Should We be Speaking Esperanto? | READ THE DESCRIPTION

I MADE AN OOPSIE:
In the beginning section where I am talking about the differences between the types of conlangs, I made some mistakes in the Interlang/Altlang section. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING, and I used "Interlang" to refer to both. An interlang is an auxiliary language based off of real world languages. An altlang is not intended for global cross-cultural communication. So, Esperanto has way more interlang aspects than altlang aspects, because it draws from many natlangs, and honestly it can be considered a cross between and auxlang and interlang. I hope that clears everything up.

This is the most labour intensive video I've done yet- I even wrote a script! :0
I tried to make it so you needed no previous knowledge of linguistics.
Hopefully I can get another video out before April, and I already have some ideas. As it currently stands, I don't really know what else to do for HTMAAC. If I ever choose to redo some of those videos, it's going to be after I get some other videos done.

[goofygooberyeah]

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.

[tomtomtrent]

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.

[CheLanguages]

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.

[MrRyanroberson]

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

[justanotherguy]

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.

[sremacsremac]

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

[bpeeluk]

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.

[zuhurayen]

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.

[lugeushqimi]

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

[jedgrahek]

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.

[tessa]

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

[seanoriain]

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.

[ZephLodwick]

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."

[martinhumphreys]

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

[JeanBaptisteDesJardins]

I have been learning Esperanto for four days and I’m having a lot of fun

[Liggliluff]

(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.

[sallyjones]

@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.)

[luikas]

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

[laurapills]

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

[rapn]

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