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0 pointschaps2y ago0 comments

Why is this getting downvoted? They're right that the criticism is pretty excessive:

  "Maybe his next article will be about how airlines should speak Esperanto because English is such a flawed language. That’s a clever and unique observation."

Hm.

0 comments

prepend2y ago

I got a little snarky but I think the analogy holds.

Esperanto is a superior language to English. And English has many flaws.

Theoretically it would be better to have all pilots and airports learn an efficient language.

But it would be stupid and immature to seriously write a blog post about that, especially without talking about all the flaws in that plan.

lmm2y ago

> Esperanto is a superior language to English.

Not really. You can say it's more regular but that's because it sees barely any actual use; if it ever gained popularity it wouldn't stay regular. (And given that pilots speak in set phrases anyway, irregularity isn't really an issue). It's not a great language by any stretch, it's an awkward mismash of four european languages; sure it sounds kind of nice in an Italianate way, but if that's what you want then why not just speak Italian?

shermantanktop2y ago

> if it ever gained popularity it wouldn't stay regular

This. Utility and purity always pull in opposite directions.

I see those boutique little (programming) languages written by amateur language designers with exotic type systems or “everything is an X” philosophies, and my reaction is to assume that they are useless for anything past toys and experiments.

I know useful language features have been born in that world and then eventually bolted onto mutt languages like Java and Python, but that suits me just fine.

nrdvana2y ago

It would stay regular if there was a strict governing body for it that wasn't a Webster-style "whatever people are speaking is the new definition of correct".

English really is a disaster of a language. There was a(nother) great XKCD about it just a few days ago. https://xkcd.com/2907/

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vouaobrasil2y ago

> Esperanto is a superior language to English. And English has many flaws.

At least one one perspective, English is superior. That perspective is that you can actually use it in almost any modern situation because it has been tried and tested globally.

prepend1y ago

This is the point of my analogy.

English:Esperanto::csv:parquet

(Although I think parquet is much more useful than Esperanto and may eventually end up dethroning csv)

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