Hyperboreus:OK, thank you. I really did miss the point. But maybe there are people in the tropics who nevertheless would like to know how to build a snowman. I have actually no NEED to communicate with anybody who doesn't speak spanish, english, german, french or italian, but I really enjoy it.

No one is saying that we should prevent the person from a tropical island from learning to build a snowman. If this person wants to learn, that's fine, of course.

But on the other hand, I wouldn't spend a lot of money to establish a snowman-building training course to be held on a tropical island. I wouldn't advertise snowman-building as a useful thing to people from tropical climates.

It comes down to needs, doesn't it. We have many homeless people in my city, Washington DC. I wouldn't go to a homeless shelter and promote learning Esperanto. These people need food and a job (and mental health counselling, many of them). Esperanto won't help them find food, find a job, or improve their mental health. They need to focus on what's important before they worry about easier ways to communicate internationally.

Forigite

Hyperboreus:Rethinking your statement about the "need" to communicate internationally or the "trade across borders" stated by others: I have business relations abroad, but actually knowning Esperanto doesn't help in any aspect. Are there really people who NEED to communicate internationally and therefore use Esperanto?

Yes, The editors at Chinese International Radio for instance who broadcast in Esperanto to the wider world have a need for Esperanto - Its a job requirment. I like you have no need, but there are those individuals who do have jobs based around Esperanto. But half the problem of recruiting to Esperanto is that there is already many other languages filling its role. But I think we are getting off topic in this thread as the original questions were based around the "worry + phrase"

Hyperboreus:Rethinking your statement about the "need" to communicate internationally or the "trade across borders" stated by others: I have business relations abroad, but actually knowning Esperanto doesn't help in any aspect. Are there really people who NEED to communicate internationally and therefore use Esperanto?

My friend always used to say it as "You won't make money with Esperanto, but you'll make friends".

Esperanto has a culture of friendship and hospitality, and that helps make you feel welcome and comfortable all over the world. It's a little like having distant relatives in all different countries. Maybe you haven't met them before, but simply because you are a relative, they are willing to meet up with you and show you around. It's very helpful when you're a tourist but you don't speak the language.

Even if you do speak the language, it helps.

I am thinking about moving to the UK, depending on where I find a job. If I move to the UK, I would prefer to live in a place with a community of Esperanto speakers. Why? It's not to practice my Esperanto. It's to have friends waiting for me when I arrive. Friends that I haven't met yet, but still friends. It can be isolating to live in a new country, and it's useful have a community of local friends who can answer your questions and help you navigate the local culture.

Another example, an Esperanto organization submitted a proposal for a new website to get funding from the European Union. The proposal was refused. One of the comments on the refusal had a text something like "You say that your website will be translated into 10 languages but it isn't clear how you will do this". (the number may not have been 10, but let's use it as an example).

To Esperanto speakers, it is obvious how you get a website translated into 10 languages. You simply ask your Esperanto friends from those countries. To the EU committee reviewing the proposal, this answer isn't obvious. A "normal" EU citizen probably does not know speakers of 10 languages who are willing to translate a website, but an Esperanto speaker can find them easily.

Forigite

Let us not be too quick to say that you can't make money out of Esperanto. Some 30 years ago, I made the equivalent of a year's salary out of my knowledge of Esperanto through a commercial venture.

Here's a way that Esperanto could give you a financial edge today.

In equity investment a good deal of money can be made by spotting early a long term social trend.

Brazil and Latin America generally are on an up-trend. There are plenty of educated Esperantists there who could give you an insight on emerging social trends, through friendly conversations over the net on such topics, and point you in the direction of investing in shares in the right sector.

On the whole Esperantists are not too interested in making money, being entrepreneurs, or indulging in speculative risk. But should you be of such a temperament, I don't see why you couldn't make some money out of Esperanto.

In the developed old world, there is surely potential for multilingual translation work.

How many translators are there with native speaker competence in say Finnish and Hungarian. However it shouldn't be too difficult to recruit educated Finnish and Hungarian Esperantists to translate out of Finnish to Esperanto and from Esperanto into Hungarian.

The Finnish Esperantist will be aware of nuances in the original text as a native speaker of Finnish, can annotate his Esperanto translation to ensure these nuances are understood by the Hungarian Esperantist who in turn can as a native speaker of Hungarian ensure they are conveyed in his rendering of the text in Hungarian.

And of course this applies vice versa and also to to other language pairs where there is a dearth of competent translators.

sudanglo:It is, I understand true, that Klingon is much more difficult than Esperanto. If it can be true that artificial languages are not equally difficult (I am only admitting Klingon as a language for the purposes of argument) why can't it be true of natural languages.

Klingon is difficult because it has (almost) no cognates in any natural language, so vocabulary acquisition is very time-consuming. The grammar of Klingon is actually not terribly complex - perhaps even easier than Esperanto. There's also the dearth of materials (written and especially spoken) and a fairly limited vocabulary that stresses things like starships and transporters.

The pronunication is also very ... odd. The distribution of phonemes is almost intentionally non-sensical.

Edit: and as regards all languages being equally potent - try discussing computers in some Central African tribal language.

This is a lack of vocabulary, not a structural fault of Central African languages itself. The expression "programu ya kompyuta" is perfectly good Swahili (admittedly an Eastern, not Central, African language). Google that phrase and you'll see there's no lack of discussions going on about that topic, all completely in Swahili.

Amike,

Paul