[Membroj] Washington Post reviews Okrent

[Ralph Dumain]

Tongue-tied
By A.J. Jacobs
Washington Post
Sunday, June 28, 2009

{review} IN THE LAND OF INVENTED LANGUAGES: Esperanto Rock Stars, 
Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers, and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build 
a Perfect Language By Arika Okrent

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/26/AR2009062601723.html 

    * 
<http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=263782140>Book 
World Podcast: Download an Interview With Arika Okrent

The review is rather half-assed, as if the reviewer were too lazy to 
write anything beyond a few cliches. Well, nothing better can be 
expected from this cow town, anyway. The comments are not exactly 
brilliant, either. I have no interest in justifying Esperanto for 
being anything other than it is, and accurate reporting would be good 
enough for me.  One thing Esperanto is not is an attempted perfect or 
logical language, akin to either Loglan or the philosophical 
languages of the 17th century.  And only a minority of the minority 
of Esperantists who are stark raving mad are daft enough to think 
that a common language will lead to world peace.  Zamenhof himself 
did not think so, so he concocted an even more ridiculous notion of 
how that would happen, i.e. a universal religion that no real 
religion would ever tolerate.  Also, though Esperanto does attract 
nerds, it is light years away from what must be the appeal of 
Klingon, which is aptly summarized iun the character of Comic Book 
Guy in The Simpsons and William Shatner's famous put-down of Trekkies 
on Saturday Nite Live. Nevertheless, this review, like others, is 
good publicity for a topic that generally doesn't get this kind of attention.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://esperantosocieto.org/pipermail/membroj_esperantosocieto.org/attachments/20090627/d243c9c6/attachment.html>