I've got an Esperanto keyboard on my phone, and probably should install one on my laptop, too. Esperanto is a language I would like to learn, and I've been giving myself a little Esperanto reading practice with a translation of the Sailor Moon manga.
There are as I understand it two main ideological currents in the Esperanto movement: Raumism and Finvenkism.
Raumism goes out on that Esperanto is essentially a self-selected language minority. Raumism focuses on Esperanto culture and community, that these should be developed, preserved, and promoted, and that Esperanto should be supported as a minority language. I don't think there's really anyone who could take much of an issue with this ideological position, especially since there are today several thousand native speakers of Esperanto. I would say that much of the appeal of Esperanto today is the community and the history, and this is really the source of my own pet interest in Esperanto, too.
Raumists do however often seem a bit pessimistic about the potential for Esperanto to achieve its original goal.
Finvenkism, on the other hand, goes out on that Esperanto should become the whole world's second language, and I think this has always been the more controversial position among non-Esperantists (though it was really the only position among Esperantists until about 1980)
A lot of the features of Esperanto that wouldn't make sense to criticize from the perspective of Esperanto as a minority language, do make sense to criticize from the perspective of Esperanto as a deliberate global lingua franca... Yet I also wouldn't say that perfect should be the enemy of good. Esperanto is as it stands a very good language, and of all constructed languages, Esperanto is still practically speaking the best suited for widespread adoption. Splintering Esperanto over reforms does no good from a Finvenkist perspective.
Esperanto gets criticized in particular for its Eurocentrism, however I feel like these criticisms misunderstand what language learning, international communication, and the problems with English and French as lingue franche actually are or tend to be like. There are a decent number of Finvenkists whose first languages aren't Romance or Germanic, and these Finvenkists aren't "stupid" for favoring a language so dissimilar from their first languages.
My own slogan for language issues is "translate everything — it has a value!" (NO: Oversett alt — det har en verdi!) — or in other words that anyone should ideally be able to live entirely in any given language, without being forced or pushed to learn another language. However, insofar as this is "ideally" and not actually practically feasible, I think I do support that Esperanto should see more widespread adoption, if not as a global lingua franca then at least as a regional lingua franca. This should happen at the same time as bourgeois language ideology is dismantled in general, and sign languages are widely learned by the hearing in a manner respectful of Deaf culture.
Sent from Mdewakanton Dakota lands / Sept. 29 1837
Treaty with the Sioux of September 29th, 1837
"We Will Talk of Nothing Else": Dakota Interpretations of the Treaty of 1837
Linguist perspective here, albeit not specialized on this area in particular, it that artificial languages have a hard time becoming a naturally used language, I would think because of the lack of incentive, if no international relevant force makes an effort to make it so, you are asking people with an already constrained time and energy to do are very hard and time consuming thing that is learning a language, with the hope that maybe someday it will be useful. Not to mention that natural languages have cultural meaning which may connect people with their own culture or cultures they have affinity for and that can be another source of motivation which artificial languages sometimes lack. So I found the idea about making this language a somewhat nation neutral natural language is nice, but somewhat wishful without big changes in how international relations works. Not least of because whitout a generalized contact with different locations that speak certain artificial languages become prone to heavy regional changes often denying their main appeal that is general inter comprehensability of different cultures.
Esperanto is not a useful language for communicating with just about anyone anywhere, no, but Esperanto certainly is a useful language for finding and connecting with people or even entire families who strongly value international peace and cooperation, and I honestly think that those people and the art and fun they create together are really reason enough to learn Esperanto.
Otherwise this comment gets into the question of desubismo vs desuprismo which Zamenhof himself talked about. The matter of Esperanto potentially developing mutually unintelligible regional variations, on the other hand... I really don't think this would be a problem.
Sent from Mdewakanton Dakota lands / Sept. 29 1837
Treaty with the Sioux of September 29th, 1837
"We Will Talk of Nothing Else": Dakota Interpretations of the Treaty of 1837
Yeah that purpose is awesome, my issues are to the idea of making it a common language, every thing I said here on afterwards is related to that idea, because at first I've read that you DID think it was a good language to talk to anyone anywhere, not the contrary, so here is the expanded version of why I don't believed the folks(you mentioned their name but I do not recall) that want Esperanto to be a common language will not succeed: It seems a bit idealistic to me, because there is a very small amount of speakers, and that means a very small incentive to learning it, if you are not interested in learning it as a hobby, outside of the hobbylike allure there is very little logic to when deciding to learn one and only one second language, to pick Esperanto, as many other languages might offer carrer opportunities, travel opportunities and much more, Esperanto does not. That's not to say Esperanto is a bad language or that does not have upsides, but assuming people only have space for learning one other language it's rarely gonna be Esperanto. And if you cross this with the data of how many people world wide get to learn a language that's not spoken where or near to where they live, it puts the idea of Esperanto or any artificial language to be a common language. As things are set up the most culturally and economically powerful county kinda makes it's language the common one, because it materially benefits people to learn it. So until there is an agreement to collectively set a non national language to be the world standard and build it with support and incentive of international proportions, artificial languages will never become a common language, it's much too much effort to much too little gain, for much too long to justify the individual energy spent on learning it. At least it's how I see it. It's an awesome hobby with a lot of upside indeed, but just not practical enough for most people
I read/write/speak Esperanto fairly fluently and I thoroughly enjoy the language and a lot of its literature but I don't particularly like the broader Esperanto movement; although my big caveat is that I'm a bit of an Esperanto hermit and don't participate in much of the group stuff such as the national/international Esperanto associations, groups etc.
