This summer, I met a guy from Iceland whose English was perfect because they do not dub TV shows or films in Iceland. Additionally, he knew more about American sports, politics and culture than any of us Americans did. Everytime he had a new fact, I was amazed.

I especially enjoyed your mention of cultural imperialism in the last sentence. An/a observation/statement/connection that is not often made in “this day and age.”

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You are absolutely correct that not all rank-and-file Canadians are truly bilingual, even though they tend to be much less provincial than the Americans in their thinking. I agree that the chances to promote bilingualism in North America (let alone trilingualism) are currently remote, particularly among English speakers, who have no real incentive (at present) to learn anything else. In this regard, I believe you will see rapid cultural change in North America over the coming decades, driven in large part by the realities of globalization. What I was positing was not the current state of affairs, but a goal moving toward the future.

I completely understand the reasoning behind the design decisions for Esperanto. Unfortunately (for Esperanto, anyway), that simply buttresses my original argument. I am not arguing that Esperanto should have been designed as a smorgsabord of world languages (of which English, ironically enough, is already the best example today, having borrowed liberally from most major languages in both place and time). Instead, Esperanto is doomed to worldwide failure for the very reason that, at heart, it is simply another “me too” eastern European language, regardless of the worthy aspirations of its creator.

Another argument that has been made for Esperanto on this forum and elsewhere is the supposed ease of learning of Esperanto, due to the regularity and simplicity of its constructions, which were designed to not favor one eastern European language over another. This kind of argument, although initially appealing to the analytical mind, is heavily rooted in 19th century ways of thinking about motivation and learning.

It doesn’t really matter whether it takes a 100 or a 1000 hours to attain book proficiency in Esperanto or any other language. If someone is emotionally motivated to learn a language, the necessary time will be used. A small minority of people are, of course, engaged by the ideals associated with the Esperanto movement, but that simply is not going to work for the vast majority of people on this planet, let alone North America. As Pimsleur and others have discovered, language is much more effectively learned by hearing and speaking than any amount of book learning (which many ESL programs unfortunately emphasize). The need to communicate with the Spanish speakers in the Mexican grocery store or the Chinese speakers in your business partner’s factory is far more motivational to most folks than Wilsonian ideals of international harmony.

But now, let’s say the Esperanto movement is somehow successful, and billions (or even millions) of people start speaking Esperanto. What do you suppose would happen? Well, those horrible, illogical, emotional masses (tongue firmly in cheek) would develop regional variations, start coining words, borrow words as needed from (gasp!) other languages, and very quickly make a joke of the whole idea of Esperanto being the very flower of “simplicity”. It would be something like someone from Iowa trying to communicate with someone from the Philippines, where constructions and vocabulary from both “standard” English and Filipino are liberally sprinkled into each other.

The proponents of the metric system (which I support) in America have typically made the same mistake. They appeal primarily to logic and reason, but most people are swayed (for better or worse) by feeling and emotion. The only reason that people make a commitment to anything is that they feel an emotional connection to the underlying goal. Language learning is inextricably linked to cultural awareness: the learner of the French language, for example, is motivated by the new ability to engage meaningfully with the French culture.

Universal North American trilingualism can (and I believe will) succeed eventually, but it will, of course, require an initial commitment from probably some future generation, possibly after a period of increasing popularity and awareness. For example, if all three languages (English, Spanish, French) were required and taught in the schools, with concomitant support from society at large, children, who are natural language learners, would attain such fluency almost transparently.

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The word-stock of Esperanto was selected a priori on the basis of ‘maximum internationality’. While the phonology is perhaps reminiscent of a Slavic language, word-building is similar to what happens in Turkish or Hungarian. More than half of the world’s population now speaks an Indo-European language. Why should a common second language such as Esperanto not reflect this? While including 5 words from Zulu, 10 from Inuit, or adding the Javanese system of honorifics, might be more politically correct these days, it certainly wouldn’t make the language easier to learn.

