The 865 U.S. military bases in 40 countries

The new foundations installed in Colombia with the endorsement of President Álvaro Uribe cast doubt on American foreign policy.

In the context of neopinochetismo hypocritically tolerated by Washington in Honduras, now follows that the projected installation of seven military bases in the United States in Colombia, which caused massive outrage in Latin America, the update is a new security agreement by the renting of existing databases philanthropy in order to combat narco-border, according to an ingenious interpretation of Obama exposed to a group of Hispanic Journalists (Reuters, 07/08/09), on the eve of disjointed SPP summit in Guadalajara, where Mexico has nothing to doing or should have participated since its disastrous genesis.

No one learns from others and U.S. head repeats the same mistakes of the USSR, with a trio of devastating consequences: sobreextensão imperial perpetual war and bankruptcy, which likely lead to a collapse similar to the former Soviet Union, according to Chalmers Johnson (Ten measures to liquidate the U.S. military bases, Asia Times, 04/08/09).

Chalmers Johnson, professor emeritus at the University of California (San Diego) and prolific author of notable books, evidences the potentially ruinous global empire of military bases that cadence long dependence on imperialism and militarism in the U.S. in its relations with other countries, and "his bloated military establishment."

In addition, Floyd Norris, economic and financial analyst for The New York Times (01/08/09) reveals that the shipment of durable goods civilian U.S. fell more than 20% during the recession, which would have been worse if not for increasing production of weapons, which fired 123% above the average for the year 2000 (beginning of militarism bushiano, Obama increased his mask with lamb kidnapped by wolves in the Pentagon).

Norris says that the U.S. is primarily a civilian economy, while "military item represents around 8% of all durable goods (in 2000 was 3%)", but in our humble opinion, is an economy predominantly military as many segments of its activity calendar intertwine with his beautiful substantial, as has been shown to SIPRI, the lofty pacifist Swedish Institute.

According to the inventory of the Pentagon in 2008, quoted by Johnson, the U.S. empire consists of 865 installations in over 40 countries, with a displacement of more than 190 thousand soldiers in over 46 countries and territories.

Johnson presents the unique case of Japan and on Okinawa (of course, plagued by scandals of sexual profligate U.S. military who take 64 years of continuous occupation).

The seven additional military bases in Colombia, the U.S. will raise its global total to 872, which has no equivalent with any power past and present. Literally, the United States invaded the world!

The most important lies in the opinion of Johnson in this occupation is not necessary for a genuine U.S. defense, and cause friction with other nations and its costly maintenance overall (250 billion dollars a year, according to Anita Dancs Foreign Policy in Focus ): its sole purpose is to offer the U.S. hegemony, ie, control or dominion over the largest possible number of countries on the planet.

According to Johnson, Obama did not realize that the U.S. no longer have the ability to exercise its global hegemony, while displaying their pitiful economic power mutilated when the United States are in an unprecedented decline.

Expresses three basic reasons to settle the American empire: 1. Lacks the means to an expansionism of post-war 2. "It will lose the war in Afghanistan, which will further increase the breaks" 3. End the shameful secret of our empire of military bases.

Proposed ten measures:

1. Finally the severe environmental damage caused by the bases and the cease of the Agreement on the Status of Hosts (SOFA, for its acronym in English) in advance that prevents the host countries to exercise jurisdiction over crimes committed by American soldiers, free of any guilt (particularly the epidemic of rape in the military havens).

2. Settlement of the empire and seize the opportunity cost to invest in more creative fields.

3. The former, indirectly, would stop the abuse of human rights, since imperialism engenders the use of torture, so abundant in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo Bay.

4. Cut the endless list of civilian employees and dependents of Department of Defense, with its luxurious building (pool, golf courses, clubs, etc..).

5. Removing the myth, promoted by the military-industrial complex, its value in creating jobs and scientific research, which has been discredited by a serious economic research.

6. "As a democratic country that respects itself, the U.S. should no longer be the largest exporter of weapons and ammunition in the world and fail to educate the military in the Third World (v.gr. military Latin American School of the Americas in Fort Benning , Georgia) in the techniques of torture, military coups and served as instruments of our imperialism. "

7. Due to increasing restrictions of the federal budget should be eliminated programs that promote militarism in schools, such as training the Officer Corps Reserve.

8. Restore discipline and accountability in the armed forces of the United States, radically decreasing dependence on civilian contractors, private military companies and agents working for the army outside the chain of command and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The book quotes Jeremy Scahill Blackwater: The Rise of the most powerful mercenary army (sic!) The World (Nation Books, 2007). Incidentally, the Dutch-American Eric Prince, Blackwater founder and retired neocruzado right-wing Christian Republican Party (very close to the Bushism), has been implicated in a murder (The Nation, 04/08/09.

9. Reduce the size of the U.S. Army.

10. Cease dependence inappropriate in military force as the primary means to try to achieve foreign policy goals.

His conclusion is realistic: unfortunately, few empires in the past voluntarily abandoned their fields to remain as independent political entities and self-governing. The two important and recent examples are the British and Soviet empires. If you do not learn from them, our decadence and decline will be predetermined.

It will cure the establishment of the United States military for over a century?


This article was originally published in the Mexican daily La Jornada. By Alfredo Jalife-Rahme

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As 865 bases militares dos EUA em 40 países

Por Alfredo Jalife-Rahme

A novas bases instaladas na Colômbia com o aval do presidente Álvaro Uribe colocam em dúvida a política externa americana.

No contexto do neopinochetismo hipocritamente tolerado por Washington em Honduras, agora resulta que a projetada instalação de sete bases militares dos Estados Unidos na Colômbia, que provocou massivo repúdio na América Latina, constitui a atualização de um novo acordo de segurança mediante o arrendamento das bases existentes com a finalidade filantrópica de combater a narcoguerrilha fronteiriça, segundo uma engenhosa interpretação de Obama exposta para um grupo de jornalistas hispanos (Reuters, 07/08/09), em vésperas da desarticulada cúpula do ASPAN em Guadalajara, onde o México não tem nada que fazer e nem devia ter participado desde sua calamitosa gênese.

Ninguém aprende com a cabeça alheia e EUA repete os mesmos erros da URSS, com uma tríade de consequências devastadoras: sobreextensão imperial, guerra perpétua e insolvência, que levam a um provável colapso similar ao da anterior União Soviética, na opinião de Chalmers Johnson (Dez medidas para liquidar as bases militares dos EUA; Asia Times, 04/08/09).

