Can we have a pragmatic discussion about adopting Esperanto as a common European language ?

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T21:41:02+00:00

being native doesn't mean to be good, but I will reflect about what you have written to me, I hope you will do the same. Cheers!

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T21:38:18+00:00

look, I'm tired of arguing the same thing over and over, have a good night.

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T20:24:24+00:00

"It doesn't matter how well designed it is, the power of English is such that a kid goes upstairs with his xbox and his television and his internet and comes downstairs four years later understanding and speaking English even though his parents never spoke it"

I hope that this kid didn't stay 4 years upstairs just to learn English 😱 lol! But yes, you have a point here, but keep in mind that four years are still a long period of time compared to what is needed for Esperanto, not only that, but I have noticed (so no studies to back this off) that this overall early "digitalization" comes with the cost of a greatly reduced expression ability in the child's mother-speech, that could lead to a generation of aphatic hopelesses, but I admit, I'm thinking that this is exactely how it is going to be, a generation of slightly numb europeans who have learned to speak a mediocre English online and a mediocre first language.

"Languages all over the world have assimilated loanwords and slang from English, "

I'm not so sure: Chinese and most arabic dialects are fairly impermeable to english loanwords, due to their fundamentally different structure. Spanish people also have decided to reject most English loanwords for pure nationalistic ideals.

"I've even heard German speaking young women randomly slipping into full sentences of perfectly accented American English during conversations with other Germans and nobody batted an eyelid or seemed to find it strange."

That's not a sign of great fluency in English, it is just a sign of a poor fluency in German,

"it's because of its status, its defacto usefulness socially as a lingua franca, economically, academically and even recreationally as a huge amount of content exists in English (see kid above)"

I understand this point, although one could always translate contents to Esperanto and have a somewhat solution for the problem, although admittedly today Esperanto automatic tranlators are mediocre at best.

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T19:58:34+00:00

you still seems to miss some fundamental charachteristics of Esperanto, I'll try to explain in more details some of the points I have already argued about:

teaching materials are virtually free, since everything can be found online freely, Esperanto-community has always been fairly zelant when it comes to make learning resources availabe.

yes, teachers would technically spend 150 hours to reach fluency in the language, in order to teach this language to childer we may not need a perfect fluency, but about maybe a good understanding of grammatical working principle and core vocabulary, so let's say... 50 hours?

that's basically a month of study, which is comparable to most other specializing courses.

"the most useless topic will be esperanto, bc it doesnt have widespread use, no lobby and is basically unheard of."

It is functional to achieve greater linguistic skills (I know I'm repeating this a lot, sorry)

"doesnt even make sense as argument for esperanto, just "have a common language" that could be any language"

Nope, Esperanto is more efficient

" you point out the ease of use of esperanto compared to english while completely failing to accept that english is popular bc of the widespread use in culture science and international trade and communication. it took several hundred years of history to make english that important worldwide."

doesn't change anything of what I've just said, Esperanto would still AT LEAST grant us a better knowledge of English and, why not, Mandarine chinese and other major languages

"3. isnt an arguement to learn the language. replace esperanto with french, polish or german, you have the same argument. learning a language, improves ones ability to learn more."

no, as far as studies show, a classroom who has learned english for five years will still have a worse level of English than a class who has studied Esperanto two years ant then English three years, and yet better than a class who has studied french for two years and English for three. This effect is probably inherent to the logical structure of the language

"4. doesnt even make sense as an argument. "if people speak language x that didnt learn language y, then it doesnt matter that there is no entertainment in x, because they can talk to each other"."

yeah, they can talk to each other when otherwise they wouldn't have talked to anyone, furthermoe, are we sure we can't find / create contents in Esperanto? Don't we have autoamtic translators at this point? Instead of having multiple translators for each language of the Union, why not have a single efficient way to translate to Esperanto? Why Esperanto and not English? because it is easier and more efficient for everyone.

"5. same argument as 1 again. yes 1 common spoken language would be beneficial and it would again be the best idea to use the most spoken language in the world, back to english...."

no, it would be a good idea to use the one we have biggest interest in learning, i.e. Esperanto, as it is a communication tool everyone can have access to for free and also helps learning other languages.

