Mordanicus XL

Monday, January 2, 2023

The European Union and Language

A common argument made by proponents of international auxiliary languages - a.k.a. "auxlangers" - is that the European Union needs a single working language and the present situation is way too expensive. Therefore the EU should adopt an auxlang, be it Esperanto or Interlingua, as its sole official language. But are these people right?

What does the EU actually spends on translation?

Let's consider a few figures. According the Publication Office of the European Union - the body that is responsible for the publication of EU documents - including their translations - the EU spent about 343 million Euro on translation in 2020. Also the EU has about 447 million residents. So a quick calculation tells us that the EU spends about 0.76 Euro per EU resident a year on translation. That is not really that much money, is it?

What are the opportunity costs for the average EU citizens of learning Esperanto or Interlingua?

According to the advocates of Esperanto, learning the language developed by Zamenhof takes about 150 hours to learn Esperanto. Eurostat states that the average hourly wage in the EU is about 28.50 Euro. (A quick note: this figure is inflated by a small portion of high income earners and the majority of EU residents will make less than this amount, but I could not find an estimate of the median hourly wage in the EU).

So the opportunity cost of learning Esperanto is 150 x 28.50 = 4,275 Euro - I do not think Interlingua will gives us a different figure. In order to recoup this cost, one needs to live for about 5,625 years. Or put simply: learning Esperanto or Interlingua just to save money for the average EU citizen (not the poorest people in the world) would be a bad investment.

Will the adoption of Esperanto or Interlingua actually eliminate translation costs?

No. Even if the EU will not translate anything anymore, the individual members states will still have to translate EU documents for its citizens. So the cost of translation are simply shifted from the EU to the member states. And as we have seen above, the actual per capita costs of translation for the EU are virtually negligible. A shift to a single working language will simply be not worth the investment.

Would the average EU-citizen even bother to learn Esperanto or Interlingua?

Most EU documents are technical in nature (e.g. product standards, various regulations) that are hardly comprehensible to the average EU-citizen, even in their native language. Those documents which comprise virtually all of EU texts, are simple not intended for casual readers but for manufacturers, law enforcement and lawyers.

Since the average EU-citizen hardly deals with EU documents on a regular base, there will be virtually zero incentive to learn whatever language these are written in. To quote Mark Rosenfelder:

“Languages take immense effort to learn, and people will only learn them if it's socially or economically inescapable.” (When do people learn languages?)

So even if the EU would decide to make Esperanto or Interlingua its official or sole working language, most EU-citizens won’t be directly affected by it.

Is implementing Esperanto or Interlingua as a working language even feasible?

Short answer: no. The EU employs about 43 thousand staff members. Contrary to the public image of rank and file bureaucrats, these civil servants are actually busy preparing a wide range of proposals on policies, standards and so on. Given the nature of diplomacy, complex negotiations require a lot of work.

When are these people going to learn a new language, while there are more pressing matters like climate change, energy security, Russia and so on? How long will it take until every EU employee speaks Esperanto or Interlingua at such a level they will be able to pursue complex negotiations? Remember such work is hard, even in your own native tong.

Would adopting a single official language of the EU not be a powerful symbolic signal?

Yes, it would and is also why auxlangers - Esperantists in particular - are so eager to push for such a move. However, it would also fuel euro-skepticism across the EU and hence potentially risking the breakup of the European Union. Imagine how easily populist politicians around Europe could claim that the "EU is going to impose a fake language upon us in order to destroy our culture" or something like that. Regardless whether such claims would be true or not - lies did not prevent Brexit after all.

Given that the adoption of a single official language offers little to no economic benefits, why would the EU even consider such a controversial move? The so-called language question only exists in the minds of auxlangers and has already been effectively solved. Both the EU and its member states have far more important issues to deal with.

Sunday, January 1, 2023

Language Learning 2023

As 2023 has begun, it is a good moment to look into my language learning plans for this year.

But first some background...

My native language is Dutch and my second language is English. Further I have a decent understanding of French, German, Russian and Spanish. Last year I read 5 novels in French, real ones written by native speakers. And I can say I read French as comfortably as I read Dutch or English - without the need of translating the text in my head.

