Esperanto was a good idea. A really good idea, as the Euro was a good idea. However, while the Euro is thriving,
Esperanto is spoken by very few people (I wouldn't dare to compare the number of
Esperanto speakers to the number of
Klingon speakers). One big problem with Esperanto is that it suffers from large negative
network effects; if many people speak
Esperanto, it becomes useful, and so, more people learn it. However, if very few people speak it, it is not useful, and therefore, very few people (just curious ones) will make that big effort.
In addition,
Esperanto suffers from a
lock-in problem: people have spent a lot of time learning English and maybe some other language; they've become proficient in them. So, the utility of learning Esperanto should be larger than the effort they must make in order to reach the same level of proficiency than the other languages.
This is another example of systems theory: those two effects are trivial to prove in systems theory, but quite hard using any other model.
PS: I have found a
similar article from
Semisane
3 comments:
You wrote:
>Esperanto was a good idea.
It would be very interesting to hear which of the seven points of the Prague Manifesto:
http://lingvo.org/xx/2/3
you consider to be out-dated and not worth supporting. I personally think "universal bilingualism" is still a very worthwhile idea, and the fairest and most democratic way of achieving this is with a non-ethnic, non-territorial planned language.
There ARE people around who speak Esperanto, if you look hard enough. I've just come home from a weekend all-Esperanto meeting with people from several US states and Canadian provinces, and the language level achieved even by self-taught teenagers is really quite impressive.
You wrote:
>Esperanto was a good idea.
It would be very interesting to hear which of the seven points of the Prague Manifesto:
http://lingvo.org/xx/2/3
you consider to be out-dated and not worth supporting. I personally think "universal bilingualism" is still a very worthwhile idea, and the fairest and most democratic way of achieving this is with a non-ethnic, non-territorial planned language.
There ARE people around who speak Esperanto, if you look hard enough. I've just come home from a weekend all-Esperanto meeting with people from several US states and Canadian provinces, and the level achieved even by self-taught teenagers is really quite impressive.
I agree with all of them; actually, I am 100% sure that it is easier to learn than any natural language. However, as in any network effect (either positive or negative), it is extremely hard to reach critical-mass; once it is achieved, it is quite hard to stop the snow-ball
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