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Proposal: Planned Languages, Esperanto, Lojban

The Planned Languages proposal already specifically includes Esperanto and Lojban. It doesn't appear that any of these are going to succeed on their own, so they should merge.

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Is there a significant intersection of Esperanto and Lojban speakers ? – ogerard Apr 15 '11 at 11:49
I understand the "Union fait la force" rationale. I am somewhat reluctant to call to merge together Esperanto and the others because the former has a "real life" following both ancient and extensive and does not have the same kind of questions and public as the others. – ogerard Apr 15 '11 at 18:25
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The way I look at it: If Esperanto and Lojban get enough questions to deserve their own place then we can give them one later. So I agree with Dori: I'd rather have everything together than nothing at all. – MrHen Apr 15 '11 at 21:15
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So let's try to rally them. What would be the right way to merge Dori ? Contact the original proposers of the three ? – ogerard Apr 15 '11 at 21:54
I don't see any reason to merge the Esperanto proposal with the constructed language proposal; following the same reasoning, there would not be a WordPress site, Ask Different should have been merged with other proposals, and all the proposals about a neo-Latin language should be merged together. Comparing the Planned Languages with Stack Overflow is not exact; there are people who know more than one programming language, but it's quite difficult to find somebody that knows both Esperanto and Klingon, or Esperanto and Volapük. – kiamlaluno May 2 '11 at 1:26
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Actually there is overlap between the conlang communities. There is significant overlap between Esperanto & it's derivatives/look-a-likes, most tokiponists are familiar with Esperanto, there is a Klingon only subforum on the Na'vi forum. Constructed languages tend to be "smaller" (smaller total vocab) than natural languages and people learn them more shallowly (except eo, people tend to learn that one really well), so it isn't uncommon to find people who dabble in many. And artlangers really represent 1 group cause they don't create communities, ie. only 1 'speaker' per language. Imho. – MatthewMartin Jun 27 '11 at 3:19
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6 Answers

up vote 7 down vote accepted

In an attempt to provide an answer for use in voting, this seems to be the basic position with regards to merging:

  • The "Planned Languages" definition includes Esperanto and Lojban
  • None of these proposals appear to be succeeding on their own volition
  • Merging them all together may provide enough support to bring "Planned Languages" to the next step
  • In the event that Esperanto or Lojban or any other specific language becomes (a) overwhelmingly dominant or (b) provides enough questions on their own subject a separate site can be created for them
  • In the spirit of the previous point, any success in creating a generic Planned Languages site can generate more support and interest in any of the individual languages which increases the changes of a specialized site succeeding
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@Dori: I updated with some hopeful clarity. The intent was mostly just to point out that the Planned Language proposal helps not hurts the more specific proposals. But I do agree with your points. My intention was mostly to get some of the comments out of the comments into more votable/visible areas. – MrHen May 2 '11 at 23:15
@ Dori Wouldn't the smaller language have a fit (if point 4 happens) because they don't want to be left a smaller community? Would an Esperanto site be a start over or a huge migration task? – Azendale Aug 21 '11 at 18:20
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up vote 4 down vote

Agreed. Let's put all our efforts in making the "Planned Languages" succeed!!!

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up vote 3 down vote

Yes!!!

(filler text..........)

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up vote 2 down vote

I understand why merging the proposals has been proposed; still, there are some points I would consider.

  • Comparing a site about all the constructed languages with Stack Overflow is not completely correct. Stack Overflow is about programming languages, developer tools, and other technologies (e.g. database engines). Programming languages are different from a natural language as

    • It's probable that who knows a programming language knows another programming language too.
    • There are very similar constructs in different programming languages; the operator ++ is present in many programming languages, which (at the end) have common operators (e.g. assign a value to a variable, create a new object instance).
    • Programming languages don't have a pronunciation; when you learn a programming language you learn the syntax, but you don't need to speak a programming language.

  • Comparing a site about constructed languages with a site about a family of natural languages is not completely correct too.

    • A native speaker of a language could know a different language of the same family (e.g. a Dutch could know English, an Italian could know Spanish or French).
    • Languages of the same family have many things in common: French, Spanish, and Italian have words that derive from Latin; Germanic languages have words that derive from the Proto-Germanic.

Differently, a constructed language doesn't normally have anything in common with another constructed language: Esperanto is different from Volapük; Lojban is different from Klingon; Ido has been created from a group of reformist Esperanto speakers.
As consequence, the most active user in a Q&A site for constructed languages would probably be the user who answers to questions for the language with the higher number of questions.

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up vote 1 down vote

According to suggested off-topic questions for Planned Languages asking the question How do you say X in [lang]? is off-topic. Therefore, there would be no place for actual speakers to ask questions about the language itself.

Planned Languages appears to be positioned as a place for linguists and Esperanto would be a place for students and speakers of the language.

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up vote 0 down vote

I agree. If nothing else, working together to get a general-purpose Planned Language board off the ground will help bring in more interested people, which could then help get some of the more specific boards off the ground.

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