Being fluent in English to some extent myself, and reading all the news about English-language programmes around the world in the backdrop of a global economic crisis with the prospect of a US dollar collapse (and at the same time expressing some interest in alternative linguae franca like Esperanto), I’ve always wondered how much has been spent by governments around the world to teach their children English, and how much is that compared to Greek or Japanese public debt and whether their investments were paying off or not. Is English as a lingua franca yet another economic bubble on the verge of popping?

Then, there's Rio+20 earlier this year, when some of the delegates came forward to suggest Esperanto as the neutral language of sustainable international interaction of the future. According to them, "Widespread use of the international language Esperanto as a second language – once it is seriously kickstarted with official institutional support – will become an independently sustainable practice, because Esperanto is economically and politically neutral and easy to learn, and its users respect all the other languages used in the world’s educational systems."

I've heard a lot of people saying that Esperanto is more cost-effective to teach than English because of its grammatical simplicity and such, just that there are not enough academic journals in Esperanto to justify its worth in modern society. But as a language of commerce, I don't see a problem for Esperanto other than the overwhelming current dominance of English, now being challenged by Mandarin and such.

So this is what I come up with. One of the ways for Esperantists to further their cause is to examine the costs of spreading English to the world in recent years (say 1990 onwards), giving facts and figures on how much each country spends in teaching its kids English and the success rate, altogether in relation to relevant economic indicators such as GDP, national debts and whatnot, not to mention some future projections on the consequences of keeping with the old course on the world economy. If they can convince/prove to the world with adequate research that English as a lingua franca will be economically unsustainable in the foreseeable future then they have their first step.

So, what do you guys think? Any better idea than this? Is this the 'positive transformative spiritual' change that those New Agers are looking for around the otherwise-feared December 21 date? Do you agree that issues on economic sustainability can determine the next mode of international communication?

This idea totally makes sense. In college i plan to major in International Studies, and I already plan to write a paper supporting the usage of Esperanto as the lingua franca for international business and law.

Translate your message into English please, ĉevino

erinja:Translate your message into English please, ĉevino

It's OK I can Google-translate it

burungmarah:

erinja:Translate your message into English please, ĉevino

It's OK I can Google-translate it

It's actually the rules of the forum; you must write a message in the language of the forum that you post it in.

You can include a translation into another language but you can't write your message only in the wrong language.

It's good to get into a habit of checking the language before posting. Administrators are allowed to delete messages that are in the wrong language, so your message can be deleted if you accidentally posted it in the wrong language and never translated it.

cxevino:Se paroli angle kial esperanto? Plimulto da esperantistoj ne scipovas la lingvon... Oni scipovas duan lingvon nur ĉesinte paroli la unuan. Ĉefe kiam tiu unua estas forta konkuranto al tutmonda helplingvo! Tial la plej fluaj parolantoj de esperanto ĉiam estis la sennaciistoj, sed da ili preskaŭ ne plu estas...

Patrick, je suppose que vous êtes Breton, et que vous comprenez parfaitement le français. Avez-vous lu les messages précedents de Erinja? Prière de traduire vos messages en anglais.

Patrick, I guess you're Breton, and that you fully understand French. Did you read the previous posts of Erinja? Please translate your Esperanto messages in English.

Amike.

Call me crazy, but French stopped being the international language early last century, so why are we still talking about a "lingua franca".
Should we not be talking about an "international language", or "internacia lingvo"?

cxevino:Se paroli angle kial esperanto?

I have a different question: If we speak Esperanto, why an English-language board?

@Bemused: Wikipedia has an answer to nearly everything.

Bemused:Call me crazy, but French stopped being the international language early last century, so why are we still talking about a "lingua franca".
Should we not be talking about an "international language", or "internacia lingvo"?

lingua franca is a term, not French. From Wiki:

"The original Lingua Franca was a mixed language composed mostly (80%) of Italian with a broad vocabulary drawn from Turkish, French, Greek, Arabic, Portuguese and Spanish. It was in use throughout the eastern Mediterranean as the language of commerce and diplomacy in and around the Renaissance era. At that time, Italian speakers dominated seaborne commerce in the port cities of the Ottoman empire. Franca was the Italian word for Frankish. Its usage in the term lingua franca originated from its meaning in Arabic and Greek, dating from before the Crusades and during the Middle Ages, whereby all Western Europeans were called "Franks" or Faranji in Arabic and Phrankoi in Greek during the times of the late Eastern Roman Empire.[3] The term lingua franca is first recorded in English in 1678."

The English forum is different from other boards in that it is effectively an international forum, as can be easily judged by the locations of the contributors. It reflects the fact that English is the de facto international language.

But obviously, it is much easier for many who can read English well enough, to post their contributions in Esperanto rather than English. If an active command of English were that easy to acquire, then one wouldn't need Esperanto.

A good reading command of Esperanto can be acquired in 1-3 months. So what is the problem?