I have little interest in this troll's posts, but the consequent discussion has me wrangling with some internal questions.

Obviously, any concerns or desires for Esperanto to become a dominate second language are gonna remain strictly hypothetical. I don't think too many modern Esperantistoj are terribly concerned with the older notions of the fina venko, instead willing to let Esperanto continue as it has been -- an eminently usable, though intellectual curiosity with its own emergent culture.

But this talk of English or another language effectively eliminating other natural languages due to ease of global communication... I find myself asking the question: Why is this bad? Perhaps because I am a native English speaker, I don't understand the language as cultural identity, but still I think that the pragmatist in me would see the benefit of a single world language regardless of my mother tongue. The only thing that might be lost is other languages, and I'm not at all convinced that that would truly be a loss. Certainly there would always be linguists or cultural die-hards to maintain the near-extinct languages' literature etc.

The only result I see of a language achieving global domination and eradicating opposing natural languages is that everyone would be able to speak with everyone. How is that bad? I enjoy other languages, and the feeling of the "other" when in a foreign land, but those seem like pretty petty benefits of our confounded tongues when contrasted with the benefits of a world language.

xdzt:But this talk of English or another language effectively eliminating other natural languages due to ease of global communication... I find myself asking the question: Why is this bad?

It is bad because a language is not just a means of communication. It's much more than that. And if it had not been so, the English and French would have made their writing more phonetic.

xdzt:The only result I see of a language achieving global domination and eradicating opposing natural languages is that everyone would be able to speak with everyone.

That's just ridiculous. No good will come out of this Mcdonaldisation of languages. But we will certainly lose a lot.

xdzt:How is that bad?

That is bad because if you were to follow this line of thought, it's good to let one country conquer all the others. Then we would all be citizens of a single nation, and we could save a lot of money we currently spend on defence.

Demian:

xdzt:The only result I see of a language achieving global domination and eradicating opposing natural languages is that everyone would be able to speak with everyone.

That's just ridiculous. No good will come out of this Mcdonaldisation of languages. But we will certainly lose a lot.

What will we lose?

Demian:That is bad because if you were to follow this line of thought, it's good to let one country conquer all the others. Then we would all be citizens of a single nation, and we could save a lot of money we currently spend on defence.

Provided it was done with a minimum of bloodshed, I'm not at all convinced that this would be a bad thing. I don't think it could be done; culture is currently too varied to unite under any but the thinnest of governing bodies, but I don't see it as being a necessarily bad thing, either.

xdzt:What will we lose?

It's hard to find a text in English (not translated by the Soviets from Russian) that celebrates Sputnik. Instead all (and that includes textbooks in India) we get to hear is: It was a potential missile and a challenge to the United States. Personally I don't care if it was a challenge to an XYZ country. It was the first time we, as a species, hurled something into space. And we, at least in the Anglosphere, don't celebrate that as much as the landing on the Moon, which was also a challenge to the Soviets.

Now, if English were to become the universal language, that's what the coming generations will learn; a prejudiced history, from an American perspective. Therefore, with the imposition or adoption of a single language we risk losing different perspectives.

Or take the Mayans. We don't even know what we have lost by eliminating a culture, a language.

xdzt:

Demian: if you were to follow this line of thought, it's good to let one country conquer all the others. Then we would all be citizens of a single nation, and we could save a lot of money we currently spend on defence.

Provided it was done with a minimum of bloodshed, I'm not at all convinced that this would be a bad thing.

A "minimum" of bloodshed. That's subjective. Where do you draw the line? A million people, two million, ten million....

Demian:

xdzt:What will we lose?

It's hard to find a text in English (not translated by the Soviets from Russian) that celebrates Sputnik. Instead all (and that includes textbooks in India) we get to hear is: It was a potential missile and a challenge to the United States. Personally I don't care if it was a challenge to an XYZ country. It was the first time we, as a species, hurled something into space. And we, at least in the Anglosphere, don't celebrate that as much as the landing on the Moon, which was also a challenge to the Soviets.

Now, if English were to become the universal language, that's what the coming generations will learn; a prejudiced history, from an American perspective. Therefore, with the imposition or adoption of a single language we risk losing different perspectives.

All of this has been clearly described in Claude Piron's papers long ago. English is really bad candidate for a global language - it is perfectly good for the English, Americans, Australians and so on. But the rest of the world need something new, refreshing, simpler and working well for all of us, not only for the English. Today world communication is ill and English is no cure.

Paquillo:La imperio atakas denove.

Thi empair atak agen

Did you want to write like this just for fun ?

If not, we write:
The empire attacks again.

Why the Esperanto movement would be racist and pro-genocide ?

I think that the Esperanto movement want to expand Esperanto in the world.

xdzt:But this talk of English or another language effectively eliminating other natural languages due to ease of global communication... I find myself asking the question: Why is this bad? Perhaps because I am a native English speaker, I don't understand the language as cultural identity, but still I think that the pragmatist in me would see the benefit of a single world language regardless of my mother tongue. The only thing that might be lost is other languages, and I'm not at all convinced that that would truly be a loss. Certainly there would always be linguists or cultural die-hards to maintain the near-extinct languages' literature etc.

See, that's source of the hostilities in a nutshell, especially against any natural language that tries to take the throne. The whole language diversity argument as I understand it is almost entirely a defense against eradication of cultural identity...not to mention cultural imperialism by the "uber-language" country/countries of origin (and the cultural assumptions and biases that come with it).

This is actually happening in Indonesia, as the NY Times laid it out a few years ago. There's a generation of upper-class children getting their primary education in English-language schools, and in spite of still retaining some national pride, they take a "negative pride" in how awful they are at their mother tongue...if they speak it at all.

Note to edcxjo: I was the one who asked that blogger if s/he saw the irony in conducting this conversation in a language that has wreaked the havoc in reality that Esperanto had in their fantasy hypothesis. The answer wasn't surprising in the slightest (paraphrased from memory, because I'm not about to read it twice): No, they didn't see any irony at all. They went on to say that sometimes you do what you have to do, and the problem isn't so much English as what people do with it.

I didn't dare ask if they saw the irony in that statement, either, but I'm sure lot of us remember being an age where we thought we had all the answers.

I hope, one day Esperanto will be adapted as a compelsary foreign language in schools, instead of present cumbersome, costly, low efficient and time cosuming English language in non-anglophone countries.
A side benefit of learning Esperanto is a sense of logical reasoning aquired by the learners, which could be helpful for better understanding of mother thong even. Such a great achivement cannot be expected from an irreqular language like English.
Learning other languages can be left for later stages and as extra curriculum.

Honestly I think most Esperanto speakers today get into because it is a relatively easy language to learn that allows you to talk with people all over the earth. The idea of it as a universal secondary language is a dream where it would be an easy to learn language so other people don't have to learn your irregular language that is probably a dialect anyway (like high German works in Germany, Austria, etc.around local dialects).
As for the destroying local languages that will happen as long as you have people who are: a)mobile and b)exist in countries larger than a few tiny villages in geographic isolation.
Finally it would not in a mobile population that intermarries among people of different ancestries to keep teaching all your families ancestral languages. For example on my ancestry I would have to speak somewhere between 8 and 15 languages as a native speaker. Which is rather impractical.