As a beginner Esperantist, I agree with all of those statements. I'm mostly learning the language as a free time hobby and because I want to belong somewhere. But I do also appreciate Dr. Zamenhof's efforts. He really had a lot of good intentions at heart. If you asked me 'did Zamenhof achieve his goal?', I'd personally answer 'Yes'. I'm just a young dude trying to appreciate an old man's effort.
I have read about Neutral Moresnet before, it wasn't a country, it was a condominium controlled by its surrounding countries equally as a buffer zone. The place was absolutely tiny, and had four official languages, German, French, Dutch and Esperanto, though I don't think anyone there actually spoke Esperanto in Neutrala Moresneto.
It's interesting, the idea that if everyone spoke Esperanto, it would just split off into other languages again. It's almost as if the story of the Tower of Babel is destined to happen to any one world language attempt.
With worldwide media and communications, I'm not convinced that Esperanto would split into dialects. What I do think would happen with universal use is the (further) development of different registers among different classes (in a broad sense) of people.
Like, no matter how hard academics could try, some kid would speak the language differently resulting in a chain reaction leading to the birth of Esperadanish, the Danish Esperanto.
I studied Esperanto some 30 years ago, and was and still are fascinated how simple it is. The grammar literally fits on one page, and the orthography is as logic as can be, as 1 phonem = 1 letter. Always. I started studying on a Monday morning, by noon of that day I was done with the grammar, othography and basics of the language, which after decades of intensive use I would not dare to say of English. What is especially intriguing is that after decades I still know these basics and can read simple texts, despite the fact that I hardly ever use and train my skills. The point obviously is that you cannot forget anything you do not have to learn in the first place (complex grammar rules, weird orthography, tons of irregularities ...) because it does not exist. Therefore it would make absolute sense to have an international lingua franca with as simple as possible concept, grammar, and orthography. As pointed out in this video however, Esperanto has some obvious weaknesses. If the huge effort would actually be taken to implement a really international auxlang, this auxlang should be as perfect as possible. My favourite scenario would be that a wide international team of linguists would carefully design a new auxlang, simple, easy to learn and easy to speak and understand for speakers of all languages (which likely would imply to use common phonemes only), but still very suitable to very well express thoughts. I think there currently are three countries or groups of countries who would have some motivation to start this undertaking: 1. European Union: Translation within the EU is a mess with dozens of languages spoken. In real life English is widely used as a lingua franca, but after Brexit almost no EU citizen has English mother tongue, the French do not like it, it has a crazy orthography and other weaknesses. 2. India: With 600 languages spoken a lingua franca is an absolute necessity for India. Again English is used for this purpose, and also Hindi to a large extent. But why use English, the language of the former opressors? Even worse than in the EU, English as a Indoeuropean language is completely alien to speakers of dravidian languages in Southern India. 3. Africa / African Union: If India is a linguistic mess, Africa is an even bigger one. Even more languages are spoken in Africa, from a number of different language families, some completely alien to each other. As a consequence in their dire need for a lingua franca similar to India almost all African countries still use the languages of their former colonial opressors, 6 decades after decolonization. To make it worse, Africa does not use one single colonial language, but four different ones (English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, and I did not even count Afrikaans here), and on top of that there are even more languages who serve as regional lingua franca (Arabic, Swahili ...). For Africa the perfect time to create a universal auxlang would be now. Literacy is still low, a large percentage of the people are very young, so education is a huge challenge anyway. So why not go in a good direction instead of putting a lot of effort in strengthening a undesireable status quo? Of course this new auxlang should consider speakers of Indoeuropean, Sino-Tibetan, and other languages as well, to support communication with non-African peoples, and eventually even becoming a global lingua franca. I as a European who speaks European languages only would be glad to support African nations in this project and and learn their new language.
On the topic of India, As a Dravidian language speaker, many indians learn Hindi, as well as the fact that there are a lot of sanskrit loanwords in Dravidian Languages, although less in Tamil than compared to Telugu ( my language ) . Despite that, I can totally understand why Esperanto wouldn't be a good fit as an Auxlang.
For the same reason there can be no universal language for all countries worldwide, I am greatly sceptical of those proposals, for India but primarily for Africa: the number of language families in Africa, compared to Europe, is considerably higher, making the feat of establishing a common language based on the intersection of their features truly difficult indeed. Imagine you need to connect English and Chinese speakers - when our overlap is so little, what language feature could you possibly introduce to make it happen? In the same way, Africans speak vastly different languages, so I think it will be nigh-on impossible to make it work. At least with India, to my knowledge, most languages there are cognate with each other, so on both grammar and vocabular fronts they have a better chance. That said, the current use of English might well be healthy for Indians as a people: they surpass, to a good extent, the language barrier with other English-speaking communities globally, making intercommunicatiom between us easier. (I'm sure you can share my experience of being taught by Indian fellows on youtube tutorials.) And also if you wanna talk about oppressors, all Anglophones should consider speaking Anglish, because all forms of Modern English are riddled with colonial Normanisms from the invasion in 1066... in the end, we just forget, and it no longer really matters so much. I'm positive that India and Britain get on quite well these days, as Britain and France do too.
If people worldwide currently manage to learn English as the international language despite the complexity then I think Esperanto certainly is easy enough to be international. An important advantage of an auxlang over a natural language is that it doesn’t belong to any one particular country, so even if it wasn’t easier it still has that advantage. Perhaps you’re right that it might make more sense to start from scratch with a language designed by linguists, but I also think we shouldn’t underestimate the advantage that esperanto has that it is well established, has been battle-tested and already has many resources in many languages to help learn it.
English is the most inconsistent language I ever ran across. Mostly, it makes little or no sense, and I really like it. It can actually be learned and used quite properly, without learning and remembering all the rules. I LIKE IT !
While I prefer other conlangs as auxlangs, I like Esperanto as a conlang on its own because of its simple grammar and I absolutely adore its history and the history and philosophy of auxlangs as a whole. I admit I'm biased because Esperanto was the first conlang I discovered and I was struggling in school with Spanish and French when I found it so it was familiar and the simplicity made it alluring, it ended up being the first language I had success with learning and it's what got me into teaching myself languages. And ofc I love both altlangs and auxlangs, so auxlangs based on real world languages are usually the ones that fascinate me the most.
Ok now being more serious, I really don't think that in today's world, Esperanto could serve as an good international language. The language really had a lot of downsides, the phonology can be pretty hard for a LOT of people, the vocabulary is too European, and the grammar has a lot of things that aren't really needed and only make things harder. And no, toki pona isn't a good alternative, too limited in vocabulary. I think the best way would be to create a new one, way more international with grammar similar to toki pona
I heavily sympathize with inadvertently using qualifiers like "essentially" almost compulsively... while one can simply see it as a repetitive tendency, it says to me that someone is both knowledgeable and actively engaged in critical thought about a subject; it becomes hard not to qualify nearly every statement somehow when that is the case and someone is just speaking sincerely.
@Connor Quimby Ethiopia actually beats out most European countries in terms of how many people speak Esperanto even though it has never adopted any European language (their failure to colonize it [or in Italy's case, their failure to enforce their language onto the locals] can attest to that.)
Nice video with some good points but also some basic errors. I think you relied too heavily on the wikipedia page. - Esperanto was created in 1887 not 1873 - I highly doubt Zamenhof knew Aramaic and while he was familiar with Volapuk, he never learned it - The fundamento was agreed in 1904 but based on earlier works - The only source for the claim Stalin learned Esperanto is Trotsky, so it's not that reliable - Esperanto is nowhere near as difficult as English is for Asian speakers. Although the vocabulary is unfamiliar, the regular and phonetic nature of the language is a major advantage over English. Esperanto also shares several grammatical features with East Asian languages - Esperanto isn't perfect but no language is - Esperanto has evolved and it's the role of the Language Academy to monitor the language not the World Congress. The main dictionary is published by SAT and 9 editions is actually a lot for dictionaries (do you know how long it takes the French academy to publish a new edition?) - The community has managed to develop the language without fracturing into dialects, so this isn't a problem - There is no logical reason for Esperanto to splinter into dialects as people would have to intentionally use the language in a way that hard to understand (contrary to the entire purpose of Esperanto). English is spoken by huge numbers of people without splitting into dialects. - The entire aim of Esperanto is to be a 2nd language, not to replace any language - Interlangs and auxlangs aren't mutually exclusive, Esperanto is both - It's very easy to download an esperanto keyboard eĥoŝanĝo ĉiuĵaŭde (if an English speaker is learning a new language, there is a high chance they will have to type letters that English doesn't have) - Most of your criticisms are true of English too
Thanks for the corrections, I tried to make this video a general overview of the history and the arguments. I put more work into this video than I have all my others combined :P. As it pertains to getting stuff wrong, just a reminder that my channel motto is "I don't know what I'm doing" :D
esperanto isn't able to splinter into real dialects because zamenhof wrote fundamento de esperanto as the criteria for true esperanto that is never to be changed. and only the language that follows the fundamento can be considered esperanto. esperanto is still able to evolve but even in its current condition it doesn't break the fundamento. and english has national variations (it's different in great britain, usa, australia etc.) and a shit ton of dialects, especially in great britain
I find it so silly with people complaining about the Esperanto orthography being bad because it contains non-A-Z letters. So are almost all European orthographies bad because an American with a US keyboard can't type it? That's basically the argument. - You should get an Esperanto keyboard layout if you're going to use it, and don't Google and Windows already include it?
