Armand6:---

One of the creators of Youtube is a Bangali. Without him there would be no Paypal either because he designed the security infrastructure of it.

Steve Jobs was 50% Egyptian.

It has more to do with culture than race. It is because Europeans have the most liberal cultures. When you have a liberal culture, then you are free to explore new ideas, and Everyone can follow their own path in life. Also, European culture is very scientific.

Esperanto is clearly eurocentric. The person behind the project built it on the bases of languages he already knew, which were primarily from the Romance, Germanic and Slavic families. His choices of vocabulary were taken from those languages, especially if they contained similar words for the same thing. Those languages were European ones.

Z was a native Russian-speaker (Slavic), spoke Yiddish (Germanic, although with other additional influences) in his neighbourhood, used Hebrew (an exception in that it's not from one of those three main groups) in the synagogue, learned French (Romance) and German (Germanic) in school, followed by Latin (the mother of the Romance family) and Greek (not from one of the main groups, though an influence in their vocabulary) in high school. In 1875 (aged 15) he started learning English (Germanic) and after he married, moved to Warsaw and raised a family there, learned Polish (Slavic), which was the native language of his children. (Point to note: Although people often state that Z was Polish, he wasn't. Bialystok was in the Russian Empire at the time he was born and not in Poland, and he only learned Polish in adult life.)

Then you have the fact that after Z himself, the next most industrious wordsmiths were the French in late 1890s/early 1900s, who introduced tonnes of new words which tended to be based on their own language, many of which were utterly superfluous in my view.

Given all that, how could Esperanto be considered anything other than very European?

I agree with points about the inherent unfairness towards people whose language backgrounds aren't European, though it's hard to imagine how to come up with a working language which would deliberately not contain grammatical elements and vocabulary to ensure that everybody was in an equally difficult position. I think you have to remember the larger picture that even though it isn't ideal that a Mandarin-speaker has to learn for 2 years to make as much progress in Esperanto as I can in 1, that's still fairer than obliging him to spend 10 years learning English and still be nowhere near my level.

TimOwen:a Mandarin-speaker has to learn for 2 years to make as much progress in Esperanto as I can in 1, that's still fairer than obliging him to spend 10 years learning English and still be nowhere near my level.

I doubt these are numbers of this order. Esperanto has its own set of difficulties, and if we will compare them objectively, it is only 1 or 2 year difference.

Armand6:I doubt these are numbers of this order. Esperanto has its own set of difficulties, and if we will compare them objectively, it is only 1 or 2 year difference.

They're illustrative examples not scientifically verified assertions. The point is that Esperanto was relatively accessible for me, a native English-speaker and functionally fluent in one Romance language at the time that I started learning. I could recognise much on sight simply because of the closeness of Esperanto to the languages that I already knew. And vocab's the killer if you want to speak a language to a high level.

Edit: I'm not even sure what you're arguing. You speak about a 1- or 2-year difference. That's pretty much what I said.

TimOwen:I'm not even sure what you're arguing.

"to spend 10 years learning English". People do not learn English for 10 years to acquire the level of proficiency most Esperanto learners demonstrate here and elsewhere. English is a very simple language.

Armand6:English is a very simple language.

Really? Are you sure it is simple? Why do lots of immigrants struggle with it even after living in an English country for over 10 years?

English has difficult ortigraphy .

Armand6:---

Armand6:to spend 10 years learning English". People do not learn English for 10 years to acquire the level of proficiency most Esperanto learners demonstrate here and elsewhere. English is a very simple language.

Elhana, is that you?

Alkanadi:Why do lots of immigrants struggle with it even after living in an English country for over 10 years?

Some people are just not good with languages. Some people do not learn the language of the country they are living in. For most people, however, just a couple years of studying English in university is enough to do research and even participating in conferences.

maybe it will be good that children have 1 year of esperanto in 4 th year of elementary school .