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.

An acquaintance of mine has been travelling throughout Asia for the last 20 years, teaching English and Esperanto. Here is his answer (by email) to my request for his opinion :

'what evidence emanating from asia is there to support your notion that esperanto is anti asian?'
there is none
non asians need to respect the position of asians on this - even though these non asians may have good intentions in promoting english
the small percentage of asians who actually have the time , money, inclination and lingual ability to master english have a vested interest , like most americans and english native speakers, in continuing the unjust status quo.

to make the world fairer we need an easy to learn language that the poor can master too.

esperanto is accepted by many in asia - especially china and japan
the asian congresses of esperanto and the number of universities etc there where it is taught are testament enough
and esperanto is so much easier than english etc for asians
ask any teacher of english there how many students actually gain english fluency
look at japan where english is an expensive disaster though 3 generations since WW2 have studied it
dont cite 'the real world' falsely when alluding to english please.
paul

Not a bad goad, “Rus (Ireland)”. But “assumptions...little knowledge of the subject of language learning...speculating”. Hmmm, entirely unsubstantiated and rather hyperbolic, no? No a priori comments if you check my text and previous discussion under the name “mil_observer” (the Esperantists are heavy on folksy anecdote, though). I think you know I'm a linguist Rus. You could present the evidence for assessing my main non-English language (pretty obvious anyway – I think I'd made it explicitly clear in a couple of posts!), then play on as you wish, but find someone else to be your dancing bear.

I smell a rat or few, like preparations for some excess using my main LOTE as cover. Of course, you could Esperantize the process too in order to feel more exclusive. Last time I ventured into this forum - as “mil_observer” (bystanders can check: http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=5900&page=0), I identified one fake discussion participant and made a strong and clear case - based on the linguistic evidence – that he was posing in the forum for purposes of “black” propaganda. Shortly afterwards my PC was zapped by the most direct hack-DOS attack I'd ever become aware of.

- But to stay on topic: indulging Esperanto could cause massive waste in Australia's already dire regional language situation. If Australians fall for this it will continue, even worsen, its failure to engage its region and regional languages, whereas so many of the region, for their part, engage so well in English and other languages, despite their relative lack of resources. Their schooling and popular culture already focus far more outwardly (and no, not towards the special, fictitious Esperanto). Good luck, Rus & friends.

Here is what a Chinese lady has to say:

She is a worker in a factory of electrical appliances in Nanking (here is the translation of what she said in Esperanto):

"I have always wanted to have contacts in the outside world. So I went to an English course. After an exhausting work day, there is not much energy left to strain one's mind and overload one's memory with so many unexplainable things (why, in English, can't you deduce 'first' from 'one' as you deduce 'tenth' from 'ten' and as we do in Chinese? Why can't you deduce 'my', 'mine', 'me' from 'I' as we do in Chinese?). So I realized that I simply could not assimilate all these complications. Just imagine, in English, if you know how to say tooth', this does not help you to say *dentist*, you have to memorize yet another word. And if you want to say 'mare', 'stallion' or 'colt', remembering 'horse' is of no avail. In Esperanto, as in Chinese, those words are derived from the basic word according to a consistent pattern. I'm very glad that when a course of Esperanto was organized in our factory, I decided to follow it. Here I felt comfortable, and I enjoyed the lessons very much. Esperanto is like Chinese, a language entirely consisting of invariable elements that combine without limitation. People say that English is the international language. But what's the use of an international language that cannot be acquired by working people? I have now many contacts all over the world. For what I wanted, I didn't need English. Too bad that I was so late in discovering it."

Unfair to Africans ? Perhaps you'll enjoy perusing the following :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7GW3RulGjIA Have fun !

How can anyone fail to understand that it would be simpler for the whole world to have at least one language in common. With Esperanto you can travel the world and be understood in amy countries. How many people are multilingual? Much easier to learn one language than several.

There are some well-reasoned arguments in Ms Vanechop's piece, although one might question Esperanto's credentials over other "universal languages". I have never in my life come across an Esperanto speaker, but then I might move in the wrong circles... English is a de facto "universal language" and manages quite well, and just as English has borrowed heavily from many languages (including Asian- so much for claim of "exclusivity") other languages are now borrowing heavily from English. I subscribe to Crystal's view that English is tridialectual, in that, for instance, Africans can (and do) get by quite nicely in a local English dialect, head off to the national capital and converse in Standard English (or a form thereof) and later attend an international meeting in say, Sydney and communicate using World Standard English. The beauty of English is its incredible flexibility and huge vocabulary (which can, nonetheless, be simplified for international users).

There is a factual error in the essay. Decimal currency was introduced in 1966, not SI (the "metric" system). There was no "friendly persuasion" in the adoption of dollars & cents. Metrication came a decade later, and the "persuasion" involved included making Imperial rulers, tape measures etc "prohibited imports". I'd argue, given the widespread influence of US & British TV and the internet, that Metrication is actually failing, but that's off-topic.