The past year, however, I spent most effort on Russian. Mostly through watching Russian language YouTube videos and by reading the books of Olly Richards for learning Russian through stories. By doing so, I made serious progress in my Russian language skills.

Other languages I studied in 2022 were Pali - the language in which the texts of Theravada Buddhism are written in - and Akkadian - an extinct Semitic language related to Arabic and Hebrew.

My language learning plans

This year I will continue with my focus on studying Russian and Pali, while Akkadian will move more to the background. There is after all no need to hurry to get highly proficient in this old language. However, in 2023 I will also start with seriously studying Burmese as well.

Why Burmese?

At the age of seventeen I developed a strong personal interest in Myanmar/Burma. This South East Asian country has a long literary tradition and has had historically also a high rate of adult literacy, not in the last place due to the central role Buddhist monasticism plays in the daily life of the Burmese people. Also as a Theravada Buddhist Myanmar as a country triggers my particular interest, as the country is one of the major Theravada nations - alongside Thailand and Sri Lanka.

As pointed out above my language learning has mostly been limited to Indo-European languages, with the sole exception of Akkadian. Burmese, however, is a Sino-Tibetan language and hence related to Chinese and Tibetan. Expanding my language learning beyond the familiar IE languages is another reason to study Burmese.

Resources for Learning Burmese

Since Burmese is not as popular among Westerners such other Asian languages like Mandarin or Japanese, few resources are available to study this language. Neither Duolingo nor Clozemaster offer a Burmese course - though Duolingo offers for some reason a Klingon course. Nevertheless I found several resources to kick start my Burmese learning.

Burmese By Ear/ Essential Myanmar - created by the late John Okell, used to be hosted at the website of SOAS but no more. Fortunately I have downloaded it previously. This method is primarily audio-based, while there is an accompanying book. But the use of this is not required and personally I found it quite annoying to read the book, while listening to the audio. Only listening provides in my opinion a better focus on the spoken Burmese.

The main reason why I would not recommend to read the book while going through the audio course, is the fact that Burmese phonology is very different from that of most Indo-European languages. Therefore the romanization of the Burmese script is rather confusing for most beginners. Because of the different phonology it makes perfect sense to start with developing listening skills in this language. Also I prefer to learn the native script as soon as possible.

In order to make the most use of BBE I have dug up my old MP3-player, bought a new SD card a fresh batteries. I put the audio-files on the SD card. Why did I choose to employ my old, unused, MP3 player instead of my desktop? On a daily base have I have several blocks of "idle" time, for instance by walking to the train station or to the supermarket. My MP3-player is small and hence portable and also since it is a simple device, there are no distracting features (as smartphones do).

Burmese frequency lists - I found this list of the 150 most used Burmese words and also this one of the top 1,000 Burmese words. The use of frequency lists to acquire new languages is recommended by Randy of Yearlyglot. The purpose of a frequency list is not that knowing them will make you fluently in the language - fluency is not matter of just how many words you know - but to be able to understand the majority of words in a text.

In my opinion the regular review of the frequency list is not to memorize all the words - as rote learning is quite ineffective in language acquisition - but to become familiar with the most frequently used words, so you will be able to recognize them in real content.

BBC News in Burmese - I am a staunch proponent of language acquisition through comprehensible input and hence it follows that I looked for Burmese language content. Fortunately the BBC World Service offers the BBC News in Burmese. This allows me to keep reading in Burmese whenever I want.

Burmese YouTubers - a logical follow up to Burmese By Ears would be to watch and listen to Burmese YouTube videos.

Online Burmese Dictionaries - I also found a couple of only Burmese dictionaries (I do not know how good they are, so it is good to be able to compare multiple ones), such as "the Myanmar Dictionary". Sometimes you will need or want to look up some word.

Stay tuned for more!

As this post already grew much longer than I originally intended, I will move some bits to future posts. A short grasp of what is to come:

my progress with Burmese...
how I study languages in general...
why I believe Duolingo is a basically a scam...
what my favorite international auxiliary language is...

Anyway, I wish all of you a happy new year!

