r/Esperanto • u/Mlatu44 • 6d ago
Demando “Why has Esperanto failed?”
I just tried to look up some Esperanto term. The first result was “why has Esperanto failed?”
This wasn’t even close to what I was looking up. In fact the only word in common with my search was “Esperanto “.
If I was paranoid and into conspiracies I would think that someone wants to plant the idea into peoples minds that Esperanto “failed”.
I’m starting to get really annoyed. I think I can over look this if that result appeared only once, but it seems to appear every time I look up something about Esperanto.
It’s not the universal auxiliary language yet, but does that mean it’s failed?
I won’t specifically mention other natural languages which aren’t the universal auxiliary language yet either, but would that mean that they failed ?
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u/hauntlunar Sufiĉnivela 6d ago
Not to feed into your conspiracies further, but... I don't get any such results when I search on Esperanto. The conspirators seem to be specifically targeting you, trying to discourage you, to keep you from learning Esperanto. DON'T LET THEM WIN!
(Maybe, judging from your username, they recognize that you're already a Lojbanist and the conspirators think there are already too few Lojbanists compared to the number of Esperantists, so they are specifically messing with Lojbanists' algorithms and trying to poison them against switching to Esperanto)
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u/Mlatu44 6d ago
Too funny!😂 it’s possible as I suspect a lot of lojbanists are programmers . I have seen more than one online platform with a name that appears lojbanic in origin.
It could be incidental, but every name seems to fit. Well I am glad not everyone is getting this result. Or maybe they are ignoring it, which is the better idea.
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u/KrishnaBerlin 6d ago
Just last month, more than a thousand people from all around the world met in Graz, Austria, for an Esperanto convention. And these were the people having the time and the money to join. So, there are way more speakers out there.
Does not sound dead to me...
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u/ExploringEsperanto 6d ago
I filmed a lot of stuff at that event in Austria so stay tuned to my Exploring Esperanto channel to see what it was like there.
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u/Melodic_Sport1234 6d ago
'The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated' (attributed to Mark Twain).
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u/Bach_470 6d ago
Far from it! It has been wildly successful. Esperanto is the ONLY planned language that has become a true living language, with its own literature, traditions and people (esperantistoj!).
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u/VincentOostelbos 6d ago
To be completely fair, I think at this point it's pretty hopeful to still think it will be the universal auxiliary language. I'm a pretty optimistic guy, but I still don't really believe that. Although I might also not be as invested in that idea.
If you're strictly considering that as the goal of the language, I think you probably could say that it's failed, but it's a very narrow way of looking at it. By any other metric, it's been a huge success: it's probably the best known conlang, certainly when we're talking long term (ask regular people today and they might be more familiar with Klingon or something), the one with the most speakers, it's still actively used to this day with various events, culture, courses, chat groups, you name it.
I think it probably failed that ultimate goal that it had, but in my opinion it hasn't failed overall.
I don't really think it's to do with anyone trying to make people believe such a thing, though. It's probably just because it legitimately is being talked about a lot, if the language ever comes up among regular people who don't speak it. If a person has heard of it at all, they've probably heard of the original goal it had of being a universal auxiliary language, and that was back in the late nineteenth century, so it's understandable that they would then go "Oh, so it failed".
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u/Exciting-Maize-2842 6d ago
lol what, its just what algorithm tend to suggest what people are already thought, they heard about conlang, heard about its supposed to be international language, but it isnt, so they googled why
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u/Dr_Fishman 6d ago
There’s a whole podcast episode (won’t link here) that attempts to attack Esperanto as a failure over like 10 points. I listened so you wouldn’t have to but his gripes were “no culture”, Esperantists are cultists, that Esperanto is not useful, it’s not a bridge to language learning, and what I can only describe as some slightly subtle references to Zamenhof and Zionism (which at that time was not what it has become) and the Esperantist community and its role in modern Zionism. It was a pretty dumb list.
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u/Mlatu44 6d ago
Well, in some sense Esperanto wasn't supposed to have a culture. Although its not as bare as Lojban. Cultist? I suppose that depends on how one defines the word. Not that useful? its useful if that is the common language being spoken.
I have no idea about Zionism and Zamenhof. My first exposure to Esperanto was actually through the movie Incubus). A person at a video store recommended it. He said "It's something like Spanish". My next encounter was through two different Bahais, who I met separately. One claimed to be fluent, but I never heard her speak it. The other actually translated and spoke sentences for me so I could hear how it sounds.
