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The Invented Language That Found a Second Life Online (bbc.com)
More than 100 years after it was invented, Esperanto is spoken by relatively few people. But the internet has brought new life to this intriguing, invented language. From a report: Since it [Esperanto] was first proposed in a small booklet written by Ludwik L Zamenhof in 1887, it has evolved into the quintessential invented language, the liveliest and most popular ever created. But, many would tell you, Esperanto is a failure. More than a century after it was created, its current speaker base is just some two million people -- a geeky niche, not unlike the fan base of any other obscure hobby.
[...] Learning Esperanto used to be a solitary quest. You could practise it by sitting for weeks with a book and a dictionary, figuring out the rules and memorising the words. But there was usually no professor to correct your mistakes or polish your pronunciation. That's how Anna Lowenstein taught herself Esperanto in her teenage years, after becoming frustrated with the oddities of the French she was learning in school. In the last page of her textbook, there was an address for the British Esperanto Association. She sent a letter, and some time later was invited to a meeting of young speakers in St Albans.
The global community that Lowenstein was joining was put together via snail mail, paper magazines and yearly meetings. [...] Newer generations are not as patient, and they don't have to be. Unlike most of their elders, who rarely had the chance to speak Esperanto, today's speakers can use the language every day online. Even old computer communication services like Usenet had Esperanto-speaking hubs, and a lot of pages and chat rooms sprouted in the early days of the Web. Today, the younger segment of the Esperantio is keen on using social media: they gather around several groups in Facebook and Telegram, a chat service.
[...] Learning Esperanto used to be a solitary quest. You could practise it by sitting for weeks with a book and a dictionary, figuring out the rules and memorising the words. But there was usually no professor to correct your mistakes or polish your pronunciation. That's how Anna Lowenstein taught herself Esperanto in her teenage years, after becoming frustrated with the oddities of the French she was learning in school. In the last page of her textbook, there was an address for the British Esperanto Association. She sent a letter, and some time later was invited to a meeting of young speakers in St Albans.
The global community that Lowenstein was joining was put together via snail mail, paper magazines and yearly meetings. [...] Newer generations are not as patient, and they don't have to be. Unlike most of their elders, who rarely had the chance to speak Esperanto, today's speakers can use the language every day online. Even old computer communication services like Usenet had Esperanto-speaking hubs, and a lot of pages and chat rooms sprouted in the early days of the Web. Today, the younger segment of the Esperantio is keen on using social media: they gather around several groups in Facebook and Telegram, a chat service.
If you need an example of how insanely bad of an idea it is to pollute the world with unneeded languages, consider either Hebrew, Gaelic or Nynorsk. They increase the number of languages for no apparent reason.
There are currently 4 languages of significance in the world.
- English (hardly any native speakers but widely proliferated, likely the most spoken and understood language)
- Spanish (possibly the most spoken language by people who only speak on language)
- Mandarin (lots of speakers in many countries, though very difficult to learn due to the dependence on vowel pronunciation)
- Arabic (a very widely used language within a given religion, estimated speakers around the same as Mandarin or Spanish)
For a runner up, French which is widely spoken in Africa and is expected to eventually become the most widely spoken language in the world due to good improving health care in Africa.
Additionally, Hindi is widely spoken and if Punjabi is considered compatible with Hindi and even little more than a common language as a union, it may be the most spoken language after English.
Of course my numbers are based on my understanding and I can link any references. But this has been what I've learned through my research.
At some point in time, English is likely to become the universal language in the world. For an example of its versatility, I just traveled to Qatar and spent a day with 15 people from the Philippines, multiple regions of India and multiple regions within Africa and the middle east. We were all able to communicate naturally because of English.
Fewer languages are better. We should never strive to introduce new languages since even engineered languages will eventually diversify and contain local dialects and colloquialisms. The sooner we reach a single spoken language and attempt to eliminate the smaller languages, the sooner we can call ourselves Earthlings.
Of course, I'm a globalist. I don't believe in patriotism or borders. People are people and borders are not useful for anything other than taxation.
Compatibility often overrides raw merit. It's why Windows lives.
Table-ized A.I.