Top all-time · #19396
Claude Piron
Personal blog · claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglaisculturephilosophy
Claude Piron's personal blog at claudepiron.free.fr covers culture and philosophy. Since 2009, 4 different Hacker News readers have linked it 15 times. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (8) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link Claude Piron's articles on Esperanto, especially its place in language families and its suitability for Asian learners. Commenters cite them in arguments about China's support for the language and as rebuttals to critical articles.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 8 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Textes de Claude Piron, ancien traducteur à l'ONU et à l'OMS, psychothérapeute, ex-enseignant chargé de cours à l'Université de Genève entre 1973 et 1994 (psychologie et sciences de l'Éducation)
Most-linked posts?
- /articlesenanglais/why.htm2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-07-31
What Hacker News says?
About Ogden's Basic English, prominent Esperantist and United Nations translator Claude Piron[1] had this to say[2]: > " "Basic English cut its essential vocabulary to 850 words", says our critic. Let's not discuss the fact that the 850 words of Basic English do not enable you to say, for instance, "Waiter, a tomato salad!". But what is amazing is that Mr Rye appears not to know that people whose mother tongue is ot…
Comment linking /articlesenanglais/why.htm
on “Things I Learnt in 2020”Submitted Esperanto: european or asiatic language? (1981) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionChina is one of the strongest supporters of Esperanto and it seems like they are satisfied with the neutrality of it. It is "basically an isolating language"¹, which is more common in Asia, and anyway a lot easier to learn than another regional language. [1] http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/europeanorasiat...
Comment linking /articlesenanglais/europeanorasiatic.htm
on “Today is Esperanto Day – here’s why I learned it”JB Rye has little to say about why Esperanto didn't catch on - indeed if the kind of inconsistency he writes about was a reason for languages not catching on, where would English be? Take the clockwork morphology which Rye derides because, genuinely, "truanta" in Esperanto doesn't mean the same as truant" in English(??) That same clockwork nature was described by Claude Piron in these terms: You never feel quite sec…
Comment linking /articlesenanglais/effects.htm
on “The Unsuitability of English (2015)”Why hasn't Esperanto caught on? Because the last thing Europe needs is another euro-language. It's easier to learn because it's deliberately made simpler - but it is still learning another language, and learning another language to any kind of fluency is still a multi year effort with thousands of things to memorise and practise. As well as "no one speaks it" (approximately true), no areas speak it, no laws are writ…
Comment linking /articlesenanglais/sociolinguistics.htm
on “The Unsuitability of English (2015)”That's not true. Esperanto is easy to learn because it's very regular, has a small vocabulary, phonetic spelling, etc... None of those advantages only apply to Indo-Europeans. It's not even fair to say Esperanto fits in the European language family. http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/europeanorasiat... China is also one of the largest state supporters of Esperanto. You can take classes in it at University…
Comment linking /articlesenanglais/europeanorasiatic.htm
on “EU must adopt ‘EU English’ as its official working language after Brexit (2017)”> Esperanto is also much harder to learn for people without western language backgrounds. Esperanto is still very easy to learn for Asians, at least more than natural languages. Some of its largest support comes from China, including being taught in grade school, giving university degrees and Radio Peking broadcasts since 1964¹. On top of that, the premise that Esperanto belongs to the western family is not accurate…
Comment linking /articlesenanglais/europeanorasiatic.htm
on “‘Saluton’: the surprise return of Esperanto”Here is a good article about the language family of Esperanto: Esperanto: european or asiatic language? (1981) http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/europeanorasiat...
Comment linking /articlesenanglais/europeanorasiatic.htm
on “Esperanto as an Asian language”- nz · 2022-09-28
It is not _too_ surprising, since Esperanto also shares some coincidental features with Chinese -- its regularity makes the word-building process similar to Chinese. Perhaps poetically, the regularity of roots and affixes does for the arbitrariness of word-building (compared to the lexicons of European languages), what a phonetic alphabet does for the arbitrariness of writing (compared to logographic scripts used in…
Comment linking /articlesenanglais/westernlanguage.htm
on “A beginners guide to Esperanto (2003)” This is incorrect. First, grammatically Esperanto shares much with Asian languages: http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/europeanorasiat... It's also generally true that a speaker of an Asian language will have an easier time learning Esperanto than another Asian language. The Chinese are one of the biggest state supporters of Esperanto. Radio Beijing has Esperanto programs and you can get a degree in it fro…
Comment linking /articlesenanglais/europeanorasiatic.htm
on “Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)”The author of that article is well known in the Esperanto world for being the author of that article... and nothing more ;) A true expert in Esperanto, the linguist and psychologist Claude Piron, debunked that article years ago: http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/why.htm
Comment linking /articlesenanglais/why.htm
on “Confessions of a Math Idiot”> [1] http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/ I have read large parts of this rant, and I started off thinking "wow, he's really ripping into Esperanto, there will be nothing useful left afterwards!". Then I started thinking about it; on the high level his arguments are weak. E.g. the overall theme of his rant seems to boil down to "If Esperanto has flaws, it can't be good", and on the low level, his arguments are…
Comment linking /articlesenanglais/comments.htm
on “What Will the World Speak in 2115?”The author of that article is well known in the Esperanto world for being the author of that article... and nothing more ;) A true expert in Esperanto, the linguist and psychologist Claude Piron, debunked that article years ago: http://claudepiron.free.fr/articlesenanglais/why.htm
Comment linking /articlesenanglais/why.htm
on “Invented languages and their long history of failure.”