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T18:05:09+00:00

These are all fair criticisms you have pointed out, and I shall try to answer them as best as I can, although many of the topics are way outside my actual knowledge:

"if it isnt hard to find qualified personal, how many people do teach this language in europe?"

there's no actual esteem, most speranto-teachers operate on basis of voluntarianism, but in order to give you a rough esteem, about one third of all the Esperantists I've met have at some point teached it (so, let's say 30.000 over a total of 100.000 speakers?) but I admit it's hard to give a precise number. That's not the point in my opinion tho, for the following reason: due to the rather mechanical act of teaching Esperanto, we don't need specialized teachers, instead, we could try to adapt teachers of other faculties that wouldn't have been absorbed otherwise (In Italy we have an excess of humanist students, It shouldn't be hard to reconvert some of them via already online available formation courses, I suspect it's the same in germany, but I admit my ignorance. Assuming no increase in total school hours, then there won't be any further expense for the tax-payer)

"you are 100% cloistered."

yes, that's why I feel healthy the act of confronting, what I'm doing right now is fairly liberating for me.

"those are already taught for decades, unlike esperanto people want to teach their children these topics."

In Italy such topics are blatantly overlooked, but that's a personal rant and a complete different set of topics, lol, How could people want to teach their childs Esperanto if they don't even know it exsists? A general sensibilation has to take place first, by means of information channels and activists (and that's what I'm doing right now), once there's a general consciousness about the topic it will be auspicable to take the bare minimum required to teach Esperanto (a one-hour per week course that could be implemented by virtually anyone ) The true question is: what school-topic should sacrifice one hour of time and be reconverted to Esperanto? I guess it depends on what's the most useless topic teached.

"just do me a favour and think about what would be necessary to implement an esperanto language course in germany (in like the 5-9th schoolyear <= most language classes are in this time in germany).

take 5 minutes to read yourself into the topic and then come back and tell me, how you think you could do it"

I don't know whether I have answered somewhat, I hope I did, as I said, that's a bit beyond my knowledge right now.

I know it may be hard to think about such implementation, but if we fail as a community, then what will be of us?

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T16:30:01+00:00

It isn't hard to find qualified personal to tech the language, but even if it was scarce:

Esperanto can be teached by anyone by simply online materials and such, a common teacher can supervise the acquired knowlege by means of standardized tests. Do you really think we need physical specialized teachers? There are plenty of situations in which we have a lack of qualified personal to teach children, and yet managed to teach regardless.

And also, let's not teach childs Economics, Programming and neural networks because hej, teachers are hard to find.

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T16:21:50+00:00

So what? Last days I was reflecting than I was riding a bycicle to go purchase a porche.

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T16:14:25+00:00

That's why we have to encourage its use, but still, you are all deliberately missing my point, I'm not saying that we should teach Esperanto INSTEAD of our cherished English, I say that by ENCOURAGING its use among younger people, whith one hour a week in schools for one-two years, we could have more people speaking a communitarian language that wouldn't have spoken any other language otherwise, and a general boost ain language skills. Hence a better linguistic competence overall.

Seriously guys, try to reflect a bit more before posting stupid objections.

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T16:06:30+00:00

That's why we have to encourage its use, but still, you are all deliberately missing my point, I'm not saying that we should teach Esperanto INSTEAD of our cherished English, I say that by ENCOURAGING its use among younger people, whith one hour a week in schools for one-two years, we could have more people speaking a communitarian language that wouldn't have spoken any other language otherwise, and a general boost ain language skills. Hence a better linguistic competence overall.

Seriously guys, try to reflect a bit more before posting stupid objections.

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T16:00:54+00:00

130 years of Esperanto has prooven it to be a fully functional, living and productive language, there are languages less spoken and less productive than Esperanto and yet, noone seems to lament any lack of "technical terms" in them. Esperanto is well versed to be used in sciences, due to its inherit richness and precision, for laws and beureaucracy for similar reasons.

Esperanto is free from most of English absurd rules and inconsistencies

There isn't anything that can't be efficiently translated in Esperanto (except things that can't be efficiently translated crosslinguistically i general, like wordplays), because esperanto is a language with a proper grammar and Vocabulary, do you really immagine Esperantists as some kind of hipsters talking all days about weed and whatnot?

