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?

[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.

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.

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.)

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!")

How many here speak Esperanto?

[NanoGator]

Nulo.

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

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...

[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"!

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"

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: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

)

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.

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.

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.