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Esperanto soft power?

de patrik, 10 de setembre de 2012

Missatges: 104

Llengua: English

erinja (Mostra el perfil) 5 de novembre de 2013 16.15.42

I use profanity in my daily life, too, but lack of profanity helps keep conversation polite and friendly on the site. It helps to reduce the possibility of offending someone in a website that is used by people from all over the world, with all different cultures.

Memnoch21 (Mostra el perfil) 5 de novembre de 2013 19.49.26

If your goal is to get more people speaking the language then I don't think competing with English is the way to go. You have two options, (1) change Esperanto from one who hopes to one who delivers. Meaning deliver on something useful that can't be done in other languages. Or (2) See below.

I think the argument should be to add knowing more than one language to the bucket list. For example, 'Before I die, I want to swim with sharks, see the pyramids, do 100 push ups non-stop, and learn another language.' Then, you make the argument that learning Japanese will be 8 years of study, Spanish will be 3 years, and Esperanto will be half a year.
The issue is that learning Esperanto isn't easy. It is easy as far as grammar and vocabulary, but not easy to find entertaining materials and methods. We need a podcast that teaches esperanto that is free, downloadable from iTunes, and can be listened to in the car. We need YouTube videos that will take you all the way from "mia nomo estas X" to flirting with women on the other side of the planet in esperanto via Skype.

Want to learn another language? Please select difficulty level.
Easy mode = Esperanto
Normal mode = Spanish
Hard mode = Japanese

erinja (Mostra el perfil) 5 de novembre de 2013 20.17.50

Memnoch21: We need YouTube videos that will take you all the way from "mia nomo estas X" to flirting with women on the other side of the planet in esperanto via Skype.
Which languages offer such a resource?

In my experience, Esperanto offers more free sources for achieving fluency than any other language I can think of. Maybe fewer YouTube videos and podcasts, but with most 'national' languages, people don't achieve fluency via a podcast alone, but also through other, paid, methods. I have never seen a YouTube series that teaches a language from start to finish, for any language. I would be interested to see such a series.

dtgallagher (Mostra el perfil) 6 de novembre de 2013 0.59.05

I think that even suggesting articles about Esperanto to a local newspaper can help. the appeal could be simply that it is a made-up language that people actually use. Who hasn't tried making up a language with their friends when they were little? I think people would recognize that it's not just a fad, though, that it is a solution to many problems. What do you all think?

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