Chalmers Johnson, professor emérito da Universidade da Califórnia (San Diego) e profícuo autor de livros notáveis, evidencia o império global potencialmente ruinoso de bases militares, que cadencia a longa dependência no imperialismo e no militarismo dos EUA em suas relações com outros países, além de "seu inchado establishment militar".

Paralelamente, Floyd Norris, analista financeiro e econômico do The New York Times (01/08/09), revela que o embarque de bens duradouros civis dos EUA caiu mais de 20% durante a recessão, o qual teria sido pior se não fosse a crescente produção de armas, que disparou 123% acima da média do ano 2000 (início do militarismo bushiano, que Obama incrementou com sua máscara de cordeiro sequestrado pelos lobos do Pentágono).

Norris comenta que EUA é primariamente uma economia civil, quando o "item militar representa ao redor de 8% de todos os bens duradouros (no ano 2000 foi 3%)"; porém, em nossa humilde opinião, é a uma economia preponderantemente militar, já que muitos segmentos de sua atividade civil se entrelaçam com seu substancial belíssimo, como tem demonstrado SIPRI, o excelso instituto pacifista sueco.

Segundo o inventário do Pentágono, em 2008, citado por Johnson, o império dos EUA consiste em 865 instalações em mais de 40 países, com um deslocamento de mais de 190 mil soldados em mais de 46 países e territórios.

Johnson expõe o caso singular do Japão e a base de Okinawa (por certo, infestada por escândalos sexuais dos dissolutos militares estadunidenses que levam 64 anos ininterruptos de ocupação).

As sete bases militares adicionais dos EUA na Colômbia elevarão seu total planetário para 872, o qual não tem equivalente com nenhuma potência passada e presente. Literalmente, os Estados Unidos invadiram o mundo!

O mais relevante radica, na opinião de Johnson, em que tal ocupação é desnecessária para a genuína defesa dos EUA, além de provocar fricções com outros países e sua dispendiosa manutenção global (250 bilhões de dólares por ano, segundo Anita Dancs Foreign Policy in Focus): seu único propósito é oferecer aos EUA hegemonia, isto é, controle ou domínio sobre o maior número possível de países no planeta.

Na opinião de Johnson, Obama não percebeu que os EUA não têm mais a capacidade de exercer sua hegemonia global, enquanto exibe seu lastimoso poder econômico mutilado, quando os EUA se encontram em uma decadência sem precedentes.

Expressa três razões básicas para liquidar o império estadunidense: 1. Carece dos meios para um expansionismo de pós-guerra; 2. "Vai perder a guerra no Afeganistão, o qual aumentará ainda mais sua quebra"; 3. Acabar o vergonhoso segredo do império de nossas bases militares.

Propõe dez medidas:

1. Por fim ao severo dano ambiental causado pelas bases e pelo cesse do Acordo sobre o Estatuto dos Exércitos (SOFA, por suas siglas em inglês) que de antemão impede aos países anfitriões exercer sua jurisdição sobre os crimes perpetrados pelos soldados estadunidenses, isentos de toda culpabilidade (particularmente, a epidemia de violações sexuais nos paraísos militares).

2. Liquidação do império e aproveitar o custo de oportunidade para investir em campos mais criativos.

3. O anterior, indiretamente, frearia o abuso aos direitos humanos, já que o imperialismo engendra o uso da tortura, tão abundante no Iraque, no Afeganistão e na base de Guantanamo.

4. Recortar a inacabável lista de empregados civis e dependentes do Departamento de Defesa, dotado de seu luxuoso prédio (piscina, cursos de golfe, clubes, etc.).

5. Desmontar o mito, promovido pelo complexo militar-industrial, de sua valia na criação de empregos e na investigação científica, o qual tem sido desacreditado por uma investigação econômica séria.

6. "Como país democrático que respeita a si mesmo, EUA deve deixar de ser o maior exportador de armas e munições do mundo e deixar de educar aos militares do Terceiro Mundo (v.gr. militares da América Latina na Escola das Américas, em Fort Benning, Geórgia) nas técnicas de tortura, golpes militares e serviço como instrumentos de nosso imperialismo".

7. Devido às limitações crescentes do orçamento federal, devem ser abolidos os programas que promovem o militarismo nas escolas, como o treinamento do Corpo de Oficiais da Reserva.

8. Restabelecer a disciplina e a prestação de contas nas forças armadas dos Estados Unidos, diminuindo radicalmente a dependência dos contratistas civis, das empresas militares privadas e dos agentes que trabalham para o exército fora da cadeia de comando e do Código de Uniforme da Justiça Militar. O livro de Jeremy Scahill Blackwater cita: A ascensão do exército mercenário mais poderoso (sic!) do mundo (Nation Books, 2007). A propósito, o holandês-estadunidense Eric Prince, fundador retirado de Blackwater e neocruzado da extrema direita cristã do Partido Republicano (muito próximo ao bushismo), acaba de ser implicado em um assassinato (The Nation; 04/08/09.

9. Reduzir o tamanho do exército dos EUA.

10. Cessar a dependência não apropriada na força militar como principal meio para tentar alcançar metas de política exterior.

Sua conclusão é realista: infelizmente, poucos impérios no passado abandonaram voluntariamente seus domínios para permanecer como entidades políticas independentes e autogovernadas. Os dois importantes e recentes exemplos são os impérios britânico e o soviético. Se não aprendemos com eles, nossa decadência e queda estarão predeterminadas.

Terá cura a fixação dos Estados Unidos ao militarismo por mais um século?

Este artigo foi publicado originalmente no diário mexicano “La Jornada”.

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Esperanto? No, Thanks! Part 2

Fonte: Justin B Rye

A2: Background


Esperanto was invented in 1887 by an oculist from Bialystok, Dr Ludwig L Zamenhof (AKA "Doctor Hopeful", hence the name). Even its proponents estimate there to be barely a million Esperanto speakers in the world (largely Central/Eastern Europe); cf. Albanian with over six million, Mandarin Chinese with 1000 million, and English with depending how you count) 500 to 1500 million. Even Klingon appears to be outselling Esperanto round here.

Most people I know despise Esperanto, but largely for daft reasons - "Everyone speaks English nowadays anyway", "It sounds a bit foreign", "It has no cultural identity of its own", etc. I, on the other hand, dislike it for being:

Just good enough to inspire anti-revisionist fanaticism!
Just bad enough to strike the general public as risible!
Easily improvable enough to inspire constant half-baked "reforms" whose inventors argue amongst themselves!
So the result of Zamenhof's labours is that it's inconceivable that any artificial "Interlang", however good, could succeed.