Saturday, September 6, 2014

Probabilistic causality

If the probability that a certain event A occurs depends on the occurrence of an event B, than we speak of a conditional probability. Mathematically we write:

P(A|B) [1]

In the context of probabilistic causation we could speak of a "cause" if the probability that A occurs in case of the occurrence of B is greater than in the absence of B, or:

P(A|B)>P(A|~B) [2]

This formula suggests the definition of a negative cause:

P(A|B)<P(A|~B) [3]

A negative cause should be understand as an event which prevents or reduces the likelihood that another event occurs.

In case of:

P(A|B)=P(A|~B) [4]

we cannot speak of a "cause" in a meaningful sense, and have to conclude that A and B are independent.

Thursday, July 17, 2014

Philosophical notes

My personal philosophical believes have changed over the course of time, mostly as result of learning new philosophical concepts and studying the works of other philosophers. At this moment my philosophical "believes" can be summarized with: monism, non-cognitivism and indeterminism.

Monism

I am neither a physicalist, nor a idealist. But I also reject substance dualism, instead I subscribe to a form of neutral monism.

Why do I reject substance or cartesian dualism? If our world really consist of two separate substance, matter and mind, than how can matter and mind interact with each other? Any substance dualist should explore this issue for a plausible answer.

Both physicalism and idealism are types of substance monism, i.e. the world consist only of one substance. The difference between these positions, is that physicalists believe that only the physical world is real, while idealists believe that only the mind is real.

Neutral monism rejects both physicalism and idealism, and instead it considers matter and mind as different aspects of one and the same substance. Because matter and mind are aspects of the same substance, matter and mind are inherently connected.

The problem is that we are not (yet) able to study the substance directly, instead we can only observe its aspects. Modern science does a great job in describing the material or physical aspects of our world, and because of this modern science is highly valuable. However, the success of science led many physicalists to believe that because mind and matter are (obviously?) related, that consequently that mind is caused by matter.

Though this seems to make sense, there's a logical possibility (but not necessarily a truth) that the matter-mind relation is an example "correlation does not imply causation". If so physicalist attempts to explain mind or consciousness in purely material terms will fail.

Indeterminism

There are several types of determinism, the most popular ones are logical, theological and causal determinism. The first two types has been historically the most important ones, while causal determinism is currently the most important version of determinism.

Logical determinism

Logical determinism is based on the assumption that all statements are either true or false, including all statements concerning the future. However, if all statements about the future are either true or false, then logically the future is also determined. That we don't know whether the future, does not mean statements about the future have no truth value.

There is serious flaw in logical determinism, however. The fundamental flaw is the idea that statements are either true or false, in other words it relies upon a two-valued logic.

Suppose you know that I don't smoke, and have never done so. If you subsequently ask to me whether I have already stopped smoking, what should I answer? If I say "yes", then I would admit I have smoked in the past, which is, of course, false. But if I say "no", I would admit that I still smoke, which is also not true. Hence the statement "I have stopped smoking" is neither true or false, since in neither case it would make sense.

Evaluating statements using a two-valued logic is not always possible, multi-value logics (such as a three-valued logic) might be required. However, if we accept logics with other values than true and false, the basic premise of logical determinism is crushed. Though logical determinism cannot be proven, it does not mean that statements about the future can't be true or false.

A further challenge for logical determinists is how statements about the future can be true or false. Proponents of this branch of determinism can either propose eternalism or to causal determinism (see below). Eternalism is the ontological position that the past, present and future are real and exist "simultaneously". This might sounds weird, but think about a classic film role with consists of all pictures of a movie. When you watch a film, you'll see only one picture at a time, nevertheless the previous and next pictures are on the film while you watch the current picture.

We can imagine a film containing 3D pictures of the entire universe. In this view, we are actually watching a movie, and though we don't know the future it actually exists somewhere. This film containing the universe is known as the Block Universe. A problem for this view of time, is that we need to explain why we experience the passing of time.

The major alternative position for eternalism is presentism, that only the present has real existence. While eternalism or the block universe is incompatible with indeterminism, presentism is not since the future has yet to be "created". A third alternative is the growing block universe, the view that both the past and the present has real existence, but not the future. Personally I am inclined to this third position.

Theological determinism

The second type of determinism, theological determinism, states that the future has been determined by god. We can distinguish between two versions of this kind of determinism, transcendental and immanent theological determinism. In the first version god has designed the laws of the universe and created the initial configuration of the universe. Essentially this is a special kind of causal determinism, with god the ultimate cause.

