How Many Readers Speak Esperanto?

lifebouy asks: "I just read a story about a high school that teaches Esperanto. I've noticed the majority of Esperantists I have met are IT professionals, perhaps because it nurtures our need to explore new things. So I was wondering, how many Slashdot readers speak Esperanto? Has anyone else noticed the high rate of IT Esperantists?"

Comments

Esperanto, for what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm learning mandarin chinese. It's actually quite useful for me - for one I get to access all sorts of new media; and I can talk to so many other people. Why bother learning an artificial language? It's hard enough learning a useful one, and I can't spend any time on the artificials. (I like the asian languages more than european though; they're more interesting to me).

Re:Esperanto, for what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet you think my choice of Latin in high school was a bad one, too!

Re:Esperanto, for what?

[Quixotic137]

Take a look at this:

Esperanto and Language Awareness

If you look under "Major Contributions" a little ways down the page you will some experimental evidence to suggest that if you only know one language now, learning Esperanto before learning another language may help you to learn a different language faster. To quote the page:

The headmaster of a secondary school near Manchester, England, found consistently over an 18-year period that pupils who learned Esperanto for a year acquired a level of fluency in the language equivalent to four years of French study, and subsequently achieved a higher level in French after three years of study than those pupils who learned only French for four years.

Re:Esperanto, for what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not a newbie to learning languages. Esperanto could be a good choice for some people as a second language, but I've already played with german and japanese. Chinese, except for the characters, is actually pretty easy.

Re:Esperanto, for what?

[LeninZhiv]

Well then, here's some irony for you: the main reason I originally learned Esperanto was to communicate with Chinese people, and become acquainted with Chinese literature. Esperanto is big in China, just check out the Cxina Interreta Informa Centro if you need proof--and there is a great amount of Chinese literature availiable in Esperanto translation. This is better than reading Chinese lit in English or another European language, because in those translations it is a native speaker of the European language who produces the translation, and a lot of interpretation is required to do it (put any two translations of the Tao Te Ching side-by-side to see how divergent they can be!). But Esperanto lit is always translated by a native speaker from his own language into Esperanto, so at least the interpretation that goes into the translation comes from the same cultural context as the work itself.

But the biggest argument is, learning to read a literary work in Esperanto takes as little as a month, whereas if you're going to be reading Laux Sxe's "Kamelo Sxangxi" (to name a Chinese novel I've read in Esperanto) in Mandarin Chinese, and you're a native English speaker, you're going to be studying for years, not weeks. --Not that there's anything wrong with that, but that's a key thing about Esperanto, it's easy, so there's no reason you can't learn it AND Mandarin Chinese, even if you put 95% of your effort into the latter.

Re:Esperanto, for what?

[raju1kabir]

The headmaster of a secondary school near Manchester, England, found consistently over an 18-year period that pupils who learned Esperanto for a year acquired a level of fluency in the language equivalent to four years of French study, and subsequently achieved a higher level in French after three years of study than those pupils who learned only French for four years.

And this has what to do with Esperanto, exactly? Studies have shown that learning any second language makes third and subsequent languages easier.

At least if their teacher had been responsible enough to teach them Spanish instead of Esperanto for the first year, they'd have a second useful skill to show for the time spent.

Re:Esperanto, for what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except in Esperanto you get quite a lot better after a single year of study than in Spanish. That's the whole point.

Re:Esperanto, for what?

[raju1kabir]

Except in Esperanto you get quite a lot better after a single year of study than in Spanish. That's the whole point.

If that's the "whole point", how come the only person to say it is an anonymous coward?

The cited article, for instance, makes no such claim. It only compares learning Esperanto to learning nothing.

Re:Esperanto, for what?

[Quixotic137]

The original comment was "I can't spend time on the artificials." The point I was trying to make is that if you only know one language to start with, you're not necessarily wasting time by studying Esperanto, as compared to only studying one other language. I guess the real question is how much you have to study another language to get that benefit. If you only study Spanish for two weeks I doubt you'll get much from it. If studying Spanish for one year will help as much as studying Esperanto for one year, I agree that you could just as well study Spanish.

Re:Esperanto, for what?

[donh1942]

You have an overly optimistic view of the amount of time it takes to learn Spanish.

A year of Esperanto gives you a skill. A year of Spanish gives you the option of going on trying for a skill.

Re:Esperanto, for what?

[raju1kabir]

You have an overly optimistic view of the amount of time it takes to learn Spanish.

I had to learn Spanish for work last year. I'm still far from fluent (really far), but I went from zero to getting around town and talking about work-related things in about a month; no classes, just reading a book at night and then using it in the daytime. If I'd spent that same amount of time learning Esperanto I'd have nothing constructive to show for it: No employer would care, nor would any job be made easier. Socially, I have never encountered an Esperanto speaker who did not also speak some other language I knew. It is a hobby and a conceit. Spanish, on the other hand, has provided numerous social and occupational rewards.

A year of Esperanto gives you a skill. A year of Spanish gives you the option of going on trying for a skill.

Even a lifetime of Esperanto gives you a skill that is only as useful as speaking Klingon: membership in a delusional in-crowd. This crowd seems to be drawn from three kinds of people:

1. People with too much time on their hands.

2. English-speakers who are daunted by the number of languages out there and want some sort of "shortcut" to seeming all international and shit.

3. Non-English speakers who for ridiculous dogmatic reasons refuse to learn English.

I have little use for any of these.

Re:Esperanto, for what?

[Anonymous Coward]

"so at least the interpretation that goes into the translation comes from the same cultural context as the work itself."

And what difference does that make?

Ask any group of British geeks whether or not Balrogs had wings and you'll find out that just because a person is from the same culture of an author, doesn't mean they *are* the author.

Re:Esperanto, for what?

[lburgbac]

Your three categories are a bit too simple. I'm not a native english speaker, I learned it at school and I use it every day at work. But I'm not fluent after 9 years of studies.

I'm from the esperantists crowd for one year now. I'm more fluent in esperanto than in english after just one year.

I have no ridiculous dogmatic reason to refuse to learn english. But the problem is quite simple : english is not an international language. It's very hard to learn, past the basis which are quite easy. Maybe some readings will give some more clues : "These Terrans Are Real Masochists".

Incubis

[utahjazz]

Remember Incubis?, William Shatner's foray into Esperanto language film? No? Me neither.

Re:Incubis

[bandy]

I heard about that film for nearly twenty years before it was released. Drove me crazy. Finally saw a copy and am disappointed that it's subtitled. Harumph!

Re:Incubis

[Yaztromo]

I heard about that film for nearly twenty years before it was released. Drove me crazy. Finally saw a copy and am disappointed that it's subtitled. Harumph!

Yeah, but did you compare the subtitles to the actual spoken words? While the pronunciation was terrible, there were some funny "errors".

The most memorable for me was the subtitle that claimed Mr. Shatners character said "I love you", when in actual fact he literally said "I want to have your babies".

Sheer comedy!

Yaz

Re:Incubis

[bakes]

No I don't, but I do remember Arnold Rimmer's vain attempts to learn Esperanto on Red Dwarf.

Lister: I hope that when you arrive the weather will be clement.
Rimmer: Wrong, wrong, wrong, couldn't be wronger.
Tape: I hope that when you arrive the weather will be clement.

Re:Incubis

[YOU ARE SO SUED!]

Holly: [to Rimmer] "could you fetch me the hotel porter. There appears to be a small frog in my bidet"

Re:Incubis

[bandy]

I studiously avoided the subtitles. Will have to give it another viewing!

Try asking Shatner if he speaks Esperanto.

Re:Incubis

[shivianzealot]

I studiously avoided the subtitles. Will have to give it another viewing!

Bandy, may I suggest duct tape?

Probably a very small number

[the_other_one]

You will probably find that there are more /.'rs that claim to have programed 6502's by typing in hex codes.

Re:Probably a very small number

[Carnildo]

You will probably find that there are more /.'rs that claim to have programed 6502's by typing in hex codes.

I've programmed a 6510 that way, does that count?

Re:Probably a very small number

[the_other_one]

It's almost but not quite exacly the same.

Re:Probably a very small number

[the_greywolf]

and i am one such fellow. (although, i will admit it was a 6510...)

Re:Probably a very small number

[millia]

You will probably find that there are more /.'rs that claim to have programed 6502's by typing in hex codes.

hellzapoppin! does this mean i'm officially old now, since I did this?

however, to answer the question, i think the correlation (and i've seen that) is because both sets of people care passionately about something that the vast majority of people find utterly boring and useless.

Re:Probably a very small number

[JabberWokky]

Bullseye on that one. Ah, the Apple ][+.

I do know a few phrases in esperanto, though. Only the ones from Red Dwarf, however. A friend knew several "industrial phrases" in esperanto that he would say at times - stuff like "please keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle before closing the door. This vehicle will not start moving until all doors are securely fastened shut". No idea where he picked it up, but he also knew a large number of computerized and rote phrases by heart (like the Disneyworld peoplemover and monorail recitations).

--
Evan

Re:Probably a very small number

[GMontag451]

I've wrote a couple carts for NES emulators, does that count?

Re:Probably a very small number

[sakusha]

You young whippersnappers and your fancy hex codes. Back when I was a student, I had to walk 2 miles through snowdrifts just to get to the computer lab so we could flip the switches on our IMSAI 8080 and input code in Binary. Then we had to walk another 2 miles over to the mainframe center, where we had to write IBM/360 code in Octal. And we LIKED it!

(BTW, I'm totally serious, I did all that stuff, even the walking through snowdrifts. No shit.)

Re:Probably a very small number

[sql*kitten]

You will probably find that there are more /.'rs that claim to have programed 6502's by typing in hex codes.

I have done that, you insensitive clod!

Re:Probably a very small number

[daeley]

BTW, I'm totally serious, I did all that stuff, even the walking through snowdrifts. No shit.

Good thing. There's nothing worse than a shitdrift. ;)

Re:Probably a very small number

[zcat_NZ]

.. does Z-80 code count?

Re:Probably a very small number

[marko_ramius]

Anyone who needs more than an accumulator and two offset registers just isn't really programming!

Re:Probably a very small number

[danlyke]

A9 CD 4C ED FD A9 C5 4C ED FD A9 8D ...

(I don't remember my Apple ][ ROM entry points perfectly, that could be "4C FD ED"...)

Here's some Esperanto ranto

[orthogonal]

So I was wondering, how many Slashdot readers speak Esperanto?

Look it's one thing to assume that /.ers

• don't have girlfriends,
• live in Mom's basement,
• playing Evercrack all day,
• while filling their already sagging bellies with Fritos and Mountain Dew
• and forgetting to wash.

That's ok, and it's probably true.

But implying they are so nerdy as to speak Esperanto?

That, sir, goes too far!

For that, we will duel with plastic "light sabers" at dawn! (Nerd dawn that is, 1 PM local time.)

Re:Here's some Esperanto ranto

[Anonymous Coward]

God, but that was funny. I mean, who is so nerdy that they would waste time learning both Esperanto AND Klingon.

Re:Here's some Esperanto ranto

[revmoo]

I found your post amusing up until the point that I realized I was eating Fritos AND Drinking a Mountain Dew...

Bastard :|

Re:Here's some Esperanto ranto

[orthogonal]

I found your post amusing up until the point that I realized I was eating Fritos AND Drinking a Mountain Dew...

As the frat boys say when reminded of embarrassing moments:

"Good times, good times."

Re:Here's some Esperanto ranto

[amuzulo]

But implying they are so nerdy as to speak Esperanto?

Well, it's true that most people in the states think that all Esperanto speakers are nerds, but people in Europe generally learn Esperanto to go to international parties. Also, the Brazilian Esperanto scene is something to be seen...

