I'm considering re-releasing my webcomic in Esperanto, dunno if anyone would be interested in reading it in the first place.

Nornen, you are right. In practice you can't use Esperanto for many things that you can use a national language for.

The Esperantist position, somewhat exaggerated, is that in principle you could 'do anything with Esperanto that you'd do with any other world language'.

Now there are some things that in principle you can't do with Esperanto, at the current stage of development of the language. But it could be used in principle for all the purposes you give examples of.

FractalBloom:I'm considering re-releasing my webcomic in Esperanto, dunno if anyone would be interested in reading it in the first place.

I'm interested in having more comic authors on Esperanimeo, if you'd like to submit your work there.

If you don't to be an author on Esperanimeo, let me know where you're going to post the Esperanto translation and I'll add a link to the resources page.

Email me at RachelJMorris@gmail.com if you're interested!

kaŝperanto:Who reads printer manuals? (or manuals in general)

Good point. Very good point. If you need to read the manual, you won't understand it; if you understand it, you won't need to read it. And this holds for any language.

sudanglo:Nornen, you are right. In practice you can't use Esperanto for many things that you can use a national language for.

The Esperantist position, somewhat exaggerated, is that in principle you could 'do anything with Esperanto that you'd do with any other world language'.

Now there are some things that in principle you can't do with Esperanto, at the current stage of development of the language. But it could be used in principle for all the purposes you give examples of.

I concur. Esperanto has the same communicative power as national languages have. And there is no doubt that in principle you can do in Esperanto everything you do in other languages. But there we have, as you have already pointed out, the big difference: You can do those things in Esperanto in posse, while in other languages you actually do those things in esse. I can in posse fill my bathtub with a tea spoon; nevertheless I don't do it that way. Or I could give birth to dancing stars[1].

The title of this thread is: What is (esse) there to do in Esperanto? and not What could possibly (posse) be done in Esperanto? Hence my comment.

Don't get me wrong: I would be glad if this whole universe of possibilities gradually morphed into a universe of realities, but this is a long way. And it is us, the users of Esperanto, who lay every single brick of this road. For example the woodworking blog in Esperanto (of one of lernu's users) is IMHO exactly the right thing to do: Yank Esperanto out of Academia and the hermetic bubble of Esperantujo and give it a good kick into Restujo.

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[1] Unless Nietzsche lied to me.

There is a chat channel in the MMOG EvE Online (award winning, and longest running multiplayer online game) for Esperanto with about half a dozen players now, from Brazil, USA and Japan. Thinking about setting up an Esperanto Teamspeak or Mumble server for EvE and other online games. Excellent way to practice and put your Esperanto into actual use, especially as many online games are localized (EvE has a huge Russian community for example, and they *do not* speak English!), so you may have no other way to speak to many of the players. I'll be posting a separate topic about this in English and Esperanto threads.

Also, reading books. I'm working on Orwell's 1984, as even though I've read it in English, I'm curious if I get any different feeling reading it in Esperanto.

nornen:
I concur. Esperanto has the same communicative power as national languages have. And there is no doubt that in principle you can do in Esperanto everything you do in other languages. But there we have, as you have already pointed out, the big difference: You can do those things in Esperanto in posse, while in other languages you actually do those things in esse. I can in posse fill my bathtub with a tea spoon; nevertheless I don't do it that way. Or I could give birth to dancing stars[1].

The title of this thread is: What is (esse) there to do in Esperanto? and not What could possibly (posse) be done in Esperanto? Hence my comment.

Don't get me wrong: I would be glad if this whole universe of possibilities gradually morphed into a universe of realities, but this is a long way. And it is us, the users of Esperanto, who lay every single brick of this road. For example the woodworking blog in Esperanto (of one of lernu's users) is IMHO exactly the right thing to do: Yank Esperanto out of Academia and the hermetic bubble of Esperantujo and give it a good kick into Restujo.

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[1] Unless Nietzsche lied to me.

I don't intend to disagree with you in general, but I think this problem is far smaller than it is being made out to be.

Where I live in the US I would generally be unable to buy fish using Spanish, which is likely the 2nd most spoken language. The largest use of Spanish I can get is probably to order food at a Mexican restaurant, depending on how authentic the restaurant and whether or not they hire mainly Spanish speaking workers. There is one Mexican food store in town that probably sells fish, but it would be out of my way to go there. Pick any other language than Spanish and there is practically no benefit to it over Esperanto in terms of usefulness (in my area). Even with Spanish I used it 99% of the time only with other English-speaking natives in Spanish class.

I know in border states in the US I would get more practical use of Spanish, and it would be more marketable of a skill. I imagine in Europe a second language is of similar usefulness. But in general, if I don't live in a country that speaks the language, I don't get much practical use out of it. Also, the more common/practical the use, the more trivial/simple the language. I could probably learn how to order fish in Japanese in a few days with minimal effort, but I won't be talking about the finer details of the fishing industry with the shopkeeper.

When was the last time you had a non-trivial conversation with an employee at your market when buying fish in your native language?

kaŝperanto:I don't intend to disagree with you in general, but I think this problem is far smaller than it is being made out to be.

...

I don't actually deem this to be a problem, more of a challenge or the first baby step towards another situation.

The fact that most US-Americans only speak English and that foreign languages are (in fact or in perception) of no use to them is somewhat idiosyncratic for the US. It is (simplifying it a bit) a huge land mass with only two frontiers and you have spots where for thousands of miles you only have other US-Americans around you. The US is not the only country of this type, but maybe the most typical. There are other countries where most of the population (like e.g. Guatemala) are bilingual (one vernacular language at home and one official "franca" language outside their homes).

Back to the poor fishmonger and the court.
Sure, in central USA I won't be able to buy fish in Spanish. Nor can I in Esperanto. Maybe even there the chance to find a Spanish speaking fishmonger is higher than the chance to find an Esperanto speaking one (surpassing the "Saluton, kiel vi fartas."-stage). You cannot communicate in Spanish in the whole world. Nor in English. Nor in Mandarin. But there exist fishmongers in all native languages[1], so each national language can be used to buy fish in esse.

No doubt, I cannot declare in a Guatemalan court in Welsh, as another user pointed out. But I can in Spanish, Quiche, Qeqchi, Kakchikel, Mam, etc. And I can declar in Welsh in a court in Wales (at least I suppose so). I doubt there is any court in the world where you can declare in Esperanto.

I don't want to talk badly about Esperanto, but maybe play a bit the role of the advocatus diaboli.

If we mutually assure ourselves that anything can be done actually and not hypothetically in Esperanto and all is well, then the current situation won't change. We should be aware that Esperanto nowadays is hermetic with very few points of contact with the outside. Be aware of this and work on this. Like talking about woodworking or playing online games.

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[1] Premise 1: In every country of the world there exists at least one human, so that this human's job is to sell fish.

kaŝperanto:Who reads printer manuals? (or manuals in general)

I do. I read everything; manuals to things I don't even own, End-User License Agreements, ingredient lists, warning labels, dictionaries, full rules and regulations to contests of various sorts... just about anything. I don't know why, somehow I just can't help myself. My family gets annoyed with me because everytime we play a game I want to read the rules again, even if we've played it before.

In theory one may address UNESCO in Esperanto.