Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for October 26, 2011

The universal language of world peace is Norwegian? Or is that a voice clip from the Swedish Chef?

Sometimes inflection & body language say it all.

No, Radish, you really don’t…

A universal language won’t do it……people kill each other in English all the time.

I’m guessing that smile that everybody everywhere does in the same language won’t make it into Danae’s lexicon?A malicious grin or sinister sneer, on the other hand…

It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it. I nominate Lucy in 2012!

Darn tootin! Wouldn’t be the first horse’s patoot seated behind the desk in the oval office.

I know that you believe that you understand what you think I said but I’m not sure that you realize that what you heard was not what I meant.

masterskrain: You beat me to it. I’m a bit dissapointed that I didn’t see it sooner.

A universal language that Danae is making up. Will anyone be able to learn it?

This has been tried before. Didn’t work out so well.

What, shortwave radio isn’t good enough? What I’ve been told, God’s been receiving season 3 episodes of “I Love Lucy”, in prime time broadcasts, and that’s about as “in person” as anyone’s going to get.

@masterskrain and olddog1: I’m a big fan of Esperanto, so I hope Danae never finds out about it! (On the other hand, I’d welcome Lucy the horse into my linguistic world anytime!)

e’osai la Lojban pluka ko.

Esperanto, Don’t make me laugh. The EU has spent billions on developing this absurdity and it is deader than Latin. I bet half the people that read this strip have never heard of it. Another example of European bureaucrats wasting taxes.

I L’edOL on this one.

A young girl like her shouldn’t even know what a goombat is……..

I have a Teach Yourself Esperanto and Esperanto/English dictionary from the 70s. I’m glad I saved them — they might still come in handy one day!

@mokurai — no fair — Google Translate doesn’t do esperanto! What’d you say? :) @three steps over Japan — Most broadcasters are turning off their SW services. Sad but true. If you want to hear them now, you are stuck with local rebroadcasters, (or you’re tethered to the internet, but really, I don’t ever think to ‘tune in’ on the internet so I just don’t listen to them any more!)

A universal language would have to be a secondary language, not a primary one, so everyone would have to be taught two languages, and it would be a couple generations (if done NOW) for everyone to learn it, at a minimum. There would be areas of the world that would never learn this language, too. Then there’s the cost of teaching an extra language, when teaching one is barely done, in some areas.

People won’t accept a replacement of their native tongue. At least not one with any pride in their country, or any culture. It’s already been resoundingly declined.

ON the other hand, Some gestures are understood world wide. (Middle finger salute)

it’s all in HOW you say it… lol! “heart” Wiley!

The other side of this is to work on the universal language of the heart—compassion, love, charity, whatever you call it. (Danae may never understand it, however.)

@wiley One thing I always wondered, does Lucy really speak, or does Danae only imagine it?

say what?

As auxlangs go, I think I’d prefer Interlingua to Esperanto but I really can’t accept the auxlang premise that there are too many languages in the world. The few thousand we have left strike me as too few to offer real insight into the way we construct reality.

Okay,MONEY TALKS AND B.S. WALKS.

Oh, yes, Esperanto. But with regard to “made-up languages”, may I just point out that there are now more speakers of Klingon than speakers of Esperanto? http://www.kli.org/

@Masterskrian, olddog, & lutro. I can say Esperanto in ENGLISH.

kaltxi frapo …. if I got that right it says Hello everyone. www.Learnnavi.org If not Esperanto… then either Klingon or Na`vi. Heard tell that the fictional languages do bridge some of the communication gap.