Re:Here's some Esperanto ranto

[donh1942]

Wonder if there were any nerdy /.ers at this Esperanto-language event in Hungary ...

http://www.krokodilo.de/mela/mela.html

Re:Here's some Esperanto ranto

[orthogonal]

http://www.krokodilo.de/mela/mela.html

Eyes! Burning!
Must wash eyes! With acid!

Naked Euro-nerds speaking Esperanto.

Must. Destroy. Optic. Nerve.

Esperanto?

[shfted!]

Mi paroli ne esperanto, vi malg^entila bul!



(For those that don't get it, it's a rough translation of "I don't speak esperanto, you insensitive clod!")

Re:Esperanto?

[H*(BZ_2)-Module]

I've coded in Oberon. You can too.

Re:Esperanto?

[mutterer]

I'm sorry, but messing up ESPERANTO? Let's just chalk it up to not having studied in quite some time, shall we? ;-) Mi ne parolas Esperanton, vi malgxentila bul! Paroli would be infinitive, i.e. "to speak/talk," whereas it should be present-indicative, i.e. "speak(s)/talk(s)." And Esperanto should not only be capitalised, but because it is the direct object, it should be in the accusative case, which simply means you add an "n" to the end of it. Also, the ^ for the circumflex is not technically wrong, but online the convention is to use an "x" instead.

Re:Esperanto?

[Anonymous Coward]

Haven't coded in Oberon, but I've written an Oberon compiler. Oh dear. Where does that leave me?

Re:Esperanto?

[shfted!]

I don't speak Esperanto, you insensitive clod!!


I was waiting for a reply like this ;) In all actuality, I've studied Esperanto for a total of about 5 hours several years ago. I knew I butchured it horribly. Took me a while for to even find a word that could stand for "insensitive". It's on my list of things to learn, when I have more time.

Re:Esperanto?

[adb]

All those sentences you cited convey the same meaning in English, but only one of them doesn't sound stupid. I'll bet it's the same in Esperanto: there is a conventional word order, but inflection makes it technically superfluous, but people will still look at you like you've grown a second head if you use a weird one.

Re:Esperanto?

[dvdeug]

I'll bet it's the same in Esperanto: there is a conventional word order, but inflection makes it technically superfluous

I take it you've never studied Esperanto, or Latin or any other language without a conventional word order, at all? If you mark cases, like Esperanto and Latin do, then there's no need for a conventional word order. In Esperanto, accusative case is marked with an n; i.e. the cat pet the dog-n and the dog-n pet the cat mean the same thing, because the n tells you who's doing what to whom.

Re:Esperanto?

[adb]

If you mark cases, like Esperanto and Latin do, then there's no need for a conventional word order

In other words, "inflection makes [word order] technically superfluous". If you're going to condescend, it helps to know the vocabulary of the field.

Despite the fact that it doesn't have to, Latin strongly favors Subject-Object-Verb word order in practice, and (as I said) I suspect that Esperanto also has a "normal" way of saying things, in the sense that people look at you funny if you say stuff the other way around all the time.

Re:Esperanto?

[dvdeug]

In other words, "inflection makes [word order] technically superfluous".

Inflection also means "A slide, modulation, or accent of the voice". Since you said that you thought it was the same in English as Esperanto, that is the definition I thought you were using.

Esperanto also has a "normal" way of saying things, in the sense that people look at you funny if you say stuff the other way around all the time.

Weirdly enough, when you're speaking a language that's spoken by almost all non-native speakers, people don't tend to look at others as if they've "grown a second head" for using grammatical expressions.

Re:Esperanto?

[adb]

Good point; I suppose people will look at you as though you've grown a second head just for speaking Esperanto at all, and word order issues will just be moot.

Re:Esperanto?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Mi paroli ne esperanto"

That should be: "Mi ne parolas esperanton".

It's one of the easiest languages ever created and you manage to make two big mistakes in one simple sentence.

Re:Esperanto?

[shfted!]

I don't speak Esperanto, you insensitive clod! lol

Re:My high school might have offered this

[Anonymous Coward]

hmmm...I have always seen slashdot as a forum for sharing ideas, experiances and information. Ranting and complaining about a specific event barely related to the topic seems a bit out of line. I would not have responded, to this AC, except the post was modded +1 interesting.

I know it's ironic that I am posting AC, and offtopic, but this isn't what slashdot should be.

losers

[Anonymous Coward]

perhaps because it nurtures our need to explore new things.

Or perhaps because the lot of you are extremely stupid and waste your time on terribly pointless and boring things. The type of people who would waste time learning Esperanto are probably the same ones who actually bothered to learn Klingon.

How many here speak Esperanto?

[NanoGator]

Nulo.

Re:How many here speak Esperanto?

[ProgrammerCat]

Hey, man, I'm still trying to find a good reason to use Perl. Esperanto can wait.

Re:How many here speak Esperanto?

[zonx lebaam]

malnulo

Learning Esperanto the fun way!

[deek]

For those who are interested in learning more about Esperanto, I recommend visiting this website. It even has its own rather unique mascot. Perfect for making people feel at ease ... I know that a green goblin-like character always works for me.

As Rimmer would say: "Bonvoro alsendi la pordiston, lausajne estas rano en mia bideo!" And I think we all know what that means.

DeeK

Re:Learning Esperanto the fun way!

[Yaztromo]

As Rimmer would say: "Bonvoro alsendi la pordiston, lausajne estas rano en mia bideo!" And I think we all know what that means.

Of course. "Please send for the porter, there appears to be a frog in my bidet!".

(Sorry, couldn't help myself :) ).

Yaz.

Re:Learning Esperanto the fun way!

[TaxSlave]

As Rimmer would say: "Bonvoro alsendi la pordiston, lausajne estas rano en mia bideo!" And I think we all know what that means.

I don't, but I did find it interesting that I had to go through a full 1/3 of the postings before I actually encountered a single word of Esperanto.

Maybedo wedo needeo ado newo pseudoas languageo calledo pigo esperantoas

Re:Learning Esperanto the fun way!

[RedTyde]

LOL, this site is great! Look at some of the "useful phrases" they teach you!

Your bed is very comfortable. Via lito estas tre komfortiga.

Never pee into the wind. Neniam pisu en la venton.

I work like a Japanese beaver. Mi laboras kiel japana kastoro.

Zamenhof sure knew how to party! Zamenhof ja estis festemulo!

Useful Phrases.

Re:My high school might have offered this

[Anonymous Coward]

I would not have responded to this criticism of a faulty moderation had the parent to the above AC not been modded to +1. My post adds nothing to this discussion, and actually makes people stupider for having read it. I too agree that this is not what slashdot should be.

cognitive dissonance???

[stonebeat.org]

I dont think so. I have learned gibberish instead. It is more commonly used these days. Atleast all of my relatives/foe seems to be speaking gibberish to me. And being a techie, I avoid any contact except by email. And 90% of the email I get is gibberish (spam).
So now tell who is better off. Someone who speak esperanto or gibberish????

Re:cognitive dissonance???

[geggibus]

I read and hear a lot of gibberish, though i cannot speak or write it myself.. ;)

Well,

[Anonymous Coward]

I for one welcome our new Esperanto overlords.

a joke i once heard...

[Doviende]

I heard this in germany:

If a person who speaks 3 languages is "trilingual" and a person who speaks 2 languages is "bilingual", then what do you call a person who speaks 1 language?
Answer: American

I think this illustrates the image that many people around the world have. Just about everyone in Europe seems to speak multiple languages. Perhaps Esperanto would be a good way for americans to get with the program globally ;)

Re:a joke i once heard...

[Brandybuck]

Just about everyone in Europe seems to speak multiple languages.

And the second language is invariably English. No, I'm serious. English is the defacto universal language. Sorry France, but the Lingua Franca now comes from the other side of the channel. When I visited Europe I tried speaking German in France. Very few Frenchmen knew German. But everyone knew English.

Since the lingua franca is English, there's little incentive for native English speakers to learn another language. Plus, at least in the US, foreign language education is abysmal.

Re:a joke i once heard...

[the_greywolf]

i'd say probably not. it's annoying enough that most businesses in my area (Idaho, though i'm sure it's likewise elsewhere) will only hire you if you're bilingual - but in that sense, only if you speak spanish and english. so learning Japanese (very fun) is completely useless to me in my state, and to get any use out of the language, i have to move further west (until i'm in the east, most likely). and learning esperanto? sorry. i'm working on learning two other artificials already: D'ni and Quenya. just for fun.

Re:a joke i once heard...

[Piquan]

sorry. i'm working on learning two other artificials already: D'ni and Quenya. just for fun.

I didn't know that D'ni was documented anywhere! Can you post a pointer?

LET FORTRAN DIE!

Yeah, nobody uses it, there's no practical value... waitasec...

Re:a joke i once heard...

[crmartin]

Yeah, after all, if you learn another language all you get is a whole new area of literature to read, a whole different culture that opens itself to you, and a new and different way of thinking. Not worth the trouble, eh?

Re:a joke i once heard...

[Brandybuck]

I didn't say I agreed with that sentiment, only that it was there.

Re:a joke i once heard...

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

" Just about everyone in Europe seems to speak multiple languages."

That's because you need at least two languages to effectively communicate in Europe (at least your nation's language and English). Here in the US, we can go anywhere in a nation the size of the EU, as well as most of Canada, without having to speek any other language than English.

In Europe, you need French and Italian and German and Spanish and English if you want to be able to communicate fluently. Yes, English has become the language of business, but many people in European nations still don't speek anything but their native language. That's not an issue in the US - everybody speeks English (although Spanish is becoming more commonplace every day).

Re:a joke i once heard...

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

"Yeah, after all, if you learn another language all you get is a whole new area of literature to read, a whole different culture that opens itself to you, and a new and different way of thinking. Not worth the trouble, eh?"

Man. You sound like my Spanish teacher. Come on. This is why we have translations. There is a *huge* range of thoughts and ideas in English. No one has enough time to capture the whole range of ideas in their own language, let alone another ten.

Spanish is an interesting language with a huge diverse history and culture. That doesn't mean that it's a "new way of thinking".

Re:a joke i once heard...

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

Here's the funny part:

Europe is extremely proud of it's phone system. They standardized on GSM early and it has paid off with near universal coverage and compatibility. Europe is now proud to be unifying their currency to enable more open commerce between countries. Europe is also proud of the EU, which unifies regulations and law (to a degree), also allowing greater trade and unity between all of the nations in Europe.

Wonder why people never learn more than 1 language in the US? It's because they don't really need to. The US has a standardized language. A nation the size of the EU with one language. You don't need to know French and German and English in the US. You only need one language. Just like the same phones and the same currency work everywhere in Europe, the same language works everywhere in the US.

Re:a joke i once heard...

[raju1kabir]

You sound like my Spanish teacher. Come on. This is why we have translations. There is a *huge* range of thoughts and ideas in English.

That's like saying there's no reason to try a papaya or mango because you can get those flavors as slurpees at 7-Eleven. A translation is a translation. It may be very good and have artistic finesse of its own, but it's not the original.

And yes, there are more books and ideas written natively in English than you could ever absorb. That doesn't mean you wouldn't benefit from the added diversity of being able to take in books and ideas in other languages.

Spanish is an interesting language with a huge diverse history and culture. That doesn't mean that it's a "new way of thinking".

It's not like dolphin thought or something, but it definitely does change the way you look at things. Spanish, like any well-developed language, has a lot of idioms that, as you learn them, encourage you to see certain parts of the world around you in strange and interesting ways.

This, incidentally, is another reason why Esperanto is a crock. Not having enjoyed the benefit of a critical mass of everyday speakers, or cultural communities that share boundaries with the linguistic community, it's a completely sterile language. The sample figures of speech that Esperantophiles wave around in rebuttal sound completely implausible and unnatural to the point of jarring dissonance.

Re:a joke i once heard...

[raju1kabir]

Europe is extremely proud of it's phone system. They standardized on GSM early and it has paid off with near universal coverage and compatibility.