A3: Scoring Criteria

An optimally designed world auxiliary language would be:

1. Clear - i.e. all its rules would be explicitly established, so users can filter out an utterance's ungrammatical parsings.
2. Simple - involving a minimum of grammatical complexity (e.g. irregular forms, fancy inflections or arbitrary categories like "feminine").
3. International - as learnable for Tamils, Koreans or Zulus as for the Europeans who already have so many advantages.
4. Elegant - largely subjective; striking potential speakers as being notably easy to pronounce and natural to use.

My contention is that Esperanto contrariwise is

1. Obscure - full of assumed rules and unadvertised usages.
2. Complex - with cases, adjectival concord, subjunctives etc.
3. Parochial - designed to appeal primarily to Europeans.
4. Clumsy - full of hard sounds, odd letters and absurd words.
It looks like some sort of wind-up-toy Czech/Italian pidgin. And if there's one part of this world that doesn't need a local pidgin, it's Europe, which not only has (at a guess) the world's highest concentration of professional polyglots, but is also the home of the current global lingua franca: English. (Still, at least it didn't choose to be known as "Euro" - the economic EMU-fanciers are clearly unaware that the euro is Macropus robustus, a kind of wallaby!)

A4: Notation

This is a tricky subject to discuss in an ASCII-based file! As a makeshift while waiting for Unicode support to become fully standard, I represent some diacritics (squiggles over letters) by means of symbols after their letter: s^ stands in for ess-circumflex, sv for ess-hook (the other way up), etc. Thus, for example, the Esperanto for (accusative case) "surroundings" is the astonishingly ugly "c^irkauvaj^ojn", pronounced roughly "CHEER-COW-AH-ZHOYN".
[Square], /slant/ and brackets are used, following linguistics convention, to distinguish [phonetic], /phonemic/ and orthographic analyses, with phonetic symbols approximating to the Kirshenbaum ASCII IPA standard used on the sci.lang newsgroup. Nonlinguists can read anything that's unclear as "some strange noise".

A5: Disclaimer

My "clarity" criterion strikes some readers as unfair in its apparent assumption that the rotten self-teaching texts I've been exposed to are all the Esperanto grammar there is... so just take my rhetorical questions as attempts to hint that there are language-design questions that Zamenhof showed no sign of recognising, and which his successors prefer not to mention. Modern Esperantists acknowledge no Standards Maintenance Authority; so on the one hand directed fundamental reforms are impossible, and on the other dialects inevitably confuse the issue. And please bear in mind that my critique is aimed at Esperanto's pretensions as a global auxiliary language, not its right to exist as a language like any other.

SECTION B: PHONEMES (inventory of sounds used)

B1: Introduction

"Phonemes" are the mutually distinct sound elements which a particular language recognises as fundamental building blocks for word-making. English - my dialect, anyway - has 19 vowels (mostly diphthongs), and 24 consonants (including the two affricates /dZ, tS/, usually spelt j,). For more details see my Phonemic Transcription Key page.
English - total 43 phonemes: a tidy rather than accurate analysis
/ m b p v f w /
/ n d t D T r /
/ l dZ tS Z S j /
/ N g k z s h /
/ i e @ a u o /
/ ii ei - ai - oi /
/ i@ e@ @@ a@ u@ o@ /
/ - - - au uu ou /

Esperanto - total 34 phonemes: though the diphthongs are arguable!
/ m b p v f /
/ r d t j h /
/ w - ts z s /
/ l dZ tS Z S /
/ n g k - x /
/ i e a o u /
/ - ei ai oi ui /
/ - eu au - - /

B2: Clarity

Natural languages have rules determining what sounds are accepted as forms of what phoneme. For instance, in English /t/ may be an aspirated alveolar plosive, a glottal stop or even a tap; in Spanish /t/ is usually an unaspirated dental plosive, and the tap is heard as an R-sound. Esperanto speakers show no agreement about whether it even has such rules. (And the ones writing to me seem particularly unwilling to agree on whether inter-word glottal stops are compulsory, optional, or prohibited.)

B3: Simplicity

First, why is the inventory so irregular? There's no single-phoneme /dz/, so why is /ts/ necessary? Why /oi/ but not /ou/? And second, why does it need so many consonants? The worldwide average is to have about two dozen consonant phonemes, and plenty of languages get by with fewer - for example:

Andean Spanish:
/ m p B f n t D s l * r n^ tS j k Q h /
Japanese:
/ m b p w n d t r z s j g k h /
Hawaiian:
/ m p w n l k h ? /
Rotokas:
/ p B t * k g /

B4: Internationalism

Compare the Esperanto inventory with the following:
Eastern Polish - total 49 phonemes: (parenthesised phonemes) are disguised by the spellings
/ m b p v f /
/(m; b; p; v; f;)/
/ r d t j h /
/ w (dz) ts z s /
/ l (dz; ts; z; s;)/
/ - dZ tS Z S /
/ n g k - x /
/(n; g; k; - - )/
/ i e a o u /
/ - ei ai oi ui /
/ - eu au - - /
/(- e~ - o~ - )/

The only phonemes Zamenhof left out of Esperanto are the ones that are hard to recognise as such - the "soft" (palatalised) consonants, nasal vowels, and /dz/! And note that I say Eastern Polish; this isn't just his natural Slavonic bias, it's the Bialystok dialect!

B5: Elegance

Complaints about the ugly strings of affricates etcetera are always brushed off as a matter of taste. But surveys say distinctions like /v/-vs-/w/, /ts/-vs-/tS/, /z/-vs-/Z/, /h/-vs-/x/ are statistically rare, so it's the people who find Esperanto's sounds strange and awkward who are being objective!

B6: Miscellaneous

This crazed inventory is a splendid demonstration of Dr Z's linguistic incompetence; he couldn't see past the spelling rules of the first language he learned to write with the Roman alphabet!

SECTION C: ORTHOGRAPHY (grapheme system)

C1: Introduction

A "grapheme" is a contrastive unit in a spelling system. Not surprisingly, Esperanto spelling is much better than English (in which gh is famously unruly - see my own Spelling Reform page); it can even be charted in a strict one-to-one correspondence with its phonemic inventory:
Orthodox spelling system:
m b p v f
r d t j h
uv - c z s
l g^ c^ j^ s^
n g k - h^
i e a o u
- ej aj oj uj >
- euv auv - -

But not content with being phonemic (one phoneme: one grapheme), Esperanto also claims to be phonetic (one sound: one letter), which is (a) pointless and (b) infeasible.

