And a recent half hour radio programme on Esperanto here in the UK (on Radio 4) did a similar thing. This is definitely not the sort of presentation to win hearts and minds.

sudanglo:And a recent half hour radio programme on Esperanto here in the UK (on Radio 4) did a similar thing. This is definitely not the sort of presentation to win hearts and minds.

Did you/someone post a link to that here? The reviewer was an aspiring Esperantist, right? I'd say he was at least fairer than I expected, and as a speaker at least he knows what he is talking about to some extent. You Brits seem to have more appreciation for honesty and a realist's perspective than we do.

I wonder if some of this is just "fantastic" reporting, and they are trying to make it look as weird as possible so that they might get more views. There is a show on National Geographic called "Doomsday Preppers" (or at least there was, it's been awhile since I've watched TV). They interviewed many "preppers" and would rate how well-prepared they were for disaster scenarios. Some of these people are literally crazy, but I'm sure the majority of them are just sane (not normal) people who choose to be prepared for the worst. They just need viewers, so they'll naturally gravitate towards the extremists. There was one guy with an impressive aquaponics setup in his backyard where he utilized his in-ground pool for fish, had chickens on a wire mesh above the fish water, and had all kinds of vegetables growing everywhere else. The only input they had was fish and chicken feed IIRC. I'm sure his neighbors "loved" him, though.

Another example would be the American Idol show, where by some miracle the pre-celebrity judges let terrible singers through to the spotlight. I highly doubt that they don't intend for this to happen.

sudanglo:And a recent half hour radio programme on Esperanto here in the UK (on Radio 4) did a similar thing. This is definitely not the sort of presentation to win hearts and minds.

kaŝperanto:Another example would be the American Idol show, where by some miracle the pre-celebrity judges let terrible singers through to the spotlight. I highly doubt that they don't intend for this to happen.

The media has a vested interest in attracting viewers, keeping them entertained, and showing them what they want to see (e.g., reinforcements of stereotypes, including "Esperanto is the weirdos' language" ) - but not necessarily in accuracy. It's a self-perpetuating situation.

And, regarding the (ad hominem) criticism that, "Esperanto is spoken by weird people", I would simply respond: So what? A language does not itself have the characteristics of its speakers. Dutch is spoken by statistically taller-than-average people, but it would be a category mistake to say that Dutch is a "tall" language. It is the same for Esperanto being a "weird" language (if, indeed, it is true that Esperantists are weird, or whether this should be a problem).

sudanglo:Following up on a link in a recent forum thread, I came across a formulation of the case against Esperanto, which I think puts it very neatly.

I quote: Very few people speak it, and most of those that do are odd people.

So the issue can be presented like this. What reason can be presented for learning Esperanto which does not depend on the current number of speakers - has force when the numbers of speakers is low?

It will eventually happen that Esperanto assumes the role that its creator, L. L. Zamenhof, claimed for it: the one and only international auxiliary language. However, in this life no one is exempt from the Law of Immediate Profitability (or, at least, Immediate Usability). An international auxiliary language, however, depends on many people, widely distributed, taking up the language at the same time. This is, indeed, technically possible, because the governments of the world, in a temporary fit of sanity, could all agree to support this endeavor. Zamenhof recognized this dynamic from the outset, and wasted much time, energy, and money attempting to leap that chasm. His resulting early death, at the age of 57, during the midst of the Great War, amounted to his crash-and-burn at the bottom of that chasm.

Esperanto, however, has immediately-profitable use as a language of documentation. Zamenhof's great blunder was failing to recognize this and shift gears. The recognition of this depends on appreciating the crying need, even in the most advanced sectors of the world, for documentation. In retrospect, all the high-profile tragedies that have paraded across the front pages of the newspapers of the world are traceable to a shocking lack of documentation - the sinking of the riverboat Slocum in the East River of New York City in 1904, the fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City in 1911, the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, and the capsize of the riverboat Eastland in the Chicago River in 1915 - to take some examples from the era of Zamenhof.

Promoting Esperanto primarily as an international auxiliary language is like a boxer leading with his right. It's just bad strategy. Esperanto needs a great left-hook, and it has one: documentation. This documentation-use of Esperanto has occurred, inevitably, although only partly consciously, from the beginning. Every time, for example, that someone translates a poem from a given ethnic language into Esperanto, this amounts to documenting the poem for those people into whose ethnic language the poem has not yet been translated.

The strength of documentation is that, unlike real-time international communication, it can be done unilaterally.

Documentation of language itself is a vast endeavor that awaits anyone willing to contribute.

mkj1887:Esperanto, however, has immediately-profitable use as a language of documentation.

There is a large Esperanto section of wikipedia, which backups your point. I have never gone there but that I what I have heard.

