apparently there is an international language - esperanto (i think) how comes noone actually knows it?!?

Answer 1

I speak esperanto.

There are too many prejudices about this language.

"it has enjoyed continuous usage by a community estimated at between 100,000 and 2 million speakers."
According to Ethnologue.com, there are "200–2000 who speak Esperanto as a first language."

"Esperanto is considerably easier to learn than national languages, since its design is far simpler and more regular. Also, unlike national languages, Esperanto allows communication on an equal footing between people, with neither having the usual cultural advantage favouring a native speaker.

Esperanto's purpose is not to replace any other language, but to supplement them: Esperanto would be used as a neutral language when speaking with someone who doesn't know one's own language. The use of Esperanto would also protect minority languages, which would have a better chance of survival than in a world dominated by a few powerful languages."

Why not english as the International Language? This seems a reasonable question, but

English is the "De Facto" international language.
Esperanto is a proposed "Neutral" International auxiliary language.

* English is by no means easy to master it is, generation after generation, the international language of a certain elite
* any nationally dominant language puts non-native speakers (in this case 90% of the world population) in an unfavourable position
* English - no matter how widespread still only reflects one specific type of culture, which may be upsetting to some
* in stress situations, one tends to lose ones ability to speak an irregular foreign language
* the above also applies to all other big languages as French, Spanish or Chinese.

"Several research studies demonstrate that studying Esperanto before another foreign language speeds and improves learning the other language."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto

Answer 2

Esperanto (hope) is indeed an international language and very few people know it.
The hope was that everyone would learn it and then we would all be able to speak to each other using our second language.
As a linguist who speaks English, French, German, Italian and some Spanish, a tiny bit of Russian, Swedish and Welsh - I looked at esperanto and it was a bit complicated.
Yes no irregular verbs etc but still had things that some languages can do without.

""- Mi bezonas laboron kaj urĝe! Mi havas edzinon kaj kvin infanojn!
- Tre bone. Sed kion vi ankoraÅ­ povas fari?""

This is a joke in esperanto - as a linguist my first thing is to look for words I recognise - Mi (me) bezonas (need) laboron (to work) but I am guessing - I have no clues really what this means and usually I can find something to understand!!

This is why not many people bother with it.

If you want to try
go to
http://en.lernu.net

Answer 3

Yes they do. They call themselves Esperantists and go to conferences to talk it together. . Many Esperanto speakers use the language for free travel throughout the world using the Pasporta Servo. Others like the idea of having pen pals in many countries around the world using services like the Esperanto Pen Pal Service. Every year, Esperanto speakers meet for the World Congress of Esperanto (Universala Kongreso de Esperanto). These attract around 1500-3000 speakers, and the best-attended conferences are regularly those held in Central/Eastern Europe, close to the birthplace of Esperanto (see statistics at World Congress of Esperanto).

Every year, hundreds of new titles are published in Esperanto along with music. Also, many Esperanto newspapers and magazines exist.

Monato is a general news magazine "like a genuinely international Time or Newsweek" [1], but written by local correspondents. A magazine for the blind, AÅ­roro, has been published since 1920.

Esperanto can be heard in television and radio broadcasts and on the internet. There are currently radio broadcasts from China Radio International, Melbourne Ethnic Community Radio, Radio Habana Cuba, Radio Audizioni Italiane (Rai), Radio Polonia, and Radio Vatican. Internacia Televido, an internet television channel, began broadcasting in November 2005.

Historically most of the music published in Esperanto has been in various folk traditions; in recent decades more rock and other modern genres has appeared.

In 1964, Jacques-Louis Mahé produced the first full-length feature film in Esperanto, entitled Angoroj. This was followed in 1965 by the first American Esperanto-production: Incubus, starring William Shatner. Several shorter films have been produced since. As of July 2003, the Esperanto-language Wikipedia lists 14 films and 3 short films.

There are cultural commonalities between Esperanto speakers, which is a distinctive feature of a cultural community. Esperanto was created to foster universal understanding, solidarity and peace. A large proportion of the Esperanto movement continue to hold such goals, and most are at least sympathetic to them. Additionally, many Esperantists use the language as a window to the larger world, to meet people from other countries on an equal footing, and for travel. The Esperanto-community has a certain set of shared background knowledge. There is a general ban on using one's national language at Esperanto meetings unless there is good reasons for its use (Esperanto culture has a special word, krokodili ("to crocodile"), to describe this avoided behaviour).

Answer 4

Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed international language. The name derives from Doktoro Esperanto, the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof first published the Unua Libro in 1887. The word itself means 'one who hopes'. Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy and flexible language as a universal second language to foster peace and international understanding.
Although no country has adopted the language officially, it has enjoyed continuous usage by a community estimated at between 100,000 and 2 million speakers and it is estimated that there are about a thousand native speakers.

Answer 5

There is quite a big Geek community that speak Esperanto. They hold a convention every year, there is literature in Esperanto ,magazines, and forums. And there are other invented international languages - I think one is called "Volupuk" or something similar.

Answer 6

esperanto is a language created to become a lingua franca, this means spoken by everyone when communicating with people that speak other language. esperanto included words and grammar from many other languages, but it was too difficult to learn and people already used english as a lingua franca!

both terms esperanto and lingua franca are not spanish, you can check that in you english dictionary!

hope it helps! i learnt this at school some years ago, so i am not sure if it is 100% correct!

Answer 7

Esperanto was an attempt at creating one internationally understood language, a new one that gave to preference to any nation. It never caught on. So many countries have such a high number of people who speak English it probably seemed daft to have everyone learning a new language from scratch.

Answer 8

Esperanto is an international language made up for a whole lot of other languages. It is simple but never really caught on. I have a friend who speaks it but he is on his own!

Answer 9

around 40 years ago the idea of a common language esparanto was popular but with the great increase in communication technology, fax, direct dial phones, mobile phones, internet etc the English language quickly took over - almost certainly due to the USA leading most of the innovations

Answer 10

I guess people just prefer to learn someone's language. There's also the fear that you could spend years mastering Esperanto, only finding you can't communicate with anyone - especially when the language first appeared. However, some people obviously learnt it - see http://eo.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%88efpa%C4%9Do if you don't believe me!