sudanglo:
Imagine the snob value that being able to speak English has in certain countries, being applicable to Esperanto. If only the crème de la crème spoke Esperanto, who wouldn't want to learn it?

I'm not sure that would work. Classical music has snob value. And for 99% of the population, it has nothing else to recommend it.

I am reminded of the Ulpan method in Israel (Hebrew taught in Hebrew), and the Esperanto equivalent, the Rekta Metodo, originally pioneered by Andreas Cseh. Of course, this requires the teacher to be a very advanced speaker.

Bruso:

sudanglo:
Imagine the snob value that being able to speak English has in certain countries, being applicable to Esperanto. If only the crème de la crème spoke Esperanto, who wouldn't want to learn it?

I'm not sure that would work. Classical music has snob value. And for 99% of the population, it has nothing else to recommend it.

That isn't true at all. The simple fact that "99%" of movie scores use classical music supports this.

I believe (from the rest of his post) that sudanglo was more talking about Esperanto itself becoming popular/famous from the popular/famous people speaking it. Pop music would be a better analogy in this case.

sudanglo:I would also like to see other people's ideas as well.

Why, just send them to lernu.net. Imagine the time and trouble you'd save.

Here in the US maybe is some of the commercially artificially pumped-up pop stars and "celebrities" were to learn Esperanto, we would probably see something like the reaction to that one actor going in for Scientology. A lot of people (who should be learning something worthwhile and reading about the true problems of our society) devote time to these "celebrities" but in reality don't identify with them. So I really don't think that if one of them would devote herself or himself to Esperanto that it would change much.
As for our political elite, that doesn't work either. Bush spoke like an uneducated country kid (bumpkin)with poor grammar and limited vocabulary but nobody I know wanted to emulate him. On the other side, our president Barack Obama speaks in full grammatical sentences with a rich vacabulary and then again (alas!) nobody tries to emulate him (I wish they did). The real influence makers here are that 1% of heartless, self-centered, money-addicted financial "stars" (I guess that they are now all in Davos). Our own George Soros is one of them. THEY are the pushers for English - even if they speak it like I do Italian (not too well) they drone on and on in "English" to show that they are part of that elite.

robbkvasnak:THEY are the pushers for English - even if they speak it like I do Italian (not too well) they drone on and on in "English" to show that they are part of that elite.

The same kind of reasoning you did with English channel of Deutsche Welle. You present yourself academic alike, so you also should reasoning academic alike from most possible different points of views.

Can you imagine 50 million speakers of Esperanto arising just from the grass roots.

We need to have the movers and shakers of our societies on our side, and the time to recruit these people is before they become persons of influence.

Imagine you are a bright young student (maybe a future prime minister, president, head of education, captain of industry) who happens to stumble across an Esperanto lernolibro. If this book presents the language as just another language, this may well not excite your interest.

For such people it is vital that in the first few pages the power of the structure of the language be revealed. 'Saluton. Kio esta via nomo' isn't going to do that.

Of course that doesn't mean that their shouldn't be 'lerniloj' which teach the language as you might teach any national language.

sudanglo:Can you imagine 50 million speakers of Esperanto arising just from the grass roots.

Should idealism ever have to express itselves non-realistic?

sudanglo:We need to have the movers and shakers of our societies on our side, and the time to recruit these people is before they become persons of influence.

I very like your categories linear, 'pro-active'(activism) "movers" and innovative, hyper-active, non-linear "shakers".

sudanglo:Imagine you are a bright young student (maybe a future prime minister, president, head of education, captain of industry) who happens to stumble across an Esperanto lernolibro. If this book presents the language as just another language, this may well not excite your interest.

Depends on. Maybe those ones who only want to escape from reality, those ones probably will look for more exotic foreign languages. Maybe those who want to apply some new foreign language as quick as possible, those ones will look for foreign language, which has most possible interferences inter regarding user's native language and regarding foreign language.

sudanglo:For such people it is vital that in the first few pages the power of the structure of the language be revealed. 'Saluton. Kio esta via nomo' isn't going to do that.

See above. It depends on someones personal wish how exotic some new foreign language has to be.

sudanglo:Of course that doesn't mean that their shouldn't be 'lerniloj' which teach the language as you might teach any national language.

I have to remain with my former opinion. I would like but I can not see some difference.

sudanglo:For such people it is vital that in the first few pages the power of the structure of the language be revealed. 'Saluton. Kio esta via nomo' isn't going to do that.

Do you think forcing someone to jump through a hundred hoops just to learn that o=noun qualifies as revealing, quickly, the power of the structure of the language?

As I recall the old ten-lesson postal course revealed, within a page or two, the power of the structure of the language, while telling you up front (and with a grammar-based teaching method) that o is a noun.

spreecamper:

robbkvasnak:THEY are the pushers for English - even if they speak it like I do Italian (not too well) they drone on and on in "English" to show that they are part of that elite.

The same kind of reasoning you did with English channel of Deutsche Welle. You present yourself academic alike, so you also should reasoning academic alike from most possible different points of views.

Pls explain. I don't understand what you are trying to say. Furthermore, I did not write about the content of the English language channel of Deutsche Welle but rather about the content and language usage of the German language channel. If you want to be tongue-in-cheek please try to remain courteous. The pragmatics of English usage vary somewhat from those in German and what may sound okay in German comes across as unnecessarily brusque in English - at least in American English.