@@Liggliluff And it's a pretty bad excuse since English doesn't have enough letters in its alphabet to be able to be spelt anywhere near phonologically and there probably won't be any efforts to change it either so everyone learning English is stuck with the tought, though, through, nature, natural, bat situation, where one sound is never pronounced the same😅 At least Esperanto is easy to spell and pronounce when seeing a new word, you could only dream of doing that with English.
As an E-o speaker, though less active now, the biggest hurdle facing E-o is splitting. The language has changed a bit since Zamcxjo's day, and not just in vocab. For one, when we want to say "at whenever," instead of using the accusative on a noun, we mostly use an adverb. Both were always allowed, but E-ists mostly use the latter. Even now with 2,000,000 speakers, I see debates over tweaking the language. Some people wanna add a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun for people, usually "ri." But others want to use "gxi."
I participated in a language conference last year and there was a 90 minutes course on Esperanto. We were told that both ri and ĝi can be used for a gender neutral third person pronoun. So... why not just accept both interchangeably and everybody uses whichever they prefer? And if somebody's own personal pronoun is one of the two, you'd simply adjust to that, just like in English, we (hopefully) adjust by saying "they" if someone goes by it, instead of he or she.
(8:20) That's a flawed argument, for two reasons: - Use an Esperanto layout that includes these letters - The existing keyboard layout should have combining diacritical marks (if there's room) to allow for typing these. So this isn't a flaw of the language, but rather the technology. (Although I would rather prefer the caron/haček over the circumflex) Complaining about the Esperanto orthography would be like complaining that German has ÄÖÜ. It's silly and you should adapt.
The "problematic" Esperanto letters (the diacritics - ĉ ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, ŭ) were chosen for two main reasons: - they were generally fairly easy to type on any "international" typewriter keyboard of the day - it was relatively simple for printers to modify existing typesets to include those letters (and they in fact did) - these particular letters (in Esperanto they are considered separate letters, not a letter plus a diacritic) weren't already used in existing national languages, so didn't favor any particular country/language group Of course, today it's even easier -- so this objection essentially boils down to "but it's not what we're used to!"
@@that_orange_hat You can easily download a keyboard for windows, android or whatever you're using. You have to do that if you are learning a new language that has new symbols anyways so it's not like it's specific for Esperanto and it's very easy to set up (as an English speaker you'd have to do the same when learning German, Spanish or Russian etc) . Most people I know have at least two keyboards that they switch between on a daily basis even without Esperanto so for most of Europe it's probably not a new thing.
@@that_orange_hat Hungarian layout have Á, É, Í, Ó, Ő, Ú, Ű.So there is place enough on keyboard. Some languages do not have all the characters of the English alphabet, so a kind of adaptation is inevitable.
@@that_orange_hat Around the year 1900, it WAS typable on any typewriter. Around the year 2000, people used the X wherever diacritics were not available
I think it should be an official language in the EU as it would work well for Europe, but not worldwide. I should never replace an already existing language though, countries should keep their national identity with languages that are theirs.
I agree. I don’t like French (when it comes to how hard the pronunciation is, the grammar, and the weird numbering system. I do like how it *sounds* though) but I also wouldn’t want them to stop speaking the language.
@@johnwillliamson8063 L.L. Zamenhof's own ambitions for the language changed within his own lifetime anyway. He's not around anymore, and I really don't like Esperantists who seem to worship Zamenhof as their 'creator', I see it all too often.
Let's say Esperanto can be used as the main language in occident or europe (instead of english). Since Esperanto is easier to learn for these populations, it shouldn't be too hard to progressively increase the amount of esperanto speakers by translating everything in both english and esperanto (that way, esperanto could tend to become as useful as english to access online or international resources over time, and overcome the attractivity of native languages like French, German,...) From that situation, is it possible to "merge" Esperanto with the rest of the world ? If esperanto is more attractive than local languages, the rest of europe could merge towards esperanto. After that, the other populations would gravitate towards esperanto instead of english (or both at the same time) And if the occidental merge towards esperanto works, this should be a valid proof of concept that other areas could do the same, by taking advantages of local similarities. The final step would be to have something like 4 or 5 major languages from which everyone knows at least one of, from which a new language, easy to learn for everyone, could be made. This is a lot of "ifs", and all of that would take a lot of time (probably more than esperanto esperantists will last), but the first step (an occidental merge to replace "english with a bad accent" with esperanto) seems doable by staying dedicated to translating everything everywhere
The Idea that the EU could some how save money by switching to esperanto is very unlikely to be true. English has a ton of infrastructure for learning and using it that Esparanto doesn't have. You would need to put a ton of money into training new teachers implementing it in schools and other contexts.
Yes ... I personally hate Esperanto, but it is hypothetically possible to switch that infrastructure, over time, to Esperanto, if they decided to do it, say, over a periof of twenty years. Still, Esperanto sucks.
@@martinhumphreys4891 I doubt that. I've seen his other videos and they're honestly not even inaccurate or bad in any way, he might just be this arrogant in linguistics
I'm starting a global campaign to extinguish Esperanto. I haven't decided if book burnings will suffice or if we need to return to the 17th century techniques of witch burnings. Lol. I'm joking. But I really do dislike it. It is a bit like going to a candy store with a thousand flavors and choosing the one marked "plain"
Esperanto might work for the EU. Something like interslavic for a Balkan/Slavic Union. Are there languages like these for celts? A soup language derived from Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Cornish, Welsh, Breton, or maybe a separate language for each group (Goidelic/Brythonic)?
I tried to learn it years ago. Kvar, kvin, knabo...no problem. Present form of to know " scias" kind of threw me. C is a ts sound. Then there's the Newspeak vibe: malseka is wet, seka being dry and mal- a modifier...oppositifier?
You think that English is better...? How many words do you have to learn to use English? About 10,000. In Esperanto 500 is enough. Why? Because with this simple grammar we can easily create thousands of new meaning without the need of learning them before.
@@KardKardus And English is not weird? Actually all Esperanto words are easy to pronounce. Stop complaining and learn Chinese instead - it is your future language.
@@fitzburg63 well i'm not "complaining" i just point out there is some word that hard for me to pronounce as an Indonesian me not like one word doesn't mean i hate all the word in languange. and stop mocking people please
I still think it's something we should pursue. My counter argument to the main flaws cited: 1. It being too European - Yes, that's true but unfortunately whether we like it or not, European languages are the most widely spread, so it makes sense for a global language to be European based. All of North America, South America, and obviously Europe speak European languages, while most of Oceania does too, and European languages are widely spoken in Africa. The only region where European languages aren't widely spoken is Asia, but even then, so many Asians are still trying to learn them so they can speak with the rest of the world. An example of this is how many people in China want their children to learn English, and there are multiple websites that you right now can sign up to teach English virtually to Chinese kids. The thing is, English still can only get you so far. It's not fair to make people in Asia have to learn multiple European languages, and it would be better if they only had to learn one easy one. Especially since English is not easy and has almost no consistent rules while Esperanto is so easily structured. 2. Esperanto never became the lingua franca so why bother with it now - Just bc it didn't take off doesn't mean you shouldn't learn it. It still could become a lingua franca now days, but really that isn't the point. Esperanto already is bringing the world together. If you say, learn German, you esentially could only travel to Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. But just look up Pasporta Servo and see how many places around the world you can go, for free, just by speaking Esperanto? So, just because there is not a large number of Esperanto speakers doesn't mean that it didn't succeed at becoming a global language. It clearly is a global language.
The idea that English is hard and inconsistent is something only English speakers believe. English is an analytic language with a great deal of variance in how it's spoken, and it has exactly as many rules as every other language, because that's how language works. Esperanto has an incomplete grammar that had to be filled in by its community, mainly because it was invented before linguistics became a science. English is already 90% of the way to being the international lingua franca. If we reject English then next up would be Spanish, French, Arabic, Portuguese, Swahili, Russian, Mandarin... and dozens of others before Esperanto would be considered. It's simply a bad language that lacks the excuse of being evolved naturally. No country has Esperanto as an official language, it has no significant population in any country, nor can it be used to travel. If by "global language" you mean "language which is spoken in many countries" then it's behind dozens of natural languages.
