Written by This is, as requested by a reader of the Association’s website, a concise FAQ about Esperanto’s supposed advantages:
Note: Information and questions are being added to the FAQ thanks to the comments made by visitors.
1. Esperanto has an existing community of speakers, it is used in daily life, it has native speakers…
Sorry, I don’t know any native speaker of Esperanto, that has Esperanto as mother tongue – Only this Wikipedia article and the Ethnologue “estimations” without references apart from the UEA website. In fact, the only people that are said to be “native Esperanto speakers” are those 4 or 5 famous people who assert they were educated in Esperanto as second language by their parents. Is it enough to assert “I was taught Volapük as mother tongue by my parents” or “I taught my children Esperanto as mother tongue” to believe it, and report “native speaker” numbers? Do, in any case, those dozens of (in this Esperantist sense) native speakers of Klingon or Quenya that have been reported in the press represent something more than a bad joke of their parents?
Furthermore, there is no single community of speakers that use Esperanto in daily life, I just know some yearly so-called World Congresses where Esperantists use some Esperanto words with each other, just like Trekkies use Klingon words in their Congresses, or LOTR fans use Quenya words. Figures about ‘Esperanto speakers’ – and speakers of Interlingua, Ido, Lingua Franca Nova, Lojban or any other conlang – are unproven (there is no independent, trustworthy research) and numbers are usually given by their supporters using rough and simple numbers and estimations, when not completely invented. Studies have been prepared, explained, financed and directed by national or international associations like the “Universala Esperanto-Asocio”, sometimes through some of its members from different universities, which doesn’t turn those informal studies into “University research”. The answer is not: “let’s learn creationism until evolution is proven”, but the other way round, because the burden of proof is on the least explained reason: If you want people to learn a one-man-made code to substitute their natural languages, then first bring the research and then talk about its proven advantages. Esperantists and other conlangers make the opposite, just like proposers of “altenative” medicines, “alternative” history or “alternative” science, and therefore any outputs are corrupted since its start by their false expectatives, facts being blurred, figures overestimated and findings biased in the best case.
2. But people use it in Skype, Firefox, Facebook,… and there are a lot of Google hits for “Esperanto”. And the Wikipedia in Esperanto has a lot of articles!
So what? The Internet is not the real world. If you look for “herbal medicine”, “creationism” or “penis enlargement”, you’ll find a thousand times more information and websites (“Google hits”) than when looking for serious knowledge, say “surgery”. Likewise, you can find more websites in Esperanto than in Modern Hebrew, but Hebrew has already a strong community of (at least) some millions of third-generation native speakers who use Hebrew in daily life, while Esperanto – which had the broadest potential community – has just some hundreds of fans who play with new technologies, having begun both language projects at the same time back in the 19th century.
Also, is the Wikipedia not a language-popularity contest? A competition between conlangers, like Volapükist vs. Esperantists, Ido-ists against Interlingua-ists, Latinists against Anglo-Saxonists, etc. to see which “community” is able to sleep less and do nothing else than “translate” articles to their most spoken “languages”? How many articles have been written in Esperanto or Volapük, or in Anglo-Saxon or Latin, and how many of them have been consulted thereafter, and by how many people? In fact, Volapük wins now in number of articles, so we should all speak Volapük? No, Esperanto is better than Volapük, of course, because of bla bla…
I guess everyone wins here: Wikipedia has more visitors, more people involved and ready to donate, while those language fans have something more to say when discussing the advantages: hey, we have X million articles in the almighty Wikipedia, while your language has less! Esperanto/Volapük/Ido/… is so cool, we have so many “speakers”! Then, congratulations to all of you Wikipedian conlangers; but, if I were you, I wouldn’t think the real world revolves around the Wikipedia, Google or any other (past or future) website popularity.
3. Esperanto is far easier than what you are suggesting. I am fluent in Esperanto, and I only studied 3 hours! And so did my Esperantist friends!
Do you mean something like saying “me spikas lo esperanto linguo” – with that horrible native accent that only your countrymen understand – and then being able to tell anyone “I speak Esperanto fluently after 3 hours of study”? And then speak about two or three sentences made up of a mix of European words more once a year with your Esperantist friends in an international “Congress”, and then switch to English or to your mother tongue to really explain what you wanted to say? Well then yes, to say “I speak Esperanto fluently” or “I learned Esperanto in 2 days” is really really easy – hey, I’ve just discovered I am a fluent speaker of Esperanto, too! Esperanto is so cool…
But, talking about easiness…Have you conlangers noticed it’s “easy” just for (some) Western Europeans, because those “languages” you are using are made of a mix of the most common and simplest vocabulary of some Western European languages, whereas other speakers think it is as difficult as any Western European language? Do you really really think it is easier than English for a Chinese speaker? I guess good old Mr. Zamenhof didn’t realize that English, French, Latin, Italian, German and Polish wouldn’t be the only international languages today as it was back then in the 19th century, when European countries made up almost the whole international community…
Furthermore, do you really really think that supposed ease of use, which is actually because of the lack of elaborated grammatical and syntactical structures, hasn’t got a compensation in culture, communication and even reasoning?
4. But I’ve been told that Esperanto is successful because it has a (mostly) European vocabulary that makes it easy for Europeans, an agglutinative structure that makes it especially fit for Africans and Asians, and some other features that make it better than every other language for everyone…
I won’t be extending into linguistic details, because those assertions are obviously completely arbitrary and untrustworthy. Not only Esperantism has failed to prove such claims, but also some people have dedicated extensive linguistic studies and thoughts to see if that was right – Esperantism has obtained independent criticism by insiders and outsiders alike, and still they claim the same falsenesses again and again. You have e.g. the thorough article “Learn not to speak Esperanto” which, from a conlanger’s point of view, discusses every supposed advantage of this Polish ophthalmologist’s conlang. Also, it is interesting that some researchers have noted the condition of Esperanto for most speakers as an anti-language, as they use the same grammar and words as the main speech community, but in a different way so that they can only be understood by “insiders”. That can indeed be the key to the perceived advantages of Esperanto by Esperantists of different generations and places, just like anti-social people like slang words to communicate with members of their community and to hide from outsiders, and it is especially interesting in light of the condition of Esperantism as an anti-social movement more than a promotion of a language, representing Esperanto with flags, slogans (“democracy”, “rights”, “freedom”,…), international consultative organizations and congresses…
5. You talk about real cultural neutrality for the European Union; but, since there are several non Indo-European languages inside the EU, Proto-Indo-European does not solve that issue either.
