This is a very interesting article. At first, my reactionary hackles rose: world language, another step in the march towards world government etc; but I read on, and found myself adding the references to my ‘favourites’ for future use.

I’m still sceptical, though. There are vast differences in education and learning abilities throughout the world: there are people without any learning skills, people who won’t even hear about it and, even in Australia, kids who can’t use their language of birth coherently.

This could lead us back to the times of early England, when the crowned heads and nobs spoke French and kept the peasants who didn’t in ignorance and poverty.

Esperanto’s being ‘four or five times faster to learn than other languages’ is not very meaningful considering the wide variations in linguistic ability

Whilst the use of Esperanto as a relay language for communication may appear to be attractive at first sight, closer examination reveales that there are serious practical, financial and technical difficulties. There are very few professionally qualified Esperanto teachers and educational institutions in the world. For logistical and financial reasons the States are not in a position to launch a training programme in Esperanto for existing and future teachers. Training a person to the required standard in a new language would take three to four years of part-time study and would cost a lot. Furthermore, there is no evidence that using Esperanto as a relay language would lead to an improvement in the overall quality of communication. On the contrary, recourse to a language that is not used in everyday life would run the risk of not being able to convey the full range of messages and ideas communicated. Respect for cultural and linguistic diversity must be the crucial element of the future. Promoting better knowledge and understanding of the cultures and languages of others is therefore of particular importance. Languages will continue in future to be the key to knowing others. That’s why Esperanto does not feature in almost all programmes on education and vocational training. The aim of these programmes must promote linguistic diversity with a view to granting equal status to each of the world’s languages. It is therefore necessary to vary language teaching and language use in order to enable all the people to experience the cultural wealth that is embedded in the linguistic diversity.

I completely agree with Stephen Crabbe, and I want to congratulate him. His article is really excellent. His opinions are not based on theory. Stephen has taken the trouble to study Esperanto. That´s the way that every serious journalist should do.

Nobody can deny the need of a second language, a lingua franca, in the modern world. English, Franch and Spanish cannot play that role, because they have many irregularities, words with several meanings, idioms, etc. Many years are necessary to learn them.

On the other hand, Esperanto is easy-to-learn, flexible and efficient in practice. Besides, it is the best defence for the preservation of the linguistic diversity.

Throwing Out The Baby With The Bath Water.

You can't suddenly change the evolution of world language.
The way sounds and concepts have evolved into words is a rich tapestry that in its most intricate form represents the very fundaments of our DNA. The very fundaments of global diversity. Esperanto can never HOPE to achieve this.
I mean, are we going to translate Shakespeare of Voltaire into Esperanto for example. What about the language of science, mathematics and technology, the main reason why English prevails, for example? You could describe the entire fabric of life on the planet and Esperanto would just not recognise 99.999% of it. It is just a commuter vehicle to get from A to B. It may be a wonderful supplemental language but even this is (clearly) not sustainable due to the difficulty in most of us for learning anything new, let alone another tongue.

English can't be replaced as it embodies:
* Science and technology
* borrows from all languages and has a vocabulary greater than any language.
* Has a richness of literature that cannot be translated.

The future? Chinese characters enhance science and technology by internal processes more spatial than semantic. English needs to borrow chinese script. This will engage 1/4 of the world's population. It will require english to borrow more chinese words than Mojo or Chop Chop. Also:
* It has a user technical advantage whether others adopt it or not.
* It can be a platform to look at arabic and indian scripts with the same intentions.
* Trains the mind for skills like electronic circuit design.

Conclusion: Langauge is more than a communications tool. Its learnability strikes at the very heart of natural human memory techniques. We are all rapidly evolving in our ability to learn. We are looking for new ways to learn and comprehend faster. Chinese script is a tried and true vehicle to that end and can be jently infused without dying. Esperanto is sadly a lost cause because it still relies on difficult to 'learn or remember' semantic structures.

"Four or five times faster" is for spoken Esperanto. Because of its logical construction, progress in reading and writing is even more rapid. Average folks who don't think they have any "language skills" have been able to learn Esperanto quite well, and then having been introduced in a rational way to the concept of internalizing a foreign language they are actually able to more quickly assimilate other more ordinary languages.

Second, "coion" is sadly misinformed. I use Esperanto every day online to chat with friends about our lives, about their language or mine, about world news, about details of software engineering or system maintenance, etc. Look at the scope of material covered in detail in the Esperanto Wikipedia! Science, poetry, news, and fiction... I can't imagine much of anything which Esperanto couldn't handle, and in fact it can be used MORE expressively. Although it has a logical structure, it's extremely flexible. You can speak your thoughts more directly in the way that you think them, without constantly dodging steaming heaps of grammar like "that's not a real word" or "it's improper to say it that way."

That "KAEP" person is just plain wrong except where he/she says that English has a large body of untranslatable literature. Every culture with literature has that too. English, however, is not the sole embodiment of science, does not borrow from all languages, and most blatantly of all... would NOT benefit from moving to Chinese writing. Can you imagine advocating a system where one might run across an idiograph one doesn't know, and be completely unable to find out what it means, much less how it's pronounced, simply because there is no reliable way to look it up in a dictionary? Would you promote a system of "typing" where every single word is a multiple-choice vocabulary quiz? Even then, Chinese writing is not just a word-for-word substitution of English. I suspect that this person has little if any personal experience with written Chinese.

Congratulations and thanks to Stephen Crabbe for an
article about Esperanto well researched.

Other journalists and some of the people replying to this
article, give their opinion about Esperanto without any
research.

Leigh mentions learning time and variations in learning
ability ... and we pretend to impose English on those people.
English is my third language, Esperanto my second.
I started writing Esperanto within two weeks of my first
contact. I needed many, many years to reach that level
in English. Learning Esperanto helps proficiency in their
own native language.

Coion mentions the cost of training and the quality of
communication. Training any teacher to teach Esperanto
costs a small fraction of training English teachers, and in
a much shorter time. I don't understand "relay language".
You communicate in Esperanto same or better than using
other languages, and a lot better than people trying to
communicate using a half learned English. (The way most
non-natives learn English)

Esperanto IS USED in everyday life. It is the best language
to learn for appreciating other cultures.

Coion says: "with a view to granting equal status to each
of the world’s languages". Maybe you think that imposing

English gives "equal status". Would you please research
a little bit about Esperanto?

KAEP says: Esperanto can never HOPE to achieve this.
I mean, are we going to translate Shakespeare ...

Shakespeare has been translated into Esperanto many
decades ago ... Many native English speakers had
enjoyed Shakespeare in Esperanto, and still today cannot
understand the original Shakespeare language.

KAEP says: ... even this is (clearly) not sustainable due
to the difficulty in most of us for learning anything new,
let alone another tongue.

And you want the whole world to learn English?
Esperanto is much easier.

>richness of literature that cannot be translated.

English literature is translated all the time. Shakespeare in
Esperanto is much easier to understand than the original.

Please read a book in the make in

http://www.icxlm.org/eobook.htm

For more information:

http://www.eeo.8k.com/lern.htm

Enrique
Fremont, California, USA
(my email address is in the book)