@@seanoriain8294 Some highlights include the lack of rules defining word order, its aspect marking being total chaos, whether or not adverbs are marked for case, how many cases there are, whether or not conjunctions are a part of speech, and the fact that the language cannot convey gender neutrality because it thoughtlessly copied a flaw found in several European languages where the neuter has fused with the masculine.
@@PlatinumAltaria No, that's not something only English people believe, it's pretty well known that western European languages so happen to be extremely irregular, and English is even more irregular because it's mostly Germanic but also has had a lot of Latin influence. Esperanto has an incomplete grammar? Where the hell did you get that from? I've learned the entire language and there's nothing lacking. "English is already 90% of the wa-" NO IT IS NOT. It's only spoken predominantly in Europe, the UK, the US and South Asia. Those countries already make up over 90% of English's speakers, but less than 40% of the world's population. Not to mention the many countries that are severely lagging behind in English, such as the Koreas, China, Japan, ex-French colonies in Africa...oh, would you look at that, most countries don't even speak English predominantly!
@@PlatinumAltaria "the lack of rules defining word order" That's called free word order, many languages are like that, too "whether or not adverbs are marked for case, how many cases there are," There are only two cases: Nominative and Accusative. Only adjectives are also marked with nouns, as verbs aren't marked and thus adverbs can't be marked "the language cannot convey gender neutrality because it thoughtlessly copied a flaw found in several European languages where the neuter has fused with the masculine." The ge- suffix is LITERALLY the suffix for gender neutrality. Viro = man Virino = woman Geviro = person
i think that esperanto is good for an intereuropean language but NOT for an international one. For asians, wtf is j in jack and french j in jaques? Vocab also unrecognizable for non-european speakers. Therefore the EU should consider it. The UN should use it for European Language Sphere only.
this was my first time listening to someone speaking esperanto and it sounded like a frankeinstein mix of french, russian, german and some variation of latin
@@mr.milkman9010 No, it is not, French is weird mix of latin and no French ever complains about it , same for English - weird mix of French and German - Esperanto is based on roots from many languages to make it familiar for people speaking those languages - you can learn Wolapuk if you want. Before you say something about Esperanto, lern it, otherwise you have no idea what you talk about - I speak Esperanto for 45 years and I never felt it was weird - this is very friendly language you can trust, not like other languages full of weird grammar and idioms. And learning Esperanto as the first foreign language opens your mind to other languages - I learned Esperanto at the age of 16...17. Then I easily learnt English, German, Spanish, Russian and a bit of Chinese.
I love the idea of Zamenhof, to have more respect for other cultures and languages and to understand eachother better. But Esperanto can only be a European language, never a universal one, because it only took from European languages. Also, claiming to be an easy language is correct, but claiming to be THE easiest language ist manifestly wrong. As an Esperanto learner, I like the idea of allowing everyone their language(s), and have Esperanto as an extra. But I am extremely vexed at the low quantity of interesting Esperanto books. Like, come on, Harry Potter and Warrior Cats have been translated in almost every language but not in Esperanto. Even the books of Roald Dahl have only seen the recent translation of Matilda into Esperanto. Most Esperanto books are old, or not very interesting (especially to non European readers). The only reason I still continue is because I like the idea behind it of trying to connect to people while simultaneously not trying to force them to become like you. Esperanto is centuries behind in amount of books, youtube channels, apps,... I found an Esperanto club not too far away from where I live...most people are 65+. Some 50. I feel very much out of place there. Everything just feels so dying out. I prefer learning Esperanto on my own and be busy with it at home. I should not blame Esperanto for the little attention it has gotten. English has taken the place Esperanto imagined itself. I still like the language, though. Ne gravas la lingvo kiu ni parolas, sed gravas la amo por la lingvojn kiujn ni parolas
It does not seem that the BRICS, which are outpacing other organizations, will encourage the learning of English as a lingua franca. Nor does it seem feasible to encourage Chinese, Russian, Hindi or Portuguese... The tendency is to adopt a really neutral language.
@@hya2in8 oh but it is... If we allow a national/ethnic language to be THE worldlanguage, many of its native speakers will never learn a second language. If we make a neutral language THE worldlanguage, most people will not be able to afford the luxury of being monolingual
@@hya2in8 No, I'm arguing against the ambiguities, both in the title of the video ( some people might think that speaking Esperanto is about not speaking ethnic languages) and in your comment. You do know the difference between "about" and "for", right?
@@ronaldonmg seems rather dumb to do, nothing about the video implies that & if someone thought that was what it was saying they could watch it to learn esperanto is for cross-language communication & not whatever they might've thought it was
Nah I am trying to learning it to travel and maybe pic up men. Also because I want to know if I can learn a new language without spending a ridiculus amount of time . And it has a big chinese comunity so.. Also if I ever have kids it would be cool yo have a "secret" family language.
I think that the pace of globalization makes the fracturing of the language less of an issue. We live in the age of TV and movies, after all. People who speak Esperanto would consume Esperanto media from all over the world, so there would be plenty of opportunity for people to keep up to date with dialects. IMO, the actual issue with esperanto is its Eurocentrism. Local languages dying out in favor of a large unifying language might be good in the end, but it feels icky for the language that wins out to just essentially be European+, it makes it feel like imperialism won.
To pros and cons. 1. Problem with wierd symbols is exagregated. Now I can see so many cool symbols in my German keyboard that you probably cannot find as well (ä, ö, ü, ß), but you can still change a keyboard layout and apply some stickers if you need them. 2. East asiatic languages have so few cognates so if Esperanto replaces dankon and saluto with arigato and nihao it will not change a lot for japanese and chinese (don't even mention karean, vietnamese etc) feel any better. They aren't sharing as much as romano-germano-balto-slavo-hellinic anyway. 3. Real problem: people are not generally into learning and not into learning language in paricular (just check for school basics could prove my words, few people can few years after school e.g. balance a chimical equetion, solve a square equetion, answer trivial history questions and yes make a conversation in a forign language learned in school). Which will create a precondition there is no strong base to create content ans services to (English has natives, Esperanto not quite and wierdly distibuted), no content and services -> no reason (immediate reward for a casual user) to spend time and energy learning it -> no monetary reason to create content and services.
@@nsawatchlistbait289 Potentially doable, but it entirely depends on the region. For regions that have similar linguistic roots without any outliers, you probably already have a pre-existing language that all are derived from in the first place. For balkanized regions... good luck with that. More than likely, you'd be better off using whatever lingua franca was already popular at the time in that area of the world. The only 'close-to-ideal' auxlang that I can think of is math, but that one's not really designed for normal communication in the first place, which is why it works as well as it does at it's particular task.
In my opinion, yes, we should be speaking Esperanto. Even though it is really different from the East Asian languages, its grammar is still incredibly simple and is much easier than English. So it is still better. Its orthography is fine, and many languages use didactical marks, I am sure we'll figure out how to adapt them
This esperanto is nothing like english it is hard to understand and African asian and indigenous south american , north america are excluded. Proper natural languages are the way to go. If You go to asia , africa, europe and you use their local languages it goes to their heart
But just one thing about Esperanto. Language names in Esperanto are written in lowercase. So "English" become "angla". - It makes no sense for a Romance-based language by a Romance-Slavic creator, of which all languages write language names in lowercase, would suddenly write language names in uppercase. A counter argument is that this was never defined. Certainly, but it was never defined that the define article was supposed to be written in lowercase either. But you write "la", so you can write "angla" as well.
I find the majestic simplicity of Esperanto very attractive but I don't like the fact that its vocab is basically romance with a smattering of other eurolangs. A truly neutral auxlang cannot just mirror a natlang word stock. My preferred auxlang is Kah which is grammatically very simple (Kah is perhaps the only practical oligosynthetic language ever devised) and furnished with a fully original lexicon.
It is Latin based but the grammar is more of that of Chinese. Esperanto is fully fledged mature language with tradition, speakers, literature, art and history. No other auxiliary language has its popularity.
While I get the importance of having one language spoken by all, I don't get why it should be a European language. Why should the world be Euro centric? A global language should be one that is the most suitable for a global language and that's easier to learn. Either create such a language from scratch or identify the best language among all natural languages
It's not really as European as a lot of critics like to claim. It still has a lot of non-European features, and some features are completely alien to all languages
Ive got it, Ive figured out how to make the perfect auxlang!. Write down the name of every single language and put them all in a big hat. Then whenever your deciding on an element of the auxlang pull from the hat and take the element from that language. Deciding on the vowels? List them out and pull from the hat to see if the pulled language has that vowel, if not its not in the auxlang. Same for consonants. How many pronouns are there? Hat pull. How are tense markers used? Hat pull. Sentence structure? HAT PULL! Itll give preference to noone and thus be terrible equally
There is a computer program called tajpj with which the problem of the circumflexes on keyboard typing can be solved Mi estas lerni parolas esperanton kaj tajpj funkcias ĝuste. Mia denaska lingvo estas hispana kaj mi kredas la problemoj de Esperanto estas pli malgrandajn ol la profitojn. Lernu Esperanton, ni faru la revo el Dr Esperanto reala!
