What is the Esperanto for Nyah Nyah?
In English, here are some replies to arguments against Esperanto:
Why should Esperanto be easier to learn? First, because the grammar has been cleansed of irregularities. The student of English, for instance, is faced with at least two totally irregular verbs and around three hundred "strong" or "radical-changing" verbs, each of which has three components that have to be learned separately; the student of Esperanto has to learn one simple paradigm, six endings, applicable to all verbs. The student of English has to learn the irregular plural endings of a large number of nouns (and, consequently, has to pay attention to every noun so that he will know whether or not it uses one of these unusual endings); the student of Esperanto has to learn one plural ending for all nouns. Etc.
Second, because Esperanto has a productive system of word-formation. Once you have memorized a relatively small vocabulary (eleven grammatical endings, nine pronouns, a dozen numerals, a correlative system consisting of fourteen parts, about forty affixes, a hundred or so particles, and maybe three hundred word roots) you can leverage this yourself into all the vocabulary you need to carry on a conversation in the language, or read most of the material written in the language with about 90% comprehension. The rest you can pick up as you need it.
Third, Esperanto doesn't force you to learn contexts as well as words. When do you use the root 'profund''? Anytime you're talking about depth, whether physical or metaphorical. When do you use 'deep' in English, and when 'profound'? Hint: you'd never use the latter in discussing a physical situation; but in metaphorical situations, the two may be used (mostly) interchangeably. In Esperanto, a root has a meaning, and may be used metaphorically as well; but nowhere is there any rule to say, "You may not use this particular root here, because you have to use this other root with the same meaning under these conditions."...
[F]ar from rejecting Esperanto, since the League of Nations accepted (over the violent protests of the French government) Assistant Secretary-General NITOBE Inazo's enthusiastic report about the language, no international organization -- particularly those currently extant -- has even looked at Esperanto, even though, in the case of the UN, they have had its existence forcefully pointed out to them (with the two largest international petitions ever collected on private initiative, one in 1948 and one in 1966 -- in the first case, they eventually referred it to UNESCO, and in the second case they simply lost it). Internal UN reviews of the language problem have concentrated on traditional means of solving the problem (add more languages, hire more interpreters and translators, ensure that all employees are multilingual), without devoting so much as a paragraph to the study -- and possibly rejection -- of the idea of adopting a neutral auxiliary language....
And, with all movements except the baby seal clubber movements, there is a manifesto:
We, members of the worldwide movement for the promotion of Esperanto, address this Manifesto to all governments, international organizations and people of good will; declare our unshakeable commitment to the objectives set out here; and call on all organizations and individuals to join us in working for these goals.
For more than a century Esperanto, which was launched in 1887 as a project for an auxiliary language for international communication and quickly developed into a rich living language in its own right, has functioned as a means of bringing people together across the barriers of language and culture. The aims that inspire the users of Esperanto are still as important and relevant as ever. Neither the worldwide use of a few national languages, nor advances in communications technology, nor the development of new methods of language teaching is likely to result in a fair and effective language order based on the following principles, which we hold to be essential.
DEMOCRACY
Any system of communication which confers lifelong privileges on some while requiring others to devote years of effort to achieving a lesser degree of competence is fundamentally antidemocratic. While Esperanto, like any language, is not perfect, it far outstrips other languages as a means of egalitarian communication on a world scale.
We maintain that language inequality gives rise to communicative inequality at all levels, including the international level. We are a movement for democratic communication.
GLOBAL EDUCATION
All ethnic languages are bound to certain cultures and nations. For example, the child who learns English learns about the culture, geography and political systems of the English-speaking world, primarily the United States and the United Kingdom. The child who learns Esperanto learns about a world without borders, where every country is home.
We maintain that education in any language is bound to a certain view of the world. We are a movement for global education.