C2: Clarity

Does Esperanto allow any variation in its sounds? Are we to believe that the n in s^nuro ("rope") is acoustically and articulatorily identical to the one in fingro ("finger")? If so, Esperanto must be damned tricky to pronounce.

Or do Esperanto ls vary subtly like the ones in athletes', and its ts like those in too? What rules govern (e.g.) strings of voiced and unvoiced sounds, like the kv in kvar ("four") and the kz in ekzisti ("to exist")? And is the word nauva "ninth" pronounced /naw-a/ or /na-wa/?

C3: Simplicity

The system is bizarrely irregular. Why is there a semivowel grapheme uv but no iv? (Clue: compare Belorussian!) Why s^ but no z^? Why is the affricate g^ paired up not with k^ but with c^? Why is the velar fricative h^ dressed up as a form of the glottal approximant h ? And above all, why do c wear a ^ while u has a 'v' ?

C4: Internationalism

Writing 'c' in preference to, say, 'ts' is a blatant display of parochial spelling traditions. Most of the world's typewriters have a 'w' key; none have a 'c' with a circumflex accent. No, not even in Croatia; you're thinking of hooks and acutes!

C5: Elegance

The problems with these diacritics were obvious enough to force a concession: we are permitted to resort to the digraphs ch, plus unadorned u - hence chirkauajhojn. Many Esperantists advocate other ASCIIifications such as cxirkauxajxojn, but I'll stick with the less offputting version.

C6: Miscellaneous

Just to show how easy it is, here is an alternative system with no diacritics (all compound phonemes become compound graphemes):
Heterodox spelling system:

m b p v f
r d t y h
w dz ts z s
l dj tx j x
n g k - h
i e a o u
iy ey ay oy uy
iw ew aw ow uw


Thus c^irkauaj^ojn becomes txirkawajoyn. But I could hardly stop there; the nearest half-way sane version is kirkuajo!

SECTION D: PHONOTACTICS (strings of sounds)

D1: Introduction

Phonotactics is the system of rules governing what sequences of sounds are permitted. In English, for instance, /h@N, viZnz, streNTs/ occur (hung,), while /N@h, Znzvi, stle/ are illegal.

D2: Clarity

The only hints we get about Esperanto phonotactics are bland reassurances about how euphonious it all is. There clearly are restrictions: Esperanto has plenty of words like shtrumpo, ("stocking, sonny, hindsight") but none like snouz, (cf. English "snows", Arabic "one", Georgian "you tear us to pieces").

The extra /o/ sound in compounds like dormo-chambro "bedroom" is "optional", but leaving such issues to Esperantists' native-language prejudices results in coinages like antikv-scienco, "archaeology". No, I'm not making this up...

D3: Simplicity

In this context, simplicity means learnable rules for building speakable words. A good proportion of the world's population find any syllable more complex than "consonant + vowel" hard to pronounce, which limits things unreasonably.

D4: Internationalism

Zamenhof's efforts to disguise Esperanto as Italian by adding final vowels are miserably inadequate. Italian uses closed syllables sparingly (chiefly ending in /r, l, n/); Esperanto loves them. Italian allows few strings of consonants (mainly things like /bl, gr, sp/ and doubled letters); Esperanto permits many. And the rigid penult-stress rule may be like Italian, but it's even more like Polish.

D5: Elegance

The whole problem is that Zamenhof mistook his own prejudices about "euphony" for a globally accepted standard of phonotactic elegance. There is no such standard; Italian is full of tongue-twisters to Japanese-speakers (postbellico, "post-war"), and vice-versa (hyakugyoo, "a hundred lines"). Even consonant + vowel languages have words like 'aueue, Tahitian for "trouble"...

D6: Miscellaneous

It's pathetic! Zamenhof didn't just give his brainchild a bad phonotactic system; he failed to recognise it needed any! How can it claim to be naturally euphonious when it has no regulations about euphony?

SECTION E: DERIVATION (wordbuilding)

E1: Introduction

Zamenhof put a lot of work into creating a range of uniformly applicable prefixes and suffixes, such as -ig- "render" (or "cause, arrange to have done") and -igh- "become" (or "do intransitively") - as in "blankigi blankighi=", "whiten (something)/whiten (= go pale)". Nonetheless, his original ideas required several amendments before they were usable, and they still look rotten to me.

E2: Clarity

These affixes are often baffling. In cigaredujo, "cigarette box", -uj- means "(bulk) container". But it also occurs in svedujo, "Sweden" (not "Swedish ghetto") and pomujo, "apple tree" (not "apple barrel"). Modern Esperantists just say svedlando,. then="" there="" s=" "sendajho, "transmission", in which -ajh- is "concrete (?) expression of"; yet this is arbitrarily extended to form majstrajho, "masterpiece" and porkajho, "pork".

E3: Simplicity

Who needs all these special affixes? Isn't the two-word expression "make white" adequate? Or if we need affixes like ek- ("suddenly"), -ach- ("contemptible") and pra- ("ancient"), why are there none meaning "-ful", "beloved" or "-ward"? We can invent new ones, I suppose; but what determines which are prefixes and which are suffixes?

E4: Internationalism

Esperanto's pseudo-agglutinative system of affix-accretion (copied from Volapük - is only one possible approach to derivation, but it is at least straightforward - compare Arabic triliterals. If there's a problem, it's that Dr Zamenhof seems strangely biassed against any of the range of possible affix forms spread across the globe by the "classical" languages.

Compare the prevalence of the abstract noun endings -ia, -ity, -(t)ion with Esperanto's use of -eco. Those -ion words Esperanto does condescend to admit have to hide their family resemblance; thus regiono, "region" but nacio, "nation".

E5: Elegance

Clockwork morphology can produce some amusing quirks:

accidental freaks - chieaj, "ubiquitous (pl.)"; majstrskribisto, "master-writer"; aghighi, "to age"

false resemblances - foresta, "absent"; fosilo, "a spade"; truanta, "piercing"

overfussy distinctions - edzighi, all mean "to marry".