In fact, the European Union is made up of a great majority of Indo-European speakers (more than 97% falling short), and the rest – i.e. Hungarians, Finnish, Maltese, Basque speakers – have a great knowledge (and speaking tradition) of other IE languages of Europe, viz. Latin, French, English, Swedish, Spanish. So, we are proposing to adopt a natural language common to the GREAT majority of the European Union citizens (just like Latin is common to the vast majority of Romance-speaking countries), instead of the current official situation(s) of the EU, like English, or English+French, or English+French+German… To say that Indo-European is not neutral as the European Union’s language, because not all languages spoken in the EU are Indo-European, is a weak argument; to say exactly that, and then to propose English, or English+French, or even a two-day-of-work invention (a vocabulary mix of 4 Western European languages) by a Polish ophthalmologist, that’s a big fallacy.
6. So why are you proposing Indo-European? Why do you bother?
Because we want to. Because we like Europe’s Indo-European and the other Proto-Indo-European dialects, just like people who want to study and speak Latin, Greek, or Sanskrit do it. Have you noticed the difference in culture, tradition, history, vocabulary, etc. between what you are suggesting (artificial one-man-made inventions) and real world historical languages? Hint: that’s why many universities offer courses in or about Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, Proto-Indo-European, etc. while Esperanto is still (after more than a century) another conlanging experiment for those who want to travel abroad once a year to meet other conlang fans.
We propose it because we believe this language could be one practical answer (maybe the only real one) for the communication problems that a unified European Union poses. Because we don’t believe that any “Toki Pona” language invented by one enlightened individual can solve any communication or cultural problem at all in the real world. Because historical, natural languages like Hebrew, or Cornish, or Manx, or Basque, are interesting and valuable for people; whereas “languages” like Esperanto, Interlingua, Ido, Lojban or Klingon aren’t. You cannot change how people think, but you can learn from their interests and customs and behave accordingly: if, knowing how people reacted to Esperanto and Hebrew revival proposals after a century, you decide to keep trying to change people (so that they accept inventions) instead of changing your ideas (so that you accept natural languages), maybe you lack the necessary adaptation, a common essential resource in natural selection, appliable to psychology too.
7. Why don’t you explain this when talking about Proto-Indo-European advantages in the Dnghu Association’s website?
Because if you make a website about science, and you include a reference like: “Why you shouldn’t believe in Islamic creationism?” you are in fact saying Islamic creationism is so important that you have to mention it when talking about science… It’s like creating a website about Internal Medicine, and trying to answer in your FAQ why Homeopathy is not the answer for your problems: it’s just not worth it, if you want to keep a serious appearance. We are not the anti-Esperanto league or something, but the Indo-European Language Association.
Apart from this, proto-languages are indeed difficult to promote as ‘real’ languages, because there is no inscription of them, so they remain ‘hypothetical’, however well they might be reconstructed, like Europe’s Indo-European, or Proto-Germanic – see Five lines of ancient script on a shard of pottery could be the longest proto-Canaanite text for a curious example of a proto-language becoming a natural dead one. For many people, Proto-Basque (for example) seems exactly as hypothetical as Proto-Indo-European, when it indeed isn’t. If we also mixed Esperanto within a serious explanation of our project as a real alternative, that would be another reason for readers to dismiss the project as “another conlanging joke”. No, thanks.
8. Esperanto has its advantages and disadvantages. You just don’t talk from an objective (or “neutral”) point of view: most linguists (of any opinion) are – like Esperantists – biased, so there is no single truth, but opinions.
Yes, indeed. Many Esperantists, as any supporter of pseudosciences, conclude that people might be for or against their theory, and that therefore both positions are equally valid and should be taken with a grain of salt. For this question, I think it’s interesting, for those who think in terms of “equal validity” of their minority views when confronted to what is generally accepted, to take a quick look at Wikipedia’s Neutral Poin of View – equal validity statement, because they’ve had a lot of problems with that issue. To sum up, it says that if you talk about biology, you cannot consequently demand that evolution and creationism be placed as equally valid theories, only because some people (are willing to) assume they are; if you talk about the holocaust, or medicine, you don’t place revisionism or alternative medicines as equally valid theories or sciences: there are academic and scientific criteria that help classify knowledge into scientific and pseudoscientific. Most (if not all) Esperantist claims are at best pseudoscientific, and when they claim real advantages of their conlang, those are just as well (often better) applied to other conlangs or even to any language.
9. Then why do the “Universala Esperanto-Asocio” enjoys consultave relations with both UNESCO and the United Nations? Why is Esperantism described as “democracy”, “education”, “rights”, “emancipation”,… Why do still Esperantists support Esperanto, when it hasn’t got any advantages at all, and they know it?
The only conclusion possible is that Esperantism (and some other fanatic conlangism) is actually a religion, because it’s based on faith alone: faith on believed “easiness”, on believed “neutrality”, on believed “number of speakers”, without any facts, numbers or studies to support it; on the belief that languages can be “better” and “worse” than others. And it’s obviously nonsense to discuss faith and beliefs, as useless as a discussion about Buddha, Muhammad or Jesus. But, trying to disguise those beliefs as facts helps nobody, not even Esperantism, as it can only attract those very people that see creationism and alternative medicines as real alternatives to raw scientifical knowledge. Esperanto is the god, Zamenhof the messiah and the UEA its church.
You are not alone in attacking Esperanto. Hitler and Stalin did the same. See http://www.his.com/~wormsong/esw/esw6.html
Native Esperanto speakers, include George Soros, Ulrich Brandenburg the new German Ambassador to NATO, and World Champion Chess Player, Susan Polger. Like yourself I have not met these people either.
The difference between Esperanto and other projects is precisely that. Esperanto is not a project. It has got off the drawing board and this is why the “Universala Esperanto-Asocio” enjoys consultave relations with both UNESCO and the United Nations. The Association’s defence of minority languages was seen at the U.N. Human Rights Conference in Geneva this year. See http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=eR7vD9kChBA&feature=related
Esperanto is in the top 100 languages, out of 6,000 worldwide, according to the CIA factbook. It is in use by Skype, Firefox and Facebook.
Its agglutinative structure makes the language especially appealing to non-Europeans. The major growth areas for Esperanto are now in Africa and Asia. CRI – Chinese Radio International – broadcasts daily in the language. Check http://esperanto.cn/
Suggestions that there is no interest in Esperanto are consequently invalid. Try to google the word “Esperanto” and see how many hits there are.
’nuff said.
@Brian Barker
Reductio ad Hitlerum in the first comment. The best reason not to criticize Esperanto, of course!
Do they have Esperanto as mother tongue? Really? Do you mean this Wikipedia article or the Ethnologue numbers without references apart from the UEA website? Do you mean those 5 people mentioned, who were supposedly educated in Esperanto as second language? Is it enough to assert “I was taught Volapük as mother tongue by my parents” or “I taught my children Esperanto as mother tongue” to believe it? Do, in any case, those native speakers of Klingon or Quenya represent something more than a bad joke of their parents? I don’t know, maybe some proven facts or figures, and also the meaning of those facts and figures, should be further explained, when talking about “daily use of Esperanto”, “native speakers” and “Esperanto speaking communities”…Again, we don’t have to look for the facts, references and reasons to prove you are wrong, but you Esperantists should have provided us with them long ago: you’ve had a 100 years to do it, and we are still waiting, while you keep on asserting the same good old believe-it-or-not-Esperanto-is-so-cool crap.
