geo63:I agree that teaching esperanto is against English teaching industry. Because English is difficult, their jobs are secured for years. So money is all that matters in this beautiful world of ours.

It's not just English teachers. If Esperanto were to achieve its objective of things like making it so all the different member states of the EU didn't need translators/interpreters, then you'd cut off prospective translators from one of the "big goals" of their line of work, by goal I mean a form of employment that's seen as close to the pinnacle of your industry, etc (this relies on Esperanto being very successful though).

Now, if the world is focussed on Esperanto this means the world needs several things: Esperanto teachers, and Espearnto translators.

This means, for people who want to have their life employment revolving around other languages, they suddenly have lost a lot of incentive.

People who decide to learn languages because they think they can make big money as a translator/2nd language teacher might end up genuinely and thoroughly interested in langauges, and help promote the preservation and growth of language culture and dispersion.

If Esperanto makes it so translators and 2nd language teachers aren't as needed (as English does today, except for itself), then that means that the following "flowchart" of career choices suddenly becomes more restrictive:
learn a language -> become a teacher/translator -> become a university level lecturer/translate for government -> become a professor or prestigious tutor/top level translator or interpretor for the president of the United States of Futureland

Except, since Esperanto/English/Chinese is in the limelight, this makes it harder to do for any language that isn't English/Chinese/Esperanto.

For example, how many jobs do you see for say an English to Latvian translator, vs a Latvian to Japanese translator? How many jobs do you see for Tagalog teachers worldwide vs English teachers?

Esperanto, if it were to take English's place, would merely take on its role as being the language of focus that everyone's obsessed about for all sorts of purposes ranging from greed to genuine despiration to genuine desire to learn a language, while other languages sit by, dejected.

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Also, Geo, just because someone wants job security, doesn't make them greedy. They might actually enjoy their job. It might be the centrepiece of their entire life. It might allow them to have money so they can eat, feed their children, be generous to others. Or they might just be saving up for a sportscar. Thus I think it's a genuine concern for people who actually deserve their jobs. But it's not like if EO becomes "elected" that we Esperanto speakers will somehow give them a new job or help them recuperate.

Some people have passions, some people also want to make a living. I see nothing that could be blamed on such people, only things that can be blamed on a system.

3rdblade:

ceigered:And I'd find it interesting to see how many people are ending up fluent from Esperanto by speaking it in schools. It wouldn't surprise me if they forget it all right after school since there's no place to use it apart from the quirky-imaged Esperanto community.

In answer to your question, I'd say that pretty much everything that is taught at high school is forgotten, unless one decides to specialise in it later. At primary school we learn more fundamental stuff which doesn't get forgotten, plus we're younger and that seems to help a lot. If a kid could read a simple text, remember 400 roots or so, and have a conversation in EO by say the age of 12, I think it would not be forgotten so easily in adulthood.

We need decent teaching and progressive education programs for that.

I've been doing indonesian my entire life in school (and now at uni), which is comparable in ease, if not sometimes easier at a basic level, to Esperanto (ignoring the fact Esperanto has similarities to English), yet it didn't stick at all. Likely because every year level it's a different thing we learn that doesn't necessarily progress from last year, or it's redundant stuff like learning the same stuff we learnt in year 3 in year 5.

At least here in the west our language learning programs need a big overhaul and standardisation.

In my opinion esperanto would not cut off the need for learning foreign languages - I learnt esperanto first at the age of 14, then I started learning other languages. It is esperanto that has helped me to understand how a foreign language works. Esperanto is easy and regular - you can very clear see the roles of gramatical structures in the language. Then you know what substantives, adjectives, adverbs, participles and tenses are. You immediately recognize these objects in any foreign language you learn. You understand them, so you learn much faster - they say: the first foreign language is the hardest, next ones are much easier.

geo63:In my opinion esperanto would not cut off the need for learning foreign languages

Exectly. Let there be English Language Departments, French, Spanish Philologies, even Hungarian and Turkish which we have in Poland. Learn any language you like, study any culture you wish, but...
Esperanto should be ABOVE it!

What I like about EO is its neutraleco, the fact that it is nenies lingvo. I might as well accept any other created language provided it matches the above condition.

(No wonder a friend of my is a fanatic enemy of EO - his daughter is a Polish -English intepreter and translator in Brussels. Money, money, money.)

You guys are making it sound like English teachers are the greediest spawn of the devil ever encountered .

Asides from that though, Geo, you learnt Esperanto out of curiosity, personal motivation (not because it's required for jobs or anything like that), despite the fact it does not give you any instant benefit. It's not so strange for that curiosity to apply to other languages is it? Furthermore, I think many Esperanto speakers like myself learnt it because we're already interested in languages.

But what happens if/when Esperanto becomes world-widely popular, and people who aren't curious about languages start learning it, just as they've learnt English (and haven't bothered with anything else because it doesn't bring in $$$)? They won't care about other languages, they'll just go from caring about English to Esperanto, no change.

Solulo:Exectly. Let there be English Language Departments, French, Spanish Philologies, even Hungarian and Turkish which we have in Poland. Learn any language you like, study any culture you wish, but...
Esperanto should be ABOVE it!

We can have those sorts of things right now, while English enjoys dominance. Merely changing English with Esperanto doesn't at all solve the problem, that people just don't care enough for there to be any significant push for such things.

It's nice to tell everyone "with Esperanto in power we can learn whatever languages we like", but do people actually care enough to learn them? Do people then go and learn languages? Do people pay attention to the lessons they learn from Esperanto grammar, or do they just speak it how others (the "true Esperantists") speak it, rather than knowing how it's spoken (e.g. how people can learn English/whatever nowadays and not know the grammar very well at all, but somehow speak it well). Esperanto being favoured by the world just means one thing: Esperanto is favoured by the world. Not that other languages are.

(I'm not defending English, but rather saying that we should have more realistic expectations for Esperanto, and realise that it too can do the exact same "nasty things" that we say English does)

ceigered:

(I'm not defending English, but rather saying that we should have more realistic expectations for Esperanto, and realise that it too can do the exact same "nasty things" that we say English does)

Like what? What "nasty things"?

The people who make English expensive to learn now will make Esperanto expensive to learn.

This is too bonkers even for you Ceiger.

Nobody makes English expensive to learn, it is simply the difficulties of the language that make it expensive to learn.

As I keep on repeating (and Zamenhof said it before me) if national languages were suitable as 'Interlingvoj', then there wouldn't be any need for Esperanto.

geo63:

vincas:In this way we can talk about any language.

What is the way out?

No, there is Esperanto, ready to be used:

1) fair
2) easy
3) precise
3) cheaper
4) doesn't belong to anyone
5) to be used to comunicate with foreigners only, so to preserve local languages

Why is it not chosen? Perhaps because most people just think the same way as you.

Well, I know some Esperanto and I think that I am a fan of esperanto. If not a fierce fan.

sudanglo:Nobody makes English expensive to learn, it is simply the difficulties of the language that make it expensive to learn.

In fact English was very cheap for me - I learnt it all by myself. But that is not the prefered way of learning this language. And still I make many errors that a school educated person would not - but I don't care.

vincas:

geo63:...Why is it not chosen? Perhaps because most people just think the same way as you.

Well, I know some Esperanto and I think that I am a fan of esperanto. If not a fierce fan.

By writing it I mean that many people don't even consider esperanto at all - they believe that there is no alternative to English - that it is just a must for the whole world. English is very good national language, but as such it is not suited well for the role of an international tool of communication. The Chinese, Japanese and other nations have hard time learning English, so if there is to be any opportunity to stop doing that, I am sure, they will.