Esperanto

MatC · 156450. Wed Mar 14, 2007 8:27 am

Yes, except that I’ve just invented this new thing called “the internet,” which - if I can only get it into production - would allow people in different countries to contact each other for the purpose of making travel arrangements. Early experiments suggest this might be an even more reliable method of contacting other esperantists than wandering around Umbria, or even Cumbria.

eggshaped · 156455. Wed Mar 14, 2007 8:33 am

OK, but if I randomly bump into a german on euromyths.com, there's still a pretty unlikely chance that (s)he speaks esperanto.

If esperanto was just a way of getting a small group of like-minded individuals together, then great (though I think we have klingon for that) but was it not supposed to be a universal thing to bring together mankind?

MatC · 156458. Wed Mar 14, 2007 8:48 am

Ah, I see what you mean - yes, it's intended to be taught in schools as the first foreign language. But you're confusing the campaign for a thing (such as general suffrage) with the effects of the completed thing (such as parliamentary democracy). You can't reasonably judge the success of the latter during the former.

Gray · 156481. Wed Mar 14, 2007 9:38 am

There's a very long history of telecommunications technology wiping out small languages, even ones that evolved naturally and were at one time quite widespread.

MatC · 1181289. Tue Mar 08, 2016 10:54 am

A viewer named D. Dobson MD, from Naperville IL, writes to offer a friendly correction: the Esperantist state mentioned above should be Amikejo.

http://bigthink.com/strange-maps/41-amikejo-the-worlds-first-and-only-esperanto-state