And then there are ambiguities such as kataro = "catarrh" versus kataro = "herd of cats" - there are so many of these I've given them their own appendix. Strangest of all, though, is the prefix mal-, a meaning-reverser like Newspeak "un-".

The only word for "bad" is malbona; "cheap" is malmultekosta, "left" is maldekstra and so on. It's an imaginative vocabulary shortcut, but it's inconsistent ("south" should be malnorda), gratingly artificial (malmalbona, "not bad"?) and misleading (malodora isn't "malodorous")!

E6: Miscellaneous

Esperanto has a special suffix to mark "feminine" (or to be more accurate, female) nouns: -in- (from German; in Romance languages that's a diminutive). But this has no equivalent "masculine" marker - being male is just taken to be the default! See Appendix O on Sexism.

SECTION F: LEXICON (vocabulary sources)

F1: Introduction

Esperanto is notable among auxlang schemes for having possessed a well-stocked dictionary from the start, made up from words out of an assortment of European languages. Then again it also had notably warped selection criteria, taking tornistro ("rucksack") from Danish tornister; nepre ("certainly") from Russian nepremenno... and so on, to form a peculiar stew of words picked for their familiarity to nineteenth-century Europeans.

F2: Clarity

In this case I'll take "clarity" to mean having an adequate stock of technical, poetic and everyday words to be generally usable. Zamenhof was if anything overzealous in this department, stuffing his "basic" wordlists with trivial distinctions such as kiso "a kiss" versus shmaco "a noisy kiss", and so on; who asked for these?

F3: Simplicity

This is the inverse problem, overlooked by Zamenhof. Language learners want to be able to start communicating with as little rote learning of vocabulary as possible.

English is rather good at this, as it is rich in "metonyms" - coverterms like "house" or "clothes", usable as stand-ins for more specialised terms like "palace" or "sou'wester" as well as in self-explanatory compound words like "treehouse" or "nightclothes".

"Basic English" cut its essential vocabulary to 850 words; any language designed from the ground up with lexical efficiency in mind could in principle do much better.

F4: Internationalism

Vocabulary is a relatively superficial, transient aspect of a language compared to things like syntax (speaking Pig Latin doesn't make you a polyglot); but it's the first and often the last feature of a foreign tongue that people notice, so padding out your Warsaw-centric auxiliary language with Romance dictionary entries can be an effective way of making it seem international.

Instead of this random European stew, a real world auxlang would get as much use as possible out of the two most truly global word sources:

1. Western Colonial Vocabulary: gathered and/or spread by the European imperial powers - chocolate,
2. International Scientific Vocabulary: words usually built from Latin, Greek or English roots for newly classified phenomena - eutheria, (It would be even more international to accept globally recognised Chinese or Hindi words too, if only there were any... Arabic, maybe. Or see Appendix P for some cases where there were better solutions available in Latin and Greek.)

F5: Elegance*

Many Esperanto borrowings are clumsily based on spellings:

"and": Mod. Greek kai ("KEH"); Esperanto kaj ("KIE")
"ball": Polish pilka ("PEEWKA"); Esperanto pilko ("PEEL-COE")
"bird": English bird ("BUH(R)D"); Esperanto birdo ("BEER-DOE")
"boat": English boat ("BOTE"); Esperanto boato ("BO-AH-TOE")
"fist": Italian pugno ("POON-NYOE"); Esperanto pugno ("POOG-NOE")
"thirst": French soif ("SWAHF"); Esperanto soifo ("SO-EE-FOE")
"Miss": dated German fräulein ("FROYLINE"); Esperanto fraulino ("FROW-LEE-NO")

Apart from anything else, where would Esperanto be if any of these languages changed their spelling systems?

F6: Miscellaneous

Esperantised placenames frequently look as if they've been transliterated into Cyrillic and then back without regard for pronunciation: Washington becomes vashingtono, Jamaica becomes jamajko, Guinea becomes gvineo...

SECTION G: CONSTITUENCY (parts of speech)

G1: Introduction

Esperanto goes way over the top in marking what part of speech each word is, via its neat but somehow risible final vowel system:

Ending Class Example Meaning Notes
<-a> Adjective viva alive/vital - plus case and number concord
<-e> Adverb vive vitally - even some adverbs take <-n>
<-i> Infinitive vivi to live - but finite verbs end in <-s>
<-o> Noun vivo (a) life - inflecting for case and number
<-u> Imperative vivu live! - melodrama exclamation

This grand scheme is based on the idea that every verb has one associated (equally basic) noun, adjective, and so on - an idea with an attractive air of symmetry and logic, but one that turns out to be fatally flawed; see Appendix U for details of the root-classes fiasco.

G2: Clarity

Non-linguists rarely understand that grammatical categories like "Adjective, Preposition" are based not on universal logical principles but on pragmatically constructed conventions in a given language - for instance, where English uses adjectives like angry, Yoruba relies on verbs like bínú, "be-angry". "Noun" is essentially universal, but Zamenhof can't take its application for granted; what do the words "event, moth, gravity, day, waterfall, Esperanto" have in common besides the "fact" they're "Nouns"?

G3: Simplicity

There are hordes of unnecessary exceptions and irregularities. Numerals, prepositions, "correlatives", conjunctions, modifiers, articles and so on are all exempt; pronouns even form their own breakaway faction, consistently ending in -i rather than -o and inflecting for case but not for number.

G4: Internationalism

Esperanto's word-classes are based on the traditions of classical Latin and Greek grammars, and a poor fit for many of the languages of Europe, let alone Chinese. Hungarians won't be used to prepositions; Germans have to learn that adverbs aren't the same as plain adjectives; and Slavs have to cope with articles...

G5: Elegance

Shoehorning words into this system can mangle them horribly.

<-a> boa, = "by marriage, bilious, repentant, ancient"
<-e> die, = "divinely, contrariwise, obediently, again"
<-i> ekkrii, = "to cry out, mine, try, know"
<-o> lego, = "reading, money, plague, arrow"
<-u> fluu! = "flow! enjoy! shake! teach!"

G6: Miscellaneous

Esperanto is oddly happy to sacrifice recognisability in stem vowels - "Asia" becomes azio, "voice" (Latin/Italian voce) becomes vocho, "coffee" (near-globally kofi) becomes kafo, etc. If only there were fewer constituent classes to distinguish, maybe some nouns could end in -a or -e... which would also make the rhymes in Esperanto poetry more interesting!