Esperanto is a dumb idea. If you want a good auxlang, sign languages are perfect for the job. Partially because sign language is basically a superpower (you can talk with people who can't hear you, you can talk with your mouth full, and you can talk without being noticed or overheard), and partially because many communities use sign languages already, even constructed ones in some cases.
How would a signed IAL have any benefits over a spoken and written IAL? Sign languages are identical to spoken languages except for the medium, and the reason people around the world use sound to communicate is that it's better.
La problemo estas ke elefen' preskaŭ nenion havas komunan kun la vera lingvafranka kiu ekzistis dum tiom da jarcentoj ĝis la fino de la otomana imperio preskaŭ ĉie apud la mediteraneo. Do elefen tute malhavas naturecon.
Not any more, learn about it before you speak. Esperanto is 140 years old and it was created by millions of Esperanto speakers just like any other natural language.
@@darius684 Fellow, don't school me about the language I speak for 45 years... you are ignoramus with no knowledge on Esperanto, go and educate yourself before you start commenting on the subject, because you write total BS.
Esperanto is awful. I've always hated it. It doesn't even do well as a bridge language between all the European language families, since it leans so heavily on Romance languages. Uralic, Celtic, Slavic languages barely get any air time in it. As a global lingua franca, it is worthless. I'm surprised it's promotion was ever as successful as it was - which is to say, not very much. Toss it in the waste bin and never look back.
I like to think that Esperanto is the perfect international language... for half of Europe, it should be an interlanguage. Maybe if we creolized esperanto we could get a more intuitive grammar, and also wether to add more loanwoards of create a unique vocabulary, with simpler sounds.
No, it would be not - Esperanto is fully fledged foreign language with community, literature, art, tradition. Its grammar is isolating like Chinese, so it is easy to learn by Asians, 10 times easier than obligatory English!!!
Those arguments against are pretty weak. Let me address some. - Esperanto is not perfect. Well, no language is and probably there never will be one that is. Are we waiting for some divine intervention? - grammar is too european. Nonsense. Several characteristics of Esperanto are found in Asian, African and Native-american languages. - vocab is too european. Same goes for English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. Maybe things will change once other people get the confidence to introduce new words - hard for non -IE speakers. Simply not true if compared to the bigger worldlanguages - will evolve into dialects. Simply not true in practice. Esperantists want to be understood worldwide - might hurt linguistinc diversity. patently false. It's the current hierarchy of languages that threatens the existence of "small" languages. If Esperanto or something similar would become the main international language, this would DECREASE the need for catalans to learn Spanish, the need for Scots to learn English, the need for Javanese to learn Bahasa Indonesia, the need for Tibetans to learn Mandarin, etc. No Esperantist over the age of 5 is monolingual, nor does any of them abandon their ethnic language. Just because there's a railway doesn't mean people are going to give up bicycles and rowboats Zamenhof simply worked with what he knew
@@thato596 Have you maybe ever heard of...actually studying linguistics? Esperanto is agglutinative and isolative, which is found among many Asian and African languages, and it's also got free word order, which makes it extremely easy to learn for even non-Europeans who aren't used to SVO
@@thato596 Esperanto is literally agglutinative, that's found in Turkic, Finnic-Uralic and Iranic languages. Denying that is actually stupid Or maybe you were denying the free word order thing, which is also another stupid claim because free word order means you can just speak in your native language's word order, while speaking the other language. And, lastly, ffs, China and Japan have some of the biggest hotspots of Esperanto. China has the most Esperanto speakers (although the esperanto community of china is aging a lot) and Japan was one of the earliest countries to be introduced to Esperanto in Asia. Not only that, but the UEA has hosted a lot of events in some African countries (despite backlash from the LGBTQ community, because african nations are..not very welcoming of queers and trans people)
Good video The answer to the question is no, but not because of Esperanto's flaws in particular. Esperanto does have a lot of flaws, but even if they were fixed Esperanto should still not become a universal language. Why? Because there should not be any universal language at all! That is an outdated Biblical idea that we need to move past. World peace will be achieved by ending imperialism, not stamping out native languages by spreading a lingua franca. Linguistic diversity is not a problem to be solved. In the 1910s dozens of languages were spoken in Vienna and this was not a limitation on intellectual progress. Just get a mate to translate for you, it genuinely isn't too hard. Also, even if an international trade language was necessary, it wouldn't need to be spoken in homes. We need to fight to prevent language death not be lazy monolingual brainlets
As a beginner Esperantist, I agree with all of those statements. I'm mostly learning the language as a free time hobby and because I want to belong somewhere. But I do also appreciate Dr. Zamenhof's efforts. He really had a lot of good intentions at heart. If you asked me 'did Zamenhof achieve his goal?', I'd personally answer 'Yes'. I'm just a young dude trying to appreciate an old man's effort.
Saluton mia samideano. Gravas aparteni ie, kaj se vi apartenas al la Esperanto-movado, vi faris la ĝustan elekton.
I have read about Neutral Moresnet before, it wasn't a country, it was a condominium controlled by its surrounding countries equally as a buffer zone. The place was absolutely tiny, and had four official languages, German, French, Dutch and Esperanto, though I don't think anyone there actually spoke Esperanto in Neutrala Moresneto.
No, the reason they would make Esperanto the official lang is that that place also had an abnormally high amount of Esperanto speakers
@@jangamecuber From my understanding, it had to do with trying to set Esperanto up as a sort of 'experiment'
It is easy to learn. I use it daily for reading and videos. I occasionally talk on chat platforms. It is fun.
Saluton! Mi ŝatus aliĝi al iu babilejo. Ĉu vi povas skribi la ligilon?
It's interesting, the idea that if everyone spoke Esperanto, it would just split off into other languages again. It's almost as if the story of the Tower of Babel is destined to happen to any one world language attempt.
With worldwide media and communications, I'm not convinced that Esperanto would split into dialects. What I do think would happen with universal use is the (further) development of different registers among different classes (in a broad sense) of people.
Ekzistas Akademio de Esperanto kiu zorgas pri uzo de esperanto.
Like, no matter how hard academics could try, some kid would speak the language differently resulting in a chain reaction leading to the birth of Esperadanish, the Danish Esperanto.
a pretty good analysis, and one of the precious few (if not only) that doesn't rely on specific grammatical flaws as the main argument
I studied Esperanto some 30 years ago, and was and still are fascinated how simple it is. The grammar literally fits on one page, and the orthography is as logic as can be, as 1 phonem = 1 letter. Always. I started studying on a Monday morning, by noon of that day I was done with the grammar, othography and basics of the language, which after decades of intensive use I would not dare to say of English. What is especially intriguing is that after decades I still know these basics and can read simple texts, despite the fact that I hardly ever use and train my skills. The point obviously is that you cannot forget anything you do not have to learn in the first place (complex grammar rules, weird orthography, tons of irregularities ...) because it does not exist.
Therefore it would make absolute sense to have an international lingua franca with as simple as possible concept, grammar, and orthography.
As pointed out in this video however, Esperanto has some obvious weaknesses. If the huge effort would actually be taken to implement a really international auxlang, this auxlang should be as perfect as possible.
My favourite scenario would be that a wide international team of linguists would carefully design a new auxlang, simple, easy to learn and easy to speak and understand for speakers of all languages (which likely would imply to use common phonemes only), but still very suitable to very well express thoughts.
I think there currently are three countries or groups of countries who would have some motivation to start this undertaking:
1. European Union: Translation within the EU is a mess with dozens of languages spoken. In real life English is widely used as a lingua franca, but after Brexit almost no EU citizen has English mother tongue, the French do not like it, it has a crazy orthography and other weaknesses.
2. India: With 600 languages spoken a lingua franca is an absolute necessity for India. Again English is used for this purpose, and also Hindi to a large extent. But why use English, the language of the former opressors? Even worse than in the EU, English as a Indoeuropean language is completely alien to speakers of dravidian languages in Southern India.
3. Africa / African Union: If India is a linguistic mess, Africa is an even bigger one. Even more languages are spoken in Africa, from a number of different language families, some completely alien to each other. As a consequence in their dire need for a lingua franca similar to India almost all African countries still use the languages of their former colonial opressors, 6 decades after decolonization. To make it worse, Africa does not use one single colonial language, but four different ones (English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish, and I did not even count Afrikaans here), and on top of that there are even more languages who serve as regional lingua franca (Arabic, Swahili ...).
