sudanglo:

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.

Bonkers?! Have you even thought about this?!

People think because something is hard (e.g. language learning), they need to pay for expensive tutors, language classes, etc. Companies pay employees to learn skills that they need to do their job correctly, and that includes language learning! This happens everywhere too, regardless of the language and its difficulty, but disproportionately for English.

It's simple economic theory: there's a demand, and there's a supply, and since the supply has no competition heavy enough (yet) and still has demand, they can charge whatever they like!

The difficulty of the language isn't what's so important as the fact that people want to learn it and don't realise they can learn it for free (or don't realise how truly easy it is until AFTER they've learnt it). After all, many would think that learning for free would be less effective than paying ("you get what you pay for"). Sometimes people want to do a paid course because despite knowing the alternatives they still find a paid course better for them. Even in Esperantujo too, keeping in mind how much people spend on Esperanto learning books, someraj kursoj etc. Granted it's cheaper, but that's because we're dealing with a small organisation of passionate and dedicated people, not people doing it mostly for the money!

Esperanto won't solve this at all, that's just wishful thinking! You need to change the entire culture of language learning the world over too for there to be a change!

Exclamation mark!

geo63: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.

I agree. People often get themselves stuck into thinking they have to do something only one way and that's the way everyone else does it. It seems like a very monumental task to change such a mindset, and I'm not sure it'd work in Esperanto's favour either, just in the favour of whatever's easier/perceived as easier...

ceigered:[The difficulty of the language isn't what's so important as the fact that people want to learn it and don't realise they can learn it for free (or don't realise how truly easy it is until AFTER they've learnt it). After all, many would think that learning for free would be less effective than paying ("you get what you pay for"). Sometimes people want to do a paid course because despite knowing the alternatives they still find a paid course better for them. Even in Esperantujo too, keeping in mind how much people spend on Esperanto learning books, someraj kursoj etc. Granted it's cheaper, but that's because we're dealing with a small organisation of passionate and dedicated people, not people doing it mostly for the money!

Esperanto won't solve this at all, that's just wishful thinking! You need to change the entire culture of language learning the world over too for there to be a change!
.../quote]I disagree. Esperanto is 5 to 10 times easer than most natural languages, so students do not have to learn that much as, for instance, with English. After 100 hours course they would acquire language skills adequate for sufficient communication. So courses could be shorter and easer, as well as learning aids - do you realize how enormously big this industry is with present English?

I showed an esperanto handbook to my friend who taught English. He could not believe that so thin book could really teach the language. So he concluded that esperanto had to be some very primitive tool. It was hard to get him on the right track.

Absolutely, Geo. And most Esperantists acquire the language without any courses at all - by self-instruction.

Yes, Ceiger, the idea is bonkers, that you could ever reach a situation where the learning of Esperanto could become a money spinning industry on anything like the scale of the TEFL industry.

From press:

"The Chinese government’s goal, as I understand it, was to promote Chinese as a global language, trying to improve the Chinese-studies services offered in China and to encourage more people to come and study Chinese in China. The Chinese government has requested that all embassies meet with the leading local universities to work together in making this happen. Mr. Li wanted to hear every little detail about why people want to study Chinese, why people want to study Chinese in China, why people aren’t coming to China to study Chinese even if they want to study Chinese, starting from the structure of the classes and schools to the economical considerations.

He asked a few questions that I was curious about myself , like "Why did you start to study Chinese?" probably expecting answers about China being the next super-power and the next-economical center of the world, but getting weak responses about students wanting to translate Chinese texts and understand some Chinese they met on a train in China. He was direct enough to tackle the students with questions like "if China is so cheap, why do you need our scholarship? why not just come and study?" which was responded with a weak description of the financial miseries of the Israeli student. Although he occasionally commented that what we said "is very important, very important", I believe he was only trying to save our face and that we didn’t really offer any meaningful insights. I was especially interested in some of the side-statements he made about plans to promote Chinese studies into Israeli high-schools and some thoughts about "making Chinese be like English". "

That is alarming. If Chinese language were going to be global, I would have had rather English...

sudanglo:
Yes, Ceiger, the idea is bonkers...

Excuse me, Sudanglo. Could you please explain to me in simple words what this "bonkers" is? Is it anything like mad or crazy?

geo63:

sudanglo:
Yes, Ceiger, the idea is bonkers...

Excuse me, Sudanglo. Could you please explain to me in simple words what this "bonkers" is? Is it anything like mad or crazy?

According to the leo.org dictionary it means approximately "crazy".

geo63:
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.

Yes, you're right.

It’s an obvious chicken-egg problem. People don’t learn (or even consider) Esperanto because only few people speak it, and only few people speak it because people don’t learn it.

The fact stays that if you need to communicate with somebody with a different native language you don’t speak, in these times English is your best choice in most countries.

darkweasel:It’s an obvious chicken-egg problem. People don’t learn (or even consider) Esperanto because only few people speak it, and only few people speak it because people don’t learn it.

The fact stays that if you need to communicate with somebody with a different native language you don’t speak, in these times English is your best choice in most countries.

This is only a part of true. Mass media present esperanto as some kind of a joke, an outdated project that once had its day but failed and is dead now. Reading this the majority of people just don't want to get involved and they choose English which is presented as very successful, effective and easy to learn. And then we have Globish and broken English everywhere in the world. Really, fantastic solution.

geo63: Esperanto is 5 to 10 times easer than most natural languages, so students do not have to learn that much as, ...

I also think that Esperanto is 5 to 10 times easier to learn. But even if it were more difficult to learn Esperanto than the english language, then it still is not possible to use english as the international language. It's completely unfair, that 90% of the mankind have to learn a new language and 10% don't have to do anything, and nevertheless have a superior position.

But of course nowadays nobody cares about fairness.