It is disappointing, but not surprising, that the article and all the comments to date have failed to mention the other alternative - a bridge between languages.
Blissymbols, developed by Charles Bliss, are one such bridge. The late Charles Bliss was an Austrian Jew. He survived time in concentration camps during WW2 and eventually migrated to live in Sydney. I met the man and, while he was decidedly odd, his ideas still have great merit.
They were inspired by his belief that the Chinese had developed a universal means of understanding one another through their 'symbols' or characters even when they had differences in spoken language.
Another Australian, Cath Gunn, worked closely with him for many years, as did Canadian Shirley McNaughton. The symbols were first used (highly successfully) as a means of communication among children with profound speech and language difficulties.
Cath Gunn, a woman I admire enormously for her contribution to world literacy through International Literacy Year, has gone on to use the system as a major tool in developing low technology communication
systems for micro-aid workers. She also helps provide communication aids based on the symbols in countries around the world. The Canadian team has focussed on developing the system in other ways, equally good. The system is also used throughout Europe where high-tech speech devices are used in parallel to rather than, as here, a substitute for the system.
I believe that the system, while not the answer to everything, still has enormous unrealised potential. This is also Cath Gunn's view.
Unfortunately successive Australian governments and other agencies have taken the line that the expensive, high tech computerisation route is the only proper course. The excellent work being done is being ignored. Some attempts have even been made to prevent it continuing. It seems a communication aid that can be produced for a dollar is unacceptable when it is possible to produce one for hundreds or even thousands.
It's a sad indictment of society when we deny people the right to communicate and ignore the work of people who try to help others in this way.

Across the globe many people set themselves the ambitious task of studying various languages, with English taking up the largest share of attention. Such people's success is obvious when we consider Australia's multitude of migrants using English as a second language. But of all the non-English-speaking-background migrants I know – and such friends I knew when overseas – none has tried to learn their target languages by, well, trying to find an easier, artificial language instead. They just get on with the job.

Why should Australia be an exception in this regard? Though it seems not entirely alone, if we reflect on Henriette's comment about disappointing Japanese efforts at English. But would the comparison flatter Australians for their two generations' efforts at Japanese? And that without Japan's consistently notorious anti-migration record and sometimes stagnant demography. These cases merely re-emphasize the need for leadership in this area.

I understand the value of innovation in language teaching in decades past: language lab drills, frequent use of character/flash cards, and even meditative techniques with recordings of word association. More recently, various interactive projects offer promising means for students' free engagement with vocabulary. But why is the task deemed so hard that so many Australians approach the challenge by trying to find ways around and away from it?

Then, of course, there is the invaluable recourse to in-country study, where students should be excised entirely from their first language, leaving no choice but properly immersed engagement. An important issue here is the selection or entitlement for people so cleared for in-country study. I saw too many cases where Australians so tasked went to great trouble wasting time with other westerners so they could speak English regularly. This happened because workplace politics and a mercenary, anti-meritocratic education system overloaded in-country programs by despatching people quite unsuited: the wasted opportunities (and money) were obvious, while the diplomatic results were less so, but probably significant too.

But notice how the above practical concerns of language study apply little, if at all, in advocacy for artificial “universal languages”.

When i meet an esperantist from another country, and we don't know each other's tongue, using esperanto is so easy, compared to having to search for words in a dictionary and then align them in "my" way (often wrongly).
What about the "false friends" ? Newly arrived in Australia, i ventured to say "i demand..." Explosion of indignation "Oh, you DEMAND ! You come here, and YOU DEMAND !" I should have said "May i ask, pray, beg of you.." I got trapped by a word which, to me, was quite familiar.

I think of Esperanto as a multilingual dictionary, carried in my head, with enough simple rules to put the words together.

Reading magazines from many different countries is to me such a pleasure. From Finland to Bresil, from Beijing to Sweden, etc. In 1997 i attended in Adelaide the "Esperanto World Congress" and was deeply moved at this "miracle".

Of course, there are those Esperantists who fully master the language and can enjoy poetry, and classic literature, both in original Esperanto and in translation from many languages (from Chaucer to Goethe to ... The Little Red Book... to the Bible translated directly from Hebrew by Mr. Zamenhof himself, even our own Nevil Shutte..

Esperanto, oft accused of "having no culture" gives access to almost all of them, straight from "the horse's mouth"..

Which reminds me that for translators one of the great difficulties is to deal with idioms. Bye for now, or i'll be ejected again !

To Viking13

Thank you for alerting me to the australian meaning of "decimal" and "metric". I fell into the trap. In my french Larousse dictionary, "metric" is "ensemble, système des poids, mesures et monnaies ayant pour base le mètre". One more example of the "false friends" one can encounter when translating "natural" "national" languages. I did mean to refer to the decimal currency introduction which was deplored and resisted (prices will go up !) A jolly jingle was created - click the shears -
In come the dollars and in come the cents
to replace the pounds and the shillings and the pence.
Be prepared folks when the coins begin to mix
on the 14th of February 1966.

http://www.rba.gov.au/Museum/Displays/1960_1988_rba_and_reform_of_the_currency/introducing_the_new_decimal_notes.html The article tells us that the notes were well received.. i wonder whether the author of this article had been around the shops.