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Apparently the language was popular among early 20th century socialist movements because it was of an international character and therefore not associated with any nationality and its use by international socialist organisations wouldn’t show favour to any particular country. It was banned in Nazi Germany and other fascist states because of its association with the left wing, with anti-nationalism, and because its creator was Jewish. It has mostly languished since then but still has around 2 million speakers with about 1,000 native speakers.
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I find the idea of making a distinctly European language and calling it universal quite thoughtless at best.
Interesting thing is that there are many esperanto speakers in China, Japan and Brazil. But, yes, Esperanto is based in european languages.
that makes sense; it’s probably the most well known conlang by far.
Of the newly created international auxiliary languages, Globasa looks the least eurocentric. Also has an onboarding process for new words that makes sure there’s a good distribution of language families.
I have read most of this thread, and it is very interesting question indeed.
My response:
Taken as a hobby in con-langs it has an impressive community (I don’t speak it though). This is to be compared to other con-langs, not other natural languages. Just the number of learners or historical connotation do not make it necessary preferrable to other con-langs in this day and era.
I believe its practical purpose as international lingua franca is defeated by its Eurocentrism and the actual spread and expansion of its users. It is not a matter of merely the number of users but where and how you actually often they meet them.
For this reason I think it is better to follow the advice I read elsewhere (I think on Lemmy), like French and Spanish can open up many more communication opportunity in ex-colonies, and we should really pay more attention to languages or families that have been local lingua franca in localities of Asia and Africa, to have a more global perspective.
I’m currently learning it. I like the concept, and no other conlang/auxlang has become as widely spoken or treated as seriously as Esperanto. There are actually children who are native speakers, as in Esperanto is their first language, no other conlang can claim that.
However, as many users here have pointed out, it has problems. It’s very Euro-centric. So while it is easy for romance language speakers to pick up, if you are from a different language family, it’s no picnic.
There is also the issue of relevance. Esperanto has a fairly active online community, you can pretty easily find Discord servers and forums with several hundred to 1000+ active speakers from all over the world.
If you are lucky, there are local clubs and groups that meet up in person and speak Esperanto to each other.
Esperanto has also been shown, at least in children, to aid in learning a second language. Learning Esperanto helps you get used to the process of learning a language in general, and basically gives it to you in easy mode.
But if your goal to learn a second language is utility, then Esperanto almost certainly isn’t a good choice. For instance, I live in the US, and not in a region that has a high Hispanic population. That being said, I still encounter 3-5 people a month who are Spanish speakers. So even for me, learning to speak conversational Spanish would be much more useful as a second language than Esperanto.
That’s actually my long term plan, to start with Esperanto because I really struggle with learning languages, even Spanish has been too tough for me. But Esperanto has made it easier so far, and it’s fun.
Ultimately, Esperanto would have been a far better world language than English, which annoyingly has become the de-facto world language, and I say that as a native English speaker.
I don’t see anything like Esperanto arising anytime soon, if ever. If you think it’s cool, learn it, you’ll at least learn how to learn a foreign language better and you’ll maybe find some new friends online, can’t complain about that.
I’m learning it too! With my husband - we even had an oath in esperanto on our wedding ;)
I really appreciate the simplicity of Esperanto - it has no exceptions and easy suffixes and no grammatical gender.
By the way, I wonder how and why there are many esperanto speakers in China and Japan (since it’s euro-centric).
Saluton!
I think its a good idea in theory but sadly it is absolutly not a Universal language, it is an european language (i tried learning it and from my limited experience , its a mix of french/spanich/italian/english with a little bit of german.) So i dont really like it because of the racist implication that European language are the most important and are "Universal ".
Then we need to look at Ithkuil. It includes not only the features of European languages, but it also seems more difficult to learn. :D
I don’t think it’s because someone thought that European languages were the most important, it just seemed to the creator that it would make the language easier to learn. Maybe it was because he knew and spoke more European languages himself.
My opinion is this: who can I speak Esperanto with?
…
Exactly.
The problem with Esperanto is that languages don’t work like that: they’re not created out of thin air. They exist because people speak them and they come into existance from other languages that get distorted beyond recognition by the people who misuse them.
No living language is known to have been conjured into existence, with perhaps the possible exception of a few rare language isolates like Basque that might have been invented from scratch a long time ago, since nobody knows where they come from exactly.
The problem with Esperanto is that languages don’t work like that: they’re not created out of thin air. They exist because people speak them>
This language was spoken by even larger population that said 2 millions but the totalitarian regimes of Second World War persecuted esperantists. So I think that Esperanto bypassed this rule. And fact that after a whole century this language is still alive and has even some native speakers is telling.
isolates like Basque that might have been invented
I don’t think this is a valid linguistic take. There were tons of languages in Europe and Central Asia that are unknown to us. Then the Indo-Europeans expanded and mostly replaced the native linguistic groups. But I think linguists think the critical factor is geographic isolation, for instance Basques and Romanians are geographically isolated, or perhaps I should say geophysically.
distorted beyond recognition by the people who misuse them
This is not the only driving force of language evolution, although is true for imperialist languages like French, Spanish, and English. Languages evolve by generational shifts among native speakers too, eg this has happened with High German, I think.
who can I speak Esperanto with?
A lot of people actually, around 2 millions on the internet only. More than you can possibly meet in your lifetime, so that’s not an issue.
All estimates are flawed since there’s no real definition of “knowing” a language. There might be millions of people who have dipped a toe in yet most discussion online is pretty much along the lines of “Mi nomiĝas Fartsparkles kaj mi lernas Esperanton.”
I’ve seen other estimates that put it at around 60,000 to 100,000-ish that can actually converse fluently in the language.