This is not a Europe thing. It is an "almost the entire rest of the world" thing.

The only point that can be proven by this is the opposite of what you're trying to say: The USA is able to get away with using its own oddball systems just because it happens to be reasonably large.

Re:a joke i once heard...

[RzUpAnmsCwrds]

I restate my point: Why don't Europeans have five types of phones? Because they standardized on one system. Why don't people in the US speek five languages? Because they standardized on one language.

We can "get away" with English because everyone in the US, as well as anyone who wants to deal with US businesses, speeks English. If the US were an island of 10,000 with an oddball language, we wouldn't be able to "get away" with it.

My point was this: Europe doesn't need ten types of cellphones or ten types of currencies because they created and followed a standard. The US doesn't need 10 languages because one has become the de facto standard. And if you were going to choose a standard language for a coutnry today, you couldn't pick a much better language than the most spoken language on the planet*.

* 1st and 2nd language speekers

Re:a joke i once heard...

[bhima]

I have to call BS for this!

I've been to the US, they don't all speak one language!

I spent time in Georgia and then I went to New York (where I met someone from Minnesota). No one can claim these are all the same language, they are too dissimilar!

I won't even begin with the travesty of calling what they speak "English"!

Re:a joke i once heard...

[wimbor]

Well, as far as I know the most spoken language on the planet is Chinese (with all its different dialects)... not English... So I suggest the US and EU should standardise on Chinese then. :-)

Re:a joke i once heard...

[sql*kitten]

I think this illustrates the image that many people around the world have. Just about everyone in Europe seems to speak multiple languages.

I have to say, as an Englishman who has lived and worked in the US, that this stereotype is largely unfounded. Most of the Americans I know also speak another language, for example Spanish or Russian or Hebrew or Japanese - and to a far higher standard than I speak any foreign languages (in my case, French and Dutch).

Re:a joke i once heard...

[FreeForm Response]

Pointer? No.

Comic strip with a D'ni speaking character? Yes.

Disclaimer: I'm a recurring character in this strip

Re:a joke i once heard...

[Piquan]

Yaaaargh! I got as far as Aug 30, and now I've got to pull out my RotK and Elven Dictionary. (It's been waaaay too long, and I usually used the tengwar anyway.) And I thought I was going to get some work done tonight. This is what I get for checking my /. messages...

Thanks for the link.

Re:a joke i once heard...

[amuzulo]

When I visited Europe I tried speaking German in France. Very few Frenchmen knew German. But everyone knew English.

Funny, when I was in Strasbourg (France), almost everyone seemed to be able to speak German, but almost no one seemed to be able to speak English. Oh well, guess I should've hanged out in the more touristy parts.

Re:a joke i once heard...

[Echnin]

English is not the standard language in America, IIRC. Some laws call for the state not to have preference for any language, and publishing stuff in multiple languages if a large enough minority speaks it. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

America used to have many mainly German-speaking parts, with German newspapers and stuff, but after WW2, many schools stopped teaching it.

English is boring. I'm quentilingual. Whee.

Re:a joke i once heard...

[Echnin]

In China, nearly everyone speaks Mandarin. Except people in the far west and people in Hong Kong. They've got their local dialects, but very few don't speak Mandarin.

I know this shit, I've got a ladyfriend from Shanghai.

Re:a joke i once heard...

[beady]

It's a shame they can't type the language as well as they "speek" it

Re:a joke i once heard...

[LWATCDR]

It is also a matter of size and wealth. Did you know that all Pilots and air traffic control people are required to speak Engilsh? A french pilot landing in Spain will get his instructions and talk to the tower in English. Why? After WWII when they where setting up airline routes only the US and the UK where large enought and healthy enough to have large airlines. So it is English.
The other reason that people tend to speak english only is that the US is so large that many people if not most spend there whole life with out ever leaving the US. If they are in the north they may go to Canada but then they also speak mostly english. My wife is from a small town in New Mexico she speaks spanish. She is trying to teach me but... I am not very good at it.

Re:a joke i once heard...

[bluGill]

Most colleges in the US will not let you in unless you either speak a second language (2 years high school). They will make exceptions easially enough, but you cannot graduate unless you take a second language in college. To be more accureate, you need either 2 years in high school, or 1 in college. If you speak two languages but didn't take any classes to get it, that doesn't count.

Most americans at one time spoke two languages. Most have forgotten the second because there is no call for it. Those who do speak two generally speak the other one at home as their first language, generally Spanish. In fact there are more americans who speak Spanish as a first language than in Spain. (In Spain there are a large number of people who speak something like Catalin that isn't standard spanish) The total size of the US, combined with the number of people, and the number of different languages, means that those who don't speak english are are tiny minority.

Languages change, which is also significant to a nation of imigrants. My Grandparents are fluent in German, and my dad grew up in a church were everything was in German (some members never learned english, so until they died in the '70s german was the only language common to the congergation). They can't talk to anyone in Germany though, because German has changed in Germany, but not in the US, thus when in Germany they appear to only speak one language. (When Germans want to read the diary of ancesters they have to send it to the US and get it translated to English)

Re:a joke i once heard...

[Martin Spamer]

Perhaps Esperanto would be a good way for americans to get with the program globally

I think we would be content for them to master English!

Re:a joke i once heard...

[crmartin]

Says someone who doesn't speak a second language.

I'm sorry, but you're, how to say it, wrong. I'm fluent in German and manage literary Chinese, and I can tell you from experience how unsatisfactory translations are.

And ... you can't tell me from experience that I'm wrong.

Re:a joke i once heard...

[Photon Ghoul]

I heard this in Spain while I was living there for three months:

Me: habla ingles?
90% of the Spanish populace: no

Granted a lot of people in Europe seemed to know some broken English, to make it sound as if everyone in Europe speaks it fluently is very misleading.

Re:a joke i once heard...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey! Eye liv in Ge-orgia, yew ensensuhtiv claud!

Re:a joke i once heard...

[Brandybuck]

I know some Germans who would argue that Strasbourg is really in Germany.

When I was in Strasbourg, all my German friends kept pronouncing the name in a silly exaggerated French accent. "Stra'boo".

Re:a joke i once heard...

[randito]

actually, in canada, french is 40% of the population. and everybody learns it it school. if i was to start speaking french, all of my geek friends would understand.

Re:a joke i once heard...

[b!arg]

Go to the central point of the U.S and travel 500 miles in any direction. Then find out the prominent language. And then from that point travel another 500 miles in any direction and find out the prominent language. It'll be English both times. Try that in any European country. You'll most likely run into three different languages from start to the first point and to the second point. You're probably also passing through a number of different locales with yet other dominant languages. It's all about proximity and necessity. If every state had a different language, it would be quite the same as it is in Europe considering the average state is about the same size as the average european country.

Re:a joke i once heard...

[Uncle Joe Steel]

True Americans often have training in a second language or were raised bilingual. However it is more difficult to maintain the skills in the US. I took two years of Spanish and two of German in high school. Additionally I was trained in Russian for work. Of these I can only claim proficiency in Russian since I used it for years at work. I only recall the basics of the other two. I do have coworkers who are fluent in other languages. Most were raised bilingual and still use it with family. A couple others spent time abroad.

Re:a joke i once heard...

[AvitarX]

I find that if you struggle the native language in a country politly they will come clean on knowing english. A lot of people don't want to deal with foregners (in America too) and use language as an excuse not o.

Also it is not like everyone in these countries knows another language, it is just far more prodominent in the middle class then it is in America.

When the grandparent tried speaking German it probably broke the same barrier that speaking a native language does. You are no longer the arrogant American knowing nothing but English. The french think as poorly of as as we do of them <generalization>

Re:a joke i once heard...

[amuzulo]

Wow, you haven't travelled much outside of Western Europe, have you? During my travels, I've asked on several occasions for the people I've been having great conversations with in Esperanto to have their hand at English. It's very amazing how incredibly horribly they speak it. I mean, they don't know such simple words like never and of course you have to repeat yourself three times on very basic phrases to get yourself understood... and my Chinese friend who studied English for seven years couldn't even understand me after that! I still admit I was quite shocked to find myself in a restaurant in Istanbul where a waiter didn't understand the question "How much does it cost?" I mean, you really can't get more basic than that!

I'm sorry, but thinking that everyone can speak English, but just doesn't want to is just being arrogant. I guess I shouldn't criticize you though, because before I really started travelling, I thought the same way.

Re:a joke i once heard...

[AvitarX]

I was actually originally going to add something along the lines of everyone is a lsignifigant portion of the middle and upper classes. And I did mean Western Europe. I was also going to compare it to a statement about people going to college or some such. The high school I went to had 2/3 of the graduating class going to college. A generalization from the people I came into contact with would be, geez, everybody is going to really good colleges/universities (not me though).

Of course most people don't speak english in the world. Most people don't even get much of an education. I would imagine that even in a Western European country most people don't speak much if any english. The ones that I have met that do have not learned it in school, but from watching American movies subtitles to their own language. Scholls don't seem to teach a language that particularly well in my observation. Practically everyone I know has taken a few years in one language or another and cannot speak it at all.

I will still maintain that many people who "don't speak english" but can fake there way through it will try to do so if you fake your way through their language.

I would not expect a wiater in even western europe to know the phrase "how much does this cost" unless they were somewhere where a lot of english/americans go. Even so I often find myself figuring out my own check and offering up the money.

And yes, americans are characterised by arrogance because we are generally more arrogant then other countries. Sol if I have american arrogance I am not suprised :)

Re:a joke i once heard...

[javax]

Here in the US, we can go anywhere in a nation the size of the EU, as well as most of Canada, without having to speek any other language than English. I'm sorry, but the EU is currently the third largest 'country' in the world - after India and China. Without the new countries joining in 2004, there are currently 379 Million citizens. And it keps growing. The U.S. & Canada together have 312 Million. Check http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union#Exten sion_of_the_EU and have a look yourself. It would be a pity to scrap all languages spoken in Europe*: Think about all the poems and novels that have been created in them! Reading Goethe in German, cursing in French, etc. ... makes much more fun! *) that of course also holds true for languages native outside Europe

Jen unu esperantisto cxe Slashdot

[LeninZhiv]

Mi tre ofte uzas Esperanton je la interreto. Gxi estas utila lingvo por trovi kaj paroli kun tiuj, kiuj venas ek diversaj kaj ofte ne tre konataj landoj aux kulturoj. Vi devus lerni gxin!

(La sekvaj vortoj ne estas traduko, sed aliaj pensoj).

I often use Esperanto on the net, for which it's very well suited. It's quite the useful language for speaking with people from diverse backgrounds on an equal footing. The threads on soc.culture.esperanto are some of the most interesting I've ever read/participated in. Learn it! It's really not difficult!

Is Esperanto worth learning?

[user555]

I like the idea of esperanto. After the trouble I've had with French any easy to learn language is very appealling...

I also feel bad speaking to people in English when I'm abroad but most people always seem to speak English better than I speak their native language.

Still I'm wondering if it's really worth learning Esperanto. Any idea of how many people actually speak esperanto?

Also more to the point, have any of the esperanto speakers here actually used esperanto to speak to someone who didn't speak English?

Re:Is Esperanto worth learning?

[LeninZhiv]

Well, it's hugely useful on the net, groups like soc.culture.esperanto and sites like gxangalo.com let you interact with users who do not speak English, which can give you a perspective on the world. There are plenty of real audio feeds of shortwave Esperanto radio broadcasts as well.

For practical uses in the real world, it doesn't get much more useful than the Pasporta Servo, a service of Esperanto-speakers who volunteer to welcome travellers from other countries in their homes--in other words, learn to speak Esperanto and you can travel around the world and get FREE room and board! (There are homepages around with the stories of people who've actually gone around the world like this, although I don't have the links handy.) Not only that, but when you visit a country you get to see how the people actually live, and to talk about life there with ordinary people, instead of getting a touristy hotel-centred kind of experience.

