Comments on: Anti-Esperanto

By: Cau-Giat

Cau-Giat — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 08:28:58 +0000

@ehsan. Although I don’t speak it, I totally believe the fact that Esperanto may be a lot easier than English to learn. But if, as you say, the English speaking do impose their language to the world, their’s no hypocrisy there. That’s only because other countries are letting them to do so. And English is perverting itself anyways; by becoming a simple Lingua Franca, it no longer interest people as a cultural language. They just learn it because they feel they have to. Esperanto will never be legitimize, because it barely had any impact on the international stage in a century of existence. I see it as a mere entertainment for a select group of people.

By: ehsan

ehsan — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 22:40:13 +0000

I started learning English about 10 years ago and unfortunately I am not so fluent yet maybe you call me a fool but I say English is difficult to learn. It has been two years since I started learning Esperanto and I am already fluent. It’s so hypocritical of you English speaking people to impose your language on the world

By: Brad Collins

Brad Collins — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:53:13 +0000

I totally agree with the cultural context thing, there needs to be an official “congress” which actually determines the languages dictionary meanings. This is also a problem with Lojban and every other language except for Brevlo. The only downside to brevlo is the low (but growing) number of speakers. But yes, Esperanto is flawed here (that and the ambiguous nature of constructed words like “kataro” or “kolego”.)

By: Joe

Joe — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 09:12:10 +0000

Ok, esperantists chop my head off for this, but.. It looks and sounds hideous in my ears. I speak English and Spanish, and I am interested in languages, but I don’t even feel compelled to try learning it. Sorry, I just view it as an overly idealistic whim, and it’s spoken by… Well, hardly anyone but Esperantists.

By: Raul

Raul — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:24:34 +0000

Belgium has more than just French, English and German, the majority speaks Dutch (then French, another part of the country speaks German and of course English). You might want to add Esperanto to that list too.
But the example of Belgium isn’t a proper one, though it’s not a totally isolated case, it is some what unique.

And Esperanto is said to be easier to learn than any other national language, even if you do not speak a somewhat related language, like Spanish or Latin. It should/could also even help you learn another language more quickly than if you were to study that language right away.

I think it would be a good idea to make it a 2nd (or 3rd) language and implement it very early in school.
So… why not?

By: fantezism

fantezism — Sun, 11 Feb 2007 17:00:43 +0000

I saw a text in esperanto and I was able to make something out of it only because I speak spanish fluently and I’m familiar with latin.Basically you need to be familiar with spanish or someother romance language to learn esperanto easily and well.In other words you already need to know another language that has a latin alphabet and an easy grammar to speak esperanto.We already have that:english.No need for esperanto.

By: Cassi

Cassi — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 21:03:03 +0000

The point of Esperanto was NEVER to convert the world to one language. It was simply a device created so the world could communicate. I see it as everyone’se second language. If the world knew esperanto…Belgians wouldn’t be required to learn French, English, AND German. Also us lazy Americans would also do our part in the whole “world communication” thing.

By: Heirabbit

Heirabbit — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 07:23:09 +0000

Esperanto survives as the most popular constructed language because it makes compromises on every language issue, that is, it is a middle ground. The author of this criticism would perhaps endorse and entirely new vocabulary, phonetic and script system “unrelated” to any other culture. But in this way the incredibly pervasive (though not totally pervasive) Latin system would be junked, and the Latin system itself (a dead language) in a sense loses its life. I think that by using an existing system that is a common link between many current systems helps the large majority of learners learn more quickly. The second most pervasive language influence in the world would be Chinese, which could either be more heavily represented in a new constructed language like Esperanto or the major basis of an entirely new constructed language. Many people have suggested this because Chinese has many simplicities to it already.

The current situation (so I’ve heard) is that Esperanto is 15 times easier to learn than other national languages for speakers of western languages, and 5 times easier for others. Its a compromise that – considering the influence of Latin is the greatest – is quite tolerable.