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Preconceived idea of Esperanto as conceited?

de Moosader, 2013-majo-01

Mesaĝoj: 17

Lingvo: English

Moosader (Montri la profilon) 2013-majo-01 19:35:31

Hey there viroj kaj virinoj -

So I've noticed several places where people act like those who learn Esperanto are conceited and generally just have a bad feeling towards Esperanto and Esperantists. For example:

"I find the idea of an invented language for general consumption to be really irritating. How narcissistic someone must be to write a language and expect others to use it?
... If I met two people speaking Esperanto speaking to one another, I would be sorely tempted to crack their self-righteous euro-centric heads together."

"Fuck Esperanto! Learn a natural language. One steeped in the diversity of cultures from different nations, where evolution through use has shaped it in to an expressive behemoth, not one made-up for the sake of some Pinko subculture."

My question is - why? I feel like I'm missing some backstory here; do people immediately percieve constructed languages to be egotistical? Does it feel like an attack on one's culture?

I see people say "Esperanto is meant to be a second language, not replace your current one", so I'm assuming it's a big part of it.

Thanks for your input.

efilzeo (Montri la profilon) 2013-majo-01 20:09:52

Moosader:Hey there viroj kaj virinoj -

So I've noticed several places where people act like those who learn Esperanto are conceited and generally just have a bad feeling towards Esperanto and Esperantists. For example:

"I find the idea of an invented language for general consumption to be really irritating. How narcissistic someone must be to write a language and expect others to use it?
... If I met two people speaking Esperanto speaking to one another, I would be sorely tempted to crack their self-righteous euro-centric heads together."

"Fuck Esperanto! Learn a natural language. One steeped in the diversity of cultures from different nations, where evolution through use has shaped it in to an expressive behemoth, not one made-up for the sake of some Pinko subculture."

My question is - why? I feel like I'm missing some backstory here; do people immediately percieve constructed languages to be egotistical? Does it feel like an attack on one's culture?

I see people say "Esperanto is meant to be a second language, not replace your current one", so I'm assuming it's a big part of it.

Thanks for your input.
The same here. These responses have more sense in your context given that they could think "why do you want to lose the advantage we have?", but in other contexts have no sense at all. I suppose it immediately appears as a hippie-thing, a save-the-whales thing, at least the glance they have while they're saying these things to me is that.

When these situations happen I immediately start to talk about the economic aspect of it and immediately they turn "oh, maybe isn't that bad".

Moosader (Montri la profilon) 2013-majo-01 20:21:08

efilzeo:
When these situations happen I immediately start to talk about the economic aspect of it and immediately they turn "oh, maybe isn't that bad".
Ooh, can you talk a little bit about the economic aspect of Esperanto? I haven't though of that at all.

RiotNrrd (Montri la profilon) 2013-majo-02 00:47:57

Claude Piron wrote an article regarding peoples psychological reactions to Esperanto that you may want to check out.

erinja (Montri la profilon) 2013-majo-02 02:31:21

I have never personally heard of anyone describing Esperanto as a conceited type of idea.

The negative reactions I usually get usually revolve around it being overly idealistic (utopian ideal that will never happen so why bother?), or useless (no one speaks it so why bother learning?), or too geeky (only geeks learn 'fake' languages).

novatago (Montri la profilon) 2013-majo-02 07:50:30

erinja:I have never personally heard of anyone describing Esperanto as a conceited type of idea.
I have. Anyway, It's like to think any other planned thing is conceited.

Is traffic lights system conceited?
Is Internet conceited?
Are fiction books conceited?
...

Anyway perhaps in some cases the answer is positive, but is that really a problem?. Do we give up internet because the group of persons (or the person) who design it, were egoistical and only thinking about how much porno they were going to enjoy?

I remembering just now that Jimmy Wales was egoistical enough to steal the wikipedia to one of his employees. Do we just don't use anymore wikipedia just because Jimmy Wales is egoistical?

That's the right answer to conceited people, who think esperanto is a conceited idea.

Ĝis, Novatago.

brw1 (Montri la profilon) 2013-majo-02 16:10:18

If we view esperanto in this light we must also say death people are conceited because communicate in a constructed language all forms of sign languages are. We must also add ido, klingnon, and their speakers to the conceited list.

chrisim101010 (Montri la profilon) 2013-majo-04 15:31:20

I believe the people who take on those sort of opinions are too afraid to step away from what appears to be the common opinion. Sometimes, just to show that they support the common opinion, they write stuff like that. Their beliefs are then confirmed when someone else agrees with them, and adds a little extra. There are many forums on many topics that follow this general pattern.

JDnDorks (Montri la profilon) 2013-majo-04 17:51:33

It sound like reactionary anti-intellectualism, to me, particularly our skull-cracking friend. "They's talkin' funny! Git 'em!" Not much to do for it. Dumb, scared people will be dumb and scared.

Moosader (Montri la profilon) 2013-majo-06 04:31:55

RiotNrrd:Claude Piron wrote an article regarding peoples psychological reactions to Esperanto that you may want to check out.
That's a really good article. Thanks!

brw1, I think you mean deaf people, who cannot hear.

So, similarly, how many of you talk about Esperanto to other people you know (online/off), and how many of you talk about the ideals like:
* Common second language, OR making it THE universal language
* Esperanto is about peace

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