So, it’s not about a language, it’s more like the Red Cross or the Sovereign Order of Malta… Not a language, but a social movement with its own principles, institution, international activities and relations… Something like a religion?
Suggestions that Google hits (or number of Wikipedia articles, chats or websites) represent real interest in Esperanto, or that such supposed interest is enough to accept the “advantages” of Esperanto, is little less than a joke. The fact that a lot of people use herbs or prays to solve their medical problems doesn’t mean that they are actually solved, or that – if they are – they do it because of their supposed benefits. That’s why you won’t see a lot of professionals recommend you any herb or pray to solve, say, an anaemia…
I ask for facts and reasons and I obtain what could be expected: personal names, Esperantist references and organizations, and big fallacies. What a surprise.
“it’s obviously nonsense to discuss faith and beliefs”
I am not sure your opinion is not the result of your beliefs.
It should be easy to PROVE that Esperanto is rubbish with a simple unbiased experiment.
Unfortunately, as soon as a group of opponents wants to set up such an experiment, they realize that they will fail to prove what they want to prove.
The consequence is that only the experiments in favour of Esperanto are published. This is the way science progresses.
Try and set up such experiment, you’ll see.
My belief is that you’ll publish nothing, not even an attempt to describe your methodology.
In the meantime, the best we can do is to rely on our own experience with the language.
Remuŝ
… a satisfied customer…
So: Esperanto advantages, creationism, homeopathy, auriculotherapy, etc. are all valid theories until their “opponents” – the rest of us – prove otherwise!?
So the proponents of everything are right until their theories are rejected, the burden of proof is on us, the “opponents”, we have to spend our time and resources rejecting the absurd inventions and beliefs of others?
Then great, Esperanto has a lot of advantages, God created the world in 6 days, homeopathy and herbs solve most diseases…; AND “if you don’t think so, then PROVE it. Why didn’t people prove the opposite? Because they couldn’t. So we are right”. That’s logic!
Again, I ask for any independent studies or research about the supposed advantages of Esperanto, which have been promoted again and again by their supporters during the last 100 years, but all that Esperantists are able to give is still today nothing more than biased texts, personal opinions (“experiences”) and direct faith on the existence of those advantages. Since Mr. Zamenhof expressed his view about the benefits of his own invention, a legion of followers defend it: was he the messiah of the Esperanto god, and the UEA his new church?
“So: Esperanto advantages, creationism, homoeopathy, auriculotherapy, etc. are all valid theories until their “opponents” – the rest of us – prove otherwise!”
EXACTLY. You begin to understand what science really is.
But “the rest of us” could be just one person. It might be you. The rest of us are eager to hear about your unbiased experiment.
Obviously, we – Esperantists – are not able to design such an experiment, because we are biased, untrustworthy, dishonest, subjective, self-deceived, unscientific, and worse, we speak with people from everywhere as easily in Esperanto (for me more easily) as in English, while there
are so many languages which work already. Why add one more to complicate things? We must be crazy!
To be practical, what experiment do you propose to prove your point or to disprove the claim of Esperantists?
Do you know what they really claim? Probably not. See http://lingvo.org/en.php
I don’t expect any progress in this discussion.
Sorry again, I (we) don’t have to prove or propose anything. It’s up to you proposers and promoters (fans) of the advantages of Esperanto to prove such advantages, to be able to claim how “easy”, “neutral” and how many “native speakers” Esperanto has.
The Manifesto you link to is still funnier than the usual claims made by Esperantists. Esperanto is not only a supposed “language”, Esperantism (the idea, the religion, not only the mix of vocabulary) is actually the solution to every international, national and personal problem! Wow, it IS so cool to believe in Esperanto. Esperantists must be like
You cannot expect anything when discussing faith. We agree on that. Just bring facts and numbers from any (just one) independent research, not made by the UEA, Esperanto Associations, and the like. We could then discuss those numbers and facts, and maybe achieve conclusions, so that the actual advantages and disadvantages of Esperanto could be ascertained; we would then at least know something else than those false, unproven topics about Esperanto and Esperantism. But it’s not worth it: Esperantists know Esperanto is cool since Mr. Zamenhof said it was… Congratulations on your coolness.
“Just bring facts and numbers from any (just one) independent research, not made by the UEA, Esperanto Associations, and the like.”
Sorry, I am not qualified to provide reliable figures now that I speak Esperanto, am member of UEA and know something (not all) on the subject; all I could say would be partial, wouldn’t it? I couldn’t have been of any help either 20 years ago when I was as unqualified to have an opinion as you are now.
You are somewhat overestimating the aura of Zamenhof: we are now in the 21st century.
To progress a little: what is THE MAIN QUESTION you want me to prove or disprove (I hope you’ll avoid religious issues as they don’t have anything to do with the subject).
Coolness be on you too.
@Remush:
If you take a look at the usual definitions of science (which means “knowledge”), the basic assertion about it is that knowledge is gained through research. It is not knowledge is rejected through research.
Usual claims about Esperanto are its supposed “number of speakers” – without further definitions or references (only an “Ethnologue” or “CIA World Factbook” link seems enough for you) -, “easiness”, “neutrality”, “agglutinative grammar” or its great “propaedeutic value”. None of these claims have ever been supported by research using the scientific method, but they are repeatedly claimed by fans as actual features of Esperanto, when not directly praising the benefits of Esperantism as a social movement
You don’t need to be a non-Esperantist or an anti-Esperantist to conduct such studies; you just must be willing to do it right. Nobody has ever done it, it probably seemed unnecessary to them, and they were right, as all Esperantists believe without proofs. I said all studies about Esperanto conducted until now were biased and unscientific, the supposed “advantages” directly invented.
Do you want to say Esperanto words to your friends and congratulate yourself about speaking a “language”? Great. Do you want to assert something about that “language” and be taken seriously? Prove it first. Everything that you want to claim, prove it.. To have a history of 100 years and a legion of supporters doesn’t turn your endless claims about Esperanto’s (and Esperantism’s) coolness true.
Anyway, I don’t expect anything from Esperantism: following your “equal validity of theories” argument, you Esperantists have filled up the Internet with pro-Esperanto websites and propaganda, and most people either don’t care or believe in that pseudo- or unscientific crap. Don’t be afraid, you’ve already won the information war against truth, just like Herbalism or palm-reading, to the point that, as you said, it’s up to us (“opponents”) to prove the contrary…
In answer to your questions about Esperanto, I am able to give the following facts.
There is no such religion as Esperantism. It does not exist.
