User: jesjenjens

Re:A long time coming...

On: China Prepares to Launch Alternate Internet

Managed to get an account now!

I discovered while attending international events outside of the Esperanto movement that travel using local national languages instead of a foreign one enables one to learn so much more about foreign cultures. Esperanto did nothing but hold me back for ten years, keeping me inside a kongresejo with a bunch of other foreigners or ideological locals instead of enjoying first-hand contact with the country I paid so much to visit.

"Other foreigners or ideological locals" -- does that mean you are foreign to yourself? That could explain quite a lot.

That languages are "too hard" is one of the great lies of the Esperanto movement.

Too hard or easy enough for who and for what? Of course you cannot speak about that in the abstract, but the "lie" that you can is hardly restricted to the Esperanto movement.

I want total Babel where people are able to communicate meaningfully with others only by learning each other's language. It just happens that English is less detrimental to this than Esperanto, because English has no ideology.

I'm having a hard time trying to distinguish between ideology and meaning. How do you do it?

There is no concept of "fia krokodilado" among two European young people who use English as a last resort: if they can switch to the native language of one or the other, they do so.

No they don't. I'm Danish -- if I speak to an Icelander, who speaks better English than Danish, why wouldn't we speak English? English would be a neutral, unmarked choice between us; if we speak Danish or Icelandic, we're both willy-nilly making a statement for or against Danish imperialism during the past (they still learn both English and Danish in the Icelandic schools). If a native English-speaker joins our conversation, the balance is gone, unless we all have some fourth language in common or define ourselves as native English-speakers.

Having seen how detrimental Esperanto was to my own international experience, and getting one or two letters a week from ex-Esperantists who feel the same, I think it is quite important that I do something to change the situation.

For how many weeks, and from how many people?

Those deeply entrenched in Esperanto might be hopeless (although one close friend did leave the movement after reading my essay), but my essay can still serve to dissuade people from learning, just like EsperRanto etc. I know it has done that, because I get e-mails fairly often from people thanking me for steering them away from E-o.

I must admit I cannot find out why anyone would care. There are three options: 1) Esperanto could lead to somewhere interesting. A reason to stay with it, maybe even experimenting with new ways of using it. 2) Esperanto's cause is hopeless anyway. A reason to leave it, but no reason to make a fuss about the leaving. 3) Esperanto is dangerous in some sense. But how? What is it that is not in full control by the individual speaker? All over the world it's much easier to find a place to learn English (any decent school system teaches it compulsorily for years), and it's easy to find ways of using it, even to make money out of it. Why, then, isn't English a much greater threat to an idealized Babel than Esperanto is?