How do we "sell" Esperanto to the public? The government? etc.
af kannouteki_neko, 27. maj 2005
Meddelelser: 11
Sprog: English
oren (Vise profilen) 25. jul. 2006 18.44.59
Pardonu mian krokodilecon.
I just got back from a 5-day trip to NYC for ELNA's annual "landa kongreso." (ELNA is the Esperanto-Ligo de Norda Ameriko) You would not be wrong to assume that most of the attendees were middle-upper class white males, and a decent number were linguistically experienced already. But that was only about half. And that's half of the people who have $500 to spend on a cross-nation trip for a congress.
In addition, there were also normal couples, many elderly men and women (not online-savvy), and people working class people from nations like japan, brazil, canada and russia.
But yes, i think that currently a good deal of the visible esperantist movement online now are people who are online-savvy and nerdy, simply because learning esperanto 'pere interreto' has been possible now for a while and sites like lernu are attracting more people who 1) are on the internet and 2) like to learn. I know at least in america, (and probably over the world) Esperanto is still pretty unknown or clouded with mis-information about its purpose ("i don't want something to replace all languages").
Somethings that can inspire one about the esperanto movement online: eo.wikipedia.org and gxangalo.com. The esperanto vikipedio has almost half as many articles as the english (15th of all world languages) and gxangalo is an impressive multi-media website with a large online community.
I just got back from a 5-day trip to NYC for ELNA's annual "landa kongreso." (ELNA is the Esperanto-Ligo de Norda Ameriko) You would not be wrong to assume that most of the attendees were middle-upper class white males, and a decent number were linguistically experienced already. But that was only about half. And that's half of the people who have $500 to spend on a cross-nation trip for a congress.
In addition, there were also normal couples, many elderly men and women (not online-savvy), and people working class people from nations like japan, brazil, canada and russia.
But yes, i think that currently a good deal of the visible esperantist movement online now are people who are online-savvy and nerdy, simply because learning esperanto 'pere interreto' has been possible now for a while and sites like lernu are attracting more people who 1) are on the internet and 2) like to learn. I know at least in america, (and probably over the world) Esperanto is still pretty unknown or clouded with mis-information about its purpose ("i don't want something to replace all languages").
Somethings that can inspire one about the esperanto movement online: eo.wikipedia.org and gxangalo.com. The esperanto vikipedio has almost half as many articles as the english (15th of all world languages) and gxangalo is an impressive multi-media website with a large online community.