Does anyone believe that Esperanto will one day have a truly world-wide practical use? After a hundred years of existence it hasn't really gotten very far.

I'm finding it fun to learn, and yet I wonder if I should put my efforts into a far more practical foreign language. I'm already tackling Vietnamese for better communication with my in-laws, but even that language has little practicality on the grand scale unless I'm in Vietnam. I know quite a bit of french but am too rusty to speak it, instead I can only read and write it. But with these languages there are a lot of real people speaking the languages, where as Esperanto strikes me along the same lines as Latin does: no one speaks it.

Does anyone see a future for it? Are there any articles, groups, or websites out there that are trying to petition for a more wide-spread use of the language?

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That's what I'm wondering as well. What is the use to learn Esperanto? One thing is clear I think. If you can speak and understand Esperanto well, it is more easier to learn other languages like Spanish or French. (that's what I think). Is there any organization or institute, which comes up for the benefits of Esperanto. Maybe there is a manner to make the case discussable in politics or something like that?

My main finding has been so far that there are several organizations for the promotion and useage of Esperanto, but I consider them to be "scattered" at best. The organizations are small or poorly organized with few updates, and the larger ones aren't usually international and are usually attached to one country or another in specific, which downplays the entire concept of Esperanto (which is that it is not tied to any one country, culture, etc.). Some of the few so-called "international" sites have pratically no information on them except links to other sites which are usually nationally-based in one country or another. I'm from Canada (I live in British Columbia) and really I can't find any information leading me to any local support sources that aren't internet-based. The Vancouver Esperanto Society has practically nothing on it of any interest, and this is the trend I've been seeing.

It doesn't stop me from proceeding to learn the language, I love languages and this is certainly an interesting concept, if it were to ever get into the mainstream I want to be a part of that. But I think in order for that to happen it has to be receiving more attention, and the organizations in existence currently are not providing that kind of push at all. I wish I could do something myself really, but it takes more than just one person.

It would have incredible uses in international politics and what have you, which is widely promoted as a use for the language, but the problem is that it cannot be useful until more people start recognizing it and realizing its potential.

I guess it needs more publicity and information available to the general public. Ironically, the information I often find on esperanto is published *in* esperanto and not always with a translation available. This is pretty much useless for people who don't know enough of the language or don't know any of the language. It needs to have wide-spread publicity in local languages to government/educational/social/etc institutions, *off* the internet. The internet is great, but we still live in a real world with real people who love to have physical tangeable things to read rather than cyber-studying. I far prefer to read a magazine than a website. And it needs the support in local regions on the wider scale rather than in scattered barely-existent organizations with people who seem to be neglecting the organization itself. I can't be the only one who thinks if you want something you need to committ fully to it and not slack at it.

Just my thoughts.

I'm a Canadian living in China.  In Canada, I was quite happy to just learn Esperanto and read literature in it.  Since I've come to China, on the other hand, there sometimes seems to be a fanatical drive to push it, which I'd naturally gotten cought up in, resulting in my having to try to distance myself from the Esperanto community a little just to give me a break from it.  But as for practical uses, there are a few elementary and middle schools, as well as over thirty universities (not alot in a country as large as China, mind you, so please keep proportions in mind), which teach it.  In Hefei alone, there are two businessmen who use Esperanto for profit, in addition to one who teaches it in university.  The government also hires Esperanto speakers for the following sites:

http://es.chinabroadcast.cn/

http://www.espero.com.cn/

http://www.china.com.cn/world/index.htm

I've also found Esperanto to be useful in accessing information which might not necessarily be available in English in China as well.  It's also a useful language for travelling, and to make friends who do tend to be more open to the world than your average person, overall (like any community, there are exceptions of course, but I do find that on average Esperantists do tend to be more open to the world.

I know about Esperanto since 1977. It seems to me that it has not spread to much since then. But, what I'm absolutly sure is that Internet will help Esperanto to grow. In fact, after 25 years whithout speaking it, nowadays I'm practicing it almost every day. It's the easy way to share opinions with people who don't speak your own language. To finish, I think that Internet-Esperanto is the way.