Well there is a standardized system of foreign language skills, which is called A1, A2, A3,…, all the way up to C2. I think that it is only a matter of gathering statistical data to know what percentage of speakers are conversational. It is not an “unknowable unknown”.
2 million out of 8 billion is kind of an issue.
Not really. That’s about average, or above average
The national language of one of my countries is spoken by 300’000 persons.
That’s wonderful, but hardly relevant :) My point was: creating a language specifically for easing comms between people, and then have 2 million people speak that language out of 8 bln, while there are multiple other general use languages that are spoken by billions of ppl, just doesn’t make sense. Case in point: we have this conversation in one of those, and it’s neither your, nor my native tongue.
Case in point: we have this conversation in one of those, and it’s neither your, nor my native tongue.
And I’m pretty sure you have a college diploma. English as an international language works, but not for everybody, while Esperanto could, and when it works it reinforces the Empire, while Esperanto wouldn’t.
but not for everybody
I second that. English is all but useless in some places in Europe and Asia.
Diploma or not, i feel if you want to learn one language to get around in the world, there are many better options than esperanto. English one of them but hey, spanish would work too, if you go to south america… I also think english by now is a common treasure for humanity, and not related to one country or empire. It evolved into a simple enough language so that you can very easily pick it up to a level where you can get around in most of the world. Anyhow, i wish all the best to all ppl learning esperanto, I’ll keep on struggling with my Dutch, and then maybe spanish or turkish :)
I meant in real life, in ordinary everyday settings. I can also “speak” Morse code with fellow hams on the air, or practice sign language at my local community college, but those are “forced” venues so-to-speak. It’s not like I can routinely speak Esperanto every day as a matter of course.
2 million Esperanto speakers is 0.025% of the world’s population, which works out as 1 Esperanto speaker every 360,000 square miles where I live. I still haven’t met that guy.
It’s true that the problem is that it’s a diaspora. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s quite easy to find Esperanto speakers, and thanks to internet the Esperanto community is actually international. To be an active member of this community builds a better understanding of other points of view, it “internationalizes” your self. As a socialist I think that this is important.
English do that too, but not with the same deepness (I know, English is my second language).
Do you know about the links between Esperantism and socialism?
Stalin, Ho Chi Ming and James Connolly were Esperantists. Hitler threw rocks at it in Mein Kampf.
As a socialist I think that this is important.
If you think languages and socialism have anything to do with each other, you’re sorely mistaken. You can be a socialist - or a communist, a capitalist pigdog, or a Nazi or anything at all - and speak any language you want. Case in point: Hebrew.
You speaking Esperanto doesn’t say anything about your political leanings. All it says is that you’re interested in languages.
Of course, I met some fascists in.the Esperanto community. You obviously didn’t understood what I said.
I understood what you said. The gist of my reply is: if you want to “internationalize” yourself, speak English. It’s the lingua franca of the world. Soon to be replaced by Cantonese no doubt though 🙂
My point was, the language you - or the world - speaks has nothing to do with your political or societal values.
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Considering that you’re 20 years old, if you speak to a new Esperantist every hour, night and day, thus to 24 new Esperantist every day, you’ll be 248 years old when you’ll have spoken to every Esperantist.
That’s why I want to learn interlingua. It lets you communicate (one way) to most romance language speakers
Interlingua is awesome. See if you can understand this:
Interlingua es un lingua auxiliar international naturalistic basate super le vocabulos commun al major linguas europee e super un grammatica anglo-romance simple, initialmente publicate in 1951 per International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA). Appellate a vices Interlingua de IALA pro distinguer lo del altere usos del parola, illo es le subjecto de iste articulo e le lingua de iste encyclopedia integre.
Honestly Esperanto is fairly readable for romance speakers. Of course Interlingua much more so.
they come into existance from other languages that get distorted beyond recognition by the people who misuse them
“Misuse” is an inappropriate word to employ here. The correct way to speak a language is the way that others speak the language, so that you are mutually intelligible. Changes to how language is used aren’t a deviation from the “correct way” for exactly the reasons you’ve pointed out: language is not prescribed.
Esperanto, however is explicitly prescriptive. This is because early speakers believed that allowing it to evolve naturally would hinder its ability to be used as an international and universal method of communication, since past writings could end up unintelligible to future readers. For that reason, Esperanto grammar and most of its vocabulary is set in stone. The Declaration of Boulogne states that the definitive reference work for Esperanto is the Fundamento de Esperanto written by L. L. Zamenhof.
That’s all well and good, but I maintain my position both with regard to the previous commenter and – though I hadn’t meant to address it at the time – also to Esperanto. If uptake of the language is sufficient, it will devolve into dialects and further, in spite of the intentions of its inventors.
There has been some change to it over the years, such as riismo adding gender neutral pronouns, while still not going as far as complete reform like Ido. In my opinion it’s struck the right balance.
Mi parolas ĝin! Mi lernis ĝin dum la pandemio. Esperanto ne estas utila, kaj nun mi learnas la japanan, sed mi amas la lingvon.
Mi komencis lerni Esperanto naŭ tagoj antaŭ. Mia gramatiko estas ankoraŭ malbona kaj mi vortprovizo estas malgranda, sed ĝi estas tre facile lernebla.
Bone! Vi estas kompreneblea. Sed vi forgesis la akuzitivon mdr. Vi komencis lerni Esperanton naŭ tagoj antaŭ.
Pardonu, me estis komencanto. Dankon pro la korekto
Nedankinde! Ĝi estas la plej ofta eraro. Me esperas ke vi amus Esperanton!
If Klingons spoke Esperanto, it would be a thing
I like what Arcadius Avellanus, a Latin scholar and speaker, wrote about Esperanto.
eh