The reasons for Esperanto, as opposed to the hegemony of one ethnic language (and thus unfair advantages accruing to one ethnic group, and linguistic discrimination for the other 90% of the world’s population), can be read in the Prague Manifesto:
http://lingvo.org

S/he further asserts:
>Most educated Canadians (and all national politicians, with rare exceptions) know both English and French fluently,

You are be right about the politicians, but you are (unfortunately!) way off base concerning ‘educated Canadians’!! I can think of very few university colleagues on the west coast able to give an interview in the other official language. If we can’t even get people to become bilingual, what hope have we for trilingualism (as promoted in the EU)? Get real!

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Philosophers disagree on how to determine what should be, but one of the most widely accepted is Jeremy Bentham’s “The greatest good for the greatest number”.

The greatest good, in the context of language, is to both be able to maintain one’s own language and to understand and be understood by everyone.

The greatest number who could enjoy the greatest good, is the ten billion or so people on Earth, plus the billions not yet born.

Therefore, what should be the World’s international language is the one which everyone can learn, in addition to their own language, at the lowest cost in time and money i.e. Esperanto.

This is hardly a matter of fun: Never before has the World had to sustain 10 billion people, less than a lifetime ago there were only 2 billion of us. We speak 6, 000 languages, and more and more of us want fridges. We Earthlings have things to discuss and much to learn in limited time. The sooner we fix our communication problem the better we are going to deal with the challenges and opportunities ahead.

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Its cultural substrate is all that is common to humanity: parenthood, love, jealousy, ambition,…and it provides a means to discuss and understand less widespread cultural elements.

Esperanto is easier to learn if you already use an alphabet something like ours but it is the most equally-available language on Earth. Unless you want to start from scratch, anything else you propose will add a heavier learning burden. (Ido may be the exception).

“A more realistic goal is for everyone to at least learn the languages of greatest regional significance. ”

I doubt that that is more realistic: for one thing, it asks for a lot more of people’s time, probably about 400 hours each for the European ones you mention, whereas Esperanto would take you 100 hours. Who do you know with 700 hours just waiting to be filled? Plus, you still only have access to a slice of the world, and only that slice gets access to you.

If you imagine this learning happening in schools, what subjects will students drop in order to fit in all these extra hours of languages?

And what about the World’s most disadvantaged people, who speak minority languages and will never be able to afford even 400 hours (not enough for them because they are not starting from a European base) to participate in the World community. Is it ok to write them off?

“All three major countries of North America (USA, Canada, Mexico) should aspire for all their citizens to be fluently trilingual (English, French, Spanish). Ideally, all North American web sites should also include a language toolbar, similar to European web sites, to select among those three languages.”

If everyone speaks all three languages, companies would be wasting money to translate into three languages, as any one would do. On the other hand, if all sites were trilingual, users would have no motivation to be trilingual because any one language would do.

On the other hand, businesses investing 100 hours to offer their pages in Esperanto, make their information available to anyone in the World willing to invest 100 hours in international communication.

Sounds more realistic to me.

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A more realistic goal is for everyone to at least learn the languages of greatest regional significance. The Europeans tend to be ahead of the curve on this point, with most knowing at least two or three languages (typically their own, plus some combination of English, French, German, or Italian). A good percentage of European web sites (the EU site is a good example) include a toolbar on every page which allows the user to instantly switch to a different language.

In North America, unlike Europe, only three languages predominate: English; Spanish; and French. Most educated Canadians (and all national politicians, with rare exceptions) know both English and French fluently, whereas most educated Mexicans speak both Spanish and English. Most Americans, however, even if highly educated, speak only English fluently, unless from a Latino or immigrant background.

All three major countries of North America (USA, Canada, Mexico) should aspire for all their citizens to be fluently trilingual (English, French, Spanish). Ideally, all North American web sites should also include a language toolbar, similar to European web sites, to select among those three languages.

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Did you know that a teaching resource has just been created that allows any English-speaking elementary school teacher to teach the class Esperanto, whilst learning along-side them?

We’re looking for a US distributor, government or commercial.

Search “Mondeto” for more info.

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Probeer Esperanto en je wordt een ander mens. Verbluffend.

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