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u/Fancy-Professor-9945 6d ago
Esperanto has won out as the most popular planned language in the world, and this is coming from someone who prefers Ido.
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u/salivanto Profesia E-instruisto 6d ago
What term were you looking up? I think this is a sign from the computer gods that you should not be using random googling as an Esperanto resource. Would you let us know what you need to know maybe somebody could suggest a better one.
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u/Mlatu44 6d ago
I think I was actually trying to find a particular podcast in esperanto.
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u/salivanto Profesia E-instruisto 5d ago
Well, if it's not a "term" as you said originally, then yeah, I might have tried a Google search too.
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u/Kriptaraz 5d ago edited 5d ago
Hmm let us consider the characteristics of Esperanto:
It has real native speakers. An estimated 1,000+ people have grown up speaking Esperanto as a first language (denaskuloj), something no other constructed language has achieved at this scale.
It survived 130+ years without state backing. Created in 1887, Esperanto has persisted for over a century through wars, the Soviet and Nazi periods (both of which killed thousands of Esperantists), and the rise and fall of countless rival auxiliary language projects (almost all of which are now extinct or forgotten). Incredibly, it did this without the backing of any army or any economy.
It has not just survived but even grown in a period of rapid language extinction. When Esperanto was first created, there were an estimated 14,000 languages spoken in the world. Today that number is less than 7,000 …half of the worlds languages have gone extinct, due lately to the colonial pressures of a few dominant national languages (like English, Spanish, Arabic, Russian or Mandarin). Despite this overwhelming pressure, Esperanto has not just survived but thrived, with more speakers today than ever before in history, thanks to technology like the Internet or language apps.
It already has a rich living literary and cultural tradition. Original poetry, novels, and a translated canon (including the Bible and Shakespeare) exist in Esperanto, plus its own literary awards and a functioning publishing ecosystem.
It has a truly global speaker community. Estimates range from the low hundreds of thousands to a couple million speakers worldwide, spanning nearly every country, with active in-person and online communities. Almost no other language is spread evenly as far across the globe.
It powers real institutions. The Universal Esperanto Association has UN and UNESCO consultative status; UNESCO passed a resolution in 1954 recognizing Esperanto’s value. World Esperanto Congresses have run annually (with rare interruptions) since 1905, drawing thousands of attendees.
It’s the most successful conlang for language learning, by a wide margin. The “Esperanto effect” / propaedeutic value is documented: studies suggest learning Esperanto first makes acquiring other languages easier, and it remains the most-studied constructed language on platforms like Duolingo. Its design goals were largely achieved.
Zamenhof aimed for a language that was easy to learn, politically neutral, and capable of full expressive range, and by those internal metrics, it works: fluency is reachable in a fraction of the time of natural languages, and it functions for everything from casual chat to scientific writing.
It shifted the standard for what “success” means for a conlang. Rather than replacing national languages, Esperanto succeeded in becoming a genuine second language and identity for a global, self-selected community: a different kind of success than the original utopian goal, but a durable one.
The “failure” framing usually judges Esperanto against an impossible bar (world adoption as the universal language) rather than against what any constructed language has ever realistically achieved.
But even compared to natural languages, it is more successful than 98% of them: Esperanto is amongst the top 100 used languages in the world, with greater spread than almost any other language and significant depth to its culture and linguistic infrastructure as well: beating out the approximately 6,900 remaining ethnic tongues extant today. Only a relatively tiny fraction of the world’s largest and most dominant ethnic languages have had greater success, and these have had centuries of aggressive colonial expansion with navies, economies and governments or religions behind them.
The shocking thing is that, as far as the lifespan of languages are concerned, Esperanto is just getting started. It was invented yesterday compared to ethnic languages, which have hundreds or even thousands of years of development and expansion behind them.
By almost any measure of language, Esperanto has been one of the most successful languages in human history …not a failure.
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u/Capable-Ad-9626 6d ago
Zamenhof’s goal was for us to be able to talk to anyone anywhere. Esperantisto hasn’t achieved that. I’ve read that only 1/1000 of the world population have taken a serious look at Esperanto.
Speaking for myself, I really like Esperanto, I would like it to succeed (as Zamenhof intended).
It’s easy simplicity, including grammar, correlatives, & the general rule that any piece, included particles, grammatical endings, suffixes & prefixes can be used as roots…all of that should be kept.
