qwertz:In my opinion one field which meets that requirements is "contemporary music".

I disagree. Many people don't like to listen to music that isn't in their language. The only exception seems to be for English, people will listen to English music. There are hardly any popular songs in English-speaking countries that are not in English. There is wonderful music all over the world but most people in English-speaking countries have never even heard of it because it isn't in English.

English music goes everywhere, but in most cases even the best band doesn't get much attention outside of their own country if they don't sing in English. If a German band singing in German couldn't become famous in Italy, then why would a band singing in a language that people think is a joke ever become famous outside of that language's community?

Even in big international song contests like Eurovision, most countries enter a song that is in English rather than in their own language. I think they submit an English song to encourage people from other countries to vote for it, maybe they think that other countries won't like it very much if they can't understand it.

Oh dear, Erinja and Todd.

If argument changes nothing then I wonder why politicians, lobby groups, and protesters bother at all with their campaigns.

Of course argument can change attitudes.

erinja:

qwertz:In my opinion one field which meets that requirements is "contemporary music".

I disagree. Many people don't like to listen to music that isn't in their language. The only exception seems to be for English, people will listen to English music. There are hardly any popular songs in English-speaking countries that are not in English. There is wonderful music all over the world but most people in English-speaking countries have never even heard of it because it isn't in English.

English music goes everywhere, but in most cases even the best band doesn't get much attention outside of their own country if they don't sing in English. If a German band singing in German couldn't become famous in Italy, then why would a band singing in a language that people think is a joke ever become famous outside of that language's community?

What about Rammstein and their - sorry - scr*p lyrics?

In my opinion if people know the music style they don't wanna (imperative) know the lyrics right at the concert. They just want to have fun. And at the most live concerts I visit the audience make party-temper and it doesn't matter if they understand the lyrics or not. I.e. I would not exclude visiting a concert of gipsy.cz even if I don't understand any Czech word. It doesn't matter because I like the music style or elements of it (Balkan music). But maybe that "distinction-consuming" of lyrics and music style is a special German or European thing. I don't know.

qwertz:What about Rammstein and their - sorry - scr*p lyrics?

Most American people have never even heard of Rammstein and even those who have heard of them mostly cannot name even one of their songs.

The only truly world-wide famous European bands I can think of all sing in English.

And it doesn't really matter what your personal opinion is, with regard to understanding music. You probably aren't representative of most people, and neither am I. We are talking on an Esperanto forum, after all.

I do not personally care about the language of music and I listen to music in all languages. I actively seek out new music from different countries, no matter what language it is in. But most people aren't like us. They listen to the music that's on the radio, and that music will mainly be in English and in the local language.

erinja:

qwertz:What about Rammstein and their - sorry - scr*p lyrics?

Most American people have never even heard of Rammstein and even those who have heard of them mostly cannot name even one of their songs.

I have to chime in here. I actually own 2 of their albums. I am a newbie here and I have been lurking. I couldn't help but add my 2 cents. I actually don't like the song that I heard that they did in English, it sounded wimpy to me.

I recently watched a movie that was filmed in Norway. All the instrumentals you could not tell the difference, but the different language gave the music a different "feel". I think that I would have really liked it given the time to actually listen to it.

sudanglo:Oh dear, Erinja and Todd.

If argument changes nothing then I wonder why politicians, lobby groups, and protesters bother at all with their campaigns.

Of course argument can change attitudes.

If you analyse successful campaigns you will see that they are based more on emotion than logic. Logic may provide a reason, but emotion provides the motivation to take action. Without emotion people cannot choose between conflicting logical arguments. There is an excellent book that discusses the role of emotion in politics The Affect Effect: Dynamics of Emotion in Political Thinking and Behavior or if you want to read about the role of affect in cognitive processes Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain by Antonio Damasio is a great book.

Reminds me of Edward Bernays and his successful campaign to introduce smoking to young women. He called them Torches of Freedom and with select appearances of women in public smoking them, turned it from a taboo into a cool new thing that all women wanted to do to assert their freedom and independence.

There's a bunch of techniques in the book Influence_Science_and_Practice detailed by a psychology professor who spent several years working undercover in sales. You can see these simplistic techniques being used everywhere to gain your compliance. They work by engineering situations where you fallback on behavioural shortcuts that can make you vulnerable to manipulation.

But that only goes so far. History has shown that when something is *soo* good that it provides huge benefits, then it will win out over all competition after time. Maybe Esperanto isn't that huge of an improvement over English to merit it's success.

One can certainly debate how best to campaign for the wider adoption of Esperanto. What bugs me is the Raŭmista position that one shouldn't bother to campaign.

Genjix, I don't think we should be arguing for Esperanto to be a worthy competitor with English as a lingua franca. This strikes me as a David v. Goliath battle that is difficult for us to win.

We should be smarter than that. Our tactics should be cleverer.

The vital step is to get the number of speakers up, and the best way to do this is to get Esperanto in the schools. And for this, I think we should use educational arguments. Such arguments can be still be valid even when, in the near future, machine translation is more developed.

sudanglo:One can certainly debate how best to campaign for the wider adoption of Esperanto. What bugs me is the Raŭmista position that one shouldn't bother to campaign.

That isn't the Raumist position at all. The Raumist position is that Esperanto is worthwhile for its own sake, because the fina venko will never happen.

Of course since Raumists believe that Esperanto is worthwhile for its own sake, they believe people should learn it. Because it's worthwhile. And because when more people learn Esperanto, it helps strengthen the Esperanto community, which is another focus of Raumism.

I agree with Alciona. This is not how I would like things to be and probably it is not how things should be, but it certainly is how things are.

Regards,

Daniel

Alciona:

sudanglo:Oh dear, Erinja and Todd.

If argument changes nothing then I wonder why politicians, lobby groups, and protesters bother at all with their campaigns.

Of course argument can change attitudes.

If you analyse successful campaigns you will see that they are based more on emotion than logic. Logic may provide a reason, but emotion provides the motivation to take action. Without emotion people cannot choose between conflicting logical arguments. There is an excellent book that discusses the role of emotion in politics The Affect Effect: Dynamics of Emotion in Political Thinking and Behavior or if you want to read about the role of affect in cognitive processes Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain by Antonio Damasio is a great book.