This FAQ may answer some of your other questions.

Re:Is Esperanto worth learning?

[hthiefshorty]

There is an anthopilogical theory called linguistic determination that claims language helps determine perception. In other words, if you are in a foriegn culture speaking a fabricated language you are missing large points of culture. You would not try to tour Greece speaking Klingon (even if you could). What is the point of using a fabricated language? People are not going to think any better of Americans if your major contribution to the world community is learning to speak a language that helps you on usenet or in teo houses a country.

Re:Is Esperanto worth learning?

[Yaztromo]

Still I'm wondering if it's really worth learning Esperanto.

Yes, but maybe not for the reasons you initially think. There have been studies that have shown that people who learn Esperanto as their second language can pickup other human languages (like French) suprisingly faster than people who only know their native language. Learning Esperanto can thus help accelerate and improve your ability to learn other languages.

Yaz.

Re:Is Esperanto worth learning?

[raju1kabir]

Well, it's hugely useful on the net, groups like soc.culture.esperanto

How does that make it hugely useful? "Esperanto is very useful because you can use it as a way to join the community of people who speak Esperanto and wish they had someone else to talk to." What's hugely useful on the net is English.

let you interact with users who do not speak English, which can give you a perspective on the world.

Consider the self-selection fallacy here. The people you will be talking to are going to be more united in whatever character attribute led them to choose to learn Esperanto instead of English, than they will be distinguished by their local cultural characteristics.

For practical uses in the real world, it doesn't get much more useful than the Pasporta Servo, a service of Esperanto-speakers who volunteer to welcome travellers from other countries in their homes--in other words, learn to speak Esperanto and you can travel around the world and get FREE room and board!

Or join Servas and do the same, but with a whole lot more people.

Re:Is Esperanto worth learning?

[amuzulo]

Professor Culbert of the University of Washington did a worldwide survey of Esperanto speakers and found there to be 1.6 million speakers at Foreign Service Level 3, so I generally just say there's more than a million. I'm a full-time volunteer at the World Esperanto Youth Organization, so I use Esperanto everyday as my working language, because it's our only common language here. Yes, believe it or not, not everyone can speak English here.

Re:Is Esperanto worth learning?

[elijahao]

That's true for any second language though.. And you could learn something that actually DOES have international ties as well as root ties to English, and that would be Latin. Learning Latin will give you a better understanding of the constructs of the English language as well as being the formal root for Spanish, Italian, and French. I don't think you could rate Esperanto as highly since it's a modern make believe language.

All that besides the benefit of learning an ancient language to orient yourself with the history of western civilization. The world didn't come into being in the Information Age.. There are many things to learn from the histories of all peoples. (most of which are not included by Latin, yes I understand that :) I happen to enjoy Asian languages as well (Japanese))

Re:Is Esperanto worth learning?

[Zachary Kessin]

Sounds Like Chabad to me, everywhere you go there they are, with their black hats and pictures of the Rebbe. They will welcome you into their homes and fead you good kosher food. Of course they speak the original international Language *YIDDISH*. (And English, and Hebrew, and Russian, and depending on where you are probably a few others )

Re:Is Esperanto worth learning?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also more to the point, have any of the esperanto speakers here actually used esperanto to speak to someone who didn't speak English?

Yes -- and not only spoke to them, but had real conversations with them.

Esperanto for n00bs...

[PHPee]

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"

Re:Esperanto for n00bs...

[Mad Marlin]

Surprisingly, there are an estimated 2 million Esperanto speakers in the world.

Assuming that there are roughly 8 billion people on earth, that means the odds of any particular person speaking esperanto are roughly 0.025%, slightly better than the odds of dealing a four-of-a-kind hand in poker on the first try, which comes in at 0.024%.

Re:Esperanto for n00bs...

[flabbergast]

I've always been under the impression that Esperanto is "easy" and a "middle ground" for European languages: French, English, German etc, but not other languages such as Farsi, Chinese, Japanese or the language of my parents, Korean, which all have very different structures from the Romantic or Germanic languages. So, lets be clear that its not really a "middle ground" language.

Re:Esperanto for n00bs...

[UnuMondo]

Esperanto's grammatical structure is much closer to non-Indo-European languages than Spanish or English. Also, because Zamenhof spoke Hebrew, there are so very exotic things in the language like the affixes "ig" and "i". While the vocabulary is of course derived from Romance and Slavic languages, learning Esperanto is a good first step to tacking an agglutinative language like Hungarian or Finnish, and the ability to generally make up new words would prepare one for Mandarin.

Esperanto?

[Joe the Lesser]

I'd rather code in Oberon!

Bonus points to anyone asides myself who *has* coded in Oberon.

Mi gxin parolas

[InfiniteVoid]

Mi parolas iom da esperanto, sed mi ne bladaux gxin lernas cxar lerneje mi nun studas la japanan.

Angle: I speak some esperanto, but I'm not still learning it because at school I'm now studying Japanese.

I took up Esperanto as a hobby. I didn't understand why I was so interested in it until almost a year later, when I realized that esperanto was like a programming language. Both are man-made... the range of Esperanto just happens to be a bit larger than, say, C.

Unfortunately esperanto has kludges and ambiguities that I'd prefer not to have in a designed language. Still, as a hobby, it can be fun. And you'd be hard-pressed to find a language that is as easy to learn (to speak) from books and online resources.

BTW, did you know that Radio Polonia gives daily internet radio broadcasts in Esperanto? (For those that want to hear what it sounds like.)

Gxis!

learnin

[diesel_jackass]

i'm trying to learn... slowly. This page is of great use in the meantime.

one of these days i'll program in esperanto.

How Many Readers Speak Esperanto?

[secolactico]

How Many Readers Speak Esperanto?

Ok, someone has to ask (you know, the whole stereotype thing and everything):

How many Readers Speak Klingon? Are there more klingon speakers than esperanto speakers in Slashdot?

Re:How Many Readers Speak Esperanto?

[bandy]

Ho ve, jen ili estas!

Re:How Many Readers Speak Esperanto?

[donh1942]

Unlikely. Based on calculations by Dr. Sidney Culbert of the University of Washington (for Esperanto) and by Dr. Laurence Schoen of the Klingon Language Institute (for Klingon), there are probably on the order of 20,000 times as many Esperanto speakers in the world as there are Klingon speakers. I can't imagine that the ratio in Slashdot would even be as low as 1:1.

Well, I didn't before this post.

[ThenAgain]

I did know what it is, thanks to Red Dwarf. I went and signed up for a free ten lesson course which I found on ELNA's "How can I learn Esperanto?" page. I've just completed the first lesson. It took about twenty minutes of reading and excercise and would be equivalent to about a week's study in German.

Programmers will love this language. It's the Python of spoken languages!

Re:Well, I didn't before this post.

[raju1kabir]

Programmers will love this language. It's the Python of spoken languages!

Oh great, does that mean that the number of seconds I pause between words has essential grammatical significance?

(for those who don't know Python, it is distinguished from usable languages by its reliance on precise quantities of invisible characters as crucial syntactical elements)

Re:Well, I didn't before this post.

[Anonymous Coward]

I did know what it is, thanks to Red Dwarf.

..The immortal phrase from RD, of course, being
"Bonvolu alsendi el Pordiston, lausajne estas rano in mea bideo" (quoted from memory, so bite me if it's wrong)
Which translates to:
"Please would you send for the hall porter, there appears to be a frog in my bidet"

Re:Well, I didn't before this post.

[ThenAgain]

Rimmer: Is it? Well what's that one about your father was a baboon's rump and your mother spent most of her time up against walls with sailors?

Holly: I'm not telling you.

Re:Well, I didn't before this post.

[ThenAgain]

I've just worked it out, I think (still learning).

Tia patro estis paviana postaj^o kaj tia patrino grandparte pasigis fojon al muroj kun maristoj.

I used to ...

[asimulator]

years ago. It's fairly easy to "learn" Esperanto -
I learnt the basic grammar in a few days' time, along with elementary vocabulary and plodded thro' a word list for a week or so and got to a point where I could hold a meaningful, short, conversation in the language. But there were very few people I could speak it to, so I sort of forgot how to; If I had the book and some one to practice it with, I'm sure I can be back at full speed in a very short time.

A glaring omission

[sakusha]

I can see that this web page missed out on listing esperanto:

http://www.thewavemag.com/pagegen.php?pagename=a rt icle&articleid=24184

Esperanto is known to amateur linguists as a "conlang" (constructed language), a class that includes everything from Klingon to Elvish. There used to be a conlang fool I saw spouting off on the net about how he had invented a new conlang, it was a combination of Japanese and Maltese as if it would be spoken by a dinosaur with enormous nasal cavities. I kid you not. And these people expect to be taken seriously?
If you want to be understood by the largest number of people, you'll study Chinese. If you want to be understood by the greatest number of technologists, you study English or Japanese. If you want to be understood by the greatest number of idiots, you study esperanto.

Re:A glaring omission

[dmachleid]

I have to agree that many conlangs are essentially masturbatory works: playthings, pet projects or (shudder) fanfic. But Esperanto (and several others, Esperanto is just the "best of breed") are different. They were constructed to address the language problem, which is essentially this:
Learning another natural language (well) is *hard*, and once you've done it you only know one more, you can converse with some new subset of the world populace, and at a sub-native fluency. You're still at a disadvantage against a native speaker.

But, if there were an easy language to learn (deterministic pronunciation, no iregular verbs, etc) that there were no native speakers of, everyone could learn it and use it as a common, neutral ground. Buisness could be conducted and treatys negotiated without one party being at a disadvantage, and with the effort required to learn one simple language one can now speak to the entire world.

That is the goal of Esperanto.

It is, to a degree, misty-eyed idealism. Everyone get's to keep their local cultures, idioms, and languages, but also gets the ability to communicate with everyone else in the world thru a second auxiliary language. Learning other natural languages would still be an option for scholars or hobyists (or anyone, in fact, just as it is now), but not at all necessary for the tourist, buisnessman, or head of state.

It cannot be debated that it would be a Good Thing (tm). I love the idea, and yes, I speak Esperanto. Do I think this idealistic state will ever come to be? No, not realisticly. Will I keep trying to promote Esperanto as a good idea? Yes.

I'm a hobyist (I've been labeled a language fetishist by some) and an idealist, but I'm also rational. If someone can come up with 1 sane argument against a universal auxiliary language, or a better candidate than Esperanto for this language, I'd love to hear it.

Re:A glaring omission

[linzeal]

If you want to be understood by the greatest number of technologists, you study English or Japanese

actually the second would be German and I think I might be less intimidated in learning Scientific Japanese if I had not already taken 4 years of German.

Re:A glaring omission

[raju1kabir]

Buisness could be conducted and treatys negotiated without one party being at a disadvantage

Who exactly is at a disadvantage when business is conducted in a language where one party has less than native fluency?

Unless you're trying to sell Monty Python dictionaries ("My hovercraft is full of eels") to the Chinese or something, I'd argue that both parties are equally disadvantaged. In my work I deal with non-fluent speakers and in various languages all the time and I don't see where one party gets any advantage out of being able to say things the other party doesn't understand.

If someone can come up with 1 sane argument against a universal auxiliary language

It's simply never going to happen. The value proposition of an artificial language is too abstract. For any rational actor, the choice between learning a language that a billion people (including many in the wealthiest economies on earth, and basically all of the world's wealthiest and most powerful people) already speak today, or learning a language spoken exclusively by anorak-clad boffins on the promise of eventual utility, is a no-brainer. People just don't have that much free time, and crappy English is better than fluent Esperanto for the practical needs of rich and poor alike.

or a better candidate than Esperanto for this language, I'd love to hear it.

Well, read this sentence aloud, and you'll be hearing it.

