Rex - you have echoed my thoughts, which were running along the lines of 'can you write poetry in Esperanto? How would Shakespeare sound? What about Aussie Aussie Aussie OI OI OI?'

In short would a world language kill all cultures?

I don't think that we should encourage people to be detached from the langauge of their forefathers. The effect of English upon other European languages is terrible... I know of its effects on Italian most intimately, knowing that the language can do without its anglicisms, both subtle in the changing of significance of words, and more overt in the adoption of words when there is an equivalent already in existance. If "il weekend" has now conquered "la fine della settimana", what will stop another world language from causing similar havoc? Not all of us are as stubborn and proud as the French.

It's a very interesting article, however I think the premise on which it is based is weak.

English is the world lingua franca. Where is the evidence to say it causes hostility or loss of language diversity. English for hundreds of years has been far more than just the language of the English people.

One of the strengths of English is that its unplanned. There is no 'academie d'anglais'. No planned language can complete with that.

Computer translation is a more likely saviour of minor languages in the world.

"The effect of English upon other European languages is terrible." Is it? Sometimes it may be amusing or incongruous, but hardly terrible.

How about the other way around? Cafe, restaurant, souvenir. Even beef, mutton and pork are Anglicised French words. Smorgasbord, sputnik, kindergarten, delicatessen, tempo, vista, sauna, the list is endless. And English is richer as a result.

It has been pointed out to us that the metric system took 200 years to catch on and still has not conquered the whole world. But the advantages of the metric system are obvious and it's much easier to learn than another language. I don't know if school children still have to learn the times tables, but I recall that we all knew at a very early age that 10 times was the easiest and 12 times one of the hardest to remember.

And thank you Crabby for joining in the fun and explaining things to us. You suggest that I "spend an hour or two working on the first stages of Esperanto online". As I said previously, I don't like studying and avoid it whenever I can. I have learned my bits and pieces of Indonesian and Balinese by mixing with Balinese people in a holiday situation and letting it rub off on me. This is what I call the painless way of learning.

I actively make a proper attempt to learn things which fall into one or more of the following categories:
Things I need to know.
Things I am genuinely interested in which can't be easily learned by my favourite method of "letting it rub off on me".
Things which are to my advantage to know.

I don't want anyone to get upset at this, because it is just my personal feeling and not intended to be derogatory to anyone, but to me Esperanto is just an unnecessary curiosity and not currently worth "an hour or two" of my time. And, rightly or wrongly, I would say that would be the opinion of most people of whatever nationality who are aware that there is such a language as Esperanto.

Here are a few facts answering points made in this forum: (1) I had a better command of Esperanto after six months than of English after six years and I met many people, with the most varied mother tongues, who had the same experience. (2) A global Esperanto community has been in existence for a century. It's a kind of diaspora: few people in a given place, but somebody most everywhere. It organizes many international events (see http://www.eventoj.hu/kalendar.htm), so that people meet, fall in love, have children. Often they have no other common language, and the whole family communicates in Esperanto, which is the mother tongue of the children. (3) For reasons pertaining to neuropsychology, you express your feelings better in Esperanto than in any other foreign language, all other factors (time devoted to study, etc.) being equal. I had someday a request for psychotherapy from a lady who spoke Polish, Esperanto, English and German. Esperanto proved to be best to express emotional matters and describe precise experiences. We were both more fluent in it than in English. (4) I've attended Shakespeare plays both in English and Esperanto. In English, I hardly understood 50%. In Esperanto I understood everything and enjoyed the plays a lot. Most of Shakespeare's works exist in Esperanto. (5) I've worked in Central and Eastern Asia and had many contacts with Esperanto speakers over there. Although Esperanto is ten times more difficult for the average Chinese than for the average European, it is still thirty to fifty times easier than English, or any national language except Malay-Indonesian. (6) Lack of teachers would not be a problem, since a good level is speedily reached by people in the teaching profession. (7) It's not true that Esperanto has had its chance and failed it. Compared with the metric system, which was nowhere in use 120 years after its publication, its success is impressive. Esperanto has never ceased spreading, except during the Hitler-Stalin era, although at a very slow pace. So it's a bit premature to speak of failure. Let's wait and see.

valano, you don't say what is your native tongue, but I have no doubt that Esperanto is easier to learn than English. One simple reason for this is the richness of the English language - approaching a million words, according to the Global Language Monitor.

Whenever you translate a sentence, particularly when it is trying to convey an abstract concept, some level of meaning is lost. This is the reason I cannot take seriously your statement "I've attended Shakespeare plays both in English and Esperanto. In English, I hardly understood 50%. In Esperanto I understood everything and enjoyed the plays a lot."

While you may well have understood the words, valano, I doubt very much whether you understood their meaning in the way Shakespeare intended. One of my abiding memories of studying his plays at school is the effort we spent analyzing and dissecting the words, and the construction of the sentences in which they found themselves, in order to wring out their meaning in the context of the play.

We did this because Shakespeare wrote for an audience fundamentally different to that of the century in which I studied him. If we hadn't put in this effort, much of the meaning would have passed over our heads.

Given the subtlety of his usage, you can forgive me for doubting whether Shakespeare translated into Esperanto did much more than tell a story.

There is also the dimension of imagery. In my previous post I talked about cultural nuances, which are closely related to the imagery, over and above sterile translation, that is created by words.

So let's be practical. Here is a short, relatively simple piece from Macbeth. I'd welcome a translation from you, plus commentary on the way Esperanto captures Shakespeare's imagery.

"She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death."

Iambic pentameters would be nice, too.