Languages have been part of the human experience.
Consider for one moment that we Filipinos have 154 recorded dialects and languages. For such a small part of the world as the Philippines, listen in on the radio with all 90 million Filipinos speaking all of their languages at the same time and you’d wish the radio would just go static.
Well, in the subculture of the Geekdom, there are several languages that you can hear. Many of them are fictional by nature and can be used for the sake of aesthetic license. Nevertheless, we humans love to speak meticulously about something, to describe an idea more clearly, and to transmit our culture from one person to another.
Aliens (if they exist… i certainly hope they don’t) may see this as just the repeated opening and closing of the two flabs on our faces we simply call lips, but we have come to know the practicality of language.
Let me give you a scenario why language is practical. An American and a Filipino enter an elevator. The elevator door closes. On the next floor, the door opens and another Filipino shows up. He said, “Bababa ba?” and the Filipino replies, “Bababa.” Communication is complete because of a single syllable “ba.” Get what I mean? Words are important. It carries meanings that bring understanding to people.
Here are some fictional language that some scholars crafted to keep us busy.
Klingon - The language itself is forcefully spoken, its syllables hard and harsh to pronounce. It mirrors the culture behind the language as Klingons (a race in the Star Trek universe) are a warlike race, mostly at war with humans and other species in that universe. If you’re clueless of what I’m talking about, remember your lolo or lola watching this sci-fi show on tv… the show with people having ridges on their foreheads. Those are Klingons. NUQ DAQ YUJ DA’POL Translation: Where’s the chocolate?
Elvish - If you’re a Lord of the Rings fan, you’ve probably encountered Elvish. No, not Elvis. He’s dead already. Elvish. The language of the Elves (the creatures with pointy ears and can live thousands and thousands of years… unless you kill them of course) in Middle Earth. Created by the master linguist and fantasy writer himself, professor JRR Tolkien, Elvish has been unmatched in the fictional languages in terms of complete rules of grammar and composition. I love it mostly because of how soft-spoken it is and how it resembles the beauty of the Celtic language which Tolkien loved. There are two branches of Elvish, Sindarin and Quenya. There’s a big difference between the two, but I lean on Sindarin more. Auta miqula orqu. Translation: Go kiss an orc.
Gungan - This language is characterized by gargles and bubbles in the tongue, as Gungans live under water in Star Wars Episode 1. Though there’s no evidence of a language crafted by George Lucas, it is still entertaining to shoot down Jar Jar Binks. Misssssssssssaaaaaaa propose……
I wish to include Esparanto but the language is dying. With the rise of worlds of the imagination, the languages I have cited may be used by fans of the said universes. Elvish, now, is a course in Oxford. So you see, fictional gibberish is not gibberish after all. As long as people speak them.
Yet of all the languages we may speak, it is all too clear for us: Ang hindi marunong magmahal sa sariling wika, ay daig pa ang hayop at malansang isda.
Ngayon, di ba masaya kapag nagsasalita na tayo ng Tagalog? 
-resplend3nt
that is a good point. imagine if there were a venue where all 154 could speak up. imagine what mix that would be. for sure i would be hearing a beautiful soft melody and harmony that is uniquely filipino.
if we could have this fluency in conversational filipino much like in poetry and literature (which is also a concern in other countries), perhaps we can think better of our race and persevere for a higher standard in the language. i dream of having bestseller novels and other literature forms by filipino or in filipino. i wish we could have movies of better quality in depth and form using the language if only to convey an exact/ the real life and the real hope in the philippines. in that way, others will also take more than just interest to study our language. but the matter at hand is something much bigger than the tongue. As Superman’s dad would say: they can be a great people…they just lack the light to guide the way. this is so for the filipino race. perhaps through language parallel to action or as a means to act, we can lead our people somewhere great.
many would argue that there are missing elements in our vernacular, missing works. but if we dig deeper there are systems and there are works that are already noteworthy and serving our purpose.
How curious to read of Esperanto that “the language is dying.” I’ve just come back from a lively British Esperanto Congress, with participants from ten different countries.
Esperanto has never been so popular - take a wander around the net. Indeed it has some remarkable practical benefits. Personally, I’ve made friends around the world through Esperanto that I would never have been able to communicate with otherwise. And then there’s the Pasporta Servo , which provides free lodging and local information to Esperanto-speaking travellers in over 90 countries. In the past year I have had guided tours of Berlin and Milan in the planned language. I have discussed philosophy with a Slovene poet, humour on television with a Bulgarian TV producer. I’ve discussed what life was like in East Berlin before the wall came down, how to cook perfect spaghetti, the advantages and disadvantages of monarchy, and so on. I recommend it, not just as an ideal but as a very practical way to overcome language barriers.
Take a look at http://www.esperanto.net
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Hi Bill! Sorry if I pre-empted what was going to happen. Here’s an explanation why I said it’s sort of ‘dying.’
First, Esperanto is a language crafted to unite all the Indo-European languages (considering the fact that all Indo-European languages are based on a single language family) and as such, is not usable by the rest of the world.
Second, because of the shift of power from West to East, Mandarin Chinese will soon be the global language instead of English (which is part of the Indo-European family).
