Esperanto is a spoken and written language that was constructed some time ago by an academic type that thought it would be lovely if the whole world was able to speak some universal second language. The idea does sound grand at first doesn't it? International politicions would be able to talk to each other honestly and directly - without any translation needed. They would be able to avoid the bias of using a language that belongs to a particular nation! That would be great.
Probably the most important thing about esperanto is that it is constructed - it doesn't originate from any nation, and it doesn't give anyone an unfair advantage because they come from a country that already speaks it. I think that's important - the british people are particularly bad at getting on with the rest of the world, and I think that partly it's because we're so rubbish at learning other languages - we simply expect other people to speak our own!* That's an attitude that we often extend to culture and tradition - sometimes without even realising it.
Of course, another major advantage of Esperanto can be demonstrated by looking at the story of The Tower Of Babylon - as described in The Bible (by God). In The Bible, when civilisation first grew all of the nations of the world spoke one language and acted under one banner. One day, they decided to build a fucking huge tower so that they could become closer to the heavens. God didn't like that, so he went super-saiyan and smashed the tower with a kamayamaya wave before spreading humanity all over the world. To make sure that the tower would never be built again, he gave them all different languages. For this reason, I believe Esperanto would help to anger God.
Good eh?
Esperanto is taught in a few different places. Notably, in the UK, Manchester university helps 4 primary schools teach it - the schools believe it will help the children to learn the basic skills needed to acquire further languages. There are 2500 books in Esperanto, and 2 films. There are between 100,000 and 2 million speakers world wide. This is an abysmal figure when you consider that it's been around for well over a century. Looks like that pesky tower isn't going to get built, after all! :(
The problem, as I see it, is that Esperanto is a novelty. It's spoken by few - you could go out and learn it, but the only people you could speak to are the sort of people who speak Esperanto; I'll bet that would be dull. Of course, the language itself also has some flaws - for example, words are intoned according to a general rule - it is not permitted to use intonation of words to convey meaning. Words spoken without intonation would sound extremely un-natural and artificial to any human being. The language is also nowhere near as neutral as it should be. It uses european pronunciations and european letters. It also derives many of its word roots from european words. Speakers that haven't grown up learning some European language find it difficult to pick up Esperanto.
All in all, I give this language 6 out of 16. Nice concept - but poorly implemented.
4 comments:
Hello from Wales. There's a lot here requiring comment. " ...you could go out and learn it, but the only people you could speak to are the sort of people who speak Esperanto ...". The same is true of German or French or Spanish or Russian or Indonesian.
Esperanto is a planned language which belongs to no one country or group of states. Take a look at www.esperanto.net
Esperanto works! I've used it in speech and writing in a dozen countries over recent years.
Indeed, the language has some remarkable practical benefits. Personally, I've made friends around the world through Esperanto that I would never have been able to communicate with otherwise. And then there's the Pasporta Servo, which provides free lodging and local information to Esperanto-speaking travellers in over 90 countries.
In the past couple of years I have had guided tours of Berlin and Milan in the planned language. I have discussed philosophy with a Slovene poet, humour on television with a Bulgarian TV producer. I've discussed what life was like in East Berlin before the wall came down, how to cook perfect spaghetti, the advantages and disadvantages of monarchy, and so on. I recommend it, not just as an ideal but as a very practical way to overcome language barriers.
Esperanto is a dynamic, youthful language with a lot to offer. You might want to contact the Esperanto Association of Britain.
Bill Chapman is right about Esperanto.
But I would add that this global language has come a long way, in a relatively short period of time.
During a short period of 121 years Esperanto is in the top 100 languages, out of 6,800 worldwide, according to the CIA factbook. It is the 17th most used language in Wikipedia, and in use by Skype, Firefox and Facebook.
Native Esperanto speakers, include George Soros, Nobel Laureate Daniel Bovet, Ulrich Brandenberg, the new German Ambassador to NATO, and World Champion Chess Player, Susan Polger
Further arguments can be seen at - http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_YHALnLV9XU and a glimpse of the language can be seen at http://www.lernu.net
Dominic:
I agree with most of what you wrote, but I think you've misunderstood the intonation business. There's an Esperanto rule that the second-to-last syllable of the word takes the stress, but the rule is no stricter than, say, the English rule that "happy" is pronounced "HAP-py" rather than "hap-PY". So, it's about as predictable as Spanish stress, and beyond that there's nothing remarkable about intonation in the language.
@ Chris Bogart
Thansk for the comment, I'll be sure to revise that when I get a moment, perhaps after I go and get milk for a cup of tea.
I'm just glad that people have questioned my opinions about Esperanto and haven't responded to by blatant blasphemy. I felt sure that the comment about God going "super-saiyan" would earn me at least some backlash.
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