It is ridiculously simple. Honestly, I don’t understand why it wasn’t chosen as a European language. We could have had an easy-to-learn, inclusive language that avoids grammatical irregularities. it doesn’t give an advantage to certain nations or disadvantages to others and as an artificial language it doesn’t prefer any culture over another. Just imagine how easy it would be to learn other languages if you already had that foundation. The pronunciation is simple, and even people outside the EU have advocated for it, since it is easy to learn worldwide. I speak German, English, and a little French, Japanese, and Spanish; Esperanto is far easier than any of those languages.
Because language is cultural and thus doesn’t lend itseld to artificiality. Not that it doesn’t happen but it is unpredictable as to what is adopted and what is left in the dust.
Most European languages are some almagation and standardization of a patchwork of dialects. English destroyed scots, Tours french destroyed occitan, hochdeutsch largely displaced bavarian, etc. The reason is the dramatic increase in state power in the 19th century (therefore giving importance to the language of administration), combined with policies of “cultural unification” and nation building. So there in fact very much is artificiality in language that is predictable.
The reason Esperanto wasn’t adopted by states when it was invented is because internationalism was seen as either an utopia or a threat by states. The reason it isn’t adopted by the UE now is because it would be a highly visible and unpopular move that would take decades to bear fruit and therefore politicians will never support it. The entire UE therefore learns english, massively increasing the influence of people who brand themselves its enemies.
That’s because it wasn’t chosen as a European language. If it were, more people would learn it.
Oh you’re a french businessman looking to expand into Spain? Sorry, we don’t know french, you’ll have to use one of the official languages to do the paperwork, which includes esperanto.
You would need to pay a spanish-speaking lawyer. Then a German one, then an English one. Or you could pay a single esperanto-speaking one that would be accepted in any European country.
This would incentivize lawyers to learn esperanto. You could do similar things for other fields. Eventually (after a LOT of time), it would just make sense to do daily life in esperanto.
It was a good idea for the time it was created, when Europeans were constantly killing eachother all over the place.
Finally, it was forming the EU that got them to stop. So creating a common language kinda felt unnecessary after that.
No the grammar will be easily understood to anyone having a language with an accusative morphosyntactic alignment, that is, by far the most widespread one. The phonetic inventory is quite limited, so perfectly learnable for every culture. For the vocabulary I agree, but it’s linked to the most spoken languages of the world, so, not that bad.
There are 28 phonemes in Esperanto. 44 in English. 51 in Polish (probably less, in fact, I don’t speak Polish maybe someone who does could correct me?).
Haven’t seen any vocabulary from Mandarin in Esperanto.
I know this is 13d old, but language discussions are bait for me.
Disclaimer: I’m discussing this matter from the PoV of conlang designing. I’m aware there are more factors involved in adoption of auxlangs than just the design. I’m not shitting on anyone who wants to learn Esperanto.
Esperanto’s 28 phonemes inventory isn’t “small”; it’s “average”, by world standards. Refer to WALS chapter 1 and chapter 2. Note both English and Polish are poor points of reference because Indo-European languages are strongly biased towards huge phonemic inventories, specially in the European sprachbund.
And average is actually subpar in this case, as you want to stick to consonants most people can tell apart; cue to the /b/ vs. /v/ distinction for Spanish speakers, or /x/ vs. /h/ for English speakers, or /s/ vs. /ʃ/ for Japanese speakers.
I think a 12+5 system like /m n pʰ tʰ kʰ b d g f s h r a e i o u/ would be the sweet spot between not making it too large (so it’s likely to hit contrasts you don’t make) vs. making it too small (so it becomes unflexible). Even then there are some sour points (Arabic speakers for example would have a hard time with /pʰ/).
A few things I’m not including, present in Esperanto:
/w j/ ⟨ŭ j⟩ - it’s better to make syllabification non-phonemic, and let people render /i u/ as [j w] if they want. Much like you mention for ⟨ankaŭ⟩.
/v z ʒ/ - fricative voicing contrast isn’t that common, and this allows the leftover fricatives to adopt voiced allophones if you so desire; specially useful if you’re adapting Romance words with ⟨s⟩ /z/. They can be adapted as /b f u/, /s/ and /i s/ respectively.