For Africa the perfect time to create a universal auxlang would be now. Literacy is still low, a large percentage of the people are very young, so education is a huge challenge anyway. So why not go in a good direction instead of putting a lot of effort in strengthening a undesireable status quo?
Of course this new auxlang should consider speakers of Indoeuropean, Sino-Tibetan, and other languages as well, to support communication with non-African peoples, and eventually even becoming a global lingua franca. I as a European who speaks European languages only would be glad to support African nations in this project and and learn their new language.
On the topic of India, As a Dravidian language speaker, many indians learn Hindi, as well as the fact that there are a lot of sanskrit loanwords in Dravidian Languages, although less in Tamil than compared to Telugu ( my language ) . Despite that, I can totally understand why Esperanto wouldn't be a good fit as an Auxlang.
@@aarushkari81 a new auxlang for India would be good, Hindi is easy but still, we need a need one
For the same reason there can be no universal language for all countries worldwide, I am greatly sceptical of those proposals, for India but primarily for Africa: the number of language families in Africa, compared to Europe, is considerably higher, making the feat of establishing a common language based on the intersection of their features truly difficult indeed. Imagine you need to connect English and Chinese speakers - when our overlap is so little, what language feature could you possibly introduce to make it happen? In the same way, Africans speak vastly different languages, so I think it will be nigh-on impossible to make it work.
At least with India, to my knowledge, most languages there are cognate with each other, so on both grammar and vocabular fronts they have a better chance. That said, the current use of English might well be healthy for Indians as a people: they surpass, to a good extent, the language barrier with other English-speaking communities globally, making intercommunicatiom between us easier. (I'm sure you can share my experience of being taught by Indian fellows on youtube tutorials.) And also if you wanna talk about oppressors, all Anglophones should consider speaking Anglish, because all forms of Modern English are riddled with colonial Normanisms from the invasion in 1066... in the end, we just forget, and it no longer really matters so much. I'm positive that India and Britain get on quite well these days, as Britain and France do too.
If people worldwide currently manage to learn English as the international language despite the complexity then I think Esperanto certainly is easy enough to be international. An important advantage of an auxlang over a natural language is that it doesn’t belong to any one particular country, so even if it wasn’t easier it still has that advantage. Perhaps you’re right that it might make more sense to start from scratch with a language designed by linguists, but I also think we shouldn’t underestimate the advantage that esperanto has that it is well established, has been battle-tested and already has many resources in many languages to help learn it.
Jes estas bone plu paco kaj Prospero!
English is the most inconsistent language I ever ran across.
Mostly, it makes little or no sense, and I really like it.
It can actually be learned and used quite properly, without learning and remembering all the rules.
I LIKE IT !
More and more of us do use Esperanto! That it why it has more wikipedia articles than 11 of the EU's 24 official languages.
While I prefer other conlangs as auxlangs, I like Esperanto as a conlang on its own because of its simple grammar and I absolutely adore its history and the history and philosophy of auxlangs as a whole.
I admit I'm biased because Esperanto was the first conlang I discovered and I was struggling in school with Spanish and French when I found it so it was familiar and the simplicity made it alluring, it ended up being the first language I had success with learning and it's what got me into teaching myself languages. And ofc I love both altlangs and auxlangs, so auxlangs based on real world languages are usually the ones that fascinate me the most.
which conlangs do you prefer?
Ok now being more serious, I really don't think that in today's world, Esperanto could serve as an good international language. The language really had a lot of downsides, the phonology can be pretty hard for a LOT of people, the vocabulary is too European, and the grammar has a lot of things that aren't really needed and only make things harder. And no, toki pona isn't a good alternative, too limited in vocabulary. I think the best way would be to create a new one, way more international with grammar similar to toki pona
@RFT the english grammar is much more difficult than even the esperanto grammar
i think lidepla would be better
oh hey Lugë, didn't expect to find you here
Not having a language for everything would be better.
@Rede Emitel Which language has easier pronunciation, English or Esperanto?
"look at your keyboard". i have all of these on my keyboard + skill issue
I heavily sympathize with inadvertently using qualifiers like "essentially" almost compulsively... while one can simply see it as a repetitive tendency, it says to me that someone is both knowledgeable and actively engaged in critical thought about a subject; it becomes hard not to qualify nearly every statement somehow when that is the case and someone is just speaking sincerely.
Yes sir I am learning esperanto because is very easy to speak 🤗
Jes!❤
Saluton! Mi lernas esperanto ĉar ĝi estas facila ankaŭ :D
@Connor Quimby Ethiopia actually beats out most European countries in terms of how many people speak Esperanto even though it has never adopted any European language (their failure to colonize it [or in Italy's case, their failure to enforce their language onto the locals] can attest to that.)
Esperanto estas multe pli facile lernebla ol la angla. Saluton Al Esperantistoj!
Saluton al vi!
Nice video with some good points but also some basic errors. I think you relied too heavily on the wikipedia page.
- Esperanto was created in 1887 not 1873
- I highly doubt Zamenhof knew Aramaic and while he was familiar with Volapuk, he never learned it
- The fundamento was agreed in 1904 but based on earlier works
- The only source for the claim Stalin learned Esperanto is Trotsky, so it's not that reliable
- Esperanto is nowhere near as difficult as English is for Asian speakers. Although the vocabulary is unfamiliar, the regular and phonetic nature of the language is a major advantage over English. Esperanto also shares several grammatical features with East Asian languages
- Esperanto isn't perfect but no language is
- Esperanto has evolved and it's the role of the Language Academy to monitor the language not the World Congress. The main dictionary is published by SAT and 9 editions is actually a lot for dictionaries (do you know how long it takes the French academy to publish a new edition?)
- The community has managed to develop the language without fracturing into dialects, so this isn't a problem
- There is no logical reason for Esperanto to splinter into dialects as people would have to intentionally use the language in a way that hard to understand (contrary to the entire purpose of Esperanto). English is spoken by huge numbers of people without splitting into dialects.
- The entire aim of Esperanto is to be a 2nd language, not to replace any language
- Interlangs and auxlangs aren't mutually exclusive, Esperanto is both
- It's very easy to download an esperanto keyboard eĥoŝanĝo ĉiuĵaŭde (if an English speaker is learning a new language, there is a high chance they will have to type letters that English doesn't have)
- Most of your criticisms are true of English too
Thanks for the corrections, I tried to make this video a general overview of the history and the arguments. I put more work into this video than I have all my others combined :P. As it pertains to getting stuff wrong, just a reminder that my channel motto is "I don't know what I'm doing" :D
esperanto isn't able to splinter into real dialects because zamenhof wrote fundamento de esperanto as the criteria for true esperanto that is never to be changed. and only the language that follows the fundamento can be considered esperanto. esperanto is still able to evolve but even in its current condition it doesn't break the fundamento.
and english has national variations (it's different in great britain, usa, australia etc.) and a shit ton of dialects, especially in great britain
I find it so silly with people complaining about the Esperanto orthography being bad because it contains non-A-Z letters. So are almost all European orthographies bad because an American with a US keyboard can't type it? That's basically the argument. - You should get an Esperanto keyboard layout if you're going to use it, and don't Google and Windows already include it?
@@Liggliluff And it's a pretty bad excuse since English doesn't have enough letters in its alphabet to be able to be spelt anywhere near phonologically and there probably won't be any efforts to change it either so everyone learning English is stuck with the tought, though, through, nature, natural, bat situation, where one sound is never pronounced the same😅
At least Esperanto is easy to spell and pronounce when seeing a new word, you could only dream of doing that with English.
As an E-o speaker, though less active now, the biggest hurdle facing E-o is splitting. The language has changed a bit since Zamcxjo's day, and not just in vocab. For one, when we want to say "at whenever," instead of using the accusative on a noun, we mostly use an adverb. Both were always allowed, but E-ists mostly use the latter. Even now with 2,000,000 speakers, I see debates over tweaking the language. Some people wanna add a gender-neutral third-person singular pronoun for people, usually "ri." But others want to use "gxi."
But you don't need to use neologisms.
@@fitzburg63 it's Esperanto, the whole language is neologism.
@@MondeSerenaWilliams no, it is not.
I participated in a language conference last year and there was a 90 minutes course on Esperanto. We were told that both ri and ĝi can be used for a gender neutral third person pronoun. So... why not just accept both interchangeably and everybody uses whichever they prefer? And if somebody's own personal pronoun is one of the two, you'd simply adjust to that, just like in English, we (hopefully) adjust by saying "they" if someone goes by it, instead of he or she.
Very cool of you to provide the time stamp, and ask that people still give the watch time. I won’t skip through. ❤
(8:20) That's a flawed argument, for two reasons:
- Use an Esperanto layout that includes these letters
- The existing keyboard layout should have combining diacritical marks (if there's room) to allow for typing these.
So this isn't a flaw of the language, but rather the technology. (Although I would rather prefer the caron/haček over the circumflex)
Complaining about the Esperanto orthography would be like complaining that German has ÄÖÜ. It's silly and you should adapt.
