With the ascension of Spanish as a popular choice as a foreign language, I see trouble for Esperanto.

An asset of Esperanto upon which the purported ease of learning rests is the consistent spelling and a phonological system syntetic and supposedly accessible to most speakers; now, it's being conspicuous now that that natural language can claim same thing for itself.

And if you elaborate on arguably syntactic and verbal system complications, you ll be dismissed with the thought that the existence of a huge speaking community far outweight that possible flaw.

Could be now or never...

I don't see Spanish as a nemesis of Esperanto, although word roots are similar enough that learning both at the same time can be confusing.

Spanish spelling is regular and the grammar rules are much simpler that in English. 'Course, that doesn't make Spanish easy, seeing as how there are dozen, if not hundreds, of dialects, and distinct regional accents.

I speak enough Spanish to do a traffic stop or a prelimenary criminal investigation. Operating day-to-day in Spanish, although I've been around it since I was 5 (20+ years), is still usually difficult.

So, while Spanis is easier than English, by far, I haven't mastered or even cracked tenses other than the present tense.

In terms of ease of learning, I can only say the Esperanto is as far easier than Spanish as Spanish is easier than English. Again, that doesn't mean that I'm a master of the language but I can, with difficulty, understand a simple conversation in Esperanto after only 2 Esperanto meetings and the first few lessons of Ana Pana.

Esperanto is still intended to be used as an auxiliary language, as free of cultural influence (from a specific culture) as possible. Spanish is the native language of several cultures and biases in Spanish are (more) inherent (than Esperanto).

Good luck with all of your languages!

dygituljunky

I don't think Spanish is a threat to Esperanto. If it really were, then why hasn't Interlingua taken off as an international language? That language, so it is said, is pretty much at sight readable to anyone who knows a Romance language. Yet it is hardly used at all. The reason, so it is argued, is that Interlingua is a fairly difficult language to become fluent in. It is easy enough to read. But fluency requires greater command of the language (to be able to write or speak) and Interlingua, apart from regularising the verb declensions, has inherited most of the irregularity of its parent languages.

Plus Spanish is, essentially, a national language. Thus it is too closely associated with a specific culture etc. And I would suffer the same disadvantages using it with a native speaker as a Spaniard has in using Enlgish with me.

I am a long way from fully convinced that Esperanto is the best of all possible worlds as far as International Languages are concerned, but you cannot get away from the fact that Esperanto is intrinsically simple while borrowing its vocabulary and grammar from a broad range of languages.

Thus Esperanto has broad appeal (for the purpose for which it was invented) and, demonstrably, no International Language, before or since, has achieved anything like the same degree of success.

Of the International Languages that have been invented there is a lesson to be learnt. Most of the ones since Esperanto have all tried to be more "natural", by which their inventors have meant, more like one or more national languages. Not one of them has really taken off at all.

The only ones since Esperanto that have caught my attention that do not attempt to be more "natural" are
a) Klingon (hardly sonorous and really only achieved some degree of notoriety because of the Star Trek TV series, plus the language did have some (imagined) culture to go with it) and
b)Loglan (and its successor Lojban). I don't know much about either, but they were not invented to be International Languages in the first place and seem a little too tied into set theory for most people's somewhat less than mathematical minds to want to take on.

Those two haven't taken off either.

The one major International Language which went before Esperanto that did actually achieve a fair degree of success for a while was Volapuk. I've read that the vocabulary was largely based on English (not that you'd easily recognise it due to the replacement of "r" with "l" all over the place due to the difficulties thrown up by that letter in various parts of the world). It was more complex than Esperanto in that it had four grammatical cases, but at least they were regular. Some also argued that it was not as sonorous as Esperanto. However, despite the sound, despite the grammar and despite the lack of "naturalness" it did achieve a fair degree of success. That it failed in the end was probably at least as much due to internal wrangling over control of the language as it was because Esperanto was/is in any way better.

And national languages as international languages? Forget it! Some English speakers say that English is the international language. Well, in a few limited circles, that claim has some degree of truth (officially aviation for one, computer science probably de facto from my experience). However, for the ordinary Joe - forget it. English has no more international claim than Spanish or even Chinese. Latin had more claim as an international language and that was largely on the back of a church!

From this I conclude that the following factors are imporant:

1) Regularity. Simplicity is a help. "Naturalness" is a poor third in comparison.

2) People do not react well to a language that changes too fast or in which one is constantly being told by one authority that "programmer" should be "programisto" and another authority says it should be "programanto" or whatever.

3) Cultural factors are more important to the spead of a language than one might realise from the application of simple logic.

Esperanto has these factors on its side and it doesn't have a serious competitor.

Nick

I think if Spanish were an actual contender for an international language, it would already BE the international language. It's been around considerably longer, and already has an enormous speaking population on multiple continents.

But, as with all the other natural languages, it's hard to learn. Easier than some of the others, no doubt. But "easier" and "easy" aren't even close to being the same thing.