SECTION H: VERBS (tenses, subjunctives etc)

H1: Introduction

For details of how Esperanto verbs and participles work, see Appendix Y; it's designed to look vaguely latinate, but with its past, present, future and subjunctive/conditional "tenses" and its inflecting participles it again most resembles a tidied-up version of schoolbook Polish.

H2: Clarity

Zamenhof takes categories such as Infinitive, Participle and Subjunctive on faith as universal concepts. Note particularly his failure to define the subtle differences between simple tenses ("I saw", mi vidis) and compound forms ("I have seen", mi estas vidinta - more literally "I am having-seen")... an especially vexing question when passive verbs are always formed as compounds ("I was/have been seen", mi estas vidita).

H3: Simplicity

It should be apparent to Anglophones that special suffixes for infinitives, future tenses and subjunctives are a redundant complication.

It may be less obvious that English is itself over-complex in some ways, with its passive voice ("they are regarded as a foundation", ili estas rigardataj kiel fundamento), vestigial subject-agreement ("we are, it is" - wisely dropped in Esperanto), and obligatory tense marking even where the context makes it obvious ("I was born in 1967") or nonsensical ("time is a dimension" - cf. my guide to SF Chronophysics).

None of this is necessary; future tense for example can be shown with auxiliary verbs ("will"), adverbs ("soon"), or if you insist, optional affixes.

H4: Internationalism

One feature of verbs is present in almost all human languages, though trivialised in traditional Latin-based school grammars: aspect, the distinction between Perfective (roughly, the "single event or act") and Imperfective ("ongoing state or behaviour"). Esperanto barely allows for aspect marking, relying on an unreliable suffix (-ad "continual" or "gerund") and arguable applications of participles (e.g. estas fermata), which some translate as "is presently closed" and some as "is being closed").

H5: Elegance

The actual forms of these inflections (-os? -inta?) are unconvincing. Worst of all is -u, the imperative. Most languages, for obvious reasons, arrange it so that commands can be given via the most basic verbal "stem" available, not a special, uniquely inflected form!

H6: Miscellaneous

Zamenhof also adopts a Slavic approach to tenses in quoted speech: where English reports "we are!" either directly as "they said `We are!'" or indirectly as "they said that they were", Esperantists and Slavs have to say (in effect) "they said that they are"(tenses direct, everything else indirect). There are some fairly knotty problems being ignored in Esperanto's use of reflexive pronouns and an active/passive distinction, too; for more details on this see Appendix Q.

SECTION I: NOUNS (case, number etc)

I1: Introduction

Esperanto nouns inflect both for number and for case; i.e., more than is considered necessary in most European languages. Compare the English sentence "yesterday you hit the three white sheep" (case, tense and number left to wordorder and context) with the Esperanto version: hierau vi frapis la tri blankajn shafojn (case, tense and number redundantly expressed by suffixes).

I2: Clarity

Esperantists never attempt to explain what cases or plurals are for. The former is extremely tricky; but even the latter is hardly cut-and-dried. Why are "zero seconds, one point zero seconds" plural? Indeed, what's the point of pluralising "two seconds"? Why are "rice, wheat" singular, while "nuts, oats" are plural?

I3: Simplicity

Obligatory inflections are a bad idea. Couldn't Esperanto emulate Japanese, which essentially does without plurals (one ninja, two ninja...), or Tagalog, which marks number only if it seems relevant (using a separate regular plural-marker word)?

The same applies to case (if not more so). The Esperanto -n suffix is not only compulsory on verb objects, but appears on time expressions, directional adverbs, complements and goals of motion - hence Lundon rajdu chevalon norden dek mejlojn en Londonon!, "On Monday, ride a horse northward ten miles into London!".

And yet... some kinds of noun phrase (infinitives, numerals, "many people" = multe, etc) can't be marked for case, and they seem to get along perfectly happily without.

I4: Internationalism

Languages disagree not only on how to indicate which of a sentence's components is the subject (Russian gives nouns fusional endings, Japanese has particles after noun phrases, Swahili uses verb marking, and Chinese relies on word order), but even on how to define this notion of "Subject"; see Appendix R. For now I'll point out that the informal English phrase "It's me!" may make poor Latin, but it's fine Turkish.

I5: Elegance

Why -j? It might be recognisable to the Italians (one percent of the world's population) who use -i as a regular plural marker, or even the Slavs (five percent) who use backwards-N; but compare -s, used throughout Central/Western Europe (Spain, Germany, France, the UK...) and their colonies: forty percent of the human race! Meanwhile, -n as an object marker seems to be based on one piece of German morphology; -m might have been better. And come to think of it, did Zamenhof ever explicitly forbid the suffixing order shafonj, or is this left to "common sense"?

I6: Miscellaneous

If nouns were formed from participles regularly, the word for "one currently hoping" - and for the language - would be 'esperantulo'. For more on -n after prepositions, see L2. Incidentally, I get a lot of complaints from Esperantists who imagine it's inconsistent to want both expressive clarity and grammatical simplicity; apparently they can't imagine distinguishing (e.g.) singular from plural without there being special extra rules to make number-agreement a compulsory part of the morphological system...

SECTION J: PRONOUNS (and demonstratives)

J1: Introduction

See Appendix Y for Esperanto's selection of pronouns. The system should be familiar to Anglophones, with its single word for "we" (whether inclusive or exclusive), single word for "you" (whether familiar singular or polite plural), and compulsory distinction in the singular (only) between "he", "she" and "it".

J2: Clarity

Few languages distinguish as we do between "a/some fish" and "the fish", and explaining the point of this distinction is well-nigh impossible. Consider also the unpredictable (to English-speakers) way that Esperanto la occurs in "ten past one", dek minutoj post la unua; "God bless you", la dio benu vin; "bird migration is remarkable", la birdmigrado estas mirinda .

J3: Simplicity

Couldn't Esperanto do without articles, and treat pronouns etc as regular nouns? Or if the pronouns really need their own system, complete with "possessive adjectives" mia, lia ("my, his") etc, why does the interrogative pronoun have to mess things up with kia = "what sort", kies = "whose" (a Lithuanian-style genitive)?

J4: Internationalism

Esperanto's words for "who, what" are kiu, which act both as question words and as relative pronouns - a trademark misfeature of the European languages that's responsible for such unnecessary ambiguities as "Did you ask the man who did it?" Compare, say, Hindi, where question-words begin with k- but their relative-clause equivalents have j-.