Primarily interested in literature and politics, I see my personal benefit to knowing Esperanto in the translation and dissemination of ideas that might not otherwise reach other cultures.  One immediate result of translating, let's say, a book of Chekhov's short stories or something, into Esperanto rather than Language X, is that you limit the audience to the people of Nation X, whereas with Esperanto you have a potential audience of billions of people.  And this isn't just fiction.  I could apply the same principles to a textbook on quantum mechanics, works of philosophy, and even language primers for other languages.  Imagine a primer in, let's say, Aramaic or Phoenician, for use in teaching archaeology/philology students these dead languages.  For students in one country you have to write the primer in their language, for students of another country you have to write it in theirs, and so on ad infinitum.  Now, if the same primer were written once in Esperanto, and you gave these students a basic semester or two in Esperanto before they went on to study the dead languages, not only could you drastically reduce the amount of labor and paperwork and costs involved in printing these hundreds of different language books, but the students and professors of each country would be able to exchange their ideas and studies with the students and professors of the other countries.  This would probably be a lot less viable for students of mathematics and sciences and such--to spend a semester making them learn a new language just to teach them these things, but the solution to that is quite simple:  teach it to them all throughout their formative education.

Well, isnt it unfair to judge a language that has only been in existance for 100 years? It took more than a thousand years for english to be widly used around the globe.  The fact that there is about 1-2 million speakers, although it sounds low, it a great acheivment.  Just as many people speak Icelandic or Lituanian, which officially makes Esperanto a minority language.  Some people dont always take advantages of Esperanto organizations.  There are Esperanto magazines, and correspondance (pen pal) services that many people proably don't use.  Ponder that.

I think that there are several problems which one must keep in mind.

1. Even if it is a good choice, you cannot really force people to speak Esperanto.

2. People won't make themselves learn it unless they think they can make money from it.  That is why English is so big these days.  It seems that English currently fulfills many functions that Esperanto theoretically should.

3. As another poster mentioned, Esperanto clubs don't seem to be terribly active. That is also true where I live.  I have met one speaker in my area, who is a great guy, but the so-called club has no real meetings or anything.  I have heard rumors that many Esperanto clubs in the USA are like this, and are often dominated by a very few speakers.  Supposedly, it is much bigger in other parts of the world.

4. I think Esperanto has actually survived very well, considering that it was persecuted. The only reason I ever learned it was because I could do so through the Internet. I also practice it in chatrooms. I think that will ensure its survival.

5. I honestly believe that having a world interlanguage is a great concept and a wonderful goal, but let's face it - it goes against human nature.  People are quite accustomed to dividing themselves into groups and excluding outsiders. It's human nature, and language is part of it. A lot of people do it within the Esperanto movement - people sometimes invent their own languages and argue which conlang works best, and we're back to square one!

I would even say that this forum is an example of people dividing up like this.  This is a site regarding Esperanto, but there are several forums, including one for Hebrew speakers, and another for Lithuanian speakers, and one for English speakers, each dealing with Esperanto.  We even do this ourselves!

I'm not meaning to be overly critical or anything - just making an observation. I think these are the things that make it difficult for Esperanto to truly catch on more.

I think the comment above is relative to personal experience.

 

I'll be teaching Esperanto in a local middle school next week, and am likewise working on an Esperanto web-page.  And from my experience, most who choose to learn Esperanto do so out of principle, curiosity, or other reason unrelated to money or profit.  So while the above might apply to the west, it certainly doesn't apply quite as much here, though maybe to some extent.

kannouteki_neko:Does anyone believe that Esperanto will one day have a truly world-wide practical use? After a hundred years of existence it hasn't really gotten very far.

I'm finding it fun to learn, and yet I wonder if I should put my efforts into a far more practical foreign language. I'm already tackling Vietnamese for better communication with my in-laws, but even that language has little practicality on the grand scale unless I'm in Vietnam. I know quite a bit of french but am too rusty to speak it, instead I can only read and write it. But with these languages there are a lot of real people speaking the languages, where as Esperanto strikes me along the same lines as Latin does: no one speaks it.

Does anyone see a future for it? Are there any articles, groups, or websites out there that are trying to petition for a more wide-spread use of the language?

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