and esperanto ?

maxmanseb   Saturday, September 04, 2004, 19:32 GMT
>Mxsmanic : Esperanto may be academically interesting, but it is useless from a practical standpoint. Study it if you're interested in it for its own sake, but don't assume that it will ever be of any use in the real world. The language has never really gone anywhere, and most likely it never will.

Personally for me esperanto is really more useful than english to meet people of others countries and to speak with them : my level of english is far too bad for a good comprehension ! I like english and I find it useful on the Internet for example, but it's not the language I would use to meet people of others countries.

For example you can travel with it with the project "pasporta servo" (http://www.tejo.org/ps/), you can meet people of the entire world in congresses (http://www.eventoj.hu/2004.htm), ...

You could say "More people speak english, so it' can help you making all these things !". Yes, but in english I can't really express myself and understand, so... esperanto is the best way for me to meet other people and to discover other cultures !

English is really more useful today... but not for all things ! And I think that in the future the place of esperanto will be more and more important ! For example in hungary you can pass it at your exams, and it's a real success : it's now the 3rd language learned as option and passed in exams in only 4 years of availability ! It shows the fact that it can works and that people find it useful to learn and use !

Have you another solution for me to meet and understand people of the whole world at a low price ? I can't afford paying for expensive language-travel in UK or USA to improve my prononciation and knowledge of english, and with only few hours of free esperanto courses it gives the same result !

Often people who are english native speakers are thinking that it's easy for us to learn their language, but that's wrong, and the level of english of french people is very bad ! Esperanto is a good solution to speak well very fast...

>Ed I love Spanish, but I hate Esperanto
I can't understand it :) Have you really ever heard someone speak esperanto ? ;)

>nic Xatufan ¿De verdad te gusta el español? Bueno, espero que puedas hablarlo, porque si no, no podrías leer esto, ¿no?

I don't speak spanish, but in fact without knowing a language we always can understand some things ! For example :

La suno estas bela. -> The sun is beautiful
La floro estas blua. -> The flower is blue
Mia nomo estas Sébastien -> My name is Sébastien
La kato dormos en la domo -> The cat will sleep in the house
Mi trinkis teon, kafon, kaj akvon -> I drank some tea, koffee, and water.

(in esperanto, the nouns allways finish with -o, and the adjectives with -a.
-as is the end of verbs used at the present time, -is is the past time, and -os the future)

You don't speak esperanto but I think that you understood these sentences ;)

See you soon !
Ed   Saturday, September 04, 2004, 23:41 GMT
"I can't understand it :) Have you really ever heard someone speak esperanto ? ;) "

Yea, somewhere online, it sucks lol
Mxsmanic   Sunday, September 05, 2004, 07:27 GMT
One must ask whether it is better to be fluent in a language that nobody speaks, or just get by in a language spoken by a billion people.

Esperanto isn't going anywhere. It's very near the bottom of the list of all languages that I might be willing to study, as it is certainly among the most useless. I'm glad the optometrist had a hobby, but I don't see a reason to share it.
Damian   Sunday, September 05, 2004, 07:33 GMT

<<Esperanto isn't going anywhere>>

I wonder why Esperanto has apparently not become more popular and widely used than it has? Has anyone every heard people casually conversing in Esperanto?
Steve K   Sunday, September 05, 2004, 12:21 GMT
You may learn a language because you need to, but you learn the fastest if you enjoy communicating with the people of that language or enjoy its culture. Why would anyone bother with Esperanto? What a ridiculous elitiest idea to promote a language that nobody speaks, just in order not to offend the speakers of the languages that are not a lingua franca.Again PC gone wild. Smacks of socialists wanting to make people better than they naturally are. Leave people alone. Latin, Sogdian (on the Silk Road) and others all had their moments as a lingua franca. There will be others but it won't be Esperanto.
Xatufan   Sunday, September 05, 2004, 21:44 GMT
Esperanto is weird, and weirdness makes beauty.
Jim   Monday, September 06, 2004, 01:44 GMT
If English proves weirder, does this greater weirdness make greater beauty?
mikel   Monday, September 06, 2004, 02:50 GMT
esperanto is the most ridiculous idea that i have ever encountered. if the inventor of esperanto were to have lived in the present time period, he would probably have been one of those Star Trek nerds who finger their assholes with some arcane and useless category of knowledge while picking at the pimples on their faces.

besides, who cares about being able to communicate with various people of the world if one is not actually willing to learn the language of those people?

culture = language...so that if one is unwilling to learn the language, then presumably one is not truly motivated enough to learn the culture.

why neutralize and compromise when we can simply make an effort to share and to understand one another?

why learn esperanto when you can learn Java or C++, since computer languages are far more universal and a far better compromise anyway?

language learning is essentially a hobbie, so why should one contrive and make artificial that which is better organic and therefore enjoyable?

sports would not be as interesting if athletes were superhuman, and life would not be as rewarding if it did not stand in the face of death.

the rules and motions of a language are most interesting when they have evolved naturally.

why would someone want to invent an international language? do we need then also to invent an international religion that satisifies bits and pieces of every existing religion? how about a government that combines communism, monarchy, democracy, anarchism, and "God's law" (whatever that is) all into one neat little package? would such measures really help us to love one another and still be satisfied?

and lastly, is making an effort to learn one another's tongue really so difficult?
Mi5 Mick   Monday, September 06, 2004, 05:26 GMT
Klingon might be a better idea for a spoken language. You could use it at Star Trek conventions.
Steve K   Monday, September 06, 2004, 06:14 GMT
Mikel,

I am with you. The pleasure of learning a language is to be able to meet with the people of that language, maybe visit that country. We should all learn at least 3 languages. The world is a small place. Esperanto is like coming up with an international cuisine of dishes that someone else chose for you according to some dogma. It is worse than that. It is just anti-human. I have had a great Chinese meal with lots of good red wine and I am enjoying a smooth Jack Daniels straight before retiring so I am getting carried away.
mikel   Monday, September 06, 2004, 20:37 GMT
steve,

i think that the international cusiine example is actually the best analogy.

if we were to mix mexican, thai, and italian into one dish, then it would end up tasting absolutely nothing like mexican, thai, or italian, and we would thereby have some sort of tasteless, undistinguishable mystery-meat of a dish.
IKEA   Monday, September 06, 2004, 21:43 GMT
English is taking over the world ! >: [
My comrads, we shall stop this before it's too late !
Let us all learn Swedish !!!
Swedish is noble and pure, like the heart of those who speak so !!!
Mxsmanic   Tuesday, September 07, 2004, 01:08 GMT
Swedish has too many vowels for my tastes, and it has a very weird sound to my ears. And virtually no one speaks the language, which is perhaps the best reason for not learning it.
Ed   Tuesday, September 07, 2004, 01:30 GMT
I agree, Swedish sounds strange.
Steve K   Tuesday, September 07, 2004, 05:05 GMT
Danish is even weirder. But Swedes are uniquely clever and progressive ( in their own opinion).