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> Why hasn't Esperanto caught on? Because no one speaks it, and the ones who do don't have the influence to push it into the mainstream. One reason is that man

by wolfgke 11y ago

> Why hasn't Esperanto caught on? Because no one speaks it, and the ones who do don't have the influence to push it into the mainstream. One reason is that many 20th-century totalitarian regimes had a problem with Esperanto: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Responses_of_20th-century_totalitarian_regimes_to_Esperanto https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Responses_of_20th-ce... lists Nazi Germany, Francoist Spain, Soviet Union and Imperial Japan.

josinalvo 11y ago
Ok. Why the downvotes? Is this untrue? If true, though not a good enough reason by itself, it is very interesting
- wolfgke 11y ago
  I also don't understand why at the beginning I was downvoted...
panglott 11y ago
Esperanto's success is really astonishing. Esperanto is widely spoken around the world, and has continued to gain new speakers and even many native speakers for over a century. No constructed language can boast anything like that. (IIRC it is widely spoken in China as an alternative to English.) Esperanto is only considered a "failure" in terms of its original goal of becoming the second language of every educated person in the world. Not even any natural language, even such a powerful one as English, has ever achieved anything so ambitious.
- wolfgke 11y ago
  > Esperanto's success is really astonishing. Esperanto is widely spoken around the world, and has continued to gain new speakers and even many native speakers for over a century. No constructed language can boast anything like that. What evidence do you have the the number of Esperanto speakers are increasing? The best source I could find > http://linguistics.stackexchange.com/a/1480 http://linguistics.stackexchange.com/a/1480 thinks that this question is very difficult to answer: Depending on the data that one considers the number of Esperanto speaker can be increasing or decreasing (first diagram hints at a strongly decreasing number since about 1990, second at an slowly, but steadily increasing number).
  - panglott 11y ago
    "Gaining new speakers" is a less strong claim than "speaker population is increasing".

by wolfgke 11y ago

josinalvo 11y ago

Ok. Why the downvotes? Is this untrue? If true, though not a good enough reason by itself, it is very interesting

wolfgke 11y ago
I also don't understand why at the beginning I was downvoted...

panglott 11y ago

Esperanto's success is really astonishing. Esperanto is widely spoken around the world, and has continued to gain new speakers and even many native speakers for over a century. No constructed language can boast anything like that. (IIRC it is widely spoken in China as an alternative to English.) Esperanto is only considered a "failure" in terms of its original goal of becoming the second language of every educated person in the world. Not even any natural language, even such a powerful one as English, has ever achieved anything so ambitious.

wolfgke 11y ago
> Esperanto's success is really astonishing. Esperanto is widely spoken around the world, and has continued to gain new speakers and even many native speakers for over a century. No constructed language can boast anything like that. What evidence do you have the the number of Esperanto speakers are increasing? The best source I could find > http://linguistics.stackexchange.com/a/1480 http://linguistics.stackexchange.com/a/1480 thinks that this question is very difficult to answer: Depending on the data that one considers the number of Esperanto speaker can be increasing or decreasing (first diagram hints at a strongly decreasing number since about 1990, second at an slowly, but steadily increasing number).
- panglott 11y ago
  "Gaining new speakers" is a less strong claim than "speaker population is increasing".