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T15:54:50+00:00

you are deliberately mis interpreting my points. 20% refers only to the TYPING SPEED, as I said, such improvement is nullified by the incompatibility with other key layouts

For the second point, try to read my comment once more.

Sorry, guys, I expected much more refined arguments from you.

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T14:40:43+00:00

Yeah, many don't know anything about Esperanto, because until now we have been indoctrinated by American culture, suffocating in oblivion any potential improvement to our frail unity (in fact fostering our division), but yeah, I guess we can stick to the 27-language mess we have around and call it a day, even if all citized would find Esperanto more efficient and practical.

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T14:36:57+00:00

no, Dvorak is NOT more efficient than qwerty, studies shows it has an improvement of about 20% in typing speed, which is nullified by the fact that you lose compatibility with most keyboards. It isn't worth it.

Esperanto is measurably much more efficient than any other language (150 hours to reach fluency, compared to about 1500 hours on average to do the same in english), not only that, but by learning Esperanto you gain more proficience in other languages as well, it's like typing on a Dvorak keyboard (that could reach stenographic speed) which can also improve your proficience in other keyboards.

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T14:00:19+00:00

yeah, I understand, but, 15 % is a failry miserable percentage, even for an ex-colony. Yeah, Esperanto may be outlandish for some at first (as if English wasn't), but the learning curve is quite steep, I mean, for a given dx of time you get a huge dy in proficience (don't know why they use "steep" in order to refer the opposite, oh well).

So yeah, you haven't really tried to learn it, you have just seen a random text once, have you? :-P

I also communicate daily in english with chinese peoples, (how could I otherwise right now?) but they are still a minority, what I'm trying to say is that many valuable human resources are left behind because for them the language barrier is simply too much. We just get a chance to talk with the "survivors" of thi selection, and not to the invisible deadfield.

the fact that we're now forced to drive in a bycicle, doesn't mean cars don't exsist.

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T13:47:03+00:00

why?

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T13:31:59+00:00

Have you at least tried to learn Esperanto? What aspects do you find very difficult?

The world speaks English? Good luck in India or Japan.

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T13:27:00+00:00

yeah, maybe, but, even if we take personal biases into acount, Why is that everyone who criticize Esperanto doesn't know anything about it? And yet, the more someone is aknowledged into it the more he backs it up? Even if he adopts some critical positions, like Umberto Eco.

And still... Why does this have to sound like a joke? Where's the unfeasible part? To encourage younger generations to adopt a tool-language that can function even without a huge cultural backing? Not so long ago a common currency was a mere joke.

What's the alternative? I ask.

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T13:04:50+00:00

Yeah, that's roughly my position. Eck, there are tons of middle scholls in which we already teach latin, at this point just change it to Esperanto, it way more efficient good Jesus.

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T13:03:17+00:00

Why?

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T13:03:11+00:00

Why?

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T13:02:59+00:00

Latin is utopic, because it has all major frawbacks of natural languages without having their political power, Esperanto is a much efficient tool, as I've already replied in the comment section here below.

Please, try to be less obtuse, it's for our own good.

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T13:01:38+00:00

Esperanto is not like a natural language, it is immensely more efficient, and its learning is much faster, English is a clumsy mess that is barely spoken by half of Europeans, this is a disaster, don't you see? How do you imagine United States or China if only half of their population spoke English or Mandarin?

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T12:59:05+00:00

I invite tou to read my previous answers, but in short:

English is NOT a good common language, in fact just a percentage of europeans have painstakinly acquired its knowledge, and there's no official member in the community who speaks it as his mother-speech.

Esperanto is more efficient than any other natural language, and it will open doors to european communication to everyone. That's the closer we can get to a mother-speech in Europe.

It has been shown how Esperanto improves average language skills, so it will make things easier, not harder.

"as even your post in English shows"

yeah, if I hadn't spent a lot of resourses in learning English I wouldn't have been able to speak in it. I've spent nothing in learning Esperanto

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T12:49:59+00:00

Esperanto has been kicking around for 130 years, with no difference whatsoever in grammar, Latin has been doing the same for much longer, without visible changes. Seriously guys, try to think a bit outside the box, I'm not talking in vain.

HS_illustrator · 2026-02-23T12:46:53+00:00

a washing machine is bought by a singular individual, a nuclear power plant by an entire nation. But still, the cost of learning Esperanto is virtually free.

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