You refer to the recognition of Esperanto by the United Nations – see also http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=YKsVGBSBG2k – but the use of Esperanto by UNESCO’s Director-General Koichiro Matsuura on the occasion of the International Year of Languages 2008, is both relevant and factual. See http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=36000&URL_DO=DO_PRINTPAGE&URL_SECTION=201.html for evidence.
I support your demands for further unbiased research on Esperanto. There have been many unbiased tests on the propaedeutic value of Esperanto http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto But you are right to suggest that such factual evidence must be academically assessed and extended. Four schools in Britain have introduced Esperanto, in order to test its propaedeutic values. The pilot project is being monitored by the University of Manchester. I hope that you agree that the experiment needs to be extended and that the University of Manchester is an unbiased body.
The fact that the number of google hits for now totals 44,700,000 does not mean that this is the total number of people who fluently speak Esperanto. These are people who are seeking information about the language.
In the same way other individuals support Esperanto but do not fluently use it. Nine British MP’s nominated Esperanto for the Nobel Peace Prize 2008. http://www.esperanto-gb.org/eab/eab_news/2008-01-05_nobel.htm According to the betting shop firm “Paddy Power” there were equal odds on Esperanto with “Greenpeace” and Bono. Greenpeace and Bono didn’t receive the Nobel Peace Prize either!
Please note that the text of the British MP’s nomination does not necessarily represent the views of “Universala Esperanto-Asocio”.
Two of the questions you ask I am unable to help you with.
In what respect is the period of 121 years relevant? In the same vein Christianity has been around for 2008 years, yet few people claim it has “failed” despite the growth of interest, now, in Islam.
Native speaker George Soros et al falls within the definition you describe. I do not speak Klingon and am therefore unable to reply to you question on how many native Klingon speakers there are. The baby in the following clip is not speaking Klingon! http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=l0ErKbLL5WQ
All the above is factual – I hope that it helps you with your research.
I’m glad that you are promoting Klingon.
At least Klingon is spoken in outer space!
No-one on earth speaks Esperanto
In answer to your questions about Esperanto, I am able to give the following facts.
There is no such religion as Esperantism. It does not exist.
You refer to the recognition of Esperanto by the United Nations – see also http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=YKsVGBSBG2k – but the use of Esperanto by UNESCO’s Director-General Koichiro Matsuura on the occasion of the International Year of Languages 2008, is both relevant and factual. See http://portal.unesco.org/culture/en/ev.php-URL_ID=36000&URL_DO=DO_PRINTPAGE&URL_SECTION=201.html for evidence.
I support your demands for further unbiased research on Esperanto. There have been many unbiased tests on the propaedeutic value of Esperanto http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto But you are right to suggest that such factual evidence must be academically assessed and extended. Four schools in Britain have introduced Esperanto, in order to test its propaedeutic values. The pilot project is being monitored by the University of Manchester. I hope that you agree that the experiment needs to be extended and that the University of Manchester is an unbiased body.
The fact that the number of google hits for now totals 44,700,000 does not mean that this is the total number of people who fluently speak Esperanto. These are people who are seeking information about the language.
In the same way other individuals support Esperanto but do not fluently use it. Nine British MP’s nominated Esperanto for the Nobel Peace Prize 2008. http://www.esperanto-gb.org/eab/eab_news/2008-01-05_nobel.htm According to the betting shop firm “Paddy Power” there were equal odds on Esperanto with “Greenpeace” and Bono. Greenpeace and Bono didn’t receive the Nobel Peace Prize either!
Please note that the text of the British MP’s nomination does not necessarily represent the views of “Universala Esperanto-Asocio”.
Two of the questions you ask I am unable to help you with.
In what respect is the period of 121 years relevant? In the same vein Christianity has been around for 2008 years, yet few people claim it has “failed” despite the growth of interest, now, in Islam.
Native speaker George Soros et al falls within the definition you describe. I do not speak Klingon and am therefore unable to reply to you question on how many native Klingon speakers there are. The baby in the following clip is not speaking Klingon! http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=l0ErKbLL5WQ
All the above is factual – I hope that it helps you with your research.
There’s a lot in here that requires comment, but I’ll restrict myself to a few lines.
Personally, I’ve met about half a dozen Esperanto speakers. In a few cases, I knew their parents, but where a couple of hundred Esperanto speakers are together (in Plouezec, Brittany, for example, where I was last summer)there is no systematic way of knowing who is a native speaker, unless the matter comes up in conversation.
Esperanto is not only used in organised conferences. It is used for skiing weekends, rambling, for church services, and for personal friendships. Like thousands of others, I use it for personal reasons, rather than for a noble ideal.
In the past couple of years I have had guided tours of Berlin and Milan in the planned language. I have discussed philosophy with a Slovene poet, humour on television with a Bulgarian TV producer. I’ve discussed what life was like in East Berlin before the wall came down, how to cook perfect spaghetti, the advantages and disadvantages of monarchy, the workings of the Catholic church and so on. These meetings, in private homes, in restaurants for example are not recoeded for scientific research, but theuy are no less real for that. There’s plenty for any linguistic scientist to record, observe and test, but the proven advantage of Esperanto to me is that it is easy to learn and use.
I wish your group well, but you have not yet made your case clearly or demonstrated it in practice.
@Bill Chapman: Thank you for your comment.
There should be a systematic way of knowing who is a “native speaker”, before asserting one is a “native speaker”! There should be a systematic way of knowing which medicine works for a certain disease, before asserting it works for that disease. Not subjective opinion, personal experience or direct belief in what others say…
After the Wikipedia definitions, “native language is used to indicate a language that a person is as proficient in as a native inhabitant of that language’s base country, or as proficient as the average person who speaks no other language but that language”. Also, “first language is used for the language that the speaker speaks best (his second language then being the language he speaks less well than his first language, etc)”. Only “mother tongue” could be fit to the cases you (and Esperantists) mention, as “it is sometimes used for the language that a person learnt at home (usually from his parents). Children growing up in bilingual homes can according to this definition have more than one mother tongue”. However, since such assertions (like “I have Esperanto as mother tongue”) haven’t undergone a systematic research, claims of “200-2000″ native speakers (or mother tongue speakers) of Esperanto have to be rejected until otherwise proven, not accepted until the rest of us are able to reject it…
Thanks. You are right, we haven’t demonstrated it in practice. But “our case” has been made clearly: Are we almost all Jews, and want to have a common language in our nation? Let’s speak Hebrew again. Are we almost all Romance speakers, and want to have a common language in our nation? Let’s speak Latin again. Are we almost all EU citizens Indo-European speakers, and want to have a common language in our nation? Let’s speak Europe’s Indo-European again. Either you like our proposal and the facts presented or not: no lies, no hidden facts, no supposed “advantages”, no invented numbers, no blurred or half truths; just raw facts and numbers and the rational conclusion we draw from them. We made our case before a University tribunal, they accepted the project as well argumented and factible, and then we began working on the language revival – not the other way round like conlangers do.
