a pretty basic linguistic concept is “PC-ism” just because you don’t understand it. And your links to sources that are mere casual references by other non-linguists are pretty obviously not convincing.
That was too funny. You can’t make this shit up, man.
Alright, I’m going out for some drinks. If you want to hear some simplified grammar, come talk to me in a couple hours. 
You don’t get to demand a “peer reviewed” cite. Unless the Staff here forgot to add “Moderator” next to your name. Posters get to ask for cites, I gave cites- from Wiki, and from other source with footnotes and such. However, I guess *your *cites are peer reviewed… oops, no- you have no cites, do you? Sorry, try again.
Excalibre- really? You’re saying I didn’t take a class in Linquistics?* Care to prove that? Care to prove YOU took a class in linquistics? :dubious: Cite?
And, dissing a dude* for a typo*- no class, and a “ad hominem” attack too. (We are in GD, you know)Poor form. 
Sounds a lot like: “You don’t know what you’re talking about because you made a typo” (on a board that doesn’t allow editing, yet). Riiiight. :rolleyes:
So, let’s see- you two dudes have nothing but blather, Ad hominem fallacies, and snide little personal attacks to back you up. I have 4 cites- that’s 4 more than the both of you two together.
Sorry- you lose.
See ya.
- OK, I admit it was 30 years ago, and pre “PC” ness.
It seems to me that Excalibre was asking for a reputable site. I also noticed where he posited that you either did not take a basic Linguistics class or learned nothing from one you may have taken.
The real issue is your completely mistaken assertions about linguistics.
BTW, the links I gave upthread list academic (i.e., scientific) publications. Those would be peer-reviewed publications in the case of published papers referenced.
To quote An Introduction to Language, 6th Edition, by Victoria Fromkin and Robert Rodman (Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace, 1998) page 16:
So, there’s your cite. Dismiss it at will.
[ Moderating ]
OK. Everyone step away from the keyboards for a moment.
From my third-party observation, it seems that we have simply some semantic misunderstandings (imagine that on a thread on language!) regarding terminology.
The two key terms that may need to be sorted out would appear to be:
complex(ity)
arbitrary
A genuine attempt to understand how those terms are used might help.
(And since the comparison of languages as “better” has only been posted as responses to perceived declarations, not actual ones, let’s stick with the discussion of complexity and leave the term “better” outside the thread.)
Now, having said that, I will note that this could be a pretty interesting discussion if the various posters would simply argue their positions without attempting to tell other posters what they have or have not done or what they do or do not appear to know.
Get back to the object of the discussion and leave the personalities out of it.
[ /Moderating ]
Do you even know what peer-reviewed means?
I recognize that there are folks who speak Esperanto out there, although I’m surprised at how many are on these boards. I still think that, even if the most wildly optimistic estimates of 2 million Esperanto speakers is accurate, there’s no way it’s approaching the universality of other languages. Compare to English, Japanese, French, Spanish, Italian, Greek, Portuguese, Swahili, Chinese (each variety individually), ancient Latin, Church Latin, etc.–each of which has, as I understand it, more speakers. I would not be astonished to find that there are more speakers of Klingon than of Esperanto, although preliminary Googling only turns up the fact that more people speak Klingon than Esperanto ;).
Esperanto didn’t die because of evil dictators: it died because it’s not a natural language, IMO. Only hobbyists speak artificial languages, hobbyists and merchants, and these days merchants have far better choices.
Daniel
I think I already pointed out how your knowledge of extremely basic ideas about linguistics proves that you don’t have the knowledge of a person who’s taken a basic linguistics class.
Like I said, it proves (along with your confusion between “letters” and “sounds” that you are not conversant in the basics of linguistics.
No. You haven’t come up with a single cite. I don’t care much about peer review. I’d just like to see a cite from a discussion by linguists, since we’re arguing linguistics here. I know that this is something that comes as a shock to you, but there is a field of study called linguistics and your constant attempts to try to “prove” things are immaterial - this is a subject that I know well, as do ybeayf and Monty. We know what we’re talking about, and despite your attempts to the contrary, basic facts are not up for debate here.
See, I’m not here to play little internet games. It doesn’t matter who “wins the internet!” at all, because no matter how much you feel like you’ve “won” the argument, you’re still wrong. We’re arguing matters of fact here, and you’ve got your facts wrong. It’s too bad you can’t be gracious and acknowledge that your own preconceptions about language might not be correct; whether you acknowledge it or not, though, you’re still wrong.
Your attempts to dismiss fact as PC-ism are pathetic. Don’t bring silly little political propaganda into a discussion of fact, because those of us in the reality-based community don’t believe that facts are relative.
Excalibre, I’m going to assume that you were composing your post when I posted mine and missed my contribution.
However, I really do not want to see any more personal “observations” in this thread.
Everyone stick to the discussion points and leave your personal feelings about other posters out of it.
I think the universal language should be the non-verbal pictograms that are used in Ikea instructions. That would work perfectly as long as everybody can draw, has a chalkboard with them, and all of their communicative needs involve the assembly of futon frames.
Getting back to the thread, I’m opposed to the use of a universal language. Every language is unique, with its own associated culture and way of seeing the world; every language has its own beauty. When a language dies out, we are all impoverished for its loss.
Those who promote auxiliary languages usually intend for them to be second languages to facilitate communication, but history has shown that dominant, prestigious, widely spoken languages tend to crowd out small and vulnerable languages. Sure, having a universally-used auxiliary language probably won’t lead to the extinction of English or Arabic, but what happens to languages like Burushaski or Karen or Evenk, when its parents realize there’s little future in knowing the language, and so don’t teach it to their children, who in any case grow up immersed in the surrounding auxiliary language. As an example, look at the number of native Irish speakers in Ireland.
There was a New Yorker cartoon which, like so many New Yorker cartoons, was set at a cocktail party. There’s a kind of schmucky looking guy in the background, and one woman whispering to another, “I’ve never met anyone who’s only language was Esperanto.”
Sorry about that. I use tabs to read the forums, and I opened this one up before you wrote your message.
Creepy. I think it’s a bit odd for parents (who obviously are hobbyists) to raise their kids that way; on the other hand, it would be fascinating to explore how Esperanto has developed among native speakers; it’s a bit like how sign languages almost spontaneously develop when any community of deaf people exist - they have their clumsy gestures they use with their families, but full-fledged languages pop up inexorably when those people come together. I wonder if Esperanto gets massively distorted from Zamenhof’s plan when used among native speakers.
Mmm…they still strike me as hobbyist freaks. There’s a family who raised their kid speaking Klingon as well; that doesn’t mean that Klingon is a natural language or a language on its way to being a universal language.
At any rate, while I see that ethnologue cite in other places as well, it’d be interesting to see the basis for it. Are they considering a child brought up having Esperanto spoken to her in addition to another language as representing a native speaker of Esperanto? I’m dubious of such a claim, in the absence of context: a native speaker of a language generally is one who hears that language primarily, right? If the child goes to preschool, play group, friend’s houses, grandma’s house, the grocery store, and hears French spoken at all of them–if it’s only dad who speaks Esperanto to her when he comes home from his job–would Ethnologue count this child as a native speaker of Esperanto?
Daniel