Beiträge: 36
Sprache: English
Alkanadi (Profil anzeigen) 29. März 2016 16:58:32
Learn English to make money. Learn Esperanto to make friends.
What do you think of this quote? What if learning Esperanto was linked to making money?
erinja (Profil anzeigen) 29. März 2016 17:00:24
Anyone who makes any money at all off of Esperanto could surely earn more doing similar work in their native language, in the normal economy, but they do their work for Esperanto instead, out of the goodness of their heart.
SPadern (Profil anzeigen) 29. März 2016 17:44:01
I'd agree that to make friends using Esperanto is much more likely than using English. "Saluton! Mi povas ankaux paroli esperanton." opens up quite a few more doors than "Hello! I can also speak English". The common factor of being esperanto speakers connects people.
Vestitor (Profil anzeigen) 29. März 2016 17:51:51
Esperanto, being "spoken" by fewer people than most minority languages, is not a language people learn for financial gain; specifically job opportunities.
Frisian, for example, is only spoken by about 500,000 people and that has some opportunities for making a living, but then it is also connected to a region, a people and linguistic culture older than Middle-English or Dutch. It's also recognised by the EU.
Bemused (Profil anzeigen) 29. März 2016 21:34:24
Offer a discount for every order placed in Esperanto.
People will learn (enough) Esperanto (to take advantage of the discount).
For some this will pique their interest and they will then continue to learn more.
Vestitor (Profil anzeigen) 29. März 2016 23:20:34
It's a particular intellectual disease of the 21st century that people are now convinced that every activity on earth must have a capitalist enterprise behind it if it isn't going to fail. It's permeating every nook and cranny and yet at the same time an almost similar number of people complain about the 'consumerisation' of everything.
Leave some breathing space please.
Alkanadi (Profil anzeigen) 30. März 2016 06:29:02
erinja:No one makes significant money from Esperanto, so to promote Esperanto as a money-making venture would be a lie (and an ineffective lie at that).I wasn't suggesting that. I meant, what if the situation in the world was such that Esperanto speakers have a financial incentive for learning the language.
Like, what if it became a popular pivot language for translation and big corporations needed Esperanto speakers.
Alkanadi (Profil anzeigen) 30. März 2016 06:31:07
SPadern:I'd agree that to make friends using Esperanto is much more likely than using English. "Saluton! Mi povas ankaux paroli esperanton." opens up quite a few more doors than "Hello! I can also speak English". The common factor of being esperanto speakers connects people.Funny. Maybe next time I want to make a friend, I will use that line, "Hello, I also speak English just like you."
Alkanadi (Profil anzeigen) 30. März 2016 06:44:39
Vestitor:You'd have to be selling the world's most desirable product at a steal, or possibly giving away free gold, in order to cause people to learn a language for the purpose of getting to it.Many people will learn a language for even a small incentive.
"The Pasporta Servo has enjoyed much use in the Esperanto movement as a means for promoting Esperanto, and is one reason why people start learning Esperanto."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasporta_Servo
It's a particular intellectual disease of the 21st century that people are now convinced that every activity on earth must have a capitalist enterprise behind it...That is because we live in a capitalist society. You live in a country were the minimum wage is 15 dollars an hour, right? Plus the government pays for you education and there is a lot of government support. For the rest of us in the world, we have to think about money all the time because if we run out of it, we will die.
And I am certain that Esperanto would have an enormous growth if it could be monetized. Until then, we will just keep using it for intrinsic motivations.
johmue (Profil anzeigen) 30. März 2016 08:47:32
Alkanadi:I just heard an interesting quote:What's your point of making people just learn Esperanto?
Learn English to make money. Learn Esperanto to make friends.
What do you think of this quote? What if learning Esperanto was linked to making money?
To me it would be way more interesting if contributing to Esperanto was linked to making money. If we were to find ways to pay people who teach, proofread, make music, podcasts, videos, movies, write novels, plays ... you name it.