This article is about spoken languages, but much of its spirit can be extended to invented [1] programming languages; that is, the likelihood, no, the inevitability of their being stillborn.
Agreed. Languages and Frameworks are grown over time, not invented. That is why I have much higher hopes for Jython or Jruby than Groovy or Scala. Similarly all successful frameworks (Django, Rails and PHP) were extracted out of existing software, not invented.
All language is invented, every time somebody coins a new word they're inventing language. What doesn't work is to raise the barrier so high that people will have to learn a lot of new words at the same time.
Learning language is an incremental thing, and the pressure to learn it is dependent on the installed base.
An artificial language will be hard to spread because there is the chicken-and-the-egg problem, if enough people spoke it then there might be a reason to cross that huge barrier to entry.
Words aren't language; an example of a "natural" languages invented today can be found in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicaraguan_Sign_Language. Many creoles follow the same pattern of spontaneous development. This is a distinct difference from the inventedness of Esperanto or Lojban.
Artificial languages don't spread because they don't solve anyone's problem; they solve everyone's problem.
That is not really context. It's a prejudiced rant.
I went through an Esperanto phase some years ago and read this article back then.
He's basically criticizing the language for not being as simple as it could be.
He completely overlooks the point many people will find Esperanto easy to learn. If you speak an Indo-European language and have never studied another language before, I dare even say that learning a bit of Esperanto will help you learn another Indo-European language.
It's been ages since I've used Esperanto but I definitely don't regret having learnt it (especially since I didn't have to put in much time).
[+] [-] fogus|16 years ago|reply
[1]: they are all invented of course
[+] [-] shabda|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jacquesm|16 years ago|reply
Learning language is an incremental thing, and the pressure to learn it is dependent on the installed base.
An artificial language will be hard to spread because there is the chicken-and-the-egg problem, if enough people spoke it then there might be a reason to cross that huge barrier to entry.
[+] [-] req2|16 years ago|reply
Artificial languages don't spread because they don't solve anyone's problem; they solve everyone's problem.
[+] [-] tokenadult|16 years ago|reply
http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/
[+] [-] wynand|16 years ago|reply
I went through an Esperanto phase some years ago and read this article back then.
He's basically criticizing the language for not being as simple as it could be.
He completely overlooks the point many people will find Esperanto easy to learn. If you speak an Indo-European language and have never studied another language before, I dare even say that learning a bit of Esperanto will help you learn another Indo-European language.
It's been ages since I've used Esperanto but I definitely don't regret having learnt it (especially since I didn't have to put in much time).
[+] [-] eiriarte|16 years ago|reply
A true expert in Esperanto, the linguist and psychologist Claude Piron, debunked that article years ago:
http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/why.htm
[+] [-] DanielStraight|16 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rawr|16 years ago|reply