I think the actual contenders for international languages with the current state of the world are those languages with heavy economic power behind them. Used to be French. Now it's English. Could be Mandarin in the not too distant future. I think the only way Esperanto has a chance of becoming the "true" international language is if one of the economic powers puts their weight behind it. Maybe China will decide that because the pronunciation of Mandarin is so difficult for non-natives, that it would make more sense for everyone concerned if anyone doing business with China spoke Esperanto instead. Maybe the EU will decide that having two dozen official languages is just untenable, and will standardize on Esperanto. Or maybe no one will ever put their economic weight behind it and it will forever remain the international language of a small, self-chosen elite (i.e., us) and that's all it'll ever be (a situation that the Raumists don't mind at all, anyway).

My own feeling is that last option will probably be the actual one. But we can always dream...

I made my point very badly. I was refering to the purely linguistic arguments of spelling+pronunciation that are often advocated. What I meant is that these arguments are easy to substantiate in front of English, but just don't hold water in front of Spanish. I posted this after my failed attemps lately to "sell" e-o to a number of guys from Slavonic languages who said, "well, just like Spanish; rather have Spanish". Of course the other arguments of neutrality etc., keep going fine as will always be, I was not talking about that. The point was that I foresee increased difficulty to sell e-o with regard to the pair Eng-Spanish than just to Engish as it used to be, where that spelling-pronunciation argument was quick to come up. It doesn't mean that my conviction of e-o's fairness and need slack a bit. You know, translators, teachers, political interested, laisser faire, sheer stupidity, vested interest everywhere... just wanted to share my feeling that the monster, if at all, was getting just a little bigger. But it feels nice to monsters-fighter, doesn't it?...

Sorry, forgot to say, interesting points you made, thank you. The one about China is a real good one.

fojo:I made my point very badly. I was refering to the purely linguistic arguments of spelling+pronunciation that are often advocated.

There are lots of languages with regular spelling and pronunciation, though. Spanish certainly doesn't have an advantage over Italian in that field (and I think Italian is easier to pronounce as well). Languages like Finnish and Hungarian are also completely regular in spelling, though difficult to learn.

I think ease of grammar is more important than regular spelling in any case, though. The spelling of French is not terribly regular and not that easy to learn. Finnish is completely regular. Which one is easier to learn? Which one would you rather study? I think the answer would be "French" for most people, based on ease of learning. Regular spelling doesn't help you that much if the grammar is so difficult that you have a hard time forming a sentence, and I believe that Finnish grammar is considered difficult.

Easy spelling might be important when you start to learn a language because you quickly get the feeling that you are able to "say something" in a form that somebody else understands it. Also, it's easier to understand the language.

However, if you proceed to higher proficiency in a language, the pronunciation becomes less important and easy grammar and regularity (rules in general, verbs ...) become more important. Also, this will be the reason why people will know that you are not a native speaker, even if you learn a language for many years and live in a country where its spoken for several more years.

I don't know a single person who learned German in school (even if they started in primary school) and who speaks it in a way that you don't immediately know that it's not a native speaker. For instance, my former supervisor (a professor from Poland) learned the language in school for many years and lives in Austria now for more than twenty years. She speaks German all day, but after one sentence you know, she is not a native speaker. And believe me, she is an extremely intelligent person.

Anyway, once again, I'm a bit off topic.

Coming back to the topic: I think that the fact that Spanish receives more attention (mostly in the US) right now, is a reason that Esperanto has better chances to flourish. Also other languages like Chinese, maybe Russian, maybe Japanese receive more attention during several years. If there is one "strong" language (English) and no serious competitor (worldwide), this one language will become the "world language" and everybody would say "Why not learn this language? Most people speak it."

If there are several major languages, a more "neutral" language that's easier to learn, has a big advantage.

So the rise of Spanish, Chinese, Russian... will rather support a strong role for Esperanto.

Gerald

I'd think if there is such a "threat" it'd be English more than Spanish. After all the only reason I don't spend more time on learning other languages is because even though most of my friends speak English as a second language, I don't know anyone who doesn't speak English at all. And all of them were required to take at least 6 years of English in school, if not more. Yet here in the US we're only required to take 2 years of another language, and that's only if we're going to college.

This story at Libera Folio is pretty interesting. The need for a single official language for documents, legislation, etc. in the EU is very real. Although Esperanto has been discussed (and that's the "news" of the article), English is the favorite, with French a distant (and unhappy) second.

For many people, the search for an international language is over. English has won. It has achieved a critical mass, in terms of global dispersion, and will not be dislodged. I don't believe this myself, but I can see why people do.

English is not particularly easy. It is not neutral. But it is useful. Knowing English opens doors to jobs, contacts, millions of internet resources, movies, books, pop music, youtube videos and more.

We have to ask: Who cares about neutrality in a language. The answer appears to be, idealists, intellectuals, and nationalists of one sort or another--and various combinations of the three.

Who cares about how easy the language is? Probably not as many as *should* care.

Utility seems to trump ease and neutrality every time. To an Italian, Spanish must be much easier than English, but I doubt that many Italians learn Spanish just for that reason.

Many of the people arguing for English as the official language of the EU are not native speakers. They are well aware that the adoption of English as the official language of EU business would give the United Kingdom a tremendous advantage, and that it would indirectly give American economic and political interests an advantage as well. But apparently they just don't care.