A subtype of transcendental theological determinism would be that god created the world as a block universe, and hence theological determinism is reduced to a special kind of logical determinism.

Immanent theological determinism on the other hand require god's ongoing intervention to keep the universe in line with his plans. One version believed by some, is that god creates every moment in time separately. But if god does create each moment separately, then we can also imagine that god could be changing its plans all the time.

A problem with all forms of theological determinism is (1) that it it requires the existence of god, and (2) his willingness to determine the future. If god does not exist, then theological determinism is false. Also we can conceive that god would want to create an indeterministic universe.

Causal determinism

The third, and by far the most plausible type of determinism, is causal determinism. This brand of determinism arises from the following line of reasoning. If we know that A causes B, and B on its turn will cause C, then we know that C will happen once we now that A has or will occur. This is known as the causal chain: A > B > C. The underlining principle is that each effect is also the cause of other effects, and so on.

Causal determinism is not without criticism, however. First, CD requires that one particular set of causes, has only one particular set of effects. That is if A happens, than B will certainly happen. However, we can conceive that B can only if A happens, but that if A happens either B or C (with B and C two mutually exclusive sets of effects) can occur.

A possible alternative to "deterministic causation" is probabilistic causation, the concept that a cause will change the probability that a particular effect will happen. This goes along the line: it's unlikely that B will without A, but if A happens the occurrence of B will be likely. If probabilistic causation is true, then causal determinism is false.

An empirical argument against causal determinism, at least against its strongest version, is quantum mechanics. Unlike classical physics, QM events (such as radioactive decay) are expressed in probabilistic terms. There is, however, disagreement among physicists whether QM is inherently indeterministic or whether QM is simply incomplete (hidden variable theories). But at this moment evidence seems to indicate that those hidden variable theories are wrong, but new scientific discoveries could change this.

Non-cognitivism

My non-nognitivism covers three topics: theological, moral and "free will" non-cognitivism. I will save moral non-cognitivism for another post, because it falls out of line with the more or less metaphysical tone of this post and otherwise this post will become too long.

Theological non-cognitivism is the position that the term "god" is not properly defined, and hence one cannot make general statements regarding the existence of god. The point is that different people have different concepts of god. If one talks about god, what is his or her concept of god? We can only argue about a specific concept of god at a time.

Also a statement like "80% of the population believes in god", is meaningless. For instance, the christian concept of god (the trinity) contradicts the islamic concept of god (tawhid). And in hinduism, different sects has their own different concept of god.

There also many different concepts of what "free will" means. Hence arguing about free will in a general sense is meaningless. Required is a specific definition of free will. I will discuss several concepts of free will in the future.

The relation between free will and responsibility is a contentious one. Adherents of free will usually state that without free will, one cannot have [moral] responsibility. Certain philosophers such as John Locke have criticized the concept of free will as incoherent, and Locke instead argued that what matters for responsibility is whether one is capable of reflecting the consequences of his actions before acting. This is basically the line I take on this issue.

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

On Suicide

Many people are against other people committing suicide. Leaving purely religious arguments aside, why do many people actually oppose suicide? A common argument is that suicide is selfish. Though that might be true, but we can wonder whether those who oppose suicide are not selfish themselves?

It is my impression that many people are upset when one of their loved-ones put an end to his own life, but do not care much about when complete strangers are killing themselves. A more sophisticated version of the "Suicide is Selfish"-argument, points to the direct impact on others (for instance train suicides cause significant delays and hence economic damage). An ever more eloquent argument points to the loss for society: if someone commits suicide, then he cannot contribute to society anymore (whether this is through his tax money, or his actual activities).

The first version is clearly selfish: I do not want that my [substitute: child, friend, spouse, parent, sibling, ... ] to kill himself, because I do not want to grieve. So is the second: I do not want to be late at [substitute whatever you don't like to miss]. The third one might be classified as group selfishness, i.e. a group puts its own (collective) interests at the first place. An important question here is, of course, whether an individual is morally obliged to serve the interests of others. I place emphasis on moral, as opposed as respecting the interests of others only because of self-interest. This is quite irrelevant if one is about to kill himself.