There are zero negatives of introducing Esperanto as a lingua franca
The 4 main arguments against Esperanto that I’ve seen are as follows:
We have English, which is only growing.
It’s Eurocentric.
It’s sexist.
Nobody speaks it, so there is no interest.
And my answers to those are:
We have English, which is only growing: English is growing because of imperialism, colonialism, and a global americanisation that is killing cultures. Esperanto, on the other hand, is connected to no specific culture or nation. Furthermore, a clear example of negatives of English being used in all discussion around the world: Swedish people are above average at English, and yet studies show that a Swedish person who has graduated college is as fluent in English as an American 12 year old. Don’t you think that gives native English speakers an unfair advantage over everyone else in global politics and debates? We need a universal secondary language that has no official “correct accent” that can “make you look dumb”.
It’s Eurocentric: And English isn’t? Ask a Chinese person; is English or Esperanto easier? (Esperanto is incredibly popular in China and Eastern Asia, relatively speaking). English is incredibly irregular, hard to pronounce and spell, and (just like Esperanto, I’ll admit) has a 100% European vocabulary. But! Since the vast majority of Esperanto’s vocabulary is Latin (+ German), it’s incredibly easy for Spanish speakers to learn the language in just a few weeks with the right resources and motivation! (As well as English speakers, or anyone who speaks a language with a lot of European loan words, it’s got a little of everything, but mostly Spanish) And Spanish is the biggest language in the world (remember both L1 and L2 speakers!) To paraphrase George Orwell: “We don’t have to be perfect, we just have to be better.”
It’s sexist: Again, many languages are. Except Esperanto isn’t, necessarily. (Here, I wrote a half-bad essay about it in school a year ago: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1w0r1R9g8C57pB2BTagsNsuj0EEMxtrhTzX4-_X8C1o0/edit?usp=sharing ) I have a correction to make thought, which is that the “base form” of nouns are NOT masculine, they’re in neutrum, but because of sexist biases in the world, we interpret them as masculinum. There are also movements of gender neutral pronouns etc, and there is the bigender prefix ge-.
Nobody speaks it, so there is no interest: Well, let’s change that! The interest has fluctuated, sure, but a lot of it disappeared when, you know, Esperantists got put in the Nazi concentration camps and in gulag (because its creator was a Jewish Communist, and because it was considered a “language of spies” by the Fascists). But take some initiative! Learn Esperanto! There are only positives, it was created to combat racism and bigotry, and it was designed so that learning it should feel like a game! (to quote Zamenhof, it’s creator). Little example; my older brother recently started to learn it through Duolingo, and he loves it, and is so, so happy about how much fun and how easy it is. He’s always hated languages and had to take extra classes to learn English and German in school, but Esperanto he actively learns in his free time for fun!
Also, the current “lingua francas” (In Europe we’ve had, to varying degrees; German, French, English, Russian) change and switch constantly, and soon we might have Mandarin, which, let’s be real, is very hard for a speaker of a non-tonal language to learn, as well as basically no other country using their “alphabet”. (Also, if you’re interested in learning other languages, knowing Esperanto gives you such a big vocabulary and understanding of grammar that further language learning will become much, much easier! I know it’s helped me in Spanish, Russian, and Latin class!)
Come on, learn Esperanto! There are countless books, a few movies, irl conventions, a thriving online community, and websites to learn it on! (see: Duolingo and Lernu.net, for example). Heck, contact me to teach it to you!
