New language comment on earlier entry

On July 21st I had an entry on a new language invented in Regensburg. I have now received an email from one Robert Maier, who apparently knows something about this but mysteriously describes himself as ‘happily far from Regensburg’. I reproduce it here and also in the comments below the earlier entry, which I have temporarily re-opened. I don’t imagine the original commenters will all see it, either way:

a few comments/flames?! from someone who – for his own taste – knows way too much about the thing…

New language not a COD… well it used to be; aber auch dort hatte man wohl so eine Art Rechtschreibreform. (Although COD was quite o.k. IMHO, theres sth very fishy about all this new language/un-language business…)

Tomas points to the issue of empiricity & testing, and quite rightly so… but his linguistics prof might be made aware of the fact daß seine (und mithin auch meine) Zunft ganz fröhlich an der ganzen internationalen Planspracherei mitgebastelt hat. Otto Jespersen gab der Welt Novial – http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novial – , André Martinet war in den Vorstufen von Interlingua – http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interlingua_%28Plansprache%29 – beteiligt, und selbst der Name de Saussure taucht in den Annalen der Interlinguistik auf – allerdings nicht Ferdinand, sondern sein Bruder René; der dafür aber recht umtriebig auf der Esperanto-Seite der Dinge: http://www.fenetreeuropetv.com/forum/read.php?f=1&i=13456&t=10984

Das bei persistent illusions erwähnte Sommerloch… genau, das war auch mein erster Gedanke. Das passt auch, da gehört das auch hin – just like the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot and the Yeti… :)
(“Persistent Illusions”, actually – true true true… seems like the world of science has been hunting for THE international language ever since the early 17th century… and before that for the philosopher’s stone. Genau dasselbe, genau den gleichen Realitätsgehalt…)

Incidentally, you mention the UFO content of the institute’s name… actually, the acronym is meant to indicate the equivalent of R&D – or rather D&R: Entwicklung Und FOrschung… die Überlegung, ob das denn die richtige Reihenfolge ist, überlass ich jetzt aber dir… (but sure *does* remind of one song of Schwaben’s finest (of 1979 vintage), “Schwoißfuaß”: “Guck, guck, i han E UFO gsäa…”)

Und was Qoh angeht: Klingonisch, warum nicht? Once the fundamental auxlangers’ (auxiliary language proponents) postulate of “we need an artificial language to ease communication between people of differnt languages” is accepted… there is nothing, absolutely NOTHING, that would make one language preferable over any other (which is my huge heresy against them all, right).
[Und von daher nehmen diese Leute in Regensburg auch ihren Stolz von wegen, no grammar. Vielberth apparently assumes that it is grammar which causes the worst difficulties when learning a language – und darauf fußt das ganze Ding. Daß das Vokabular notwendig anschwillt, wenn man (wie dort betrieben) die ganze Morphologie lexikalisiert… tja! Oder? “The real intrinsic difficulty of learning a foreign language lies in learning to master its vocabulary.” Henry Sweet, 1899 – not a word about grammar…]

Anyway, das brannte mir so am Freitagabend grad mal noch so unter den Nägeln.
Happily far from Regensburg,
viele Grüße –
Robert

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