Of all people, I think I understand this concept more than most. Of course languages evolve. It's quite natural.
If it didn't make Wikipedia seem "less respectable", in fact I would advocate writing en.wiki in modern colloquial English.
In fact, some people have been irritated with me because I often justify my own "misspellings" as linguistic evolution rather than mistakes - http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=nessecary for example yields 211,000 results (although this is very small when compared to the 1,190,000,000 results for the "correct" spelling, it is nonetheless significant).
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=ackward yields 225,000 (as compared to 46,700,000; I don't tend to spell the word that way myself but I have noticed that many people do).
http://www.google.com/search?q=accidently http://www.google.com/search?q=accomodate http://www.google.com/search?q=amature http://www.google.com/search?q=arguement http://www.google.com/search?q=beleive http://www.google.com/search?q=calender http://www.google.com/search?q=catagory http://www.google.com/search?q=cemetary http://www.google.com/search?q=changable http://www.google.com/search?q=collectable http://www.google.com/search?q=commited http://www.google.com/search?q=concensus http://www.google.com/search?q=momento+-%22un+momento%22+-%22momento+decisiv...
etc.
However, while language change is generally only somewhat chaotic and is governed by some specific rules, and every language is at any given point tied down to a great degree (for example, even though English is constantly changing, you still can't say something like "I not likes me it much the no chocolate"), no language is ever in such a state of linguistic chaos as Europanto is right now and will, in all likelyhood, always be.
And while it's true that there are different ways of saying the same thing in pretty much every language, how many of them would you use in writing? How many of them are natural? I mean, I could certainly say "Ahh, chocolate? Yes, I truly love that food", but could I say it without context? If I used it to _start_ a conversation people would think I was positively insane. There are always limitations on how you can say something in any real language.
In Europanto, there aren't really any. You can fool around with synonyms and word order so much that it is truly not a language anymore.
Mark
On 11/04/06, europanto europanto@gmail.com wrote:
Yes, and ... do you have to be afraid of that ? ;o) Languages are not dead or frozen things. They all evolve. They also tend to take words from their fellow ones. ( French purists seem to be frightened when they see English words invading "their" language, but they don't see how many French words can be found in English ) And you know, even in a single language, there are dozens of ways to express an idea, with different words and grammar rules. For example ( sorry, in French. I'm not good enough in English for that ) :
-"J'aime les confiseries au chocolat plus que les autres." -"Les sucreries chocolatées sont mes préférées." -"De toutes les friandises, celles qui sont au cacao incarnent mon péché mignon." -"Les bonbons ... miam ! Les bonbons au chocolat ... miam miam !" -"Mes papilles me le disent, bravant mon désarroi Au pays Gourmandise, le chocolat est roi"
( => I prefer chocolate sweets )
smh
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Europanto-t1056989.html#a3858151 Sent from the Wikipedia General forum at Nabble.com.
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