I have two main problems with "la Esperantujo" (the "Esperanto-verse").
The first is that I find it very inward looking. This is to say that as a new learner or intermediate speaker, you're going to want to find contemporary reading material or stuff to listen to and a lot of the material is about Esperanto itself and its designer, Zamenhof. This is understandable because the language and its speakers have developed their own shared culture distinct from national cultures and members of that culture want to talk about their history and where they've come from. This is absolutely fine, but I feel that there is a disproportionate amount of this compared to e.g. stuff about technology or science or philosophy, or news/politics that doesn't directly relate to the Esperanto movement, or personal blogs which aren't just discussing events at various Esperanto conferences.
I also understand that one of the goals of the Esperanto movement is to actually spread Esperanto as an international auxiliary language and that necessitates a certain amount of self-focus in order to understand their material conditions and improve their praxis; similar to how a communist org should be refining itself through praxis. But from my vantage point it just feels kind of like those Ultraleft orgs who do a lot of talking in their own congresses and branches but don't do much engagement or organised work.
I dunno maybe I'm just grumpy and I should participate more.
I've found some notable gems of Esperanto-language material if any budding Esperantists want to get a flavour of the language in use online. I'm always keen to be corrected and learn about more so please if anyone knows of any good Esperanto-language blogs, podcasts, or news outlets then I'd love to check them out.
- uea.facila is a blog written in easy-to-understand Esperanto. Articles are fairly diverse in topics and have a good balance between just interesting stuff and news about the Esperantujo. Each article also has an audio file of the narration and has definitions of new or uncommon words, with the definitions written in Esperanto.
- Scivolemo (en: Curiosity) is an Esperanto-language science blog. It contains some good articles in straightforward Esperanto which should be accessible to someone who is comfortable reading the articles on facila.org and who is OK looking up a few words here and there.
- kern.punkto (en: Core point, kernel etc.) is a fairly regular Esperanto-language podcast about technology, culture, and society.
My second problem with the Esperantujo is that I've mostly found the politics to skew very Western Liberal in the vein of the average US Democrat voter. China and Russia are bad, Gaza is complicated because Hamas are "problematic", etc etc. Libera Folio is one of the more prolific Esperanto-language outlets and regularly has stuff which will make most Communists' eyes roll. Recently I had to stop reading an article about Esperanto in BRICS because the author was saying that Russia and China were totalitarian and wouldn't allow their citizens to be exposed to any other idea other than state media. There is also the Esperanto-language feed of Global Voices which kinda has "Radio Free Esperanto" vibes to me.
At one point there did exist La Internacia Komunista Kolektivo (IKEK), but as far as I can tell it's basically defunct. I've not been able to access the website for some time and when I did a lot of the posts were from 2009 or something.
Put together, this doesn't leave a lot of spaces for a principled leftist to organise or engage in internationalism within the Esperantujo as it can be a den of libs who will accuse you of being a Chinese or Russian bot. In one Esperanto-language mega group chat I was in on Telegram, someone was praising some aspects of fascism and when I challenged this I was told that I was contradicting Freeze Peech, but when I later discussed IKEK and inquired about any Communist Esperantists I saw a lot of "Ew Commies are worst than Nazis gtfo" style stuff. Of course there won't be Commie Esperanto spaces until we go to create one, but I think that the material conditions are such that I think most principled commies see that organising efforts are perhaps best placed elsewhere for now.
So that's my thoughts on the Esperanto Movement. This is different to my thoughts on Esperanto itself. It's not perfect, it's definitely Eurocentric. I'm sure a linguistics expert could come up with a bunch of reasons as long as my arm about why the language itself sucks, but I find it really fun and it taught me a lot about learning languages and I've really enjoyed a lot of the poetry and literature I've encountered.