English has the closest thing to critical mass that any language in history ever had. This has been centuries in the making. Esperanto, on the other hand, has centuries yet to go, and even then, it's waiting in line behind Spanish, Chinese, and several others. By the time its turn comes around we'll either be using telepathy, or we'll be back to banging rocks and referring to all objects as "urk."

Fact is, the universal language is Bad English. It's spoken everywhere, and its speakers are largely mutually intelligible. Americans can't understand them, but that's just a matter of practice. The rest of us can, and we didn't even grow up on English.

Re:A glaring omission

[sakusha]

It's not just critical mass, it's thousands of years of evolution in use. Esperanto nerds seem to have this stupid idea that languages are something written down in stone and do not evolve. Quite the contrary, today's languages have evolved and become more useful, more descriptive, more flexible over time. Given that esperanto has none of that history, it will always be inferior to any currently spoken language.
I'd just be happy if native English speakers practiced their English skills instead of wasting time on fictional bullshit languages. Most colleges have given up on that idea, nowadays they teach foreign languages, not with the goal of the students attaining fluency, but to make them rethink their native language usage. Hell, I never knew what a transitive or intransitive verb was until I studied Japanese. My English writing improved considerably once I learned to write in Japanese.

Re:A glaring omission

[amuzulo]

It's simply never going to happen.

It already has happened. There's over a million speakers around the world. While that does mean that I'm not likely to just run into someone on the street who speaks it (like I did in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), but when I travel to a new city, I can almost always contact someone there who will show me the city or give me a place to stay for the night. I did this countless times travelling through Brazil and Europe using the Pasporta Servo. So, it is already useful, just not yet in international commerce.

Re:A glaring omission

[amuzulo]

Well yes, Esperanto has not been around for a thousand years, but it does however have more than a hundred years of history. It is indeed a stupid idea that languages are written down in stone and do not evolve. That's probably why Esperanto evolves. A former UN translator, Claude Piron, wrote a few notes on the evolution of Esperanto in his article: Evolution is Proof of Life.

Re:A glaring omission

[fuzzybunny]

we'll be back to banging rocks and referring to all objects as "urk."

Ah, that explains my co-workers.

Re:A glaring omission

[ratsnapple tea]

"common, neutral ground. ... without one party being at a disadvantage ..."

But it's not common ground. The language uses Roman characters, for starters, and the roots are pulled almost exclusively from Western languages. How does this not place people at a disadvantage who grew up reading and writing CJK or Arabic?

Even if the script were something nobody'd ever seen before, and the roots were also completely invented, I would still argue that Esperanto has a strong Western bias. Its comprehension depends on phonetics, not pitches and inflections (as comprehension of Chinese does to a large degree), and Esperanto's pronunciations are much easier for a speaker of a Western language to pick up than, say, a native Japanese speaker (you've seen Lost In Translation, right? "Lip them! Lip my stocking!")

You can try to address these problems, but at the expense of making the language much harder to learn for people of any background, which (correct me if I'm wrong) essentially negates Esperanto's whole raison d'etre.

Not to mention that every language, even Esperanto, has evolved to express a certain range of ideas and a certain way of thought. You can stretch this (poetry anyone?), but the result is rarely elegant or intuitive. Western linguistic anthropologists have "discovered" languages in which there is no easy way to express the passage of time--present, future, past tenses simply aren't important for some people on this great planet. So even by assuming a familiarity with time, Esperanto reveals its bias. More broadly, this problem of relative cultural importance is a problem that I doubt any so-called "common" language can solve gracefully.

"It is, to a degree, misty-eyed idealism."

Yes, and that's the whole problem...

I don't know, I just find it worse than useless--downright counterproductive, even. This whole mentality smacks of condescension to me: "Oh, you poor noble savages," says the bearded Western intellectual, "we don't speak your language, and you don't speak ours; I'll invent a common ground and we shall meet halfway!" Then he goes and creates a language that is of course every bit as culturally loaded as every other language, but he is so thrilled at his own worldly generosity that he does not realize what an ass he is making of himself.

But, to each his own.

yours

Re:A glaring omission

[raju1kabir]

It already has happened. There's over a million speakers around the world.

No, it is estimated there are over a million people who have at one time dabbled. The same could be said for piglatin.

While that does mean that I'm not likely to just run into someone on the street who speaks it (like I did in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), but when I travel to a new city, I can almost always contact someone there who will show me the city or give me a place to stay for the night. I did this countless times travelling through Brazil and Europe using the Pasporta Servo [tejo.org]. So, it is already useful

Sorry, that's contrived. You could say the same for membership in the Kiwanis or the Justin Timberlake fan club. Or, for heaven's sake, Servas.

You're pushing this is a geek club, not as a language. Which is fine, so long as you understand what it is.

Re:A glaring omission

[amuzulo]

No, it is estimated there are over a million people who have at one time dabbled.

No, it is estimated there are over TEN million people who have at one time dabbled. Based on the study by Professor Sidney S. Culbert, there are 1.6 million Esperanto speakers in the world (foreign service level 3 speaking ability) which has also been published in The World Almanac and Book of Facts. Here are his personal comments on the survey:

...I have personally conducted an on-the-spot stratified sampling of populations in dozens of countries during a period of over twenty years, using hundreds of hours in attempting to trace down every person within the selected areas of the selected countries who meet my criteria of "speaker of Esperanto." In addition, I have the largest collection of items in and about Esperanto to be found in the Western Hemisphere -- a collection which has been thoroughly searched for any clues which could improve my estimate. In short, I know more about the topic under discussion than any other person...

...It is, however, annoying to go to elaborate, carefully-planned, and time-consuming efforts to obtain data nowhere else available, and then to have the results incompetently criticized by someone who bothers neither to read the material carefully nor check on the "facts" which he offers in criticism...

Re:A glaring omission

[raju1kabir]

Based on the study by Professor Sidney S. Culbert, there are 1.6 million Esperanto speakers in the world

Is there an online version of this study? I'd like to take a look.

Re:A glaring omission

[sadiklis]

If you want to be understood by the largest number of people, you'll study Chinese.

Are you sure all those educated Chinese don't know English?

Ever heard of "being fluent in a second [or third...] language"?

Re:A glaring omission

[amuzulo]

Unfortunately not. From what I remember, the study was done in 1987, and he only released it to the World Almanac and Book of Facts. I keep planning on visiting him one of these days to look through the research papers though. I mean if someone published a book on the number of Esperanto speakers in Esperanto, it might become a best-seller. ;-)

Re:A glaring omission

[riskyrik]

I don't agree. Esperanto is based (both vocabulary and grammar) on rules derived from important European languages (English , German , French , Spanish ...). It's grammar is very logical and almost without exceptions. So if Americans or Europeans would learn it , it would definitely be x times more easy than studying Chinese. The European Community spends millions of euros each year on translations in every direction.Next year another 10 new states with at least 5 new languages will join the EC. If European governments would support and encourage the teaching of Esperanto, maybe a good deal of these translations costs could be cut.

Re:A glaring omission

[Anonymous Coward]

This whole mentality smacks of condescension to me: "Oh, you poor noble savages," says the bearded Western intellectual, "we don't speak your language, and you don't speak ours; I'll invent a common ground and we shall meet halfway!" Then he goes and creates a language...

Well, "he" created the language when he saw Germans and Jews (Yiddish) and Russians and Poles having problems in the city of Bialystok because of language differences. So the language he created was not all that foreign to the people he hoped would learn it. (Though note that none of the groups speak romance languages. Also note that this was not between countries -- as we typically mean with the word "international" -- but inside a single city!)

Does it not smack of Westerners thinking they know what's best for the "savages", when people complain that Esperanto is too European? Shouldn't the complainers let the non-Westerners decide for themselves? The most vibrant Esperanto communities in the world are in Russia, China, Japan, Brazil, Hungary, Iran, among others. It would seem that the non-Europeans and speakers on non-Indo-European languages are doing just fine without sympathy from Westerners/Europeans.

Re:A glaring omission

[dvdeug]

Esperanto is known to amateur linguists as a "conlang" (constructed language), a class that includes everything from Klingon to Elvish. There used to be a conlang fool I saw spouting off on the net about how he had invented a new conlang, it was a combination of Japanese and Maltese as if it would be spoken by a dinosaur with enormous nasal cavities. I kid you not. And these people expect to be taken seriously?

There used to be a programming fool I saw spouting off on the net about how he had a webserver runing on a Commodore-64. I kid you not. And computer programmers expect to be taken seriously?

Re:A glaring omission

[Anonymous Coward]

OK I wouldn't call people who like conlangs, such as esperanto, 'fools'.
They just have a huge interest in something that you and I find a little weird.
I mean some peoplemight think me a foolfor some of my hobbies.

And then you also make another mistake:
Though Mandarin Chinese with 726 million speakers is the worldsmost spoken first-language and english is only second with 427 million, many many people speak English as a second language (like alot of people in India who have Hindi as a first) and even more have it as a foreign language (pretty much everybody that as a above-average education, as a matter of fact if you ever visit China you'll be surprised how well their English is (well atleast in the Big cities),much better then your average Japanese, so I guess Chinese education spends a little more time on english then Japanese education).
The total estimated English speakers is something like 1.5 billion, or 25% of the world's population.
And I dont think there are that many people with Mandarin Chinese as a second/foreign language. (can't be more then 100 or 200 million, and certainly not 700 million).

Source: http://helpcentre.englishclub.com/el_howmany.htm

And the greatest number of tecnologists?
Well again English would be the obvious first candidate, but I think that Chinese or German would be the second choice,however I could be wrong.
But for most technical stuff natural language often plays a minor role.
The math and code in pogramming, or well known formulas in Physics are by far most important.
I'm a physics geek, and If you ever read what those asians write in their own natural language (they are brilliant, really) you van understand almost everything, as the 'normal' text plays just a minor role.
The math and well known formula's arealmos language independent and you can follow those with ease.
Same goes for code (in programming), correct universal code + vague german comments are still very understandable most of the time.

"Anyone caught speaking Esperanto...

[doofusdan]

...is thought crazy or headed for jail."

-Jay Farrar, the opening verse of "Barstow" on the album Sebastopol.

Okay, I'll bite.

[devphil]

I'm a nerd. All but one of the laundry-list assumptions are false in my case. And I'm considering learning Esperanto. Why? Because the reasons listed here are pretty good ones.

Esperanto is not meant to be a replacement primary language. It's meant to be a useful fallback, a common secondary language. Oh no! Increased communication abilities! Not here! Not on slashdot!

Re:Okay, I'll bite.

[raju1kabir]

I'm a nerd. All but one of the laundry-list assumptions are false in my case. And I'm considering learning Esperanto. Why? Because the reasons listed here are pretty good ones.

Really? I'd be genuinely interested to know which ones you found to be "pretty good". I skimmed through the FAQ (especially part 9) and all their answers struck me as either non-sequiturs or downright stupid.

Esperanto is not meant to be a replacement primary language. It's meant to be a useful fallback, a common secondary language.

Well, if that's your goal, you've definitely picked a loser. There is not, and never will be, any situation anyplace on earth outside of an Esperanto convention where you can find an Esperanto speaker more easily than you can find an English speaker.

If you want a fallback, pick something that people who leave the house actually speak. There are plenty of languages with large diasporas. Chinese. French. Russian. Arabic.

Or at least invent some sort of giant red forehead tattoo for Esperanto speakers so you can find your one counterpart among the thousand people you'll see in a week.

Until then, its only use will be in completely contrived situations (blue-moon-rare anecdotes about chance Esperantencounters notwithstanding).

Re:Okay, I'll bite.

[orthogonal]

Or at least invent some sort of giant red forehead tattoo for Esperanto speakers so you can find your one counterpart among the thousand people you'll see in a week.

Hey good idea! I've put some work into it, and I think this tattoo design is both simple and obvious. Since I can't set colors in a /. comment, I'll substitute a bold font.

