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Isn't this what Esperanto was invented for?

It's an engineered language, in the Klingon tradition, but lots easier to learn and pronounce.

Then again, we could all just learn Klingon and wear lots of leather.

Actually, Esperanto HAS evolved.

http://esperanto.org/us/USEJ/world/kontraux.html#e volve

Why not esperanto instead? Certainly more intuitive than whistling!

Before reading this post, I have only heard about Esperanto a few times. I always assumed it was some sort of Spanish dialect or something, not knowing any better.

So, I did a bit of research and found that Esperanto is actually a very interesting language. Apparently it is an "artificial" language, created by Dr. L. L. Zamenhof and published in 1887. The concept was to to be a "middle ground" language, facilitating communication between people of different backgrounds or cultures. Esperanto is apparently much easier to learn than many national languages and was designed to be a straight-forward neutral language. Surprisingly, there are an estimated 2 million Esperanto speakers in the world.

Check out some of these interesting links that I found:
Esperanto FAQ
What, why, who and where info about Esperanto
Previously mentioned educational Esperanto site with the little green goblin, "Zam"

The whole world is literally at your finger tips. Here are a few examples.

Actually, I have regular (almost daily) conversations with mainland Chinese Esperantists, in Esperanto of course. Not to mention Vietnamese, Koreans, Iranians, and people from other locales whose viewpoints I don't "normally" get to hear about here in the USA.

Now, for all I know, they are all military intelligence officers, monitoring 'net usage. For all I know, they could be working for the U. S. military. But they sure sound like they are legit.

Se oni jam parolas la lingvon, iru al Karelia au alia babilejo en GEIB.

If you don't already speak La Lingvo Internacia, check out any of ELNA, eo.org, UEA, or just Google for "Esperanto". Be prepared for a lot of hits nowadays.

(Dang, left my flame suit at home. Oh, well.)

It seems like the creators of this system have noble goals, and I appreciate their efforts. It reminds me of Esperanto's Prague Manifesto. "Every language both liberates and imprisons its users, giving them the ability to communicate among themselves but barring them from communication with others."

I think anything that can bring the disparate world together is a good thing. But we woulnd't need technology like this if everyone got off their duff and learned a second language. For the purpose of learning a common second language, Esperanto is ideal. A smart kid like you can learn it in just a few hours of study.

I've used it to communicate with people from Brazil, Korea, and Germany, without having to learn Portuguese, Korean, and German. We just learned a simple middleware language to help us communicate. The Esperanto community offers Free Tutored Courses to help you get started. It's well worth the small investment to become bilingual.

But don't take my word for it. In the words of Tolkein: "My advice to all who have the time or inclination to concern themselves with the international language movement would be, 'Back Esperanto loyally.'"

-- Yekrats

This is a wonderful reason for us all to learn Esperanto. This site offers a free Esperanto course with a personal tutor.

I was able to pick up the fundamentals of Esperanto within a few weeks using a free correspondance course I found (search for "Free Esperanto Course" in your favorite search engine. Also www.esperanto.org has some good resources.) Esperanto is a handshake language, where both parties must exert a little bit of effort, but they are both on equal terms.

Recently, I promised myself to start recreating my personal web-pages in Esperanto, and new web-pages will be created in Esperanto first, then English.

Personal rant coming. I apologize in advance.

This country spends scads of money translating signs, instructions, and labels into Spanish and French in addition to English. My idea of a good time is not sorting through a thick polyglotal manual with 3/4 unnecessary gibberish. Yearly, the IRS spends extra dinero publishing many documents in Spanish now. Why not versions in Chinese, French, Japanese, and German?

No, no. We should stick with English and start publishing instructions and manuals in Esperanto. English has its labyrinthine grammar and spelling rules. However, Esperanto actually makes sense here and there. Everyone should be at least bilingual: their own native language and Esperanto.

My prediction: As the world's economy turns more global, monoglots are going to be left behind. You heard it here, folks. I think you're a fool if English is your only language.

So, dear geek-friends, do yourself a favor and learn a second language.

Esperanto advocacy groups say that almost every day. And almost every time they say it, they get shouted down. The world will take to Esperanto when it's ready for it, not before. You can't force people to change a belief this fundamental. Esperanto advocacy groups know that beliefs about language border on the religious--strongly held, not logic-based, and seldom changed by external pressure.