EFFECTIVE EDUCATION
Only a small percentage of foreign-language students attain fluency in the target language. In Esperanto, fluency is attainable even through home study. Various studies have shown that Esperanto is useful as a preparation for learning other languages. It has also been recommended as a core element in courses in language awareness.
We maintain that the difficulties in learning ethnic languages will always be a barrier for many students who would benefit from knowing a second language. We are a movement for effective language learning.
MULTILINGUALISM
The Esperanto community is almost unique as a worldwide community whose members are universally bilingual or multilingual. Every member of the community has made the effort to learn at least one foreign language to a communicative level. In many cases this leads to a love and knowledge of several languages and to broader personal horizons in general.
We maintain that the speakers of all languages, large and small, should have a real chance of learning a second language to a high communicative level. We are a movement for providing that opportunity to all.
LANGUAGE RIGHTS
The unequal distribution of power between languages is a recipe for permanent language insecurity, or outright language oppression, for a large part of the world's population. In the Esperanto community the speakers of languages large and small, official and unofficial meet on equal terms through a mutual willingness to compromise. This balance of language rights and responsibilities provides a benchmark for developing and judging other solutions to language inequality and conflict.
We maintain that the wide variations in power among languages undermine the guarantees, expressed in many international instruments, of equal treatment regardless of language. We are a movement for language rights.
LANGUAGE DIVERSITY
National governments tend to treat the great diversity of languages in the world as a barrier to communication and development. In the Esperanto community, however, language diversity is experienced as a constant and indispensable source of enrichment. Consequently every language, like every biological species, is inherently valuable and worthy of protection and support.
We maintain that communication and development policies which are not based on respect and support for all languages amount to a death sentence for the majority of languages in the world. We are a movement for language diversity.
HUMAN EMANCIPATION
Every language both liberates and imprisons its users, giving them the ability to communicate among themselves but barring them from communication with others. Designed as a universally accessible means of communication, Esperanto is one of the great functional projects for the emancipation of humankind -- one which aims to let every individual citizen participate fully in the human community, securely rooted in his or her local cultural and language identity yet not limited by it.
We maintain that exclusive reliance on national languages inevitably puts up barriers to the freedoms of expression, communication and association. We are a movement for human emancipation.
Prague, July 1996
But Esperanto kinda sorta oppresses the Third World, perhaps. At least that's what I conclude from this and this (emphasis mine):
One of the design features of Esperanto is that it is based on a (relatively) limited number of roots which are then compounded to make a full vocabulary. A student of Esperanto thus has to learn a lot fewer roots to make sense of Esperanto than in any "natural" language. Esperanto takes this so far as to avoid redundant roots for many binary or oppositional concepts. Thus cold is malvarma, "anti-hot", rather than having its own distinct root.
The roots are supposed to be "universal" in the admittedly eurocentric view of Esperanto's founders (mostly romance with a good number from Greek, English and German, a handful of slavic roots and a tiny number from other languages). Thus a speaker of a European language should recognize many of them. Although this universality is often overstated, it still makes Esperanto more accessible to the majority of the world's population who do speak some European language, as a second tongue if not their first.
Chomksy's "linguist from Mars" would conclude in about ten minutes that Esperanto is an unusual Romance language, possibly a Romance pidgin....
Even when it has nonRomance words, they are virtually all from some other European language. And Indoeuropean to boot. It is Subject Verb Object which means it is easier for someone whose native language is SVO or VSO to learn than for someone whose native language is SOV or some other order. It's deictic (or demonstrative system) works like European languages'; native speakers of some subsaharan African languages will then have a more difficult time. It has a base ten number system, thus discrimminating against Maya, Ainu, and Welshmen all of whom have base twenty number systems....
Esperanto was touted as "linguistically and culturally neutral". That was a silly Eurocentric touting even for people who didnt know how very different languages can be and are. They might at least have borrowed the definite and indefinite object verb conjugations from Hungarian. Or gotten rid of all agreement and case affixes (Esperanto has a direct object case suffix.) and made it like Chinese languages....
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