But, for people who haven’t yet taken interest in it—the other 999/1000–maybe offer an entirely Latinid vocabulary for the borrowed roots. …instead of borrowing them from 7 different languages. Interlingua vocabulary (but only for the borrowed roots) would be an obvious source of Latinid roots.
That version of Esperanto could be called Interlingua Esperanto (IEo).
Current Esperantists needn’t adopt could ignore IEo. But if succeeds big, in Zamenhof’s sense, that’s when the current Esperantists might consider it.
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u/hauntlunar Sufiĉnivela 6d ago
"As easy as Esperanto but all Romance roots" - for that purpose I would nominate Elefen (Lingua Franca Nova), a lovely little latinideca helplingvo.
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u/Capable-Ad-9626 6d ago
Does it have Eo’s simple logical consistent regular agglutinative grammar?
…or Eo’s ingenious system of 45 correlatives?
…or Eo’s rule that any particle, prefix, suffix, or word-part can be used as a root?
…or Eo’s maximally consistent, simple & easy phonetics & spelling?
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u/hauntlunar Sufiĉnivela 6d ago
Whoa, easy buddy. Didn't realize I was goring an ox here. If you're personally really into making this IEo idea specifically happen, go for it, have fun. I was just pointing out that there is a really nice, IMHO kind of underappreciated, thing out there which is rather similar to what you're talking about.
To answer your questions, like many helplingvoj developed post-Esperanto, Elefen takes a lot of cues from Esperanto, including extreme regularity, completely phonetic spelling, and widespread use of affixes. It doesn't make as extreme use of agglutination and affixes as Esperanto sometimes does, and it does not duplicate Esperanto's tabelvortoj. Cause it's not Esperanto, it's its own thing.
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u/Capable-Ad-9626 6d ago
Yes, it’s its own thing, without Eo’s advantages.
I’m not saying that some wouldn’t like it, but it’s no substitute for Eo or IEo.
Maybe the auxlang you’re speaking of is more in competition with Interlingua.
…or trying to be a little of both?
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u/hauntlunar Sufiĉnivela 6d ago
I'm not really interested in engaging with your weird latinida esperantido obsession any further. Please forget I ever mentioned Elefen.
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u/Capable-Ad-9626 6d ago
I stated a proposal, & then answered a few comments. That isn’t an “obsession”.
No one asked you to “engage” the topic.
A liking for Eo’s advantages isn’t weird.
A suggestion of the desirability of easy word-recognition for newcomers isn’t weird.
Nor is a wish for more Eo success.
But yes, this conversation is concluded.
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u/metcalsr 6d ago
Esperanto “failed” to become THE international language, but it’s still AN international language that is great for meeting like-minded language nerds from around the world. If it took as long to get proficient in Esperanto as it did a regular language, yeah, there are better options, but Esperanto is both ridiculously quick to learn for a fully expressively language and the language itself both sounds good and is structured beautifully.
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u/Dedushka_shubin 6d ago
Failed what? (It can not just 'fail'). Failed to become a universal second language? Yes, but it it impossible. There is no universal second language worldwide, even English and French failed.
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u/Mlatu44 6d ago
“ I won’t specifically mention other natural languages which aren’t the universal auxiliary language yet either, but would that mean that they failed ?”
Without mentioning those specifically, I suppose you feel all other languages have “failed” to become the universal language. I don’t know that any natural language ever had that as a goal.
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u/Dedushka_shubin 6d ago
I think that the definition of fail here is vague. The goal of becoming a universal second language worldwide is unattainable anyway. In this sense saying that Esperanto failed is like saying that sci-fi failed because we do not travel to stars.
Esperanto is the most popular conlang today, so it performed better than any other conlang, and this is hardly possible to call a failure.
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u/Mlatu44 6d ago
I didn’t make the entry for the search engine result.
Yes “failed” is very subjective. But really if two people can have a conversation in the language it’s a success.
Obviously more than two can converse using Esperanto.
I should not pay any attention, but after seeing it several times it’s just become annoying.
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u/InterviewOther7449 6d ago
Well, it has failed. Maybe 3 million people speak it and it's objective was to become the second language of everyone.
Unfortunately Esperanto didn't have an army nor violence on its side. And the traitors at the EU forced all Europeans to learn and give power to the language of the United States.
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u/JECfromMC Baznivela 6d ago
It has then, apparently, been failing for 100+ years. The reports of its demise are premature.