Esperanto should not have to be adapted to. As an international language, one of the many goals it should achieve is typability by everyone.
The "problematic" Esperanto letters (the diacritics - ĉ ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, ŭ) were chosen for two main reasons:
- they were generally fairly easy to type on any "international" typewriter keyboard of the day
- it was relatively simple for printers to modify existing typesets to include those letters (and they in fact did)
- these particular letters (in Esperanto they are considered separate letters, not a letter plus a diacritic) weren't already used in existing national languages, so didn't favor any particular country/language group
Of course, today it's even easier -- so this objection essentially boils down to "but it's not what we're used to!"
@@that_orange_hat You can easily download a keyboard for windows, android or whatever you're using. You have to do that if you are learning a new language that has new symbols anyways so it's not like it's specific for Esperanto and it's very easy to set up (as an English speaker you'd have to do the same when learning German, Spanish or Russian etc) . Most people I know have at least two keyboards that they switch between on a daily basis even without Esperanto so for most of Europe it's probably not a new thing.
@@that_orange_hat Hungarian layout have Á, É, Í, Ó, Ő, Ú, Ű.So there is place enough on keyboard. Some languages do not have all the characters of the English alphabet, so a kind of adaptation is inevitable.
@@that_orange_hat Around the year 1900, it WAS typable on any typewriter. Around the year 2000, people used the X wherever diacritics were not available
I think it should be an official language in the EU as it would work well for Europe, but not worldwide. I should never replace an already existing language though, countries should keep their national identity with languages that are theirs.
I agree. I don’t like French (when it comes to how hard the pronunciation is, the grammar, and the weird numbering system. I do like how it *sounds* though) but I also wouldn’t want them to stop speaking the language.
Creator never wanted that either.
@@johnwillliamson8063 L.L. Zamenhof's own ambitions for the language changed within his own lifetime anyway. He's not around anymore, and I really don't like Esperantists who seem to worship Zamenhof as their 'creator', I see it all too often.
Let's say Esperanto can be used as the main language in occident or europe (instead of english).
Since Esperanto is easier to learn for these populations, it shouldn't be too hard to progressively increase the amount of esperanto speakers by translating everything in both english and esperanto (that way, esperanto could tend to become as useful as english to access online or international resources over time, and overcome the attractivity of native languages like French, German,...)
From that situation, is it possible to "merge" Esperanto with the rest of the world ?
If esperanto is more attractive than local languages, the rest of europe could merge towards esperanto.
After that, the other populations would gravitate towards esperanto instead of english (or both at the same time)
And if the occidental merge towards esperanto works, this should be a valid proof of concept that other areas could do the same, by taking advantages of local similarities.
The final step would be to have something like 4 or 5 major languages from which everyone knows at least one of, from which a new language, easy to learn for everyone, could be made.
This is a lot of "ifs", and all of that would take a lot of time (probably more than esperanto esperantists will last), but the first step (an occidental merge to replace "english with a bad accent" with esperanto) seems doable by staying dedicated to translating everything everywhere
The Idea that the EU could some how save money by switching to esperanto is very unlikely to be true. English has a ton of infrastructure for learning and using it that Esparanto doesn't have. You would need to put a ton of money into training new teachers implementing it in schools and other contexts.
Yes ... I personally hate Esperanto, but it is hypothetically possible to switch that infrastructure, over time, to Esperanto, if they decided to do it, say, over a periof of twenty years.
Still, Esperanto sucks.
@@RobespierreThePoof English sucks even more... prepare for Chinese.
Good luck with your channel!
Thank you for talking about Esperanto more respectfully than Conlang Critic.
Kind of insane how jan Misali straight up called Zamenhof "Polish" even though he was Jewish-Russian. That's gotta be the worst thing he could've said
@@kiwenmanisuno I think he cared more about trolling than making criticisms in good faith.
@@martinhumphreys4891 I doubt that. I've seen his other videos and they're honestly not even inaccurate or bad in any way, he might just be this arrogant in linguistics
Mi jam delonge parolas Esperanton kaj mi estas tre feliĉa pri tio.
I'm a Esperanto speaker. I think the language is pretty cool and the community is majorly nice. But as a Auxiliar lang, it will not work
I'm starting a global campaign to extinguish Esperanto. I haven't decided if book burnings will suffice or if we need to return to the 17th century techniques of witch burnings.
Lol.
I'm joking. But I really do dislike it. It is a bit like going to a candy store with a thousand flavors and choosing the one marked "plain"
I'm learning Esperanto
Esperanto might work for the EU. Something like interslavic for a Balkan/Slavic Union. Are there languages like these for celts? A soup language derived from Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Cornish, Welsh, Breton, or maybe a separate language for each group (Goidelic/Brythonic)?
Personally Baguette is my favorite language.
As a fluent Baguette speaker and pretty-damn-proficient Lojban speaker (yes, really!), I can confirm that English is stinky.
I tried to learn it years ago. Kvar, kvin, knabo...no problem. Present form of to know " scias" kind of threw me. C is a ts sound. Then there's the Newspeak vibe: malseka is wet, seka being dry and mal- a modifier...oppositifier?
You think that English is better...? How many words do you have to learn to use English? About 10,000. In Esperanto 500 is enough. Why? Because with this simple grammar we can easily create thousands of new meaning without the need of learning them before.
For me "scii" is reallyy weird to pronounce. Like, "st-tsi-i"?
But othet than that i like the languange :D
@@KardKardus And English is not weird? Actually all Esperanto words are easy to pronounce. Stop complaining and learn Chinese instead - it is your future language.
@@fitzburg63 well i'm not "complaining" i just point out there is some word that hard for me to pronounce as an Indonesian
me not like one word doesn't mean i hate all the word in languange. and stop mocking people please
@@KardKardus For us most English words are hard to pronounce - should we change English pronunciation to fit our needs?
I still think it's something we should pursue. My counter argument to the main flaws cited:
1. It being too European - Yes, that's true but unfortunately whether we like it or not, European languages are the most widely spread, so it makes sense for a global language to be European based. All of North America, South America, and obviously Europe speak European languages, while most of Oceania does too, and European languages are widely spoken in Africa. The only region where European languages aren't widely spoken is Asia, but even then, so many Asians are still trying to learn them so they can speak with the rest of the world. An example of this is how many people in China want their children to learn English, and there are multiple websites that you right now can sign up to teach English virtually to Chinese kids. The thing is, English still can only get you so far. It's not fair to make people in Asia have to learn multiple European languages, and it would be better if they only had to learn one easy one. Especially since English is not easy and has almost no consistent rules while Esperanto is so easily structured.
2. Esperanto never became the lingua franca so why bother with it now - Just bc it didn't take off doesn't mean you shouldn't learn it. It still could become a lingua franca now days, but really that isn't the point. Esperanto already is bringing the world together. If you say, learn German, you esentially could only travel to Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. But just look up Pasporta Servo and see how many places around the world you can go, for free, just by speaking Esperanto? So, just because there is not a large number of Esperanto speakers doesn't mean that it didn't succeed at becoming a global language. It clearly is a global language.
The idea that English is hard and inconsistent is something only English speakers believe. English is an analytic language with a great deal of variance in how it's spoken, and it has exactly as many rules as every other language, because that's how language works. Esperanto has an incomplete grammar that had to be filled in by its community, mainly because it was invented before linguistics became a science.
English is already 90% of the way to being the international lingua franca. If we reject English then next up would be Spanish, French, Arabic, Portuguese, Swahili, Russian, Mandarin... and dozens of others before Esperanto would be considered. It's simply a bad language that lacks the excuse of being evolved naturally. No country has Esperanto as an official language, it has no significant population in any country, nor can it be used to travel. If by "global language" you mean "language which is spoken in many countries" then it's behind dozens of natural languages.
@@PlatinumAltaria You might give a list of the grammatical features that Esperanto is lacking, in your view.
@@seanoriain8294 Some highlights include the lack of rules defining word order, its aspect marking being total chaos, whether or not adverbs are marked for case, how many cases there are, whether or not conjunctions are a part of speech, and the fact that the language cannot convey gender neutrality because it thoughtlessly copied a flaw found in several European languages where the neuter has fused with the masculine.
@@PlatinumAltaria No, that's not something only English people believe, it's pretty well known that western European languages so happen to be extremely irregular, and English is even more irregular because it's mostly Germanic but also has had a lot of Latin influence.
Esperanto has an incomplete grammar? Where the hell did you get that from? I've learned the entire language and there's nothing lacking.
"English is already 90% of the wa-" NO IT IS NOT. It's only spoken predominantly in Europe, the UK, the US and South Asia. Those countries already make up over 90% of English's speakers, but less than 40% of the world's population. Not to mention the many countries that are severely lagging behind in English, such as the Koreas, China, Japan, ex-French colonies in Africa...oh, would you look at that, most countries don't even speak English predominantly!