To assert we “didn’t make our case” whereas Esperanto did, when the only proven fact about Esperanto is that it is mainly mix of Romance (and some Germanic) vocabulary – nothing more than the output of some days of a experimental language game by a Polish ophthalmologist – is little less than willing blindness.
“knowledge is gained through research.”
In a very strict application of the experimental method, hypotheses are tested by critical experiments: ones that can falsify the hypothesis in the case of a non-result (i.e., an experiment showing that the independent variable did not affect the dependent variable as predicted).
Read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experiment.
How long were you personally busy with any kind of research on the subject?
You obviously have troubles asking yourself the right question. Is it related to:
1) “number of speakers”? Short answer: nobody knows not even the CIA. I personally know more than enough. My answer at http://remush.be/rebuttal/social.html.
prove the contrary? Prove what exactly? Nie mam zielonego pojęcia.
2) easiness? See my answer at http://remush.be/rebuttal/easyness.html. Many experiments were done on the relative easiness of Esperanto.
3) neutrality ? Not well understood. In this context the sentence “Esperanto is neutral” means there is no country, no power, no group of people who owns Esperanto.
4) agglutinative grammar? Never heard of… Explain what that might be. Do you mean that words are build by juxtaposition? Then yes, this is like that by construction.
5) propaedeutic value? see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto but you are probably too old to be a good candidate for such an experiment. Moreover, as you are well educated, you probably already know several languages.
6) all Esperantists believe without proofs? I personally believe that it works, but only with those who spend some time learning it. I made many experiments on that.
7) most people don’t care? I couldn’t agree more, it’s their decision; I have no problem with that.
What is the essential question you want to ask?
@Tom Windsor alias Brian Barker alias Francis Lee:
Sorry for the spam classification of your comments – they probably had too many links for Akismet plugin to approve them. I cannot control these plugin’s preferences, so thanks for posting it more than once.
@Tom Windsor:
Certainly not. It is a rhetorical figure called hyperbole, it uses exaggeration as a way to point out something. In this case, that Esperantism is more a kind of (anti-)social movement or international organization than a real language spoken because of its supposed “advantages”. People believe first Esperanto and Esperantism is the answer to some international or social problems, and then support a “language” and its community because of any possible “advantage” they can imagine. Quite similar to religion, isn’t it?
I find any experiment about Esperanto great. Really. I want to read the full paper of the whole experiment, not only a promotion website and a link referencing it in the Wikipedia article about Esperanto: who financed it, who conducted it (and what links did the researchers have with Esperanto and Esperantist groups and associations), their academic background, the methods and tests used to get their facts and numbers, the statistical measures used and the outputs in relation to those facts and numbers obtained. Everything. Not just “hey, we are doing an experiment about how good the propaedeutic values of Esperanto are. Our conclusions say Esperanto is great!”. That’s not enough, I’m afraid.
It is relevant in light of the success that Modern Hebrew has had in the same period, when in fact Esperanto had the whole world as potential speakers, being the “easiest” and “most neutral” language possible. It is relevant in the sense that every year new “advantages” are found for Esperanto, while no single “advantage” has been proven. It is relevant in the sense that the community supporting Esperanto is very strong and convinced about the truth of its benefits, while there has been little (if any) real interest in proving such claims before learning or promoting that Romance mix. It is relevant because Esperantism, like religion, is based on statements that haven’t been (or even cannot be) proven, and still they survive thanks to a surprisingly strong faith demonstrated by their supporters. It is relevant because many Esperantists, when writing to dismiss our project, told us “Esperanto has a longer history than…”, so if the “tradition” benefit is relevant to Esperantists (and Volapükists), then the other side of that argument, the “you have failed for 121 years and counting” argument must be relevant for you, too.
@ Remush: Thank you for your comment.
“We don’t know”, that’s a good starting point for everything about Esperanto. Better than saying e.g. “from 200 to 200.000.000 speakers according to an Ethnologue writer, who consulted a friend, who had in turn heard that…”.
Thanks for the link. Your answers about the easiness are full of “I’ve met…”, “I know people who..”. Great for promoting Esperanto among people willing to believe you and your personal vision. Bad for claiming anything here, I guess. Hint: Just imagine a similar website talking about Volapük, or Klingon… Would you believe it? If so, then great, go on.
Not well understood by whom? by other Esperantists? I guess every Esperantist from time to time claims “it’s neutral”, whithout further questioning him- or herself what that means. Now you want to explain it further, because “it is not well understood?” I don’t get the point in asserting something as abstract as “neutrality”, and then – only when asked – trying to explain it in different ways. You can read the common criticisms of Esperanto neutrality in the Wikipedia, where all possible interpretations of that supposed “neutrality” have been considered – and remember Wikipedia articles about Esperanto are usually written by Esperantists, so just imagine how that looks like for real world critics…
No problem. It’s normal that not all claims made by Esperantism are known to all of you, you should compile a Esperanto Bible to be able to learn everything that has been claimed about that “language” and its social movement. Here is what agglutination means. Here is a note on the “intensive agglutinative” character of Esperanto. Here is the first comment of this thread by Brian Barker (another Esperantist) claiming that agglutination makes Esperanto easier for Asian and African speakers. References to the “advantages” of its “agglutinative” character appear also when claiming its supposed “neutrality”. As you can see, when Esperanto is involved everything can appear everywhere to claim whatever Esperantists find appropriate to claim about its “advantages”.
Thanks for that, I’m blushing…I had a looong discussion with another Esperanto fan about those studies – he just posted them one by one in a Spanish forum, and I commented them one by one, no less than 2 hours in front of my computer to get NOTHING. It was exactly the same for him and the rest of Esperantists there. To sum up: What we have about those “studies” is just the introduction, conclusion and sometimes who did it and what links they had with Esperantism and Esperanto Associations. It’s not that we (“the opponents”, as you call the rest of us non-Esperantists) mistrust Esperantist studies – it’s just that you should mistrust every study, its method, the statistical measures used, and the conclusion drawn. I had already a bad time having to read all those summaries of the studies and discussing each one, and I won’t do it again: if you want to believe they did all studies (“or at least some of them”) right just by reading those paragraphs ABOUT the studies, without further questioning them, then perfect.
As an interesting example, some weeks ago we were discussing (in Clinical Pharmacology) a paper that was published in some Indian Medical review – another student found it in PubMed – which referenced the advantages of the flower of the “Punica Granatum”, I think. The conclusion was that that flower (or herb, I don’t know exactly) that grow up in the Himalayas is good for everything…Some hundreds of people took it (eaten or whatever), and the conclusion was it served for everything – and it is published in a medical review, and referenced in PubMed. No comparisons with other alternatives, no reference to or study of adverse effects, no appropriate statistical measures or systematic method, but here they are, at the core of PubMed, one of the best scientific knowledge databases. Now, I’m sure you can find a lot of such articles about every possible herb, or alternative medicines.
