Saluton! I speak several languages but I'm new to Esperanto (though been aware of it for several years and studied it's history). I'm approaching it from the perspective of wanting to (see if it's even possible to) have a language that can be used as an international auxiliary language that won't have the political baggage attached to it that English has, especially due to direct and indirect efforts to spread the influence of English in the last 40 or so years. Essentially, I'm trying to capture what it would look like if Esperanto were used as English is now, especially in the EU and (to a degree) Asia; essentially a utilitarian contact pidgin (recognizing that the America-philia in Japanese society creates another level in the demand for English there).

With that in mind I have some questions for those of you who are much more in tune with what Esperanto is meant for than I am.

1. I hear that Esperanto has no culture, but isn't this a "good" thing? It seems a lot of Esperantists want to respond with examples of how it does, but I would think that if Esperanto is to be an IAL not having a culture is the point. If you're interested in a particular culture you learn the language of that culture (for example, I learned Portuguese because Brazil fascinates me), the whole point of an IAL is that it is a tool, first and foremost, not a culture carrier.

2. Children being raised with Esperanto as their native language. What are the factors that go into one deciding to do this? Again, the point of Esperanto, or any IAL (I feel) is that it's no one's native language, and all speakers are essentially equally advantaged or disadvantaged when it comes to its use (roughly...Esperanto in its current form certainly favors Romance, Germanic, and to a degree Slavic and other Indo-European speakers).

Basically, it seems Esperanto is not meant to be a language that is lived in the way we live in our natural languages, it's meant to be treated as a tool to facilitate communication on as equal a footing as possible between speakers of mutually unintelligible languages. In other words, I thought the whole point was that we may give directions to tourists, or order our food, or ask for directions to the bathroom, make friends, in Esperanto, but we'll continue to go to school, consume local media, write poetry, make love, what have you in our natural languages. In a world where Esperanto had become the IAL some of us would use it everyday, some of us would use it occasionally, some of us would learn it in school but have no cause to ever actually use it in our lives (as is the case with the natural languages we learn now).

All that said, I'd like to hear from the community of people that have actually learned and used the language what they think. Am I way off base? Partly? Spot on? What's your vision for the language? I'm optimistic about the potential of Esperanto as an IAL but, seeing as how I'm more of a descriptivist than a prescriptivist, I wanted to hear what those who actually use it feel?

You've got lots of separate issues here. I have a few comments. I've been speaking Esperanto for around 20 years now and I intend to raise my kids speaking it, just so you know where I'm coming from. I'm not going to tell you that you're right or wrong, some of your base assumptions seem a little strange to me, but I'm going to write some thoughts and you can decide for yourself whether you were right or wrong in your suppositions.

- Everyone speaking Esperanto like English is used now? This is a thought experiment in the truest sense. I think this will never happen, so it hardly matters whether it's a good or a bad idea or what the practical consequences are. You can certainly think up all kinds of good and bad consequences of this situation but you should understand that it is likely to remain strictly theoretical. National languages have a government and funding and armies behind them. Esperanto doesn't have any of that, so I think it's beyond utopian to think that Esperanto has any chance whatsoever of ever being an IAL as it was intended to be. Nonetheless, I think it's fun and useful, for the great people, for the community, for the fun events, but I have no illusions of it ever being used on a much wider scale than it is today.

- Culture? I had a friend in the past who was European and claimed that the US had no culture because in his mind, its history was not long enough and culture was something developed over many hundreds of years. Everyone has a different idea of what "culture" means exactly. No, we don't have Esperanto traditional foods and clothing. Is there a culture of boy scouts and girl scouts? Do evangelical Christians have a culture? Does the military have a culture, and could you say that Army culture may differ from Navy or Air Force culture? If you answer yes to those, then that might be something like an Esperanto culture. We have a language community that shares a set of values, such as equality in communication and international friendship. You could speak Esperanto without sharing those values but I would say that anyone active in the Esperanto community would probably agree that equal communication and international friendship are a good thing. We have annual events where we do certain annual ceremonies and sing certain songs. We have musical artists popular within our community. There are certain well-known books and poems, a body of both translated and original literature where artists make literary allusions to other well-known works within the body (that is, there is a certain set of literature that a well-educated Esperantist is more or less expected to recognize in these literary allusions). Is that not a culture? Depends on your definition but if you have ever used the term "subculture" or used "culture" to refer to a community other than a national ethnic group, then you should probably agree that Esperanto has some kind of culture. If you learned the grammar and vocabulary of the language but spent no time in the community, if you were dropped in the middle of an Esperanto event, you would need some time to learn to navigate the things that would be obvious to the experienced speaker, the shared "cultural expectations", if you will.

- Native Esperanto speakers - People tend raise their kids with Esperanto for three reasons. One - a couple may speak Esperanto together and this is the language of the house. It would be unrealistic if a couple used this language for communication every day but their kid did not speak it. Or should they learn another language and use that instead to force the point and insist that the kid not learn? Two - A couple may speak Esperanto and really enjoy it, and the want to share what they enjoy with their kids and allow their kids to participate in Esperanto events with them, or else feel that speaking a foreign language is important and Esperanto is the only language they have to give. Three - A person may be really ideological about Esperanto and feel strongly that every person needs to learn it, so they prioritize this with their kid for ideological reasons. There may be other reasons but these are three big ones. And that last one, I think it's a small minority who are like that, and they are likely to turn their kid off to Esperanto through their ideology. Most people are in the first or second category.