J5: Elegance

Notice that kiu, kio aren't listed among the pronouns; instead they're in a separate irregular subfamily, the so-called correlatives.

These are words for a mixed bag of concepts like "every-thing, what-kind, no-where, some-time, that-many"; they naturally form a table with columns like "every-" (= chi-) and rows like "-where" (= -e), intersecting at "every-where" (=chie).

But the grid has no columns for "else-(where), any-(way)", or "this-(time)", and no rows for "(some)-degree, (how)-often", or "(which)-direction"; such coinages require arbitrary botch-ups, so triplets like "when, then, now" become ki-am, ti-am, num.

A more open system (where e.g. "anything" is simply "any thing") would make the whole table unnecessary.

J6: Miscellaneous

These word-forms may not display much regularity, in the sense of behaving like normal nouns, but they do score highly for uniformity, in the sense of "did you say li estas, ni estos or mi estus?

SECTION K: ADJECTIVES (and numerals)

K1: Introduction

Esperanto adjectives end in a superficially latinate -a, then add inflections to agree with the noun they modify. If there's any logic behind this, wouldn't it imply you need to put similar markers on la? That's how things work in the natural languages Zamenhof was copying here: if agreement belongs anywhere, it's on articles.

K2: Clarity

What kinds of word go in this things-ending-in- a category? "Third", but not "three"; "many" and "any kind of", but not "every"; "his" and "one's", but not "whose"... if only Zamenhof had ever heard of determiners, a lexical class covering things like articles, pronouns and correlatives, maybe the categories wouldn't have ended up such a mess.

K3: Simplicity

Above all, why oh why did Zamenhof give his "simple" international language obligatory case-and-number concord? The Esperanto for "the houses are new" is la domoj estas novaj - which is on the fussy end of the scale even by European standards. Compare French les maisons sont nouvelles, where the "plural agreement" is silent; German die Häuser sind neu, where the predicate shows no concord; or Russian doma novi, which while it does have agreement at least compensates by letting you leave out the verb. Even Volapük didn't get it this wrong - doms binom nulik!

K4: Internationalism

English may depend on an "Adjective" to say "the new houses", but many languages go about things differently. Arabic uses appositional nominals ("the-new-things the-houses"); Japanese prefers things that morphosyntacticians analyse as stative verbs ("being-new house").

K5: Elegance

The "basic" number-terms tri, trio, tria, ("three, threesome, third") are a crowded jumble, making a mockery of the regular root/noun/adjective pattern they imitate (note for instance that both tri and tria can occur as either argument or modifier). Knock-on effects include the baroque selection of number-related suffixes needed for trioble, trifoje, triope, ("triply, three times, in threes").

K6: Miscellaneous

Why, other than because of European tradition, do we need a one-word label for 10³ ("thousand" = mil instead of "ten hundred") but not for 10⁴ ("myriad") or 10⁵ ("lakh"); and a label for 106 ("million" = miliono) but not for 10⁷ ("crore") or 10⁸ (a Japanese "oku")? If Esperanto was built around the S.I. system of prefixes this might make sense, but there's no sign Zamenhof ever heard of "kilo-" etc. Indeed, -pico- is the Esperanto for pizza!

SECTION L: ADVERBS (and prepositions)

L1: Introduction

These categories are less reliable than most people assume. Latin may have had distinct "Adverbs" and "Prepositions", but Vietnamese uses neither (it just needs flexible adjectives and verbs); even many English words ("like", "except") are hard to pigeonhole. Yes, most adverbs are simply verb modifiers like "fast"; but this hardly covers cases like "extremely".

L2: Clarity

Esperanto's -n ending simply replaces some prepositions, modifies the meanings of others, and never associates with the rest. Zamenhof didn't just mix these prepositional functions confusingly into his case system, he also made them officially vague - see Appendix Y!

L3: Simplicity

Esperanto grammar favours a proliferation of adverbs. "Whistling" in "whistling, I left" is not allowed to be a mere adjective fajfanta describing the subject; no, it's fajfante mi foriris. Worse yet, since Esperanto weather phrases involve no nouns at all, they can't have adjectives either; "it's warm" becomes estas varme ("is, warmly"!). Or so my old primer claims; modern Esperantists, I'm glad to hear, simply go for varmas ("is-warm").

L4: Internationalism

Many languages go without the category "Adverb", making do with adjectives and phrasal expressions ("quickly" = "fast" or "at speed"). What might seem more surprising to Europeans is how few languages have the category "Preposition". Where Yiddish expresses the phrase "jump onto a box" via a preposition (slightly assisted by casemarking), Vietnamese uses modified verbs ("jump-ascend box"); Finnish has hyper-specialised cases ("jump box", with "box" in the allative!); and Panjabi goes for postpositions ("jump box onto").

L5: Elegance

These words are a strange mix. Prepositions can end in consonant clusters (like all Esperanto roots, but without the usual disguise of a tacked-on vowel), leading to sequences like post Kristnasko, "after Christmas". On the other hand there are twenty-odd random adverby particles and things that form a sort of semi-developed word-class with the distinctive ending -au (ambau,kontrau, preskau = "both, against, almost").

L6: Miscellaneous

English prepositions are a bit un-European in their willingness to appear with no following "object" noun (cf. our "transitive" verbs: Appendix Q). This blurs the line between "Preposition" ("I walked along the road") and "Adverb" ("I walked along"), and allows English to form phrases outlawed by Esperanto grammar (e.g. "that's the road I walked along")!

SECTION M: SYNTAX (sentence structure)

M1: Introduction

Zamenhof's efforts to explain the rules of Esperanto grammar (see Appendix Y) focussed almost exclusively on derivational and inflectional morphology (i.e. word-building and word-endings). The nearest they get to syntax is implicit word-order rules. Unsurprisingly, Esperanto's phrase structure rules and so on turn out to be hardly distinguishable from the ones Zamenhof grew up with - they're pretty good simple ones, but it's sheer blind luck...

M2: Clarity

We know sentences are usually Subject-Verb-Object, possessives go Property-Of-Owner and adjective phrases are Adjective-Noun; but that's about all we learn. Esperantists boast of the way the final vowels make individual nouns readily identifiable; what they fail to mention is that "free word order" turns all the higher structure of noun phrases, subclauses and so on into a matter of guesswork.