I keep hoping that the 'net will help people realize that their own language isn't universal, but judging from most of the posts on this story, that will take, um, quite some time. I'm fairly certain that an international auxiliary language will eventually be adopted; whether the world chooses to take advantage of the work already done on Esperanto, or decides to start afresh, I cannot say.

In any case, go here or here for some starting points in learning about La Lingvo Internacia.

Cannot say. Saying, I would know. Do not know, so cannot say. -- Zathras.

Sorry, forgot to include these links in prior message: Esperanto.org, the Multlingva Inform-Centro, and the Esperanto League for North America, three good starting places. Now go do some research!

Esperanto hasn't been a complete failure. No, it hasn't succeeded like its creator and proponents would like, but then, neither has Linux. Esperanto is alive and doing pretty well over a century after its creation. I wouldn't call that failure, and I'm sorry you do. Go read up on it before you declare it dead.

Out of interest I've looked at esperanto but not tried to learn it - most people I bounced the idea off seem very unenthusiastic about it because they think it is either (1) too simple to express complex concepts and subtle nuances, or (2) not backed by an interesting "culture", and hence not as rewarding to learn. These arguments don't convince me much, especially after reading a few Esperanto sites, but I do think that (3) you gotta think carefully about learning a World Language that almost noone speaks (2 million or so). Put in all the hard work for how much benefit?

A historical point which may be of interest (and is almost certainly flamebait ;-)) is that Esperanto was suggested to the League of Nations or somesuch early in 20C as a candidate inter-language. The French didn't support it, probably because the language of diplomacy at the time was French. Things have changed since then. ASCII and standard computer technologies have made it harder for languages with accents, non-english characters, or (much worse!) pictograms like Chinese, Japanese, Korean. Unicode is much more than a nice-to-have for these people.

My experience is that people tend to learn a second language which is spoken in the land(s) they aspire to become or go to. A lot of Germans learn English. A lot of Spanish learn English. Dutch and Scandinavian people seem to be born with at least 4 languages. A lot of Eastern Europeans seem to be learning German. (Not sure what the French do, but they sure have a lot of different cheeses.)

Now, if DARPA decided to fund the development of a decentralised language which could survive and flourish under heavy cultural attack, and then this were to slowly snowball over the course of twenty years, spreading through universities and research institutes, to become The Interlingua... that would be cool.

Stark? Never heard of it. How about Esperanto instead?
Derived from European languages, it was designed to be a simple, effective language for use in business etc, and to allow easier access to foreign language teaching resources for those whose native tongue was not widespread. It was also mooted to be an official language of the EC (where did that other E go from EEC, anyway?), but everybody realised English was better since everybody spoke it already. Except the French, who insisted that their language be adopted too, followed by the Germans. Way to go, EC dudes! :)
Well, if you don't believe me about Esperanto, here's a quote from one of the finest literary minds this century:
"My advice to all who have the time or inclination to concern themselves with the international language movement would be: "Back Esperanto loyally." - J.R.R. Tolkien

It is not likely that we will get good automatic translators until we have machine that a pass the Turning test with ease.

The UN here also reinventing the wheel her, there are many candidates for their purposes.

• Esperanto has a simple grammer and is easy to learn, since it was intended as a Internation Language. Esperanto is ambiguous, but people can handle ambiguity most of the time.
• For well defind nonamgigous languags there are a few Loglan and its desendant Lojban are two, unfortunatly Loglan was not designed to be easy to learn. Actuualy since it was to test the Whorf hypothesis the opposite is closer to being true.

Saluton! Wow! I've been buying Apple's since the IIc (The first portable --1977--), and I never was cut! But I'm sure these state-of-the-art cases will revolutionize the technology market.

And what a rip-off! I expected fruit flavors, they are all yummy, well, except for Blackish-Green, tastes like compost. Yeck. Mmmmm, copy cat, great flavor!

Wow! Choose your own color, kind of like Burger King ads, but I can't say I wanna "collect all five!", cause there are more than five, isn't that craaazzzyyy???

I was looking for firewire in these A-jects, but it seems $1 a unit is expensive. Wow. I'm ranting, huh?

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