/ʃ/ ⟨ĉ⟩ - [ʃ] is excessively common as an allophone of /s/ before front vowels. Specially high ones. Make it /s/.
/t͡s t͡ʃ d͡ʒ/ ⟨c ĉ ĝ⟩ - affricates are better handled as simple sequences of phonemes; render them as /ts ts ds/ (remember what I said about voiced allophones? Nothing wrong if you pronounce /ds/ as [dz], you know…). /d͡ʒ/ could be also rendered as /di/.
/l/ vs. /r/ distinction — I swear, why do people think it’s a good idea? Be glad Esperanto was made by Zamenhof, and not some random Portuguese speaker; otherwise you’d see /ɾ r l ʎ/ instead with /r/ allophonically [h].
A point not-often-mentioned in Esperanto’s design are the phonotactics. Zamenhof never explicit them out, but in practice max onset is 3C (see: ⟨skribi⟩ ) and max coda is CC (see: ⟨ekster⟩ ). I might be biased but I think anything past CCVC is already overboard, there’s Russian/English/Georgian if you want to cram 9001 consonants per syllable.
For the rest, a language do need some diversity in its phonology or the words would have to be very long and least recognizable
“Long” as amount of syllables isn’t that important. When the phonology and phonotactics are simple, people tend to speak more syllables per minute; cue to Spanish and Japanese speakers.
Regarding recognisability, the best thing that can be done is to have predictable rules on how to adapt borrowings.
Have you looked at which phonemes Esperanto has? If you look me in the eyes and say an international language needs to have a distinction between [h] (written as “h”) and [x] (written as “ĥ”), I can only make a conclusion you’re trolling. See also distinctions between:
fricatives and affricates
voiced and voiceless plosives
“r” and “l”
“v” and “w” (which is also for some ungodly reason written as “ŭ”)
We only need “th” to become a full fledged abomination.
Also, yes, all is not most. But it is concerning if the “most” conveniently all happen to be languages from the same family, spoken in the same relatively small region.
Punjabi speakers will find Esperanto easier than any natural language. It will be harder for them than for, say, a French speaker, but in the absolute it will be easy for both.
I’ve never looked at Esperanto. Is it at least easy to learn and use?
I have to look up it’s history, like who and when thought it’s a good idea, and why it didn’t work out. Sounds like a fun rabbit hole.
It is ridiculously simple. Honestly, I don’t understand why it wasn’t chosen as a European language. We could have had an easy-to-learn, inclusive language that avoids grammatical irregularities. it doesn’t give an advantage to certain nations or disadvantages to others and as an artificial language it doesn’t prefer any culture over another. Just imagine how easy it would be to learn other languages if you already had that foundation. The pronunciation is simple, and even people outside the EU have advocated for it, since it is easy to learn worldwide. I speak German, English, and a little French, Japanese, and Spanish; Esperanto is far easier than any of those languages.
Because language is cultural and thus doesn’t lend itseld to artificiality. Not that it doesn’t happen but it is unpredictable as to what is adopted and what is left in the dust.
Most European languages are some almagation and standardization of a patchwork of dialects. English destroyed scots, Tours french destroyed occitan, hochdeutsch largely displaced bavarian, etc. The reason is the dramatic increase in state power in the 19th century (therefore giving importance to the language of administration), combined with policies of “cultural unification” and nation building. So there in fact very much is artificiality in language that is predictable.
The reason Esperanto wasn’t adopted by states when it was invented is because internationalism was seen as either an utopia or a threat by states. The reason it isn’t adopted by the UE now is because it would be a highly visible and unpopular move that would take decades to bear fruit and therefore politicians will never support it. The entire UE therefore learns english, massively increasing the influence of people who brand themselves its enemies.
The cultural erasure of the past were monarchy run genocides…
It has the same problem as Lojban - you can only use it to communicate with the sort of people that learn Esperanto.
That’s because it wasn’t chosen as a European language. If it were, more people would learn it.
Oh you’re a french businessman looking to expand into Spain? Sorry, we don’t know french, you’ll have to use one of the official languages to do the paperwork, which includes esperanto.