The real question is then: are you Esperantists prepared to be as critic with those studies about Esperanto as you are with, say, Medicine or History? After having learned, taught, supported and even promoted that “language” with your time and efforts, are you Esperantists ready to accept that almost all claims have to be rejected until proven otherwise, and that almost all time you dedicated to it has been lost? I guess not. It’s easier to hide inside your strong combatant community, it’s easier to say “we have an opinion, and they (“the opponents”) have other”, “either you are with us or against”, “opinions about Esperanto are too polarized”, “there is no neutrality when talking about Esperanto”… Just the same arguments one could use to defend homeopathy or voodoo.
Please share those experiments. Remember, scientific method: To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering observable, empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning. A scientific method consists of the collection of data through observation and experimentation, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses.
Prove every single claim you keep making everywhere since that enlightened Polish published his conlang grammar. Prove Esperanto’s easiness, neutrality, number of speakers; and also those features you mentioned before about Esperanto, such as “democracy”, “rights”, “emmancipation”, “linguistic diversity”, etc. Every single “advantage” must be proven before claiming it. If not, it’s all just opinion disguised as fact, if not directly falseness, lies, inventions and half truths.
Again: it’s not that we (“the opponents”) have to ask for anything specific to be proven. You claimed “advantages”, “values”, “native speakers” and didn’t provide any data: proofs first, claims thereafter. Research is the only way. Research made with the scientific method, of course, not a handful of home-made Esperantist “researchers” – i.e. Esperantist teachers with some hundreds of students to experiment with – who publish some papers whose conditions, methods and conclusions couldn’t meet the minimal criteria to be published in a serious academic review about philology or linguistics.
You are still avoiding to answer this:
What is the essential question you want to ask about Esperanto?
You like to make stupid analogies with herbs and alternative medicine. I propose another stupid one:
I went to the swimming pool this afternoon and I noticed that there were several people swimming there as well.
Can I prove to you that people can swim, if you don’t want to go to a swimming pool and check with your own eyes?
About numbers.
How many chess-players exist in the world?
Propose an experiment to compute that, without making estimation based on contestable sources. Would you decide to learn chess if there are more than 2 millions people playing it? Would you call yourself a chess-player if you just know the rules of the game? We would call you a wood-pusher not a chess player.
Speaking of experiments:
Technically, nobody can prove anything with experiments. What scientists do is publish the methodology they used to prove or disprove something. It is up to you to remake the experiment and CONVINCE YOURSELF. If you disagree, show where they made a mistake.
If enough people arrive at the same conclusions as the authors, and no contester can produce contradictory material, the theory is considered to be valid (…until disproven)
Note however that it is not always evident to find the flaw.
Think of Aristotle, Newton, Einstein, Hawking and God playing dice so we will never know the outcome for sure.
However it is often possible to prove without dispute that something is false. (Think of spontaneous generation and Louis Pasteur)
In summary…
You want a proof of what exactly?
That Esperanto doesn’t work? or that MIE works even better? Nie mam bladego pojęcia.
???
@Remush:
I’ve answered that already, you are repeating the same question. I’ll repeat the answer: everything. Do you want to claim that Esperanto is “easy” (i.e. “easier than other languages”)? Prove it. Do you want to claim Esperanto is “neutral” (i.e. “more neutral than other languages”)? Prove it. Do you want to claim anything? It’s O.K. Prove it first. If not, it’s just wrong. Just like claiming angels protect you: this is wrong until proven otherwise. You can believe it, of course, but if you try to disguise your beliefs as facts, that’s distorting reality for your own (perceived) benefits.
It’s not “Esperanto is easy because I learned it in 2 days” or “because I have a friend who told me he learnt it in 2 hours”, or “because I saw some people speak it after reading just a book” but rather a good example of how this “advantage” could have been studied is:
“Esperanto has been found to be easier to learn than language/s X for speakers of Z languages, after this research published in this prestigious peer-reviewed academic journal. The study concluded that, after a randomized trial studying [?] hundreds of students under [?] conditions, [?]% of students assigned to the Esperanto group were able to communicate [?]% of certain (previously prepared) standard information better than those who were assigned to the group that studied the language X, because they achieved better marks in these standard language proficiency tests, and that difference is statistically significant according to these conditions. The study – not the teaching or the language proficiency tests, which are necessarily made by Esperantists – was designed, conducted and written by teachers and researchers either linked or not to Esperanto or Esperantist groups, and it was financed by this Esperanto Association or Organization”.
Indeed, the results of such an independent study conducted by independent linguist researchers could be not only non-conclusive about the hypothesis that Esperanto is “easier than X for speakers of Y”, but could also show a clear disadvantage of Esperanto over many – if not all – combinations, like e.g. (most probably) Esperanto vs. English for German students, Esperanto vs. Spanish for Italian students, Esperanto vs. Czech for Polish students, Esperanto vs. Japanese for Chinese students, etc.
By knowing who finances, designs and conducts the research, one can more precisely ascertain which aspects of the design and content of the study might be biased, and criticisms to it are far easier to find – that’s in fact how medical research and critcisms to them work. So, for example, about the studies you link to from the Wikipedia “Propedeutic value of Esperanto” article: Most were made by Esperantist school teachers, who taught Esperanto to their students for some time, then asked them whatever they deemed appropriate to judge what they considered “knowledge of Esperanto”, compared that “knowledge” however they deemed appropriate with what they thought was “knowledge of other language/s”, and concluded “how easy” Esperanto was for them to learn, or how great it’s “propaedeutic value” was. They published those findings, and those papers are linked again and again by Esperantists. That’s not research. That’s a joke, even if some people are interested in taking them seriously.
Mi bone konscias ke mi ĉi tie perdas mian tempon. Konsideru tion kiel ekzercon mian por praktiki la anglan lingvon. Avertu min private se vi rimarkis gravan lingvan eraron.
“I’ve answered that already, you are repeating the same question. I’ll repeat the answer: everything. ”
That’s a lot! The answer is 42, the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy)
If you central question is : prove that Esperanto is easy: the answer is : I can’t prove it to you; I can prove it to myself and you could prove it to yourself, but you refuse to experiment yourself and prefer to rely on some external body, preferably one who would say it’s more difficult (I did not find any). I would not consider that a very scientific approach.
1) When people don’t have a good motivation they have a hard time learning anything (do you need a proof on that as well). To you, Esperanto would be very very difficult, not to say completely unlearnable (do you need a further proof of that?). However, many learned Esperanto with a weak motivation.
2) Easy is a relative term. People mistake the word easy for the word easier. (from http://remush.be/rebuttal/easyness.html that you did not care to read)
It’s like saying that going to the moon is easier than going to Mars. It’s true, but that doesn’t mean that going to the moon is easy.
