Doesn't really apply to Israel/Palestine/Lebanon tho
FrogPrincess
joined 1 week ago
Esperanto is extremely Eurocentric
It gets too much shit for this, IMO
The two choice were:
-
be similar to the world's largest language-family, so that speakers of that family pick it up quicker
-
be distant from all languages, so that nobody picks it up extra quickly
The alternative to making speakers-of-european-languages winners was making everybody everywhere losers
Esperanto has 100× the traction of any of those, though.
Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, and James Connolly learned it.
It definitely has flaws, that other International Auxiliary Languages do better on.
Lingua Franca Nova, Ido, Novial , Lingwa de Planeta, Lingua sistemfrater – all technically better than Esperanto
Esperanto – way better than any of those for adoption, actual community, a million or 2 million speakers
To give an idea of adoption:
https://eo.wikipedia.org/ – 359 344 artikoloj en Esperanto
https://io.wikipedia.org/ – Hodie (jovdio, 3 di oktobro 2024), ni havas 50 461 artikli tote en Ido
https://ia.wikipedia.org – Al momento nos ha 29 719 articulos.
https://ie.wikipedia.org/ – 12,858 articules in Interlingue/Occidental
https://lfn.wikipedia.org/ – Aora nos ave 4,446 articles.
https://nov.wikipedia.org/ – Disum es li Wikipedie in Novial! Nus nun have 1,665 artikles.
And when you compare it to a language like English..... like it's 6× easier to learn than English. And yeah maybe Ido is 10% better than that.... but say English is 600 difficulty points, Esperanto is 100, Ido is 90..... you're pretty much fiddling in the margins at that point.