@@PlatinumAltaria "the lack of rules defining word order" That's called free word order, many languages are like that, too
"whether or not adverbs are marked for case, how many cases there are,"
There are only two cases: Nominative and Accusative. Only adjectives are also marked with nouns, as verbs aren't marked and thus adverbs can't be marked
"the language cannot convey gender neutrality because it thoughtlessly copied a flaw found in several European languages where the neuter has fused with the masculine."
The ge- suffix is LITERALLY the suffix for gender neutrality.
Viro = man
Virino = woman
Geviro = person
i think that esperanto is good for an intereuropean language but NOT for an international one. For asians, wtf is j in jack and french j in jaques? Vocab also unrecognizable for non-european speakers. Therefore the EU should consider it. The UN should use it for European Language Sphere only.
You are wrong - the Chinese are very good Esperantists, because Esperanto grammar is closer to theirs than that of English.
Japanese also have a way easier time learning to pronounce Esperanto than they have with English.
this was my first time listening to someone speaking esperanto and it sounded like a frankeinstein mix of french, russian, german and some variation of latin
Your English is no different to our ears.
@@fitzburg63 im brazilian fella
@@mr.milkman9010 Does it make any difference? Still it sounds bad.
@@fitzburg63 well but esperanto really is a weird mix of french, russian, german and latin as was said in the video so whatever
@@mr.milkman9010 No, it is not, French is weird mix of latin and no French ever complains about it , same for English - weird mix of French and German - Esperanto is based on roots from many languages to make it familiar for people speaking those languages - you can learn Wolapuk if you want. Before you say something about Esperanto, lern it, otherwise you have no idea what you talk about - I speak Esperanto for 45 years and I never felt it was weird - this is very friendly language you can trust, not like other languages full of weird grammar and idioms. And learning Esperanto as the first foreign language opens your mind to other languages - I learned Esperanto at the age of 16...17. Then I easily learnt English, German, Spanish, Russian and a bit of Chinese.
I love the idea of Zamenhof, to have more respect for other cultures and languages and to understand eachother better. But Esperanto can only be a European language, never a universal one, because it only took from European languages. Also, claiming to be an easy language is correct, but claiming to be THE easiest language ist manifestly wrong.
As an Esperanto learner, I like the idea of allowing everyone their language(s), and have Esperanto as an extra. But I am extremely vexed at the low quantity of interesting Esperanto books. Like, come on, Harry Potter and Warrior Cats have been translated in almost every language but not in Esperanto. Even the books of Roald Dahl have only seen the recent translation of Matilda into Esperanto. Most Esperanto books are old, or not very interesting (especially to non European readers).
The only reason I still continue is because I like the idea behind it of trying to connect to people while simultaneously not trying to force them to become like you.
Esperanto is centuries behind in amount of books, youtube channels, apps,... I found an Esperanto club not too far away from where I live...most people are 65+. Some 50. I feel very much out of place there. Everything just feels so dying out. I prefer learning Esperanto on my own and be busy with it at home. I should not blame Esperanto for the little attention it has gotten. English has taken the place Esperanto imagined itself. I still like the language, though.
Ne gravas la lingvo kiu ni parolas, sed gravas la amo por la lingvojn kiujn ni parolas
Used to try to discourage overly amorous girls by telling them I was an Esperanto major or Philosophy and Interpretive dance major but never worked.
It does not seem that the BRICS, which are outpacing other organizations, will encourage the learning of English as a lingua franca. Nor does it seem feasible to encourage Chinese, Russian, Hindi or Portuguese... The tendency is to adopt a really neutral language.
maybe the real question is: should we confine people to just one language?
that's not what esperanto is about
@@hya2in8 oh but it is... If we allow a national/ethnic language to be THE worldlanguage, many of its native speakers will never learn a second language. If we make a neutral language THE worldlanguage, most people will not be able to afford the luxury of being monolingual
@@ronaldonmg did you just argue against your own point?
@@hya2in8 No, I'm arguing against the ambiguities, both in the title of the video ( some people might think that speaking Esperanto is about not speaking ethnic languages) and in your comment. You do know the difference between "about" and "for", right?
@@ronaldonmg seems rather dumb to do, nothing about the video implies that & if someone thought that was what it was saying they could watch it to learn esperanto is for cross-language communication & not whatever they might've thought it was
i've been here since 10 subscribers
Nah I am trying to learning it to travel and maybe pic up men. Also because I want to know if I can learn a new language without spending a ridiculus amount of time . And it has a big chinese comunity so..
Also if I ever have kids it would be cool yo have a "secret" family language.
Esperanto - język Podlasia
I think that the pace of globalization makes the fracturing of the language less of an issue. We live in the age of TV and movies, after all. People who speak Esperanto would consume Esperanto media from all over the world, so there would be plenty of opportunity for people to keep up to date with dialects. IMO, the actual issue with esperanto is its Eurocentrism. Local languages dying out in favor of a large unifying language might be good in the end, but it feels icky for the language that wins out to just essentially be European+, it makes it feel like imperialism won.
It's not that Eurocentric. It's European, sure, but not nearly enough to make Europeans at a huge advantage of learning it or anything
no, we should speak toki pona
What about Europanto? (yes, google it) A language many european wouldn't even need to learn to speak and understand (most) of it.
To pros and cons.
1. Problem with wierd symbols is exagregated. Now I can see so many cool symbols in my German keyboard that you probably cannot find as well (ä, ö, ü, ß), but you can still change a keyboard layout and apply some stickers if you need them.
2. East asiatic languages have so few cognates so if Esperanto replaces dankon and saluto with arigato and nihao it will not change a lot for japanese and chinese (don't even mention karean, vietnamese etc) feel any better. They aren't sharing as much as romano-germano-balto-slavo-hellinic anyway.
3. Real problem: people are not generally into learning and not into learning language in paricular (just check for school basics could prove my words, few people can few years after school e.g. balance a chimical equetion, solve a square equetion, answer trivial history questions and yes make a conversation in a forign language learned in school). Which will create a precondition there is no strong base to create content ans services to (English has natives, Esperanto not quite and wierdly distibuted), no content and services -> no reason (immediate reward for a casual user) to spend time and energy learning it -> no monetary reason to create content and services.
Conlang showcase?
Some dislike the accusative case, but what about the definite article? You would think someone from Poland would know better.
The real question is should we all be speaking toki pona
you want to limit speech to just 130 words? doubleplusgood...
Ĉu toki aŭ ne toki, tio estas la demando.
It would be hell for any international science/engineering student
Is there an ideal auxiliary language for the world?
No.
@@DarkVeghetta what about for certain regions?
@@nsawatchlistbait289 Potentially doable, but it entirely depends on the region. For regions that have similar linguistic roots without any outliers, you probably already have a pre-existing language that all are derived from in the first place. For balkanized regions... good luck with that.
More than likely, you'd be better off using whatever lingua franca was already popular at the time in that area of the world.
The only 'close-to-ideal' auxlang that I can think of is math, but that one's not really designed for normal communication in the first place, which is why it works as well as it does at it's particular task.
Saluton! Mi furzas bone.
In my opinion, yes, we should be speaking Esperanto. Even though it is really different from the East Asian languages, its grammar is still incredibly simple and is much easier than English. So it is still better. Its orthography is fine, and many languages use didactical marks, I am sure we'll figure out how to adapt them
What is Baguette? I'm not unknowledgeable about language but have never heard of that before.
He's just using a cliché in order to talk bout French xd, France is known for its Baguette
@@feliad6401 They're also known to be feggets.
This esperanto is nothing like english it is hard to understand and African asian and indigenous south american , north america are excluded. Proper natural languages are the way to go. If You go to asia , africa, europe and you use their local languages it goes to their heart
Interlangs are my favorite as well.
But just one thing about Esperanto.
Language names in Esperanto are written in lowercase. So "English" become "angla". - It makes no sense for a Romance-based language by a Romance-Slavic creator, of which all languages write language names in lowercase, would suddenly write language names in uppercase.
A counter argument is that this was never defined. Certainly, but it was never defined that the define article was supposed to be written in lowercase either. But you write "la", so you can write "angla" as well.
I find the majestic simplicity of Esperanto very attractive but I don't like the fact that its vocab is basically romance with a smattering of other eurolangs. A truly neutral auxlang cannot just mirror a natlang word stock. My preferred auxlang is Kah which is grammatically very simple (Kah is perhaps the only practical oligosynthetic language ever devised) and furnished with a fully original lexicon.
It is Latin based but the grammar is more of that of Chinese. Esperanto is fully fledged mature language with tradition, speakers, literature, art and history. No other auxiliary language has its popularity.