Third, Marko Sikosek finds only as few as 30 people out of 180 Esperantists who are really fluent in Esperanto. Although I don’t doubt that Esperanto is the most popular among the crafted languages to date, 2 million speakers is still few and there’s no guarantee that it will survive by practicality alone.
Tolkien said before that if a language is to exist, it must have a story . . . a history. That is why fictional languages like Klingon and Elvish are so popular, not because it is practical to use but because of the fictional cultures and stories that represent them. Somehow when people speak these languages, they identify with the Klingon warriors or the Noldorin Elves.
All I can say is, Esperanto may alleviate the language barrier, but only in Europe. Not the rest of the world. Thus, in our place in Asia, it is quite unusable.
Hello everyone. We have a missing comment! We published a comment on Esperanto–a reply to Resplend3nt’s comment. But what is strange is that, it’s nowhere to be found, nowhere in the global dashboard.
I only remember that the email address has a mac.com in it. i don’t remember the user name.
Whoever posted the comment that is now missing, please post it again.
Thank you!
Foolish as ever.
Hello Decoders!
I’ve finally found the missing comment… we still don’t know who deleted it, but I suspect that it’s a glitch of wordpress.
I opened our email (thedecodesociety@gmail.com) and lo and behold, all the comments received here are recorded there. So good news for us! We have retrieved the comment thanks to… technology haha.
(it’s my fault really, i dont check the email all the time.)
The comment comes from Lune (dreah@mac.com). The comment goes:
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1. There are thousands of esperantists in China.
2. There are a large number of neologisms in Esperanto that have Asian roots.
3. Tolkien supported esperanto, though there is debate that he was actually an esperantist.
4. Marko Sikosek largely polled beginning esperantists. Hardly a fair study.
5. Esperanto has a culture, a story, and a history. You just need to look for it a little harder since there are so many people out there spouting the party line that it does not.
In reply to Lune,
1. Yes there are thousands of Esperantists in China. A few thousands among millions. Consider also the fact that there’s no guarantee that these people are fluent in Esperanto considering that the Chinese are not so well versed in Indo European languages… i mean, they have 5000 characters in their calligraphy to study so why would they bother studying a language too foreign for them?
Another fact to consider is that many have been learning English in China but not as much as non-Chinese learning Mandarin. Last I heard there are lots and lots of Europeans and Americans training in Beijing to study Mandarin.
2. I am familiar with some Esperanto words that have origins in Asia, yet so do all languages. That is why languages exist. If a language (like Dutch) meets a global language (like English), the Dutch language would naturally “borrow” some words, tweak it, and make it their own. Languages assimilating words of other languages is common.
3. Indeed Tolkien wrote something about Esperanto. And he did encourage Brits to study them, all in the purpose of practicality. But he did say in his essay that Esperanto as a growing language has internal conflicts within itself (like if a language is growing it is bound to change. When it changes, it might lose its practicality.) But Tolkien still emphasized the value of having a story… language being the organ of transmission of a culture’s uniqueness in character. Having a story alone makes a single worthless object (like a stone for example) have value. If that happens in languages then people will use the language beyond the reasons of practicality.
4. If Marko Sikosek just focused on the fluent Esperantists and did not include those with some grasp of it, that is hardly a fair study too, don’t you think?
5. Please don’t misunderstand me when I say “history” or “story”. A history is a story of how a people or a culture began and how it rose up to assert its identity through the people thus making their language unique and sensible in their context. Tolkien’s Elves have it. The fact that the Elves (though fictional) have thousands of years of history, from the Noldorin’s flight from the Undying Lands to Middle Earth, it is naturally reflected in how their languages (Quenya, Sindarin, Telerin) developed by migration, interaction with other races, etc. In Esperanto, though there are many users of the said language, there’s not much motivation to study it because everyone knows that it was just invented by L. Zamenhof with reasons of practicality and bridging language barriers alone. The fact that it was consciously constructed does not help in motivating people (like me and others) to learn the language. The words at times sound “artificial.”
Can I add my support to Bill Chapman and the need for a future, non-national, global language?
Esperanto is deserving of more attention, from a wider public!
A good indicator can be seen at http://www.lernu.net
Thank you for your reasonable comments. I think I started something here!
I think that there is something of an Esperanto people beginning to emerge. Indeed, a smallish movement called ‘Esperanta Civito’ is based on that premise.
Esperanto has its heroes and great statesmen (Privat, Lapenna…), its enemies (the name Blinkenberg comes to mind), and it’s not an exaggeration to say that some Esperanto speakers have died because of their involvement with the language, whether in Stalinist purges (Drezen and Varankian) or because of Nazi brutality (including Zamenhof’s daughter). Then there’s the terrible Ido conspiracy of about a century ago.; I remember being warned not to get involved with those terrible Idists … The Zamenhof saga itself is a story of self-sacrificeand endeavour and success against all the odds. You may remember that Zamenhof’s early drafts of his language were burned by his father. These sort of things constitute the story whose existence you were doubting.
Anyway, I wish you well, and I’ve enjoyed your comments.