sudanglo:Edit: I am informed that the French believe only a madman would eat fish for breakfast, though an Englishman will happily tuck into kippers (or even fish fingers)at that hour. What the French think of devilled kidneys or fried black pudding in the morning, I have no idea.

I got a small taste of this one year at SES (Summer Esperanto Study) in Slovakia. The breakfast was always whatever the Slovaks eat, and a couple of mornings, there were sausages available for the non-vegetarians.

SES's attendees come from all different countries, and I did hear a couple of comments in the dining hall, of the nature of "Sausages for breakfast??"

I do think that you can hold a different set of cultural assumptions in each language you speak, though. Esperanto, for example, has a well-developed sense of hospitality. You go out of your way to help an Esperanto speaker who winds up in your city, more than you would as an English speaker for another English speaker. Things like writing to a random Esperanto club in another city and asking if someone can show you around are totally normal in Esperanto, but I wouldn't try it for English. Not even for a situation like "The American club of [whatever city]", if such a thing were to exist.

Michaelmoore:Sudanglo, that's only assuming that Esperanto speakers represent the average person of which ever culture they come from. Previous studies have already shown that such is not case. Among the Esperanto community there are more vegetarians, more pacifists, etc. Esperanto tends to attract a certain group of people. I would expect the study you propose to confirm that.

I totally agree. Esperantists rather differ from all other citizens of the country they live in.
You can already see it in a thread "Komunaj valoroj" - you'll have problem to group all of them into only two groups
Personally I posted there only after reading that it is a part of an experiment. Actually I used a local proverb to represent the regional understanding of a phrase.

However weird Esperantists are, and I'm sure that some of them are pretty far out, I can't see them not being imprinted with cultural assumptions of their native lands.

Vegetarian or not the answers to the question what might be found on the breakfast table would be very similar among English Esperantists and different to American Esperantists.

Waffles for breakfast with syrup! Are you mad? Where's my scrambled egg with baked beans?

sudanglo:However weird Esperantists are, and I'm sure that some of them are pretty far out, I can't see them not being imprinted with cultural assumptions of their native lands.

Vegetarian or not the answers to the question what might be found on the breakfast table would be very similar among English Esperantists and different to American Esperantists.

Waffles for breakfast with syrup! Are you mad? Where's my scrambled egg with baked beans?

Yeah, I agree, that would be terrible. Almost like bun with butter and jam

sudanglo:Waffles for breakfast with syrup! Are you mad? Where's my scrambled egg with baked beans?

I saw Italians somewhere putting jam on their American-style pancakes (the thick and fluffy kind of pancake, not an English pancake or a French crepe that you might roll up with jam).

I do love the (vegetarian variant of the) full English breakfast, though.

Forigite

sudanglo:However weird Esperantists are, and I'm sure that some of them are pretty far out, I can't see them not being imprinted with cultural assumptions of their native lands.

Yes, I speculate that some Esperantists could be rather "far out" but that does not mean that we have to ignore them for the fina venko.

Vegetarian or not the answers to the question what might be found on the breakfast table would be very similar among English Esperantists and different to American Esperantists.

Waffles for breakfast with syrup! Are you mad? Where's my scrambled egg with baked beans?

Scrambled eggs with baked beans??? Sounds like a perfectly good breakfast to me. I am an American, and I sometimes eat tinned sardines in mustard sauce for breakfast.

As Esperanto has no innate culture behind it, no common social environment, no shared geography, no general behaviour rules --, maybe Esperanto is not "culturally neutral", but "cultureless". It does not imprint you.

I am inclined to agree, HB

But didn't you say previously

The language is not neutral, as it is built a posteriori from several Indo-european languages and is European to its core.

Forigite

Yes, HB, and I think this contradiction is enjoyed by many.

So Esperanto is culturally neutral when different parts of Europe have different points of view, but culturally saturated with a common (komuna) European perspective.

There is a connection between the lexicon and turns of phrase (also grammar?) of a language and the culture borne by that language. (Yet perhaps there are some matters that are so deeply entrenched in a culture that they may be referred to as unwritten rules and may not be evidenced in the language.)

Esperanto is in a peculiar position. Perhaps the French have no word for 'queue-jumping', since the rules they have about proper queuing behaviour are different.

However in Esperanto, because of its flexible word building system, a word to express this culturally unacceptable behaviour (for the English) can be readily conjured and has full validity without the necessity of usage, or dictionary validation.

The solution might be to stop calling Esperanto a (kulture) neŭtrala lingvo, but to describe it as an intercultural language.