Some people who enjoy Esperanto purposely do not teach Esperanto to their kid for the reasons you cite ( = making sure everyone is equal by making it a second language only). People who have been in Esperanto for a long time will probably tell you that native speakers of Esperanto do NOT speak better than an ordinary well-spoken Esperantist, and frequently they speak worse. This has been my experience. If the parents speak faulty Esperanto, they might well pass faulty Esperanto on to their kid. No one goes to school in Esperanto or has Esperanto grammar classes, so if you don't learn the rules of grammar explicitly, you might be lax with getting your grammar right, especially if you just don't care. Second language learners often care more about getting the grammar right than native speakers. My colloquial everyday spoken English has colloquial errors and I won't go back and correct myself if a mistake has slipped out, everyday speech is not like writing a paper for a class. But in Esperanto, I will go back and correct myself.

But this whole thing of no one having an advantage - native speakers truly do not speak better than an average high level speaker, except possibly having a bigger vocabulary. Grammatically they are not better.

This is a bit surprising for me since I was also considering some of these questions this afternoon (it's late now). Erinja is way more advanced than me and has far more (and wider) experience of the Esperanto landscape, but I would like to consider some of the points raised by the OP.

I tend to think it's possible to raise the acceptance and usage of Esperanto above the subculture level - based upon simple educational policy - and I don't accept the idea that it's mere utopianism to see it being used as an IAL on some level.

Personally I see certain obstacles that are internal to Esperanto's image, like the seemingly high number of conlang cranks and fantasy novel readers. I realise this comes across as unfair and judgemental, but somewhat like heterodox politics it seems to attract people who don't present the most neutral image. If you look at the concept of 'English speaker', it's just everyone and no-one. You can be practically anything in your daily life and 'happen' to speak English and the two are distinct. There is undeniably a certain cultishness around Esperanto (perhaps as seen from outside) and it makes it appear as though you have to accept the associated 'culture' if you want to learn Esperanto.

On the culture, well I'm sceptical. There are no doubt traditions that have grown up around the movement and that may well be 'culture', but it looks like an odd business sometimes. Perhaps it is the ultimate in accommodating everyone and not letting any national culture dominate. I can't speak about this authoritatively because I have not yet attended a UK, where (I am assured) there is lots of cultural diversity pumped into the proceedings. I also see the language more as a tool, but it can't be denied that the more a language is used and develops, the more it seems to produce 'culture'.

I see no problem with native Esperantists, even the idea of them speaking 'faulty' Esperanto, because it's better to learn any language early on. I've heard people say Esperanto is best learned later, but I can't imagine what the principle behind that is supposed to be. It would be best to have Esperanto as a school subject, but the catch 22 is that because there's no 'place' or country where people speak it, it seems to be regarded as not worth the trouble, but then the more people learn it the more useful it would obviously be. It has to start somewhere.

I don't think anything will happen just with social engineering (education and social policy) or just by means of cultural popularity (Duolingo, conlang interest and the internet, low-level marketing), the two need to combine somehow.

I think anything that people are involved in for any length of time develops a culture, like it or not. I'm sure there is a HAM radio culture, for example. But as erinja says, it really depends on where you draw your lines; what counts as culture has a certain subjective quality.

I still think Esperanto has a chance for greater usage if it can be pushed into schools as a "recorder" language*. I.e., as a model, used to illustrate language concepts. It is particularly well suited for this application. The trick, of course, is convincing school boards that having such a model is useful. But that's where the analogy of the recorder comes in.

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* The idea being that they teach the recorder in elementary schools in order to introduce musical concepts to the students, not to make anyone into recorder virtuosos. Esperanto can fill the same role for language concepts. The point being not so much to learn the language as to just get down some of the basics.

Whenever I read that "Esperanto has no culture", I think of Beletra Almanako , Literatura Foiro and the publisher Sezonoj and my first thought is: "how can people think that?" but the answer is obvious. They have no idea.

Is Esperanto culturally neutral? Yes How could it be otherwise? Only I suppose by one group of Esperanto users from a particular culture becoming a dominant group.

[You might argue that there is such a dominant group, namely the speakers of Indo-European languages - but what is there in common culturally speaking between say the Portuguese speakers of Brazil, the Russian speakers in Russia and the English speakers down under in Australia.]

Is it the carrier of a particular culture other than that associated with its aims? I don't think so.

Anyway the link between culture in the anthropological sense and language is obscure. American culture is different from English culture, though both American's and the English sort of use the same language.

Is it more than a utilitarian contact pidgin? Decidedly so. There is a long history of using Esperanto for the purposes of literary culture - writing original poems, translating classics of world literature etc. A lot of the enrichment of Esperanto over the years has stemmed from such creative efforts.

There are some Esperantists who have, so they say, turned their back on the idea that Esperanto will ever become a serious practical solution (the non-believers are referred to as Raŭmistoj, the believers are referred to as Fin-venkistoj).

But Esperantists (which ever group they profess to belong to) are committed to the idea, as shown by their actual use of the language, that it is an international language, rejecting turns of phrase or figures of speech that might be consider internationally incomprehensible. And this is true also of Esperantists who may only occasionally use the language with someone of a different mother tongue and who predominantly use the language with their fellow country men.