Mar 11, 2026, 1:02 PM@fastfinge @hongminhee This cultural selectiveness is why I am for a constructed auxiliary language as lingua franca. The most popular is Esperanto, but there are technically better projects nowadays.
- Mar 11, 2026, 1:02 PM
Replies
- patricuspatricus@gts.posix.liveMar 11, 2026, 1:16 PM
@clv1 @fastfinge @hongminhee well, that isn't possible as such a language would need to be usable *somewhere* on it's start.
🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦fastfinge@interfree.caMar 11, 2026, 1:35 PM@patricus @hongminhee @clv1 It also doesn't solve any of the problems of "just learn English": can you afford the lessons? Do you have the cognitive ability to learn two languages? Do you have the time for the lessons? Are teachers and materials available? Are they accessible? Do you have a place to practice outside of the classroom? Also, "let's erase everyone's culture" doesn't sound, to me, like any better of an answer than "let's make one culture king".
I speak as someone who studied French for eight years straight, an hour a day, and never managed to pass a single course. There are people who just literally can't, when it comes to language learning. I'm one of them. Though to be fair, it's almost certainly a combination of the environment, the instruction, and other factors, rather than some flaw innate to me. But either way, I've never found a method that works.
I actually toyed with learning Korean, thinking that maybe it was the gendered nature of French, as well as the spelling, that was the problem. Plus I thought a more regular alphabet might help me. But after eight years of bashing my head against the French wall, I just...couldn't. Picking up a new language course felt like going back to hell, and I couldn't make myself stick with it for more than a week.- Mar 11, 2026, 1:44 PM
@fastfinge @patricus @hongminhee Auxiliary languages are constructed to be easier on purpose. A regular alphabet is only one of many features that must be easy on a lingua franca, and there isn't a single natural language whose all features are easy. As for cognitive ability, as far as I've observed, it seems that the teaching method counts a lot. Have you tried different methods?
- 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦fastfinge@interfree.caMar 11, 2026, 1:52 PM@clv1 @hongminhee @patricus Yup! With French, I tried:
* in-person classroom instruction (both in school and extra-curricular): material is often inaccessible, teachers are mixed quality, I eventually lag behind everyone else in the room and get left behind
* total emersion (I live in Canada and have extended family that doesn't speak English): I never manage to take anything in, and just freeze up when addressed directly
* independent correspondence courses: materials are more accessible and I can go at my own pace, but no matter how I study, I can't pass the tests or use what I've tried to learn in real life
* apps (duolingo): accessibility varies. I eventually get pretty good at doing the exercises offered in the app, but that never generalizes in a way that lets me pass any formal tests or use the language
My measures of success are:
* able to have basic conversations in the language
* able to pass Canadian government tests to be certified in the language for career purposes
I have never achieved either of the above. And after eight years of failures, I've pretty much given up. - 🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦fastfinge@interfree.caMar 11, 2026, 2:00 PM@hongminhee @clv1 @patricus I actually did seriously consider some sort of genetic problem. My grandmother (on my father's side) was a French speaker who had the exact same problems learning English. She took dozens of courses over her life, but never actually learned anything. And yet, both me and my grandmother have won awards for writing in our native languages, and had our writing published. My aunts and uncles are all bilingual, but none of my cousins on that side of the family are: they either speak only French or only English, just like me. So that's a strong pattern. On the other hand, the idea of a genetic inability to learn a second language just seems silly. Why wouldn't it make it harder to learn a first language?
- patricuspatricus@gts.posix.liveMar 11, 2026, 1:55 PM
@clv1 @fastfinge @hongminhee nah, I just heard someone speak Esperanto and I was like: yeah I'll die trying to learn this.
- patricuspatricus@gts.posix.liveMar 11, 2026, 1:58 PM
@clv1 @fastfinge @hongminhee also, it needs to sound cool when I was little, English sounded cool, I wanted to learn it, so I learned, as fast as I could, I asked my parents to find some native speaker to talk to, I was getting better and better. because I knew, English sounds cool so.
Mar 11, 2026, 1:41 PM@clv1 @fastfinge @hongminhee Esperanto is a terrible choice as an auxiliary language. It's not much easier for speakers of most languages than English is, being full of unnecessary things like a myriad of declensions: declining for number, gender, tense, aspect, word form, etc. But hey, at least it has maybe 50,000 L1 speakers.
- Mar 11, 2026, 3:15 PM
@ZDL @fastfinge @hongminhee Hi, for an example of a contemporary project that's technically better than Esperanto, check Globasa: https://www.globasa.net/eng
- Mar 12, 2026, 6:50 AM
@clv1 @fastfinge @hongminhee I think dice with letters on the sides rolled randomly would be better than Esperanto! 🤣 But yes, this project looks pretty sane from a glance-over.
The choice of agglutinative is interesting. I would personally favour particulate, but agglutinative is a very good second choice.