3) To measure easiness one needs to consider the source and the target language pair: in principle a German would learn English easier than a Spanish, but the disturbing factor “motivation” could false the results.
4) English speakers are very lousy learners of languages probably due to their education system (like in France 100 years ago: “French is the world language, who needs another one?”). For an English all languages are difficult. I never met an English speaking French correctly, but I met several speaking Esperanto perfectly (but this is no proof because they had a very high IQ as well).
In summary, I’ve proved to myself that Esperanto required less learning time than French, English, Dutch, German, Polish, Latin, Greek, Chinese and even Java.
Set up your own experiment, but don’t bet your life on the outcome.
My question when I started was : does it work or not?
At the time, my answer was, may-be its readable but probably not speakable.
As I am a hard believer, I did not rely on the rubbish published in blogs and experimented myself.
BTW. The big majority of Esperantists are very very hard believers. Publish anything in Esperanto, you’ll see. This is the normal result of diversity.
Sorry, but everything is too much to handle. Ask precise and well limited questions in order of importance, and try to keep the focus on essentials.
One word about “propaedeutics”. Obviously you never were in direct contact with any of those who conducted the experiment, they could have given direct answers.
@Remush:
Scientific method again: Scientific researchers propose hypotheses as explanations of phenomena, and design experimental studies to test these hypotheses. These steps must be repeatable in order to dependably predict any future results.
Then why on hell would you use any adjectives at all 
It’s not: “I believe in God and go to church. To go to church is great to heal every illness, to be always happy, etc. I know it because I experimented it. I know it because a friend of mine experimented it. If you don’t believe it it’s up to you, but I know it and my friends too”. WE ALL MUST either know it or not: and we don’t. So these advantages of going to church (or of learning or using Esperanto words to communicate) doesn’t exist; not until proven otherwise. You might believe in them, but they just don’t exist. If you, instead of accepting Esperanto is you personal option, promote it everywhere making propaganda about its “advantages”, like “easiness” or “neutrality”, then you are distorting reality for your own purposes. By the way, adjectives like “easy” or “neutral” are necessarily related to the difficultness or non-neutrality of other languages, you mean in fact that it’s “easier/more neutral than other languages”, if not it hasn’t any sense at all: what you assert is like saying “he is tall, but that doesn’t mean that he is ‘taller than others’, or that ‘others are shorter than him’”
Scientific method again: Among other facets shared by the various fields of inquiry is the conviction that the process be objective to reduce a biased interpretation of the results. Another basic expectation is to document, archive and share all data and methodology so they are available for careful scrutiny by other scientists, thereby allowing other researchers the opportunity to verify results by attempting to reproduce them. This practice, called full disclosure, also allows statistical measures of the reliability of these data to be established.
You don’t have to be friends with researchers to examine the validity of their studies…
We agree on that. Everything is too much to handle. So please tell your Esperantist community to focus on relevant aspects about Esperanto, and stop claiming every absurd “advantage” they can imagine about speaking that “language” and about being member of their community. Then maybe some of you could be able to prove something at all… Until then, all propaganda that surrounds Esperanto is just promotional crap and blind belief.
Another basic expectation is to [...] verify results by attempting to reproduce them.
The key words are “verify results by attempting to reproduce them.”
OK, I reproduced: it works!
Did you try and reproduce anything?
No! Too lazy, no time, no motivation, no use, no interest, no money, no sponsors, other interests…
Then believe whatever, in angels, in herbs, in the Bible, we couldn’t care less.
Your attitude is called: doctus cum libro (ou posséder la science infuse) while it is so easy to experiment by oneself.
DON’T PLEASE DON’T EVER LEARN ESPERANTO
Better learn Japanese to check if indeed you can learn Chinese faster. (I know somebody who did it and indeed it lasted 3 years to reach the level others could only reach after 5! There was still a lot to learn thereafter, but the girl had to earn her living and had to quit).
BTW in all the language pairs you proposed, which one do you think would show a better result than Esperanto?
I’ll send a message to a multilingual discussion group and people will tell their opinion. We’ll decide later what kind of experiment can be done to prove or disprove the assertion.
The language pair that most people would really like to be compared is their mother tongue and English, the so-called de facto international language. Which language is closest to English ? French? Dutch? German? … Esperanto???
As an Indo-European you could get some clues in http://remush.be/etimo/etimo.html . I’ll do my best to update it.
Prefere mi faru tion anstataŭ perdi mian tempon ĉi tie.
@Remush:
Given that Esperanto is in fact a mix of vocabulary from Romance languages, I guess it might be easier to learn Esperanto than German for a Spanish, Italian or French speaker… What means, it might be as easy as learning Spanish for an Italian speaker, as easy as French for an Italian speaker, etc. The problem is, Esperanto is little less than a lot of words taken from natural languages and two or three grammatical rules selected from them, whereas Spanish, Italian and French are real world languages, which obviously means the details of information you can achieve with the later are infinite, whilst Esperanto (with it’s praised ‘simplicity’) wouldn’t probably do the job, if it’s in fact that simple. Those details cannot indeed be shown by a home-made experiment to see if a Spanish speaker can say “I like Esperanto” better in Esperanto than in German…
I think that is the best option you Esperantists probably have now. But it is rather odd to propose studies of Esperanto now, after 120 years of having created a community based on the “advantages” and “values” of Esperanto as IAL – it would be like accepting other conlangers are right when claiming that Esperanto is little less than a personal game, and that there might in fact exist other more thorough tries to create a “neutral” language, like Lojban; or a “simple” (not just easy) language, like Toki Pona, or a “more natural” one (hence possibly “as good to express everything as other natural languages”), like Interlingua… Anyway, I think Esperantists would be like
if they see insiders questioning such traditional “advantages” right now; remember the slogan: either you are with us or against us… If that position has worked 121 years to get well-intentioned people like you inside the movement, it might work for another 121 the same way! 
As it happens, I have Esperanto as my ‘first language’. By that I mean that my parents spoke only Esperanto to me from birth until just before I started school at the age of three and a half. As their friends were primarily Esperanto speakers, this was the language I heard in our home, read in my children’s books and sang in my nursery rhymes.
Frankly, as such, I don’t bother getting too involved in rebutting the various arguments against use of the language. I use Esperanto on a daily basis with a wide variety of friends and colleagues around the world, on a personal and business basis.
“the details of information you can achieve with the later are infinite”
What is exactly your measure of infinity?
More than you can grasp in your lifetime?
With Esperanto, you’ll need several reincarnations, and rely on charity to feed you while reading.
Read anything in Spanish lately?
Esperanto gives people more time to read literature in their own culture. What about that?
How much time are you actually spending on great world literature?
…
Honestly?
Anyway, thanks for giving me an opportunity to practice my English. Now that I have absolutely no use for it – other than participating to such blogs – I would soon forget everything. Unfortunately, my elocution deteriorated a lot these last years.
