Article shows common misconception about Esperanto
I often google "Esperanto" at googlenews to see how Esperanto is being portrayed in the MainStreamMedia. Yesterday, I saw an article about the Universala Kongreso called Esperanto: Lost in Translation. The author invited Esperanto speakers to contact her. Below is the reply I sent.
I read your article "Esperanto: Lost in Translation" and would
like to offer an observation about the idea that Esperanto has
"failed". The fact that most of the world hasn't adopted
Esperanto says little or nothing about how well Esperanto
actually works. People seem to think that Esperanto is an
"all or nothing" proposition, but this is a false premise. If
you want to learn a language that will let you communicate with
people from all over the world, Esperanto will let you do that.
It is a beautiful dream that someday the rest of the world might
catch on and use Esperanto too, but that's not necessary for
anyone to learn Esperanto today and start using it tomorrow.To answer your questions, I decided to learn Esperanto in 1987
and have enjoyed contacts with people from around the world
since that time. Most recently, I attended the Brazilian
Esperanto Congress in July of 2006 with around 400 other Esperanto
speakers. It was a fabulous experience. Two years ago, I
attended scientific meetings in Slovakia with people from
more than 20 different countries in Europe -- all in Esperanto.The biggest challenge for Esperanto is getting people to realize
that it actually does work. Everyone who learns Esperanto is
struck by how quickly and easily they can start using it to have
conversations with people from all over the world. Unfortunately,
my experience is that those who don't speak Esperanto have a
hard time recognizing the magic of it, even right in front of them:
you could have 20 people from 20 different countries all speaking
together which for each of them is a magical experience but, to
the outsider, its just 20 foreigners speaking a foreign language.To anyone who's curious about Esperanto, I encourage you to
take the time to satisfy your curiosity. Just give it try -- do
the 10 lesson email course, join Project Nesto, or sign up at
lernu.net. You, too, might be amazed where the language might
take you. In the USA, visit http://esperanto-usa.org/
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re: Article shows common misconception about Esperanto
>...Yesterday, I saw an article
>about the Universala Kongreso called Esperanto: Lost in Translation.
>The author invited Esperanto speakers to contact her. Below is the
>reply I sent.
> I read your article "Esperanto: Lost in Translation" and would
> like to offer an observation about the idea that Esperanto has
> "failed"...
Have the people who say Esperanto has failed done a study of the history of the language, or are they just repeating what they heard someone else say? I've had people make this comment to me whom I was sure had little or no knowledge of Esperanto and its history. Do these people really know what they are talking about, or are they just pretending to be experts?
Amike,
Gxeraldino VRAJTO
gw_grin@yahoo.com
August 4, 2006 by Ĝeraldino Vrajto, 5 years 26 weeks ago
A reluctant reply
Bonan vesperon, Gxeraldino:
It is all too easy to pretend to be an "expert" online, and especially in the age of the blog. I've read -- and often do read -- more than my share of them, and I have four of them myself (one of them, a journal of my experience learning la internacia lingvo is over at Diaryland).
To be sure, there are good bloggers who read up on their subjects and do their homework before they do a new post. It could be that in this case, Nicole Martinelli, a Spot-On regular, decided that a gut reaction was enough.
As with the other ELNA regulars who have responded, though, I wasn't convinced. In my case it just came across as yet another uninformed opinion. It happens all too often online. I just shrug, select another bookmark in Firefox (Lernu!, maybe?), and move on.
Meanwhile, I am glancing again at my exercise sheet from Lesson 7 of ELNA's free postal course. I see a 97% grade - something that completely surprised me. If I can take on the challenge of compound words and do it that well, then something must be going right. (Even if I didn't say so on my blog just yet.)
Amike,
Philip David
2007.08.05-06
August 6, 2006 by Philip David Morgan, 5 years 26 weeks ago
Experts
In spite of the experience of anyone who's used Esperanto, the assertion that Esperanto has failed is the conventional wisdom, at least in the United States. In fact, I'll bet that about half of the time that Esperanto is used as a reference, it is used with that meaning: to describe something well-intentioned that was never adopted -- and with the subtext that it is hopeless and never will be adopted.
I believe the only way to confront this misconception is to *do* stuff with Esperanto -- just saying that Esperanto isn't dead won't persuade anyone. But to the extent you can tie Esperanto something that you are personally doing, I think you can make a persuasive case that (at least for you) it's not dead.
It works OK to do things yourself that you can tell people about -- like travelling or speaking. Even better, I think, would be for local groups (or ELNA) to organize events, like language fairs or international festivals.
--
Steven BREWER
August 5, 2006 by limako, 5 years 26 weeks ago