OK. Maybe not an "artificial" language". How about a "contrived", "make-believe" or "fantasy" one? Loose anecdotes about Esperanto's supposed popularity cannot escape the real world, though; where, for example, is a telephone Esperanto service in our lists for phone interpreters?

On another level, Esperanto's essentially European origins and lack of organic existence seem not only anti-Asian, anti-African, etc. It is misanthropic for people to deny real, living languages and, by implication, the real human processes which help to produce those languages, and then deny the great chance of true engagement between peoples. If "neutrality" is so important, why not try a Tolkien-inspired "Orcan" or Star Trek-based "Klingon"? Because such a notion is offensive and inhuman.

In the platitudes about Esperanto's universality there are little of the real generous, brave and humble qualities which language learners are compelled to exercise when venturing outside of their mother tongue and into another culture.

Yet across the world so many people have gone to such trouble to learn English, more than for any other language. As we know, English is highly irregular and has extra hurdles for non-Europeans, but so many take up the challenge anyway. Such effort to engage has usually not been reciprocated by native English speakers. Now that Australia's sorry state of language skill is in focus, many would rather avoid real languages (and real people) in an effort to save themselves from the challenges of learning. These bizarre efforts would also prevent the Esperanto learners from dealing with scrutiny by native speakers, where learners are assessed for their mastery or weakness in accent, syntax, slang, idiom or obscenity.

Australians really need to venture out of their shell; Esperanto would be another device to keep them in it. Far from being the confidence-building language on training wheels, Esperanto seems more a Euro-centric confidence trick.

It's all well and good, the technical structure of a given language, but such arguments ignore the way in which language is used, by people, in the real world.

People don't want to learn a language because it represents technical perfection, they want to learn a language because it has some utility.

That is, they will be able to use it to get a job, or have a chance at a better life in another country, or to do some study, or to talk to their neighbours, or whatever: they have a purpose in mind for using it.

I think money would be best invested in helping school kids find some purpose for learning a language, any language, because then the rest of the debate would be taken care of by the students themselves. I also think that it would be money very well spent and the world would be a much better place for it, for all the other reasons the author mentioned.

People want to learn a language they can become fluent in in a reasonable amount of time. Esperanto is that language. Many people have found it extremely useful while travelling using a service like Pasporta Servo for example. Many people enjoy the meetings of Esperantists and being able to speak to plenty of people from different countries. A word play is often made Esperanto estas edzperanto, which means that people marry and then they use Esperanto at home every day as it is often the couple's only common language, children in those families are often bilingual or even trilingual. Esperanto has a grammar which Chinese people love, there are quite a few similarities with Chinese, for example in compound words like "samlandano". It is true that total fairness doesn't exist. It does take an Asian person 240 hours to learn Esperanto when a French person can do it in 200, but to study English takes over 2000. What do you think is best? Many people don't study Esperanto because they simply don't know enough about it or have misconceptions like the person who wrote before. I have made friends in Hungary, Denmark, Japan, etc thanks to Esperanto. I do think that there is much ignorance concerning Esperanto, please do google Esperanto and try to find out more, go to www.lernu.net for example

Esperantists have quite noble intentions, and I concede that some rare cross-cultural encounters happen where the language can function usefully. However, it occupies "dead" rather than "neutral" ground, while the language itself often takes on, ironically, a rather cultish and exclusive oddity of its own - a la "Jema'ah Esperantah"?

There seem to be ideological and strategic dimensions to this issue of Esperanto advocacy too. Why would advocates so frequently use the loaded term "neutrality" to locate Esperanto's place? The very word conjures notions of defensiveness against nationalist zeal in scenes of wartime paranoia, border checkpoints and internment camps. But learning real languages and ignoring Esperanto need not inspire some fear that the student is somehow "not neutral" i.e., a turncoat fifth-columnist! Such is the mentality of paranoids assuming that Rudd must be a Chinese agent...yawn.

That returns me to Esperanto's Euro-centric qualities and the bad faith apparent in advocates' claims about its universality. There seem to be some obvious pretensions about "Chinese" in this debate too. Where is the peculiar Chinese tonality in "samlandano", for example? And just what "Chinese" language do you mean here? Could we just stop imposing on non-English speakers so many double-standard expectations about language learning? Asians and others already learn more than their share of European languages; why burden them with a special Da Vinci-code-style device like Esperanto?

Put the ball on the other foot. Imagine Chinese, Viets and others devising a morphed tonal and pictographic character language - "Mandakvien" - with no real cultural or historical authenticity, no native-speaking population i.e., no life. Would native English speakers consider learning such a thing just because its creators and advocates had managed to churn a fluency in half the time of Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese, Vietnamese, etc.?

mil-observer, even though you had some good points made while mocking Esperanto but still most of your assumptions just yee.. assumptions based, I afraid, on your little knowledge of the subject of language learning. Esperanto is just a language and it has long enough history, culture and community of users. I don’t think you would light-heartedly offence speakers of any natural language such as Chinese for that sake. Spot speculating on the subject. Ask a Chinese speaker who has not superficial knowledge of English and Esperanto what language they’d rather learn from the efforts evolved point of view. I think you the answer might surprise you.

Tell me what languages you know well enough to carry on that discussion in it. Really hope you mastered at least one.

Mi parolas Esperante, kaj mi kunvenis multaj de homoj. Esperanto estas facila kaj cxio povas esti esprimita, inkludanta slangajxo. Estas abundo da literaturo,kaj famaj autoroj, ekzemple William Auld, Claude Piron kaj Jorge Camacho.
Tri TTT-ejoj por viziti estas
http://www.esperanto.net
http://www.esperanto.org
http://aea.esperanto.org.au/

kaj por lerni:
http://www.lernu.net

Parenteze, ni havas revuojn kaj rokbandojn!
http://klaku.net
http://www.vinilkosmo.com

Amike,
Kyle W.