For some of us (not me, not yet anyway) Esperanto might as well be our native tounge. And I'm suprised no one else brought this up: The Tower of Bable. In Jewish(and therefor Christian and so forth) tradition, the Tower was a monument built by man when everyone spoke the same language. God got mad and blew it up, at the same time confusing language so we couldn't work together. Now, I don't see Esperanto leading to a repete, but some religious leaders might. So let's avoid building any big Esperanto towers. Hehe.

Many religious cultures, including several segments of Christianity, will not support religious texts in other languages even outside of their own culture's language because they believe too much is lost int he translation. Muslims are a good example of this and many do not believe their holy book should be translated outside of its original language; that all participants in the religion should learn the language in order to read the book, and not translate the book into their own language. Its almost an obedience to God issue in other religions, translating holy books into your own language is the easy/cheap way to go where learning the original language is a challenge and shows more committment to God.

Myself, I am very much a Christian, and I would love to read the Bible in Esperanto, but only if I can understand it. There is no point in reading religious holy books in a language you cannot understand very well because I feel it takes away from the meaning behind the words. I would never use an Esperanto Bible as a teaching tool.

Anyway, as for English already considered an international language, I think this is mainly a perspective from an English-speaking vantage point or a vatage point from people who have been forced to learn English to communicate in their communities, jobs, etc. People who run their daily lives in other countries in completely different languages, many of them I'm sure couldn't care less about English. We can't forget that English is still tied to a certain culture despite its world-wide use. Its considered by many to be a Western-World language that has basically infiltrated the world-wide spectrum of languages because of the population of the western world.

For the average person, it may seem rediculous to bother learning a fully international language, and for good reason. When you can live your life in your native tongue, why bother? If you are a hard worker who has to work a very large amount of hours just to support your family, what time do you have to learn another language? If you spend all day raising your family, what priority could learning an international language possibly be? These are the things that people have to think about and then find answers to these questions that fit into these peoples lives in a significant way. The people who say "Hey look, this is a useful language if everyone was just to learn it" are probably the people who are *not* working 18 hours a day to support their family, or running a house while taking care of 7 children, etc etc etc.. the point of view that Esperanto is useful is mainly a Western-thinking philosophy I think, and not everyone in the world has this kind of mindset.

Until we can get into the heads of the average person in a completely different culture than the fully developed western world, and until we can answer their objections with solid answers, I think Esperanto will continue to be an unknown language to the majority of people.

On top of that, In order to start formulating answers to questions and objections of a large cross-section of people and cultures, these questions have to be looked at in my opinion by government/political people and organizatinos as well as large-scale social organizations. A poster in your room, office, local library, etc. is all well and good, but at the end of the day if 50 people see it, probably one person or less will actually pay attention. Because its just a silly blip on their everyday radar. But if larger organizations that have an impact on the people of a nation can be petitioned to look more indepthly at the issues surrounding the idea of this international language and its benefits, then there would start to be the possibility of reaching the masses rather than that sad 50 people that actually bothered to look back at your local library. The possibility of exposure to hundreds of thousands of people only comes through following through with our social and governmental infrastructure.

Ok I've rambled on enough, hehe

I have my own idea about getting Esperanto out there.  It seems to me that the direct approach is not working so well.  Presenting Esperanto as a candidate for the language of the world not only puts it in direct competition with languages like Spanish and English, it opens the doors to the knee-jerk backlash against the idea of a planned language.  The people I've told about it usually don't like the idea of it as soon as I mention that it was invented by someone, however many logical arguments I make for it.  Even knowing nothing about the language, people tend to step away from it, in my experience.

How do we get past this?  One can not convince another of the merit of something if the other will not listen.

Well, I think I have a solution.  I don't think that people like the above can understand the benefits of this language unless they can see these benefits for themselves.  Thus our goal should not be to get people to accept Esperanto as the international language, rather we should just get people to try it, regardless of reason.  Just get them to start, and let Esperanto do the rest of the work, itself.

Not helpful?  Not really.  The above paragraph leaves out the critical question of how we get people to try.  What reasons will people accept?

Just about every successful technology has a "killer app,"  Something that gets the people to use it.  For example, the killer app of the computer is, arguably, games.  Computers weren't originally made for games, but games are what brought people to them in droves (again, arguable).  So, how about Esperanto?  Being an international language isn't the killer app, or we wouldn't be having this discussion.  Pasporta Servo(http://www.tejo.org/ps/)  is a great candidate for a killer app, however, I think I may know an even better one.

Perhaps you have heard of the propedeutic value of Esperanto (http://www.answers.com/topic/propedeutic-value-of-...)?  I think that we should use this information and present Esperanto as a language-learning tool.  At least in Japan, where I live now, many people are spending obscene amounts of money to study English.  If we told them "Try a year or two of Esperanto, and you'll pick of English faster," or "A year of Esperanto and a year of English is better than two years of English," and showed them the information above, they'd be more likely to try Esperanto, which is all we really need.  We don't need to restrict ourselves to English either.  We can present Esperanto as "A Bridge to Other Languages", or something catchier.