M3: Simplicity

Many languages, especially in Europe, have sets of sentences related via order-shuffling rules ("transformations") such as English question-inversion ("I have; have I?"). That's one Esperanto doesn't share (mi); which just makes it more baffling that it does insist on correlative extraction, moving words like "who, where, why" to the start of their clause, and not permitting the "Unextracted" column in the following table any more than English does:

No correlative Unextracted Extracted

Esperanto: mi legas ghin. mi legas kion? kion mi legas?
English: I am reading it. I am reading what? what am I reading?


M4: Internationalism

Some of Esperanto's word-order conventions are no more than optional defaults; others (although taken for granted in grammars) are unbreakable. "Yesterday you hit the three white sheep" may legally become la, but it's never blankajn! Even the dislocation of "only" English allows in "I only ate one" is forbidden for nur.

The following "obvious" order rules demonstrate classically European default assumptions:

Articles precede nouns and their adjectives - "the new house" is never nova domo la
Prepositions precede their noun phrases - "on a table" is never tablo sur
Verbs (even if themselves infinitivised) precede the infinitives they subordinate - "to want to try to start" is never komenci peni voli.

M5: Elegance

Excess inflections such as case might at least lead to extra flexibility in word order; and Esperantists consider this an aid to stylistic elegance. But wouldn't it be easier as well as more flexible to use "topic-marker" particles to assign emphasis? Instead, Tibetan-speaking learners of Esperanto (with no guide to what stylistic effects are produced by what order-shift) have to learn to treat word order as essentially meaningless.

M6: Miscellaneous

The question-forming particle chu is a neat idea (though maybe a bit redundant, when interrogative intonation or punctuation will do - you agree?). But its form is copied from its source, the Polish czy (or Ukrainian chi or even Belorussian ci), rather than resembling the question words like kio.

Download this text here: Esperanot

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Esperanto? No, thanks! Part 1

By Ricardo Rangels

Whenever we talk about Esperanto, followed by the sophistry that can only be that language to be the great and universal sacred language. But you never asked us, the citizens of this world, whether we want a universal language, and that if we just have to be the Esperanto?

We always hear that Esperanto is a language-neutral, but may be neutral as something they want to impose guela below?

Even the English as associated with political and cultural domination, is so adamant this way. Where is neutrality?

Another thing they talk about is that Esperanto is already a universal language, which already has native speakers and that therefore, we should embrace it.

If you already have native speakers - is another reason to despise it as soon as possible.

After all, it is precisely against this that the esperantists fights, I explain: the Esperantists says that English should not be universal because it benefits the people who already have it as their native language, so basically that Esperanto has lost its reason for being, as already gives advantages to those native speakers who grew up speaking Esperanto on us poor mortals speakers of colonialists languages.

Another aspect or rather sophistry - and that is we adopt Esperanto because it is much easier than all the other languages, but the truth is that speaking another language whatever it takes time, study and practice.

Esperanto is not easier or harder than any other language, if by that criterion I would choose the Tupi, the Maori, the transliterated Chinese or any other indigenous language that has rules easy or even if it has not verbal inflection time as verbs of Tupi.

I do not think humanity really needs a universal language, it's great to know that there are many languages, pronunciations and linguistic ways of seeing the world.

As said Umberto Ecco in one of his books: a universal language would only come forward with capitalism, as I remove the complete translations of advertising and trade between countries. And even if I do not think we needed a language created individually, is the best solution.

The best solution would be a language created by all the citizens, supervised by the UN. How? Let me explain - A group of linguists, teachers, scientists and stakeholders organize through an internet forum world wide through a website or blog where we could all decide every letter, every sound, every grammatical rule, one by one.

That would be a universal language, as we all inhabitants of the earth will choose one by one all the details of our universal language. It would also be available trained staff and equipment for people without resources or access to the Internet also could decide. More democratic impossible.

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Esperanto? Não, obrigado!

Por Ricardo Rangels

Sempre quando se fala em esperanto, segue-se o sofisma de que só pode existir esse idioma para ser a grande língua sagrada e universal. Mas nunca se perguntou a nós, os cidadãos desse mundo, se queremos ou não uma língua universal; e se queremos por que justamente tem que ser o esperanto?

Sempre se fala que o esperanto é um idioma neutro, mas como pode ser neutro algo que querem nos impor guela abaixo?

Nem mesmo o inglês tão associado a dominação política e cultural, é tão inflexível assim.Onde está a neutralidade?

Outra coisa que se fala é que o esperanto já é um idioma universal, que já possui falantes nativos e que por isso mesmo, devemos adotá-lo.

Se já possui falantes nativos - é mais um motivo para o desprezá-lo o quanto antes.

Afinal, não é justamente contra isso que lutam os esperantistas; eu explico: os esperantistas dizem que o inglês não deve ser universal porque dá vantagens aos povos que já o tem como língua nativa, então basicamente o esperanto perdeu sua razão de ser, pois já dá vantagens a esses falantes nativos que cresceram falando esperanto sobre os nós os pobres mortais falantes das línguas colonialistas.

Outro aspecto ou melhor sofisma - é e que devemos adotar o esperanto por ser muito mais fácil que todas as outras línguas, mas a verdade é que falar uma outra língua seja ela qual for exige tempo, estudo e prática.

O esperanto não é mais fácil nem mais dificil do que qualquer outra língua, se for por esse critério eu escolheria o tupi, o maori, o chinês transliterado ou qualquer outra língua indigena que possua regras fáceis ou mesmo que não possua flexão verbal de tempo como os verbos do tupi.

Não acredito que de fato a humanidade precise de um idioma universal, é ótimo saber que existe muitas línguas, pronuncias e maneiras linguísticas de ver o mundo.

Como disse Umberto Ecco em um de seu livros: um idioma universal só faria com que avançasse o capitalismo, já que eleminaria por completo as traduções da publicidade e das trocas comerciais entre os países. E mesmo se precisassemos não acho que uma língua criada individualmente, seja a melhor solução.

A melhor solução seria uma língua criada por todos o cidadãos, fiscalizada pela ONU. Como? Eu explico - Um grupo de linguístas, professores, cientistas e todos os interessados organizariam através da internet um grande forum mundial através de um website ou blog onde todos nós pudessemos decidir cada letra, cada som, cada regra gramatical, uma a uma.

Isso sim, seria uma língua universal, já que todos nós os habitantes da terra elegeriamos uma a uma todas os detalhes do nosso idioma universal. Também seria disponibilizado pessoas treinadas e equipamentos para que as pessoas sem recursos ou acesso à internet também pudessem decidir. Mais democrático impossivel.

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