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From the article: "By the time Esperanto got out of the gate, another language was already emerging as an international medium: English." Yep. Esperanto is toas

From the article: "By the time Esperanto got out of the gate, another language was already emerging as an international medium: English." Yep. Esperanto is toast as a world interlanguage compared to English. The number of new speakers added to English each year just by natural increase of households in which English is spoken as a home language is, matched for levels of proficiency, comfortably greater than the total worldwide number of speakers of Esperanto. (The same is true, of course, of Modern Standard Chinese (Mandarin), Spanish, and Hindustani.) English is by far the language of choice in "interlanguage" contexts, as for example when a native speaker of Korean travels to Taiwan (I have seen this many times) or when a native speaker of Japanese travels to China (I have seen this too) or even when educated native speakers of various Sinitic languages meet up and some are not proficient in standard Mandarin (I have seen this plenty of times too). The use of English as an interlanguage in India alone (where mandating Hindi as the sole interregional language would be very politically contentious) ensures that English will continue to grow and thrive, even if the United States and Britain somehow disappeared from the world. (I have been watching a lot of films from India recently, as my town is blessed with more than one cinema that show current films from India, and even in a movie set in India with entirely Indian characters, you will hear little snatches of English embedded in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, or Malayalam dialog, and you will always see signs in English in street scenes even of very rural places.) So, yes, what will the world speak only a century from now, as the article asks? Plenty of other languages, for sure, and I for one am glad I devoted years to learning Chinese and German and other languages, but there will be more and more people speaking English in more and more places as the years go by.

jodrellblank 12y ago
On the other hand, Esperanto is the only constructed language to have got anywhere at all, and is outlasting those smaller languages that are going extinct every few weeks and those natural languages on life support kept around by hobbyists with too much power, like Welsh. It hasn't become a dominant inter language (yet), but it also hasn't failed, and nothing has come along to change that Esperanto is dramatically less effort to learn to usable levels than any evolved language.
- tokenadult 12y ago
  Esperanto is dramatically less effort to learn to usable levels than any evolved language That is a frequent claim in the Esperantist literature, one I encountered when I studied Esperanto, but it is dramatically untrue. There are very few people who have taken up Esperanto who can communicate well with it even after much effort. That's especially true for people of the majority of the world's native language backgrounds.[1] By the way, how would you write your whole comment in Esperanto? [1] http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/ http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/
  - jodrellblank 12y ago
    By the way, how would you write your whole comment in Esperanto? I would struggle, because I'm not a fluent Esperantist; it would come out be omething like: Alian ideon. la Esperanton estas la sola konstruitan lingvon kio havas multaj da parolistoj en multaj loĝoj. Ĝi ekzistas, dum ĉiu semajno aliajn malgrandajn lingvojn mortas, kaj ĝi havas pli vivo ol tiojn denaskajn lingvojn kio vivas de amatoristoj kun tro influo - ekzemple kimra lingvo. La Esperanton neestas la plej uzata mondlingvon (nuntempe), sed ĝi ne mortas. Nenio ŝanĝis la fakto ke vi povas lerni ĝin, ĝis vi bonparolas, en malpli tempo ol iu denaska lingvo. -- [I dropped English idioms "on the other hand" - which hand?, "have got anywhere" - languages don't go anywhere, some of the metaphoric stuff about a language being alive and "on life support". If I've written it reasonably well it should carry the same general meaning. Transliterating this comment back to English: Another idea. Esperanto is the only constructed language which has many speakers in many places. It exists while every week other small languages die, and it has more life than those native languages which live by amateurs with too much influence - for example Welsh. Esperanto is not the most used world-language (currently), but it is not dead. Nothing changed the fact that you can learn it, until you speak well, in less time than any native language. ]
    - tokenadult 12y ago
      I could surely learn Dutch to given level of proficiency faster than I could learn Esperanto to the same level of proficiency. And what's really sad about that for Esperanto is that learning Dutch would give me access to more speakers in more places than learning Esperanto does.
deleted 12y ago
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jodrellblank 12y ago

On the other hand, Esperanto is the only constructed language to have got anywhere at all, and is outlasting those smaller languages that are going extinct every few weeks and those natural languages on life support kept around by hobbyists with too much power, like Welsh. It hasn't become a dominant inter language (yet), but it also hasn't failed, and nothing has come along to change that Esperanto is dramatically less effort to learn to usable levels than any evolved language.

tokenadult 12y ago
Esperanto is dramatically less effort to learn to usable levels than any evolved language That is a frequent claim in the Esperantist literature, one I encountered when I studied Esperanto, but it is dramatically untrue. There are very few people who have taken up Esperanto who can communicate well with it even after much effort. That's especially true for people of the majority of the world's native language backgrounds.[1] By the way, how would you write your whole comment in Esperanto? [1] http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/ http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/
- jodrellblank 12y ago
  By the way, how would you write your whole comment in Esperanto? I would struggle, because I'm not a fluent Esperantist; it would come out be omething like: Alian ideon. la Esperanton estas la sola konstruitan lingvon kio havas multaj da parolistoj en multaj loĝoj. Ĝi ekzistas, dum ĉiu semajno aliajn malgrandajn lingvojn mortas, kaj ĝi havas pli vivo ol tiojn denaskajn lingvojn kio vivas de amatoristoj kun tro influo - ekzemple kimra lingvo. La Esperanton neestas la plej uzata mondlingvon (nuntempe), sed ĝi ne mortas. Nenio ŝanĝis la fakto ke vi povas lerni ĝin, ĝis vi bonparolas, en malpli tempo ol iu denaska lingvo. -- [I dropped English idioms "on the other hand" - which hand?, "have got anywhere" - languages don't go anywhere, some of the metaphoric stuff about a language being alive and "on life support". If I've written it reasonably well it should carry the same general meaning. Transliterating this comment back to English: Another idea. Esperanto is the only constructed language which has many speakers in many places. It exists while every week other small languages die, and it has more life than those native languages which live by amateurs with too much influence - for example Welsh. Esperanto is not the most used world-language (currently), but it is not dead. Nothing changed the fact that you can learn it, until you speak well, in less time than any native language. ]
  - tokenadult 12y ago
    I could surely learn Dutch to given level of proficiency faster than I could learn Esperanto to the same level of proficiency. And what's really sad about that for Esperanto is that learning Dutch would give me access to more speakers in more places than learning Esperanto does.

deleted 12y ago

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