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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2016-01-13 21:48, spike wrote:<br>
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<div><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Esperanto
is a good example of a system in which a lot of
investment was made with little to show for it. <o:p></o:p></span>
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style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-size:11.0pt;font-family:"Calibri",sans-serif;color:#1F497D">Klingon
is another example. You hear it at Star Trek
conventions (with some of the hardcore yahoos very
fluent) but it never gained much traction: didn’t
take advantage of existing language expertise.</span></p>
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<br>
I recommend "In the Land of Invented Languages" by Arika Okrent. She
goes through the history and approaches to artificial languages.<br>
<br>
Esperanto is an auxlang, intended to help people communicate: it is
by far the most successful such language. It is just not useful
enough. Meanwhile Klingon is full with linguistic in-jokes: it is
deliberately obtuse to be alien, and unlikely to be easy to learn
(Okrent's framing story is about her learning Klingon - she is a
professional linguist, how hard could it be?)<br>
<br>
The problem is that languages are fairly expensive if you convert
the time it takes to learn them into salaried hours. They need to be
very useful to be worth it. <br>
<br>
(Trivia: the micronation Moresnet planned to use Esperanto as
official language. <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.ipernity.com/blog/jens_s_larsen/242660">http://www.ipernity.com/blog/jens_s_larsen/242660</a>
)<br>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Dr Anders Sandberg
Future of Humanity Institute
Oxford Martin School
Oxford University
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