While I get the importance of having one language spoken by all, I don't get why it should be a European language. Why should the world be Euro centric?
A global language should be one that is the most suitable for a global language and that's easier to learn. Either create such a language from scratch or identify the best language among all natural languages
It's not really as European as a lot of critics like to claim. It still has a lot of non-European features, and some features are completely alien to all languages
0:33 sawatdi you guys
Saluton , mi estas esperantisto
Saluton!
Saluton, mi estas komencanto en la Esperanto lingvo, mi lernas Esperanto lingvo kun Duolingo.
jes jes mi estas esperantisto! mi povas kompreni esperanto
Kial vi estas geja?
Ive got it, Ive figured out how to make the perfect auxlang!. Write down the name of every single language and put them all in a big hat. Then whenever your deciding on an element of the auxlang pull from the hat and take the element from that language. Deciding on the vowels? List them out and pull from the hat to see if the pulled language has that vowel, if not its not in the auxlang. Same for consonants. How many pronouns are there? Hat pull. How are tense markers used? Hat pull. Sentence structure? HAT PULL! Itll give preference to noone and thus be terrible equally
Esperanto should be a mandatory subject taught in school in every country.
And people would enjoy it just as much as every other compulsory language course? :)
There is a computer program called tajpj with which the problem of the circumflexes on keyboard typing can be solved
Mi estas lerni parolas esperanton kaj tajpj funkcias ĝuste. Mia denaska lingvo estas hispana kaj mi kredas la problemoj de Esperanto estas pli malgrandajn ol la profitojn. Lernu Esperanton, ni faru la revo el Dr Esperanto reala!
Mi povas tajpi perfekte per mia poŝtelefono sed kiam mi uzas mian tekkomputilon mi uzas "Tajpi"
There is also this language Ido that never had this issue in the first place.
@@АлександрАлександров-щ7к8т Damn you got us there
@@АлександрАлександров-щ7к8т Except Ido IS actually insanely eurocentric
Make farsi the world language 👀
Yeah.
I heard to speak Arabic and speak Esperanto cuz had no Arabic long words or anything like that and you should get better at words
Esperanto is a dumb idea. If you want a good auxlang, sign languages are perfect for the job. Partially because sign language is basically a superpower (you can talk with people who can't hear you, you can talk with your mouth full, and you can talk without being noticed or overheard), and partially because many communities use sign languages already, even constructed ones in some cases.
sign languages are not perfect for radio-amateurs or correspondence
@@ronaldonmg nothing's perfect
And the blind people? What they would do?
@@Omouja whatever deaf people do for all the other auxlangs I guess
How would a signed IAL have any benefits over a spoken and written IAL? Sign languages are identical to spoken languages except for the medium, and the reason people around the world use sound to communicate is that it's better.
Akhem! SindariN, not SindariL.
So... I made multiple oopsies. My bad.
Elefen es plu bon multe per usada per un lingua franca, de mea opina.
La problemo estas ke elefen' preskaŭ nenion havas komunan kun la vera lingvafranka kiu ekzistis dum tiom da jarcentoj ĝis la fino de la otomana imperio preskaŭ ĉie apud la mediteraneo. Do elefen tute malhavas naturecon.
2:30
Jes
I appreciate your content - But I won't watch the imagery for more 10 minutes. It offends me somehow. :(
volapuke
vomitpuk
olapuke
0:40 yo as a South African please just use the flag 🇿🇦 because bro wtf is the transkei
Kvankam mi tre ŝatas Esperanton, mi komprenas kial ĝi supozeble ne estas la plej bona rimedo por internacia komunikado.
What's the prob ?
You can learn some basic latin languages + esperanto + some exotic other ones.
No, because it as an artificial tongue.
Not any more, learn about it before you speak. Esperanto is 140 years old and it was created by millions of Esperanto speakers just like any other natural language.
@@fitzburg63 barely
@@darius684 sure, sure, you are the expert.
@@fitzburg63 it hasn't evolved and it was made by somone you don't have to be a expert to know that
@@darius684 Fellow, don't school me about the language I speak for 45 years... you are ignoramus with no knowledge on Esperanto, go and educate yourself before you start commenting on the subject, because you write total BS.
Novosa
1000th like
It's just a second version of Spanish...
Really?
Americans
Esperanto iki, toki pona pona
you mean ike?
Esperanto is awful. I've always hated it. It doesn't even do well as a bridge language between all the European language families, since it leans so heavily on Romance languages. Uralic, Celtic, Slavic languages barely get any air time in it.
As a global lingua franca, it is worthless.
I'm surprised it's promotion was ever as successful as it was - which is to say, not very much.
Toss it in the waste bin and never look back.
Stop saying your utter BS, man - you don't know the language, so why do you talk about it as if you were an Esperanto expert?
bad conlang guy gets his fax wrong
I like to think that Esperanto is the perfect international language... for half of Europe, it should be an interlanguage.
Maybe if we creolized esperanto we could get a more intuitive grammar, and also wether to add more loanwoards of create a unique vocabulary, with simpler sounds.
NO
No, no, no
naaaaa, just use English, or German. They are the best sounding languages. Practice and don't have that flamboyant romance flare
No, they are NOT and they are 10 times more difficult than Esperanto. Besides learning Esperanto at young age opens the door to foreign languages.
toki pona would be a better auxlang than Esperanto tbh
no extreme eurocentrism
simple grammar
few sounds
few words
No, it would be not - Esperanto is fully fledged foreign language with community, literature, art, tradition. Its grammar is isolating like Chinese, so it is easy to learn by Asians, 10 times easier than obligatory English!!!
Nah its too simple
Those arguments against are pretty weak. Let me address some.
- Esperanto is not perfect. Well, no language is and probably there never will be one that is. Are we waiting for some divine intervention?
- grammar is too european. Nonsense. Several characteristics of Esperanto are found in Asian, African and Native-american languages.
- vocab is too european. Same goes for English, French, Spanish and Portuguese. Maybe things will change once other people get the confidence to introduce new words
- hard for non -IE speakers. Simply not true if compared to the bigger worldlanguages
- will evolve into dialects. Simply not true in practice. Esperantists want to be understood worldwide
- might hurt linguistinc diversity. patently false. It's the current hierarchy of languages that threatens the existence of "small" languages. If Esperanto or something similar would become the main international language, this would DECREASE the need for catalans to learn Spanish, the need for Scots to learn English, the need for Javanese to learn Bahasa Indonesia, the need for Tibetans to learn Mandarin, etc. No Esperantist over the age of 5 is monolingual, nor does any of them abandon their ethnic language. Just because there's a railway doesn't mean people are going to give up bicycles and rowboats
Zamenhof simply worked with what he knew
Esperanto isn't that commonly spoken so you would have to learn another language to get around
It is too european. esperanto was never build with African and asian and indigenous languages. It is better to learn proper natural languages
@@thato596 Have you maybe ever heard of...actually studying linguistics? Esperanto is agglutinative and isolative, which is found among many Asian and African languages, and it's also got free word order, which makes it extremely easy to learn for even non-Europeans who aren't used to SVO
@@kiwenmanisuno no it does not. And also it unfair to expect Africans and Asians to accept a language that is not build from their languages
@@thato596 Esperanto is literally agglutinative, that's found in Turkic, Finnic-Uralic and Iranic languages. Denying that is actually stupid
Or maybe you were denying the free word order thing, which is also another stupid claim because free word order means you can just speak in your native language's word order, while speaking the other language.
And, lastly, ffs, China and Japan have some of the biggest hotspots of Esperanto. China has the most Esperanto speakers (although the esperanto community of china is aging a lot) and Japan was one of the earliest countries to be introduced to Esperanto in Asia.
Not only that, but the UEA has hosted a lot of events in some African countries (despite backlash from the LGBTQ community, because african nations are..not very welcoming of queers and trans people)
Well Esperanto is shite, so nah, we should not.
@Just an alien with some internet access ne ci
@@amirsur2750 NE, VI AMBAŬ
@Deyvi :v Hahahha 😂, Mi sxatas lernas Esperanto.
Almenaŭ ĝi estas multe pli bona kiel internacia lingvo ol la angla!
Malgusta.
Good video
The answer to the question is no, but not because of Esperanto's flaws in particular. Esperanto does have a lot of flaws, but even if they were fixed Esperanto should still not become a universal language. Why? Because there should not be any universal language at all! That is an outdated Biblical idea that we need to move past.
World peace will be achieved by ending imperialism, not stamping out native languages by spreading a lingua franca. Linguistic diversity is not a problem to be solved. In the 1910s dozens of languages were spoken in Vienna and this was not a limitation on intellectual progress. Just get a mate to translate for you, it genuinely isn't too hard.
Also, even if an international trade language was necessary, it wouldn't need to be spoken in homes. We need to fight to prevent language death not be lazy monolingual brainlets
Jes