You would need to pay a spanish-speaking lawyer. Then a German one, then an English one. Or you could pay a single esperanto-speaking one that would be accepted in any European country.
This would incentivize lawyers to learn esperanto. You could do similar things for other fields. Eventually (after a LOT of time), it would just make sense to do daily life in esperanto.
Had it been chosen as a European language and been adopted by a large population, it would quickly stop being simple.
as long as it’s European, of course
It was a good idea for the time it was created, when Europeans were constantly killing eachother all over the place.
Finally, it was forming the EU that got them to stop. So creating a common language kinda felt unnecessary after that.
Do you know if anyone has tried a similar language project that takes the entire globe into account?
There were many, many attempts. Most with a European bias tbh, but not all
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_constructed_languages#Auxiliary_languages
Thankyou vm for the references to go through. Cheers. Fascinating topic for me, who has never learned any language other than English.
Indo-European. That is, 3.4 billion native speakers. And only for the vocabulary and writing system: the grammar is pretty universal.
Not every Indo-European is going to have a compatible phonetic inventory or vocabulary. It’s specifically very limited to Europe, as is grammar.
No the grammar will be easily understood to anyone having a language with an accusative morphosyntactic alignment, that is, by far the most widespread one. The phonetic inventory is quite limited, so perfectly learnable for every culture. For the vocabulary I agree, but it’s linked to the most spoken languages of the world, so, not that bad.
If you’re Polish
Haven’t seen any vocabulary from Mandarin in Esperanto
There are 28 phonemes in Esperanto. 44 in English. 51 in Polish (probably less, in fact, I don’t speak Polish maybe someone who does could correct me?).
All ≠ most.
I know this is 13d old, but language discussions are bait for me.
Disclaimer: I’m discussing this matter from the PoV of conlang designing. I’m aware there are more factors involved in adoption of auxlangs than just the design. I’m not shitting on anyone who wants to learn Esperanto.
Esperanto’s 28 phonemes inventory isn’t “small”; it’s “average”, by world standards. Refer to WALS chapter 1 and chapter 2. Note both English and Polish are poor points of reference because Indo-European languages are strongly biased towards huge phonemic inventories, specially in the European sprachbund.
And average is actually subpar in this case, as you want to stick to consonants most people can tell apart; cue to the /b/ vs. /v/ distinction for Spanish speakers, or /x/ vs. /h/ for English speakers, or /s/ vs. /ʃ/ for Japanese speakers.
I think a 12+5 system like /m n pʰ tʰ kʰ b d g f s h r a e i o u/ would be the sweet spot between not making it too large (so it’s likely to hit contrasts you don’t make) vs. making it too small (so it becomes unflexible). Even then there are some sour points (Arabic speakers for example would have a hard time with /pʰ/).
A few things I’m not including, present in Esperanto:
A point not-often-mentioned in Esperanto’s design are the phonotactics. Zamenhof never explicit them out, but in practice max onset is 3C (see: ⟨skribi⟩ ) and max coda is CC (see: ⟨ekster⟩ ). I might be biased but I think anything past CCVC is already overboard, there’s Russian/English/Georgian if you want to cram 9001 consonants per syllable.
“Long” as amount of syllables isn’t that important. When the phonology and phonotactics are simple, people tend to speak more syllables per minute; cue to Spanish and Japanese speakers.
Regarding recognisability, the best thing that can be done is to have predictable rules on how to adapt borrowings.
Have you looked at which phonemes Esperanto has? If you look me in the eyes and say an international language needs to have a distinction between [h] (written as “h”) and [x] (written as “ĥ”), I can only make a conclusion you’re trolling. See also distinctions between:
We only need “th” to become a full fledged abomination.
Also, yes, all is not most. But it is concerning if the “most” conveniently all happen to be languages from the same family, spoken in the same relatively small region.
oh sure, i bet punjabi speakers find esperanto trivial to learn, and the latin script it’s written in just feels so familiar to them.
Punjabi speakers will find Esperanto easier than any natural language. It will be harder for them than for, say, a French speaker, but in the absolute it will be easy for both.
Hitler and Stalin. That’s why.