Here's the tattoo I think is the best:

L O S E R

(However, a friend suggested this one; it's a bit more complex, but is perhaps even more accurate:

K L I N G O N . L A N G U A G E . I N S T I T U T E . D R O P O U T

)

Re:Okay, I'll bite.

[More Karma Than God]

That's a good start.
Here's another:

Harry
Harrison
Fan

Re:Okay, I'll bite.

[orthogonal]

Harry Harrison Fan

Stainless Steel Rat! Forgot about that!
Okay, I disavow my ealier mockery of Esperanto.

Re:Okay, I'll bite.

[devphil]

There is not, and never will be, any situation anyplace on earth outside of an Esperanto convention where you can find an Esperanto speaker more easily than you can find an English speaker.

I think their FAQ disproves this myth quite handily, so I won't bother. From your list of suggestions, I've already studied French and Russian, but the point remains (also in their FAQ) that I am at a permanent major disadvantage when conversing with a native French or Russian speaker. Artificial languages help level the playing field in this respect.

so you can find your one counterpart among the thousand people you'll see in a week. Until then, its only use will be in completely contrived situations

What, you've never heard of newsgroups and chat rooms? I suppose talking about hobby Foo in rec.hobbies.<foo> counts as a completely contrived situation in your mind, then, but when the whole point of discussion is an internationally-bridging language, I'll meet far more interesting people there than I ever will on slashdot.

In any case, I find it exceedingly odd that /. -- normally chock full of people willing to learn new programming languages -- are suddenly too hip, too mainstream, too arrogant to learn a new human language. If you (or anybody else) had written, "hey, I studied it seriously for six months and it's fiendishly difficult and my sex life went to hell and Esperanto-speaking clowns killed my family," then I might listen to your experience. But you're dismissing it out of hand, not even willing to try? I'll just ignore your (baseless) opinion, then, if it's all the same to you.

Re:Okay, I'll bite.

[raju1kabir]

I think their FAQ disproves this myth quite handily, so I won't bother. From your list of suggestions, I've already studied French and Russian, but the point remains (also in their FAQ) that I am at a permanent major disadvantage when conversing with a native French or Russian speaker.

If you just want to be on a level playing field with native speakers, either go there and hang around outside an institution for mentally challenged kids, or take the time to learn it right. How's my English? It's not my first language, but I don't think I'm at a disadvantage with native speakers at all. Is it your claim that Esperanto is a vehicle for people who are too lazy and/or stupid to learn a foreign language, so they can pat each other in the back when conversing in permanent mutual semi-intelligibility?

What, you've never heard of newsgroups and chat rooms? I suppose talking about hobby Foo in rec.hobbies.<foo> counts as a completely contrived situation in your mind

When Foo is the language, and the existence of the forum is used to prove the viability of the language, then yes, that's pretty much the dictionary definition of "contrived".

But you're dismissing it out of hand, not even willing to try?

This is not like refusing to eat Green Eggs and Ham. My rejection is not based on low expectations of the subjective experience of learning or using the language.

Rather, it's because I'm rational enough to realize that the exercise has no point. Learning a language takes a lot of work, and when I expend that work, I want a payoff greater than the ability to converse in rec.hobbies.foo.

Mi! Mi!

[Yaztromo]

Mi malbone parolas g^in. Mi lernis hejme.

I'm a bit rusty, having not paid much attention to my Esperanto studies for the last little while, but one of these days I'm going to start up again. I have several Esperanto books, including a copy of "The Diary of Anne Frank" I bought at Anne Frank house in Amsterdam last time I was there. It was rather funny purchasing it -- the people in the bookstore thought I had brought it with me, even though I plucked it off their shelf (presumably the people at the till had never sold a copy before, and thus didn't even know they had it in stock! :) ).

It's an excellent language -- makes english look crude and low-tech by comparison. It's a highly constructive language. Take, for example, the word for hospital: malsanulejo. It's actuall a "constructed" word, with the following breakdown:

• "san-": prefix denoting the concep of "health"; sana == "healthy", sane == heathily,
• "mal-": prefix that causes the appended root to become it's opposite; malsana == "unhealthy",
• "-ul-": suffix denoting a person who exhibits this quality; malsanulo == "unhealthy person",
• "-ej-": suffix denoting a place where you'd expect the find this item,
• "-o": denotes an obect noun. Thus malsanulejo == "place where you'd expect to find unhealthy people".

Sheer beauty. One of these days I should get back to the books.

Yaz.

Re:Mi! Mi!

[IainHere]

malsanulejo. It's actuall a "constructed" word, with the following breakdown:
...
Sheer beauty.

Sounds doubleplusungood to me.

planning to learn...

[Hakubi_Washu]

well, my university (Aachen, Germany) requires me to display read-only capability in Latin, English and French. For the latter one I write a test today, concluding a six week intensive course. I expect to pass, but, here comes the twist: At the beginning I swore that if I passed, I would go learn Esperanto (which I consider interesting, but utterly useless :-). I also had ("had", because it's been a long time since I used it) some basic understanding of Klingon back when I was still running around in my uniform (no, I don't do that anymore. Grown-up, I guess. No, Ah! Stop the bashing! "Fire at Will!" :-) After that I guess I could finally learn Russian which I started a few years ago, because a good friend of mine is from St. Petersburg, but let slip because other things were more important... Japanese would be cool too... Jeesh, so many languages and so little time :-)

For those interested in ConLangs, BTW, I have these links:

www.langmaker.com

www.zompist.com/kit.html

These are of good use if you want to create your own languages for a novel, or a nice game of Caverns & Creatures :-)

Re:planning to learn...

[Anonymous Coward]

The second link (the Language Construction Kit) is one of the better guides to language creation out there. Well, non-professional language construction, at least. It goes into a good amount of depth without being overwhelming, and explains things as much as possible in easy-to-understand terminology.

But even the LCK makes fun of the idiocy known as Esperanto. ;)

10101010011010

[Associate]

Most of the geeks I know took German or Latin. Except for one. He got forced into Spanish because German wouldn't fit his schedule and French was closed. He was placed into Spanish. But if you high school employs more than one Spanish teacher like mine did, there's always room for another student council member.

Re:10101010011010

[goulo]

Heh, yeah I studied Latin and German both... :) (Also Finnish... once I'd figured I just sucked at learning languages, I decided I'd fulfill the requirement with a wacky language since it just didn't matter, I wasn't going to get fluent at anything, I thought...!)

So I've been pleasantly surprised at how much easier I've found Esperanto to learn than other languages. In 6 months I am already getting pretty good, easily reading and writing it every day, as compared to years of frustration with other languages. In fairness, I am probably more motivated to learn a foreign language now than I was in school - but part of that is because I've been so encouraged by my faster progress... it's a postive feedback loop :)

I highly recommend checking it out to anyone who felt frustrated studying languages in school. lernu.net is a great place to start and learn the basics quickly. (And contrary to some of the bogus rants you see, there is definitely an Esperanto community, culture, history, literature, etc. with plenty of people around the world you can communicate with.)

La lingvo Esperanto estas mia kvina lingvo!

[mutterer]

La lingvo Esperanto estas mia kvina lingvo!
(Esperanto is my 5th language)

After English, Spanish, Japanese, and French, I wanted something a bit different--something that was almost completely useless (except for pasporta servo, of course) but incredibly easy and incorporated elements of most of the other languages I'd studied. Since then I've begun learning Attic/Koine Greek as well, and my experience with Esperanto has actually been a big help. If one really wants to be successful at learning _useful_ languages, Esperanto is a great way to get his feet wet, so to speak. Learning Esperanto provides one with a simple and clear way of understanding the foundations of grammar that are common to virtually all spoken languages, and the experience with complex grammatical features such as noun declension--but in an unbelievably simple form--is extremely useful if one plans on learning any slavic or classical languages (such as Russian, Greek, Latin, Old English, Sanskrit, etc.) or German. Also useful is the hodgepodge of vocabulary from virtually all of the languages thus far mentioned (with the exception of Japanese), which should give one a decent headstart in learning the vocabulary of any Romanic, Slavic, or Germanic language.

It's true that there's a tremendous shortage of Esperantists in the states, if not the world (most figures point to about 2 million at most, compared to Albanian's 10 million+ speakers), but that's really not the point. Esperanto is still well worth the investment of a few months of dilligent study for all the benefits that I've mentioned (again, even without considering pasporta servo!).

A note to newbies on accents.

[Yaztromo]

A brief note to those of you seeing Esperanot writen for the first time. Esperanto uses 6 accented characters -- five of which (c, g, h, j, and s) use a cricumflex ('^') over them when accented, and one of which ('u') uses a breve (a upturned half-circle). These six characters exist in non-accented versions as well.

It was recognized early in the life of Esperanto that some printers (the profession, not the peripheral) may have problems handling these characters -- they probably wouldn't have the necessary moveable type to handle them. As such, a convention was established: if a chcaracter is taken to be accented, put an 'h' after it. Thus, in place of a 'c' with a circumflex, you'd use 'ch'.

For English (and other language) speakers, this makes some sense for 'c' and 's', as they respectively make, when accented, a 'ch' and 'sh' sound. However, 'h' itself is a valid letter in Esperanto (note than note all of the 26 letters in the modern engligh alphabet are in Esperanto - there are no 'q', 'w', 'x', or 'y'), so this could become confusing. I;ve noticed that nobody posting here in Esperanto has used this convention.

A more recent convention is to use the same method, but using an 'x' instead of an 'h' as the trailing character. This works nicely as there is no 'x' in the Esperanto alphabet (its sound is represented by the lettert 'eks' instead). So in any of the other posts, where you see an 'x' in an Esperanto word, note that it's not really there -- it's just used to signify that the preceeding letter has an accent.

Finally, there is the convention I (and some others) tend to use, which is instead of using a letter at all, to append accented letters with a '^'. As this is the accent that 5 out of the 6 possible accented letters use anyhow, it's closer to the actual look of the word.

Of course, in this day and age, we aren't limited to ASCII codepages that lack some of the accented characters in Esperanto. Unicode can represent these characters nicely, but entering them on a keyboard in still a pain -- and many mail and Usenet news clients don't support it anyhow (nor do many older browsers for that matter, or older OS's that don't have Unicode support and/or fonts installed), thus the other conventions continue to thrive.

(And if you think I'm odd for knowing all of this, I'm also a guy who uses Dvorak keyboards on all his systems :) ).

Yaz.

Re:A note to newbies on accents.

[bhima]

You use Dvorak keyboards !?

How do you find them? What is your profession? (what do you primarily do on these keyboards).

My reason for asking is that these days I find my self frequently switching between German & English keyboards and I find it much easier to code on an English keyboard, but it is difficult to use for composing documentation on it. Any way the shifting about of these keys only bothered me for a few weeks, and now I'm OK with that, So I'm thinking hey moving these letters about isn't so bad, maybe I should have an Dvorak keyboard!

Re:A note to newbies on accents.

[Yaztromo]

How do you find them? What is your profession? (what do you primarily do on these keyboards).

I'm a software developer/computer scientist. And you really on't need to find a specific Dvorak keyboard -- you can re-map an existing keyboard by moving the keycaps around, and then selecting the Dvorak keyboard keymap in your OS. Linux, OS/2, MacOS, Windows, and all other major (and many not-so-major) OSs come with out-of-the-box support for Dvorak keyboards.

My primary keyboard is an old Honeywell WN-101 -- but my favorites for such remapping remain the old IBM "clicky" keyboards.

This is off-topic now -- IIRC there was a Slashdot topic on Dvorak keyboards a few weeks back which can answer all your questions. HTH!

Yaz.

Pig Esperanto

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Gort, Klaatu Barada Nikto!

Re:Pig Esperanto

[Anonymous Coward]

care to translate?

Re:Pig Esperanto

[Mr Z]

Google will translate it for you.

:-)

Even Ash knows what it means! Groovy!

