Shane the problem isn't the language, the problems the people. Most people don't want to spend an extra 3 months learning a secondary language, if it doesn’t give them something immediate in return. Now I also looked at Interlingua before I started Esperanto and realised quite quickly I didn't like it, because it is a Romance only language, whilst Esperanto has at least the ability to be a word language. So basically it’s easy for people of Europe, parts of Africa and South America ... but that’s it beyond those borders it is just as hard as any other language.

Shanemk:
UNESCO recognized Esperanto years ago, but why has there been no effort on the UNs part to gather a group of amazing linguistic scholars from many countries to form a new IAL with the absolute intent of becoming an IAL within only a few decades?

Not enough support, no one cares, etc.

It's like the current commonwealth games in India. There's no one in the stands at the moment and they're giving free tickets out soon apparently to people living in India. But the biggest problems are:
- if you go, who's going to support your family financially those few days?
- and more importantly, the demographics are all wrong. Poor children should be the ones watching those games, so they can be inspired by sporting heros, rather than kids who have money to go to school etc, because they're more exposed every day to said inspiration.

The same applies to the idea of an IAL. People have priorities, and IAL proponents have priorities, but they often don't line up. Normal working citizens want money etc. IAL's need normal people. But, like most things academic, you'll get a glut of students and teachers etc who are exposed to these things more often, and thus aren't quite as important.

The biggest problem though is lack of financial support. If Google and Coca Cola suddenly started putting things in the same, simple artificial language like Lingua Franca Nova (I'll use Lingua Franca Nova based on the fact that it's easier to read/understand passively), people would go "Oh, that's quirky".

Now, let's say all these big companies continue this promotion for a few years, by then, people now know that there's this "language" going around, and people get interested to see if it means anything. This has happened with the video games The Sims and Spore, whose characters speak utter nonsense, but people go "That sounds like a cool language! I wanna learn it!".

After people have that interest, they follow it up, learn it, show off to their friends, their friends know what the language is too and go "oh that's neat, you can understand what all these things are around us", and so forth. Later on, people then start to go "you know what, I reckon Lingua Franca Nova is the new world language", this idea floats around a bit, then eventually it gets picked up.

At least, that's how English, Japanese and Chinese came into the limelight. Money, constant exposure across a large area, and lots of use. English is used a lot everywhere and in tourism, Japanese in electronics, the internet and video games, and Chinese is used everywhere fullstop.

All IALs lack any said support. Movies like Avatar with their own languages don't achieve much because a movie is a "watch once" affair for most, and isn't a day to day affair like, say, drinking, eating, moving around the city being bombarded by advertising, etc. So if you own a company selling day to day commodities like McDonalds etc and want to make a change linguistically, you've got a lot more power than almost anyone else on the globe. Companies like McDonalds also have very little to fear from a single failed marketing approach. But these companies are human too, and so the people in the company need to care as well. (I mean movers in the company, not those 16 year old lasses frying your burger for you).

Shanemk:if interlingua were to swoop through and magically amass a speaking population of 20 million, would you willingly climb onto that boat, out of support of an IAL?

This hypothetical question is flawed, because magic isn't real. The only way 20 million people would suddenly support interlingua or one of the other IALs is if... they suddenly decided to support it for some very good reason. If such a reason existed then a lot of people might think differently, including we lernu members.

Shanemk:UNESCO recognized Esperanto years ago, but why has there been no effort on the UNs part to gather a group of amazing linguistic scholars from many countries to form a new IAL with the absolute intent of becoming an IAL within only a few decades?

This may sound silly, but I reckon write to your UN ambassador and ask him.

3rdblade:

Shanemk:UNESCO recognized Esperanto years ago, but why has there been no effort on the UNs part to gather a group of amazing linguistic scholars from many countries to form a new IAL with the absolute intent of becoming an IAL within only a few decades?

This may sound silly, but I reckon write to your UN ambassador and ask him.

Maybe add the clause that language = medium for information, information = power, UN = needs it .

(Nur ŝerco! If you really added clause there that I doubt it would do any good)

Ceigered, I love your inventive use of the Commonwealth games as an analogy for Esperanto.

Regarding the question, I think it presupposes that Esperanto speakers generally support the idea of an IAL, and I don't know if this is necessarily the case. A lot of Esperanto speakers I know aren't very ideological about it. We use it because we enjoy it, we meet cool people, we participate in fun events. It isn't a problem for me if Esperanto never becomes a widespread IAL. I don't care if it ever does, and I don't expect that it ever will, but I derive so much enjoyment from it today, as it is now.

Therefore I would not switch to another IAL simply because that one is better, because that's not why I use Esperanto anyway. I'm sure that some Esperanto speakers would, and I think that lots wouldn't. I think they have become attached to the Esperanto community more than they "believe in the language" itself.

Regarding learning this hypothetical future IAL that 20 million people have suddenly decided to learn - sure. If it were useful, I would learn it. But not as a replacement for Esperanto, simply as a useful language to learn. I don't think that languages have to be an either/or proposition. "If you had to choose, would you pick this one or that one?". It's a false choice for me, learn both if you want to learn both, why choose? I am a big believer in learning lots of languages, for those people who have the time and capability to do so. (I speak only a couple myself but I would love to speak more)

3rdblade:

This may sound silly, but I reckon write to your UN ambassador and ask him.

Maybe add the clause that language = medium for information, information = power, UN = needs it .

(Nur ŝerco! If you really added clause there that I doubt it would do any good)

As much as I'd like to think our beautiful ambassador would read a citizen's letter, I'm sure she would do exactly how our congressmen do, let the secretary read, note, and throw. Unless about 50 or more of you want to write and post letters during the same time, the statistic blip of "IAL" on a list won't do much good.

Shanemk:

3rdblade:

This may sound silly, but I reckon write to your UN ambassador and ask him.

Maybe add the clause that language = medium for information, information = power, UN = needs it .

(Nur ŝerco! If you really added clause there that I doubt it would do any good)

As much as I'd like to think our beautiful ambassador would read a citizen's letter, I'm sure she would do exactly how our congressmen do, let the secretary read, note, and throw. Unless about 50 or more of you want to write and post letters during the same time, the statistic blip of "IAL" on a list won't do much good.

I'm afraid that should answer your original question about why the UN doesn't do something more about an IAL. Why not write, though? You've nothing to lose. You never know what kind of reply you'll get.

ceigered:

Maybe add the clause that language = medium for information, information = power, UN = needs it .

(Nur ŝerco! If you really added clause there that I doubt it would do any good)

yes, it may be true

3rdblade:
Why not write, though? You've nothing to lose. You never know what kind of reply you'll get.

I still did that in another way. The UN's Youtube PR team(?) confirmed my Youtube friendship request (esperanto karaokeo). In my opinion it has more value than they follow me at Twitter.

But I recommend, before writing paper letters (not Emails) to attract some attention, put some efforts into reading UN's announcementst to understand their (public relation) priorities. I.e. Reading of their offical (certified) Twitter account.

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