My worry with this is that maybe people will not take Esperanto seriously as anything more than a language-learning tool, but once again, I think the advantages of Esperanto that people discover will outweigh this problem by far.  It's difficult to watch a Korean and an Argentinian fluently discuss philosophy after only a year of study and not consider Esperanto as a real language.

I worry that we're trying to get Esperanto to win a race against other languages for international status, and I don't think we can.  The other languages have trained longer, have bigger leg-muscles and are probably taking steroids.  Instead, my belief is that we should have Esperanto jump on other languages' backs and ride them to the finish.

This was quite a bit longer that I had planned.  Congratulations to all who read this far.

Kwame Alexander
Osaka, Japan

Good points.  The two things which had brought me to Esperanto were the Baha'i Faith and the propaedeutic advantages of Esperanto.  I'd tried this approach in Hefei, PRC, but with only some success.  here in Changchun, PRC, however, it's quite different. This September I'll be teaching Esperanto to primary school students as part of their compulsory curriculum in the Jilin Experimental school in Changchun.

 

If anyone is serious about comming to China to teach English and possibly Esperanto, I'll post more informaiton about it in the next few days, hopefully.

I also have a T-shirt in the Chinese language about Esperanto.  It's a quote from Bing Xin, a famous Chinese author about during the time of the Republic of China.   It's always a shock for the locals to see a foreigner wearing a T-shirt in Chinese with a quote from some famous Chinese about Esperanto, with them not having realized she even knew it.  Seems as if I'm teaching them something about her they didn't even know themselves. Very effective.

Hi,

I came across some unexpected and unacknowledged Esperanto today:

"She took a deep breath and counted to five. Unu, du, tri, kvar, kvin."

[James Patrick Kelly: i]The Edge of Nowhere [/i]in Asimov's Science Fiction June 2005]

I expect the science-fiction community to be more susceptible to E-o than others.

As far as religion is concerned, most, if not all, religions have a language of origin: Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Sanskrit, Zend-Avestan, Pali, Panjabi and Japanese.

Exceptional religions may be so "far out" from the mainstream, that they would not add to the reputation of E-o.

Examples which occur to me:

The Church of All Worlds: This had its origin in the novel Stranger In a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein. Since in the novel initiates were required to learn Martian, it would not be too much to ask for All-Worlders  (Akvfratoj) to learn Esperanto. Heinlein was no Tolkien as far as inventing languages was concerned; the only Martian word I can remember him using was "grok", which I would prefer to be rendered as "groki" rather than "drinki".

Unification Church (Moonies). origin Korea.

Church of Scientology: origin USA. I would try to keep them out, considering what they've done to the English Language!

Jedi: origin George Lucas (La Forteco estu kun vi! - perhaps "malkontraŭ" would be better than "kun", but I would draw the line on "malkontraŭu", even if it is good Esperanto.

I was raised as a R Catholic, and I would be interested to know the attitude of the new Pope and his associates to Esperanto.

Best wishes,

Peter (piteredfan)

 

Pinto - What about the denaskaj speakers of Esperanto?

 

Peter - Philip Jose Farmer made some use of Esperanto in his Riverworld Series. It's pretty interesting.

 

I think translating religious texts into Esperanto is just as good an idea as translating anything else - it gives a view into a culture and religion that might not be available in someone's own national language.

I have found that the best way to get the conversation started is to speak it in public with a friend. Be ready to hand the interested person(a) a bookmark that has a brief description of what esperanto is, a website (ELNA's, Lernu's, etc.) and the contact information for the local group.

In our Yahoo group, we have a template that you can personalize with the local group's information. The web address for the group is: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/EsperantoGrupodeSanD...

I also made some attractive T-shirts with many flags from around the world that says:

"Many cultures, One common future, One common second language" I'll be happy to email the design to anybody who is interested. You can print the design on the back and an Esperanto symbol, small, on the front, or the name oof the local group, anyway, you get the idea...

Or why not just come to China and teach Esperanto here.  That's what I've been doing.  And starting this September, I'll be doing so officially in a primary school for the first time.  The Institute I'm going to be working for is actually very enthusiastic about the idea and will help me create a new curriculum as well!

 

And that's just the start!  The institute's plan is to also weave moral education through the entire curriculum using quotes from the world's religions to do so.

One way to promote Esperanto in China is to download QQ (otherwise known as OICQ, the Chinese version of ICQ).  You can download it here in English:

http://im.qq.com/qq/mo.shtml?/download/qqe.shtml

The Chinese love QQ, and nearly every Chinese has a QQ number.  Some also know English too.  One idea could also be for lernu.com members to blitz certain cities using QQ or ICQ now and then (Most Chinese prefer QQ to ICQ, though those who use ICQ nearly all know English from my experience with it, with some exceptions.  Most QQ users, however, only know Chinese, but that's because QQ is the one most go for.  There are still many who know English too.

One advantage with this is that Chinese would then see proof that there are indeed foreigners who know Esperanto.

 

And if you want a recommendation for which city to blitz first, may I recommed Changchun, in Jilin province, in the P.R.C.