--Joe

Re:Pig Esperanto

[divbyzero]

See here (the source of the quote).

Re:Pig Esperanto

[delfania]

Hi where can someone learn about this language? do people have to rate every single comment, no matter how asinine? I'm new to slashdot just playing around. delfania

Right you are!

[GCP]

consider us birds of a feather

How to swear in Esperanto

[Dammital]

I remember from my youth a National Lampoon article entitled "How to Swear in Esperanto". It contained an assortment of curses ("May your penis be struck by lightning") and handy phrases ("Pardon me, could you direct me to the nearest medical facility? My penis has just been struck by lightning").

Alas, the article is lost to antiquity. But a Google search produces this useful vocabulary list.

Re:How to swear in Esperanto

[Greg Hewgill]

Here is the article: http://mindprod.com/dirty.html

It's actually a very good introduction to the language and some of its capabilities.

Atentu al la elefantaj fekeregoj! Ili ankoraux vaporas sub la argxenta luno.

Re:How to swear in Esperanto

[bandy]

Too bad Beard didn't bother to find out that there was an extant vocabulary for such pillow-talk.

Esperanto is now my primary language

[amuzulo]

I'm a full-time volunteer for the World Esperanto Youth Organization in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. As of July 2002, I've been speaking Esperanto as my primary language travelling for six months through Brazil and Europe and then volunteering here starting in January 2003. I'm also a board member of Esperanto@Internet which has done projects like lernu! which is one of the best free language teaching environments online as well as the founder of the Wikipedia in Esperanto which has over 8,000 encyclopedia articles after two years of work by an international team from over 25 countries and is now the 9th largest language in the project.

As for a high-rate of IT Esperanto speakers, I think a lot of it comes from the fact that we aren't put off by the word artificial because we're familiar with fields of study like artificial intelligence. Also, people working in IT are more likely to like the idea of a "logical language" even though Esperanto isn't really logically per se since no living language can ever be completely logical. Esperanto was initiated out of the need for a just international language and started just like an Open Source Project. So, another reason that many Esperanto speakers are techies is simply because we tend to use the Internet more than other people.

The single most useful language for cheap travel

[UnuMondo]

I learned Esperanto in 1996 and it has proven very useful. I travelled through Europe several times, staying at no cost at the homes of Esperantists, and finally moved there for good by first working for an Esperanto youth organisation in Holland. It's been a ticket to lower-cost travel, a genuinely international social life, and ironically more effective learning of national languages.

For those who would say that learning English or Mandarin is more important because there are more speakers, the traveller to, for example, Chile can't just call up any English speaker there and request free lodging and hospitality. With Esperanto, however, that's pretty common. In spite of the smaller number of speakers, Esperanto is much more useful for travel.

However, Esperanto is pretty useless if you spend all your time in the US. A lot of American Esperantists, though, end up leaving the US like I did after they learn the language because it's a ticket to a much more diverse and interesting world.

Ankaux mi parolas esperanton

[lburgbac]

Saluton al cxiuj, mi gxojas vidi, ke oni parolas pri esperanto tie. I learned esperanto, because it's so simple and logic. I could start to read "The Lord Of The Rings" (La mastro de l'ringoj) after only 5 months. If someone wants to try, you can use this very good free course at http://www.cursodeesperanto.com.br/ Gxis revido!

Why worry about utility??

[zhiwenchong]

To the people who say that Esperanto is useless etc: Look, usefulness isn't the only reason to learn anything.

Sure, we'd be better off learning German or some real language (actually, I've done that. I have a working knowledge of German, Chinese, etc.). But consider the effort and time required to pick up those languages. (it took me a couple of months to just wrap my mind around the nominative, accusative, dative and genitive in German). In contrast, Esperanto can be picked up fairly easily. You can get a basic feel of the language in a matter of days (if you're good) or weeks. (becoming an advanced user of the language takes a bit more time of course)

Esperanto is also an interesting study in syntax. It is interesting to study the choices that were made in its design -- and what limitations they impose, i.e. whether expressiveness was given up in simplifying certain structure. (after all, language is a form of encoding. Some things are there for a reason, while others are merely ornamental -- so lossy vs lossless). Learning Esperanto grammar helps one learn more about grammar in general (how symbols are classified, how they are modified, etc.) without getting into a whole lot of linguistic jargon.

You might also learn a few things about etymology; many Esperanto words come from Romance languages, and some from Germanic languages.

It's a language that should be learned for fun, or just for improving the mind's flexibility, if nothing else. (symbolic manipulation and that sort of thing, you know.) You might even use it as resume padding material. (I have so many languages that most employers don't even look at my list, but what the heck. It's one of those geek items, much like naming all the opensource projects that you've been involved even if you were just responsible for designing the toolbars).

It's kind of like learning LISP (okay, it's not the perfect analogy because LISP is actually useful and powerful, but the moral is the same). Some people use it. Most people don't, but it's probably good for them to learn it anyway, so that they can appreciate functional programming. It gives them an extra vantage point from which to approach problems.

Likewise, Esperanto helps us appreciate other languages more. It may not be your cup of tea, but don't diss us language dillettantes and other people who'd like to learn it anyway.

So why should any geek learn Esperanto? For all the above reasons, but most of all:

Because we can.

Re:Why worry about utility??

[orthogonal]

So why should any geek learn Esperanto? For all the above reasons, but most of all:

Because we can.

Why should any geek learn to have a sense of humor?

Because my post was a joke.

What's Esperanto for "Lighten up and laugh"? Sheesh.

Re:Why worry about utility??

[zhiwenchong]

Whoops... clicked "reply" by mistake, I didn't mean to reply to your message specifically. I was making a general remark to the detractors of the language.

Sorry bout that.

Re:Why worry about utility??

[Reality Master 101]

So why should any geek learn Esperanto? For all the above reasons, but most of all: Because we can.

The biggest reason NOT to learn Esperanto? Opportunity cost.

There is no payoff to learning it. It's a completely useless exercise. Why not spend that time learning something else that would be infinitely more interesting? Learn to play the piano. Learn to draw. Learn to fly an airplane. Hell, learn to read an ancient language such as Latin so you can read certain literature the way it was originally written.

In other words, learn something that helps you grow as a person.

There are endless things that can be learned. Why waste time with something like Esperanto? It's just mental masturbation. No growth takes place.

Re:Why worry about utility??

[aminorex]

You make a good point about etymology. If you
know esperanto, you've been exposed to the
rudiments of a number of different european
languages as a result. But I have to ask
whether you wouldn't have gained more general
knowledge by studying an ancient root language
such as latin or koine greek.

Re:Why worry about utility??

[Anonymous Coward]

RealityMaster101 wrote:

Why waste time with something like Esperanto? It's just mental masturbation. No growth takes place.

I think being fluent in a language other than English is a sort of growth. Had I spent the same amount of time studying another language rather than Esperanto, I would not yet be fluent, certainly not at my current level. In addition to that benefit, I've met interesting, intelligent people and had memorable experiences.

--Aaron Brown (who someday will get around to creating a Slashdot account)

Re:Why worry about utility??

[dvdeug]

Why not spend that time learning something else that would be infinitely more interesting?

So you aren't interested in languages. But that is indeed an interest of many geeks, so the other things aren't infinitely more interesting.

Hell, learn to read an ancient language such as Latin so you can read certain literature the way it was originally written.

You could learn Esperanto so you can read certain literature the way it was originally written, too. Part of the point of Esperanto is that learning Latin is much more complex then learning Esperanto. You won't be able to read anything in Latin by the time that you would be nearly fluent in Esperanto.

In other words, learn something that helps you grow as a person.

Why does learning the piano make you grow as a person and learning Esperanto not? Learning the piano, for most people, isn't a skill they will ever use. It's as much mental masturbation as learning Esperanto, except in that you can actually use Esperanto without being excellent at it.

There's an old saying that...

[david.given]

...more people speak Klingon than speak Esperanto.

Unfortunately, I don't know if it's true; snopes doesn't have anything. Can anyone shed any light?

Re:There's an old saying that...

[amuzulo]

Yes, this urban legend is widely spread. The best "proof" I could find against it though was this reply to the editor of the National Review.

Re:There's an old saying that...

[donh1942]

I hate to say so, having myself written "this reply", but there's a better "proof" at http://groups.google.com/groups?q=Mandel+Klingon+g roup:rec.arts.sf.written.*&hl=eo&lr=&ie=UTF-8&grou p=rec.arts.sf.written.*&selm=FnB1E0.Jqw%40world.st d.com&rnum=1 (warning: the preview of this message shows some extraneous spaces in this URL -- if they appear when you read this, you might want to take them out).

Re:There's an old saying that...

[Tumbleweed]

I'd have more respect for someone who learned Klingon than for one who learned Esperanto. At least there's _some_ kind of benefit to learning Klingon! :)

Re:There's an old saying that...

[Anonymous Coward]

I read that in the whole world there are about 12 people fluent Klingon speakers. In one meeting I participated, there were about 2600 Esperanto speakers.
Do you know that the author of Klingon is a fluent Esperanto speaker?
Klingon was designed to be difficult to learn and understand. Esperanto was designed to be easy to learn.
When I was in Seoul, Korea, in the house of an Esperanto speaker, I didn't think that Esperanto wasn't useful...
I have used Esperanto during many, many years. Now, thanks to internet, I am using it every day.
If you doubt about the use of Esperanto in internet, just go to the page: Google.com
enter the word "esperanto" and see how many hits you get...
Rob from California

Re:There's an old saying that...

[mrb000gus]

By suggesting that those Esparomulans have anywhere close to as much power as Klingons, you have insulted my family honour! Prepare to die!!

Re:Dvorak

[Lord Bitman]

oh.. is that why your typing is so horrible?

English is good enough

[pmz]

Who cares why anyone should bother with Esperanto, when they have a language of perfect unambiguity, such as English.

Re:English is good enough

[goulo]

English is sufficiently ambiguous (just like any other spoken language) that I can't tell if you're kidding or serious when you claim English is good enough because it's perfectly unambiguous. Certainly English is much harder to learn than many languages, and Esperanto is much easier to learn than most. (I began studying Esperanto 6 months ago and am amazed at my progress, compared to attempts to learn other languages in the past, including Latin, German, and Finnish...)

Re:English is good enough

[pmz]

...I can't tell if you're kidding or serious when you claim English is good enough because it's perfectly unambiguous.

I'm kidding, seriously. For example, in my original post, what does the pronoun "they" refer to, "who" or "anyone"? I'd have to rewrite the sentence to be really clear about it.

Literature

[cmpalmer]

I totally agree with this. I took two quarters of Japanese in college (not enough to be useful without a lot of outside work and practice) because I thought it would be cool. I wish now that I had taken French or Spanish (which I thought to be "boring" at the time).

I now realize that I would rather be able to read Spanish or French or Italian because of the wealth of literature available. Yes, most of it is available translated into English, but it doesn't *feel* right sometimes. I always wonder how much is different in the translation.

I would love to be able to read Borges, Garcia Marquez, or Umberto Eco in their original languages. I've tried reading in parallel and it is interesting, but exhausting (read a paragraph in Spanish, read the same paragraph in English and keep a dictionary handy -- it really improves your vocabulary). Does anyone know of any good web sites or programs for aiding this process?

Anyway, my point is, I think Esperanto is really cool and elegant. I sent off for books and lessons after reading the Stainless Steel Rat books by Harry Harrison and toyed around with it for a while back in high school. Now, though, I can't really muster the effort to learn it better when I would be better served by learning a language where I could expand my literature knowledge.

Yes, I know there is original literature in Esperanto, but is there any really good original literature in Esperanto? I'm not learning it so I can read The Lord of the Rings translated -- English is fine, thank you.

Re:Literature

[UnuMondo]

Yes, I know there is original literature in Esperanto, but is there any really good original literature in Esperanto?