Now allow me to go back to my reading of “Faraon” de Bolesław Prus (with the help of an excellent translation of Kabe, alias Kazimierz Bein – another one you never heard of in your horizon of infinity)
@Heather: Let me then rebut your argument with a little change in your words:
As you can see, we are still in the field of “my personal experience is…”. I could assert the same about Indo-European, or anyone could say the same about his “language” – see e.g. the Slovio “testimonials“, how a lot of people argue about the great advantages they had when learning (and using!) Slovio… Do you believe them? WHY NOT? Are they not personal experiences, as reliable as yours?!
Indeed, if your “first and only language” is (really) Esperanto, then maybe your ability to comprehend and use abstract theories is already affected. That’s what happens when parents play with Star Trek or The Lord Of The Rings to educate their children. The same happens when parents play with ‘alternative’ medicines instead of correctly vaccinating their children, or when they teach them only creationism: if he/she dies from a preventable influenzavirus, or becomes a violent extremist, then it’s not your fault as parents; but if he/she just lives and isn’t violent, and continues the family tradition, then you’ve done it well. That’s called denying the antecedent: “I taught my children Esperanto; it didn’t go wrong; so it was right“. A rather simple, but very useful, logical fallacy.
@Remush:
I used the word “infinity” not as a measure for individual knowledge, but as a philosophical measure for our (speaking hominids’) almost infinite possibilities of reasoning – it refers to this post about the need for a complex language to be able to use a complex reasoning. It is indeed a matter studied in psychology of language, whether language helps reasoning or the other way round, but it is more or less clear both language and developing mind influence each other. Would you consequently rely, for the education of your children and the world’s next generation, on a “language” (i.e. a mix of Romance words and some selected grammatical rules) invented in two days of work, 120 years ago, by someone completely unrelated to linguistics or psychology, who in fact called himself “Dr. Esperanto”, showing that his only aim was “the hope to unite the world”, and not to bring anything valuable to improve communication from a scientific or academic point of view? Then you have faith on Him and His work, and nothing can change that.
You can note that for the future. Remember that in each “Universal Congress” you Esperantists have to bring new promotional “advantages” of learning and using Esperanto, proof of them is not required. Just your “personal experience” for newer, more difficult to contrast propaganda; something like “Esperanto gives people more time to read literature in their own culture“, whatever that could actually mean
Did I told you about logical fallacy already? What do you think about the argumentum ad hominem? Maybe you should read less “great world literature” (i.e. fantasy and inventions), and concentrate on real world knowledge, so that you don’t repeat the same mistakes again and again? The problem of not knowing something is that you cannot feel ashamed of not knowing it: you prefer to read fiction books, so you decide it’s a shame not to have read those very books you’ve read, while philosophy or science aren’t that important for you…
Are you kidding me? But Esperanto and Esperantism are perfect! Your English must be perfect, thanks to your Esperanto, it’s tautological! Bring that to the next Master of the Universe Congress, too: “If you learn Esperanto, you will not forget English, even if you don’t use it! That’s my personal experience”
BTW I think you Esperantists should register the trademark “that’s my personal experience” ™, before the other conlangers begin to exploit the same argument. But hurry up, because – as I said – the Slovio creator already noticed it…
Indo-Slovio,
How old are you? I know several teenagers who think just like that.
Do you have a personal experience to share?
In any language?
Of course you may always believe what others (preferably in white laboratory clothes) have experienced.
mi venis tie cxi dum mi sercxis por “lojban kaj esperanto”.
kial? mi ne scias.
tio cxi estas tuta perdo de tempo.
tre amuza, kial iu fartas Indo-European helpus penson abstraktan, kvankam multaj jaroj antaux, homo malpli abstraktis.
se vi ne komprenas, povas peti Heather traduki por vi.
May I kindly refer you to some of the following works?
Schubert, Klaus (1993), “Semantic compositionality: Esperanto word-formation for language technology.” Linguistics 31: 311-365.
Haitao, Liu (2001), “Creoles, Pidgins, and Planned Languages.” Interface. Journal of Applied Linguistics / Tijdschrift voor Toegepaste Linguistiek 15 [2]. pp. 121—177.
Gledhill, Christopher. The Grammar of Esperanto: A Corpus-Based Description. Second edition. Lincom Europa, 2000. ISBN 3-8958-6961-9.[3]
Furthermore you should consider the positive judgments of non-Esperantists such as Umberto Eco (In search of the perfect language; though otherwise a confused book) and Robert Philipson (English-Only Europe, 2003; good overview of language policies).
etc.
More at:
Ignorance may be excusable, willful ignorance not so. As a scholar you should lay aside your personal convictions and look at the facts.
Formatting erorr. The link was supposed to be separate from the concluding line. Oh well.
I am boggled that you don’t even believe in the existence of people who learned Esperanto as a first language. I personally know several such people.
I am also boggled that you don’t believe it is easier to learn than most languages. Even most anti-Esperanto people I know (who dislike or reject it or simply have no interest in learning it) at least acknowledge that a language with very regular grammar, no gender or irregular forms to remember, no maze of complicated endings, a consistent orthography, and so on has quite obvious advantages with ease of learning. In practice, everyone I know who has bothered to learn Esperanto finds it noticeably easier than national languages. I was able to speak and understand only in Esperanto sufficiently well to enjoy an all-day Esperanto meeting I attended about 6 months after I started learning it primarily through self-study. Compared to my experience learning national languages (some of which I studied for years, including living immersed in the country where the language is spoken, and never reached that level of competence I reached with Esperanto after 6 months), the difference is quite obvious.
Remush seems right on with his comment:
> I went to the swimming pool this afternoon and I noticed that there were several people swimming there as well.
> Can I prove to you that people can swim, if you don’t want to go to a swimming pool and check with your own eyes?
You sound like the medieval church officials who refused to look through Galileo’s telescope and so thus could deny that moons moved around other planets.
I see now that for you it is an article of faith that people don’t really speak Esperanto. And you use radical skepticism about anything typed on the Internet as a pretext to dismiss any information given to you about Esperanto which does not conform to your beliefs about Esperanto. (By that reasoning, I should believe nothing I read from you or others about Indo-European.)
It’s as if I described the game of chess to you and your response was “That game sounds too artificial. I can’t believe anyone actually plays it or that it could be an interesting game.” And then when people comment “Actually, I play chess and find it to be a good game”, you dismiss the comments as not being scientific enough. And because no one can tell how many people in the world play chess, you assert that this proves there aren’t really chess players. And if someone points to online chess servers and communities, you dismiss that as mere posing on the Internet, not any kind of proof that people really play chess in real life. And if you find some enthusiast making an absurd false claim about chess or some technical argument about chess, you use that to claim that no one really plays chess and that chess can’t really be a good game.
Meanwhile, out in the real world, people continue to speak Esperanto and play chess (sometimes at the same time!), whether or not you believe they exist…
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