However, what if I want to use Esperanto to chat with people in China or Brazil, rather than using it to look up historical events?

I did a poll and it seems as though people like using Esperanto because it connects them with other people.

Concerning the aforementioned propaedeutic value of Esperanto:

Basically studying any foreign language will help the learner to more easily learn other foreign languages in the future. The big step is the first foreign language as it removes some mental blocks and teaches us that (to use Christa's words) "language X is not just English with other words."

For instance in Germany, Latin classes are always praised for their propaedeutic value, saying that if you study Latin then any other foreign language will come easily to you.

What brings more propaedeutic value? A language which is closely related to your mother tongue or a language which is very different from it?

What special propaedeutic value has Esperanto that other languages lack? If we want to promote Esperanto for this reason we should have a good answer to this question. The fact that it is highly regular isn't enough, as there are several (many?) national languages which are highly regular, too (mostly agglutinating or isolating ones).

Why Esperanto and not for instance Mandarin? Or Turkish? Or Toki Pona?

Especially Toki Pona. It is also a constructed language, but never intended to be an IAL. And due to its design criteria it really helps you realize and analyze an important item: the stony way from signifiant to signifié. You don't have to focus on participles, agreement rules, tenses or number, you get down to the very basics of language. sina wile kama soma e toki sin la toki Epelanto li pona lili tawa sina. taso ni la toki pona li pona suli tawa sina.

jdawdy:The documentary film "The Universal Language" did nothing to dispel this, and indeed, I think it tried to present Esperanto exactly this way.

[...]

A non-Esperantist who watches the film will come to two conclusions: The heyday of Esperanto was in the 1920s, and people who speak Esperanto are weird.

I'd like to argue that this kind of publicising of Esperanto is not actually that bad. Consider the following scenario.

Suppose Bob has heard of EO on some TV show. The show presented EO somewhat similar to the way you've just described. Bob heretofore has never heard of EO. Now, EO is mildly associated with weirdness in his mind.

Bob, an oftulo - an average guy with average tastes, who doesn't usually like to be labelled "weird", who just likes to sit down and have a beer in front of the telly after a hard day - is not inclined to learn EO. However, he would have been be equally disinclined to learn Esperanto if he had never even heard of it to begin with! It follows that the TV show hasn't really caused Esperantujo to lose Bob as a potential future learner.

But now the word "Esperanto" is not completely meaningless for Bob. Suppose Bob later has a chance encounter with a person (maybe an acquaintance, maybe someone on the bus) who, it transpires, is an Esperantist. Esperantists are in general pretty good about not egregiously misrepresenting the language to non-speakers - they're aware of the possible stereotypes, if not complete ignorance. This particular Esperantist might be "weird", perhaps, but nonetheless Bob now has a face to attach to EO. Bob now knows that Esperantists actually exist in the real world. EO is not a "dead" language - and it is that particular false belief which is the real doozy. The worst kind of publicity is none at all.

After all this, Bob might not be *more* inclined to learn Esperanto, but then again, he's an oftulo. He's not particularly intellectually curious, and wouldn't be enthused about learning the language no matter how much positive publicity for EO he had seen. So neither the Esperantist's weirdness, nor the TV show, really caused him to be more dissuaded than he was already (from his initial total ignorance). Both are, in this case, a non-issue.

So, instead of worrying about how EO is perceived among those who would probably never learn it anyway - it would be more productive to throw our sales pitch at people a little more intellectually curious than Bob. These people would not necessarily find "oddness" so negative, and would perhaps be less inclined to make a general assumption about Esperanto without looking into it for themselves.

sudanglo:I quote: Very few people speak it, and most of those that do are odd people.

The matter is: too less speak it daily (in real-time, in public).

sudanglo:In any case, no other tactic used by those who support Esperanto has in 100 years been effective in producing the numbers of Esperanto speakers that are required for Esperanto to fully fulfil its purpose. So it is definitely time for a new approach

Well, some prefer to learn foreign languages which overlap with their own native language(s), some prefer no interferences at all for maximum exotic attractiveness, some prefer to get most practical benefit only, etc. So, how any one foreign language only could fit this needs?

nornen: sina wile kama sona e toki sin la toki Epelanto li pona lili tawa sina. taso ni la toki pona li pona suli tawa sina.

mi sona ala e toki sina. mi sona e nimi ali pi toki pona, taso mi sona ala e kulupu nimi.

That is to say, that I know all the words, but still don't understand sentences very well, especially with "la". Is your sentence saying, that if you want to learn a language, Esperanto is okay, but Toki Pona is better? I'm afraid all my studying of Toki Pona has been very casual and sporadic, so I'm probably not as fluent as I might be otherwise.