William Auld, a poet from Scotland who writes exclusively in Esperanto, has been nominated several times for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Similarly, the "Iberian school" of Esperanto writer has been the subject of several studies. And then there's Tibor Sekelj, an anthropologist whose works were written originally in Esperanto and translated to numerous national languages.

There is bad literature in Esperanto, just like every language, but there are also pearls which stand out not just within Esperanto, but within world literature as a whole. The poet Mauro Nervi, for example, continually amazes me.

I do

[bertilow]

So I was wondering, how many Slashdot readers speak Esperanto?

Since you asked: I do.

WTF is an "Esperantist"?!?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

Come on - you don't call someone who speaks English an "Englist", or someone who speaks French a "Frencist"..

What a stupid-sounding made-up word..

Re:Dvorak

[Yaztromo]

oh.. is that why your typing is so horrible?

Yes, but not for the reason you're probably assuming. I've been "on the road" the last few days, and as I don't own a laptop (and don't carry my own keyboard around), I'm unable to use my personal system, so I've been forced to use QWERTY-based keyboards for my last several posts. Ugh! Can't wait to get behind my own keyboard again!!!

Yaz.

a famous Esperantist

[ChipMonk]

Sergio Aragones, the famous cartoonist for Mad Magazine, didn't speak English when he interviewed for that job. His knowledge of Esperanto was the only thing that enabled him to communicate with anyone at the publishing office.

Mi parolas esperante...

[wallywam1]

...sed vere malbone.

Esperanto is amazingly useful

[Anonymous Coward]

I used Esperanto to travel for two weeks in Japan. I stayed with host families that spoke Esperanto, many of whom could not understand my English, though some of them could (one was an English teacher). They gave me a place to stay, fed me, showed me all the sights, talked about politics, etc. It was an amazing experience.

I have used Esperanto to travel in Scandinavia, as well (even though I took a year of Swedish). I have been to Esperanto events in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, where I had an amazing time, learned a lot, met really cool people, and had a lot of fun. Learning Esperanto has really paid off for me.

I would also say that my esperiences with Esperanto have fueled my interest in learning other languages, and in learning about other cultures and countries. By having personal experiences with people from different backgrounds, I developed a personal interest in learning more about the language and country of those new friends. I make a new friend in Hungary, I want to learn Hungarian, etc. Many Esperanto speakers also support multiculturalism and multilingualism, so through Esperanto I have participated in seminars and discussions on intercultural issues, and have developed a greater appreciation for the issues.

For all of these reasons, I encourage young people to check out Esperanto. It opens a ton of doors. Anyone in college can spend a semester or two learning Esperanto and then spend the summer or spring break travelling anywhere in the world. And then, when the next break comes, go travel to a totally different part of the world! And have friendly people who will host you (for free!) in those places. Travel to Japan this year, Sweden next year, China the next, Nepal the next, Venezuela after that, Togoland, Iran, Poland ...

To learn Esperanto, check out http://lernu.net and for younger speakers in the US, check out http://www.usej.org

Mi parolas esperanto

[litui]

sed mi relative estas nova parolanto. Esperantolingvo estas simpla lingvo lerni.

Kial slashdot-aj legantoj ridas la lingvo?

Re:Mi parolas esperanto

[goulo]

Cxar ili estas sensciaj pri la lingvo, kompreneble, kaj slashdotoj mokas cxiun, pri kiu ili ne scias! :/ Cxi tiu artikolo havas interesan teorion pri via demando.

The slashdot site isn't very friendly to foreign languages anyway, as it disallows one to enter foreign language characters via UTF-8 or even via html entities (hence the need for using x-system in the Esperanto text here, alas).

Re:Mi parolas esperanto

[bandy]

Kial? ^Car ili estas santaguloj, ja! Se oni ne konas io, do oni devas moki ^gin.

Re:Mi parolas esperanto

[bandy]

Fi fi fi sentaguloj. Ho ve!

Engrish!

[cdh]

Forget Esperanto, Speak Engrish!

the search for the perfect language?

[amuzulo]

These are common arguments against Esperanto. However, you have to pick some script for a language, so it would make sense to pick one that the most people already know (and for that matter six letters in Esperanto aren't in other languages, making it neutral in this regard). The Russian Esperanto speakers that I know tell me that this isn't a big problem for them and in fact, knowing Esperanto helped me considerably in learning the cyrillic alphabet.

As for pronounciation, I have had trouble understanding foreigners trying to speak to me in English (for example at the airport or even in tech support at my last US company) because of their accent, but I have never continually had problems understanding anyone in Esperanto because of their accent. Also, if Esperanto had pitches and inflections, it would make the language much more difficult even for people who have pitches and inflections in their own language.

As for its evolution, Esperanto has evolved with a worldwide speaking community, so it has, in effect, evolved internationally. Some even predict that it's use today in Africa will show us the future of Esperanto's evolution.

As for your last comment, Esperanto is not as culturally loaded as every other language. I say this because in general, those who can speak Indo-European languages can learn it in one year while those who are not from these languages, learn it in two years (my Chinese friend could speak Esperanto better after six months of studying than English after seven years). Yes, it's not fair. But, it's a lot fairer for all of us than using any national language for this task. Also, as you pointed out in your last posts, it's impossible to design a perfect language. No matter how someone would design a language, others would not agree with it.

Basically, it's easy to theorize about how Esperanto doesn't and could never work as an international language. It's another thing to use it every day as your working language (as I do) among people from different continents and see it work.

How Many Readers Speak Esperanto?

[Anonymous Coward]

Is very interesting to see how many people can give their opinion about a subject they don't know.
The some goes for qualifying people they don't know.
Esperanto is a language that have been used for more than 100 years.

To get an idea about Esperanto use in the web, please go to the page Google.com and enter the word "Esperanto". Check the number of hits reported by Google...
"Searched the web for esperanto. Results 1 - 10 of about 1,700,000"

Rob from California

Whorf, Japan, the facts

[Anonymous Coward]

Western linguistic anthropologists have "discovered" languages in which there is no easy way to express the passage of time--present, future, past tenses simply aren't important for some people on this great planet.

If you are referring to the work by Whorf (of Whorf-Sapir fame), then I think you are mistaken. Whorf is like the Freud of linguistics -- his ideas sound cool to laymen, but they don't stand up to scientific examination, and no modern linguist beleives any of Whorf's ideas. Whorf studied native American languages (Cherokee I think?) and said that, since the language has no words for time, the people must obviously have no concept of it, can't imagine it, etc. Of course, a few pages later, Whorf gives an example sentence and the translation includes the word "tomorrow"! Yes, there are languages which have no tense conjugation of verbs, but instead refer to time paraphrastically -- the language Indonesian is like this (but then... Indonesian is an "invented" language too). Anyway, no real linguist believes that language influences thought (the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis). So Esperanto is at no disadvantage there.

Incidentally, the word-creation mechanism of Esperanto is very similar to that in Chinese. I have read a great article by a Japanese Esperanto-speaker praising this quality of Esperanto because it makes the language so much easier for people from non-European backgrounds. It's also interesting that the Esperanto-community in Japan is *huge* -- orders of magnitude larger than in the US. (I used Esperanto to travel in Japan and it was *the* way to travel.) So it would seem that practice contradicts your assumptions.

Anyway, I think discussions of cultural loadedness are actually off the mark. I don't think people should learn it for that reason. I think people should learn it if they want to have the same kinds of cool and useful experiences that I (and many many others) have had. The language is easy to learn, and it can be used in many rewarding ways. Nothing idealistic about it.

Incidentally, yes, some other language, written in a different script, with different vocabulary, could be just as easy to learn as Esperanto. But for many uses of an artificial language (there are many) the fact that Esperanto already has a lot of speakers and a lot of networks outweighs any slight advantage of another script or vocabulary.

Chinese English

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure all those educated Chinese don't know English?

Spend some time working at an IT helpdesk at a large university and you will quickly discover that they do not.

MOD ASSHO- I MEAN PARENT DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

Christ, I would kill for mod points today.

This person clearly has no grasp on the purpose of a practical designed language.

If you refuse to mod this asswipe down, at least have the good sense to mod the well informed rebuttal up to the same level.

Esperanto?

[malachid69]

I started to do the email course, but got busy and forgot to finish it. It is only like 10 lessons. Personally, I really like Esperanto for the way that it doesn't matter what order the words are in. For example, in Esperanto, "I pet the dog", "Dog I pet the", and "the I dog pet" all mean exactly the same -- because it encodes the words themselves with what part of speech they are. Very clever.

Romans go home!

[Anonymous Coward]

Centurion: What is this then? Romanes eunt domus, "People called Romanes they go the house"?
Brian It-it says, "Romans, go home"!
Centurion: No, it doesn't! What's Latin for "Roman"? [grabs Brian's ear] Come on, come on!
Brian: Romanus!
Centurion: Goes like?
Brian: Annus!
Centurion: Vocative plural of annus is...?
Brian: Anni?
Centurion: [writes] Romani. And eunt? What is eunt?
Brian: "Go"! Let-
Centurion: Conjugate the verb "to go".
Brian: Ire; eo, is, it, imus, itis, eunt!
Centurion: So eunt is...?
Brian: Third person plural, present indicative. "They go!"
Centurion: But "Romans, go home" is an order, so you must use the...?
Brian: The... imperative!
Centurion: Which is...?
Brian: I!
Centurion: [twisting Brian's ear] How many Romans?
Brian: [yelling] I.. Plural, plural! Ite, ite!
Centurion: [writing] Ite. Domus? Nominative? But "go home", it is motion towards, isn't it, boy?
Brian: Dative, sir!
[The centurion promptly draws his swords and presses it against Brian's throat. Brian yells:]
No, not dative! Not the dative, sir! No! The... accusative, accusative! Domum, sir, ad domum!
Centurion: Except that domus takes the...?
Brian: The locative, sir!
Centurion: Which is?
Brian: Domum!
Centurion: [writing] Domum... -um [sheathing his sword] Understand?
[Brian nods eagerly]
Now, write it out a hundred times!
Brian: Yes, sir, thank you, sir! Hail Caesar!
Centurion: Hail Caesar. If it's not done by sunrise, I'll cut your balls off!
Brian: Oh, thank you, sir. Thank you, sir. Hail Caesar and everything, sir!

Pardon Me Stewardess, I Speak Jive

[jvschwarz]

Instead of learning Esperanto, I decided to learn Jive... I may need it on an airplane sometime...

OT: MegaTokyo Riff...

[Adumbratus]

"Excuse me? Does anyone here speak 133t?" - Cute Flight Attendant.

Mi parolas

[Via_Patrino]

Pardonu al mi, mi ne ridis via teksto ankau^. Mi parolas maltre, mi eklernis sed mi haltis c^ar nun mi ne havas tempo.
Vi povas paroli esperanton en #esperanto en la reto "freenode" (irc.freenode.net). La personaj tie ne prozas ofte sed g^i estas ie al prozi.

Translation: Sorry, i didn't read your article before. I speak a little, i started to learn but stopped because now i don't have time.
You can speak esperanto on #esperanto on freenode network. The people there don't talk often but it's a place to talk.

Same for Turkish and Finnish

[Frans Faase]

Some people think that only artificial languages can be regular. This is not the case. Both Turkish and Finnish are agglutinative languages, which have many suffixes, were each suffix represents a destinct concept.

19.

[amuzulo]

Well, to answer your question, it looks like 19 slashdot readers who actually found this story confessed to speak Esperanto (or at least have comments so favorable to Esperanto that I can't imagine that they don't speak it). They're names are:

LeninZhiv, InfiniteVoid, asimulator, bandy, Yaztromo, mutterer, amuzulo, UnuMondo, lburgbac, zhiwenchong, donh1942, bertilow, Quixotic137, goulo, wallywam1, riskyrik, litui, dvdeug, Via_Patrino

It would've been so much cooler if the answer had been 42. Damn.