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.

As a Portuguese speaker, hearing you say "who uses X for a sound?" was pretty weird. We use X all the time. It's more frequent than K, W and Y at least, which are only used in loanwords.

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.

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.

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.

It is easy to learn. I use it daily for reading and videos. I occasionally talk on chat platforms. It is fun.

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.

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.

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.

Very cool of you to provide the time stamp, and ask that people still give the watch time. I won’t skip through. ❤

"look at your keyboard". i have all of these on my keyboard + skill issue

Esperanto estas multe pli facile lernebla ol la angla. Saluton Al Esperantistoj!

Yes sir I am learning esperanto because is very easy to speak 🤗

@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.)

Good luck with your channel!

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."

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'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

(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 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.

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)?

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

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

As a fluent Baguette speaker and pretty-damn-proficient Lojban speaker (yes, really!), I can confirm that English is stinky.

this is mostly just discussing here, I love the idea of an international language that can help bridge gaps between communities that wouldn't have been able to communicate before, but its definitely not for EVERYONE. it would take a lot of really large influencers to even affect the Esperanto speaking community numbers that well in my opinion. For example, at the time of writing this, there are more people learning Klingon (star trek language) on Duolingo than there are Esperanto speakers on the platform. Duolingo surely helped expose more people to the language, but its far from a popular choice. Also this is just my subjective opinion here but depending on who is speaking Esperanto, it can sound insanely unnatural to me, unless they really try to make it flow out of their mouth well. I also love Toki Pona, which I understand is far too simple to ever discuss scientific and political views in great detail (doesn't stop them from trying) but I also find it fascinating with its multiple writing systems, and its use for just everyday non-specific conversations about life. Toki Pona is a beautiful artistic experimental language but it isn't perfect.

Conlang showcase?

Thank you for talking about Esperanto more respectfully than Conlang Critic.

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.

i've been here since 10 subscribers

Is there an ideal auxiliary language for the world?

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?

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 like that he doesn't even try to lie to get watch time

Personally Baguette is my favorite language.

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.

Mi jam delonge parolas Esperanton kaj mi estas tre feliĉa pri tio.

What about Europanto? (yes, google it) A language many european wouldn't even need to learn to speak and understand (most) of it.

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.

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

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.

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

maybe the real question is: should we confine people to just one language?

Interlangs are my favorite as well.

The real question is should we all be speaking toki pona

I'm learning Esperanto

Saluton! Mi furzas bone.

Esperanto should be a mandatory subject taught in school in every country.

Jes

Yeah.

Elefen es plu bon multe per usada per un lingua franca, de mea opina.

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.

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

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.

What is Baguette? I'm not unknowledgeable about language but have never heard of that before.

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.

0:33 sawatdi you guys

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

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

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.

Esperanto - język Podlasia

1000th like

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.

Make farsi the world language 👀

I appreciate your content - But I won't watch the imagery for more 10 minutes. It offends me somehow. :(

no, we should speak toki pona

2:30

Akhem! SindariN, not SindariL.

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!

Kvankam mi tre ŝatas Esperanton, mi komprenas kial ĝi supozeble ne estas la plej bona rimedo por internacia komunikado.

Novosa

Saluton , mi estas esperantisto

What's the prob ? You can learn some basic latin languages + esperanto + some exotic other ones.

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.

0:40 yo as a South African please just use the flag 🇿🇦 because bro wtf is the transkei

volapuke

Esperanto iki, toki pona pona

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

Some dislike the accusative case, but what about the definite article? You would think someone from Poland would know better.

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

No, because it as an artificial tongue.

It's just a second version of Spanish...

NO

No, no, no

toki pona would be a better auxlang than Esperanto tbh no extreme eurocentrism simple grammar few sounds few words

naaaaa, just use English, or German. They are the best sounding languages. Practice and don't have that flamboyant romance flare

bad conlang guy gets his fax wrong

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.

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

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

Well Esperanto is shite, so nah, we should not.

Jes