Should Esperanto replace English as the global lingua franca?

[Melki]

Esperanto is a hothouse flower of an artificial language. It is nobody's birth language, a situation which is likely to continue indefinitely. Though supposedly "universal" it gives no more than a nod to Asian languages, and its grammar is strictly Indo-European.

Esperanto was a noble experiment which decades of desuetude have proved unsuccessful.

Actually, George Soros is a native speaker of Esperanto. Since everybody here hates Soros, I'm more than happy to be an Esperantist.

[♥ Lily ♥]

Esperanto is horrible.
I cannot stand the sound of it.



You call it an advantage?...

I love it that das Boot (the boat) is neuter in German, whilst Swedish båten is not.

Or that French the French sea (mer) is feminine, and the Spanish one (el mar) is masculine.

That gives every language an immanent poetical metaphysics of its own.

I couldn't live without it.

I guess that's because you're familiar and used to it but to me, I'm sorry, but it's not very practical as it's difficult to remember which objects are feminine or masculine whenever I try to speak or write in French.

I love the French language but the gender rules are frustrating to remember.

A pencil has no gender in English;- it's just a pencil! I'm confused how it can have a gender..?

[Melki]

I guess that's because you're familiar and used to it, but to me, it's not very practical as it's difficult to remember which objects are feminine or masculine when trying to speak or write in French.

A pencil has no sex in English - it's just a pencil! I'm confused how it can it have a sex..?

Mnemonic trick: pens and pencils are male cause they are phallic-shaped.

[♥ Lily ♥]

International English is a soulless pidgin with no real home and a limited vocabulary.

English has a massive vocabulary;- the number of words in the English language is: 1,025,109.8. As a result, we have a large choice of words to describe our feelings, etc.

15,000 words in the English langauge are of French origin btw, as that was forced onto us after the Norman Conquest and we adapted to it as the various European languages that were forced on us by settlers and invaders merged together in England... to become English and the language spoken in England. It has a home in England.

All languages have their origins and roots that stemmed from various places, even though many people don't speak their languages in the same way their ancestors did thousands and thousands of years ago due to the continuous evolution of languages.

[♥ Lily ♥]

Mnemonic trick: pens and pencils are male cause they are phallic-shaped.

I'll remember that.

But why do female breasts have a masculine gender rule in French?

[Smitty]

I'll remember that.

But why do female breasts have a masculine gender rule in French?

[♥ Lily ♥]

Breast
noun
[of woman] sein (masculine)
[of man] poitrine (feminine)
[of wild bird] gorge (feminine)
(cookery)
[of chicken, turkey] blanc (masculine)

[Óttar]

Absolutely not. Esperanto purports to be a universal language, but it does not represent parts of all languages, not by a long shot. Actually, from a cursory glance of the language, it very closely resembles Spanish and a simplified Latin. Considering that Spanish has half a billion native-speakers, and its grammatical regularity allows one to achieve conversational fluency rather quickly, there is a reason why many contend that Spanish could become the world language. Until then, English will fulfill that role, which is proper because English speakers collectively have made an impression on several sectors of everyday experience i.e. media, business, science, technology, etc.

[♥ Lily ♥]

Absolutely not. Esperanto purports to be a universal language, but it does not represent parts of all languages, not by a long shot. Actually, from a cursory glance of the language, it very closely resembles Spanish and a simplified Latin. Considering that Spanish has half a billion native-speakers, and its grammatical regularity allows one to achieve conversational fluency rather quickly, there is a reason why many contend that Spanish could become the world language. Until then, English will fulfill that role, which is proper because English speakers collectively have made an impression on several sectors of everyday experience i.e. media, business, science, technology, etc.

One of the complexities of the English language for many people are that a lot of words aren't spelled in the same way that they're pronounced. Eg: 'Know' has a silent 'k'. And in French, 'Hotel' has a silent 'h'. (These are just simple examples.)

A Spanish person said that Spanish has a more accurate spelling for their words with their pronunciation. I think they have gender rules in Spanish though.

Maybe a new modern world language could be created for everyone on the planet to understand each other... before humans explore other planets in the universe and may try to communicate with aliens one day.

A global language that has words that are spelt exactly as they're pronounced, with no complexities of gender rules, and one that carries the elegance of French sounds, and the musical sounds of Italian, and has the calligraphic beauty of Japanese and Chinese lettering, and one that combines the best qualities of various languages.

Nobody would argue anymore about one language dominating over others.

[♥ Lily ♥]

No wonder the Celtic languages are struggling...



Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysilio gogogoch (imagine trying to pronounce and spell that!! ) is a small town on the island of Anglesey off the northwest coast of North Wales.

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysilio gogogoch (lan-vire-pool-guin-gith-go-ger-u-queern-drob-ooth-clandus-ilio-gogo-goch) is a Welsh word which translates roughly as "St Mary's Church in the Hollow of the White Hazel near a Rapid Whirlpool and the Church of St. Tysilio near the Red Cave".

I admire anyone who can fluently pronounce such a long word.

http://wikitravel.org/en/Llanfairpwl...ysiliogogogoch

I understand that people have a cultural, emotional, and sentimental attachment to their language. It's a strong part of their cultural identity too. I think the world would be boring if everyone spoke the same language. I guess people must feel frustrated with English dominating over other languages, but the funny thing is that there's more English speakers in the world than the amount of people in England.

We have English, Welsh, Gaelic, Cornish, and Manx spoken in the British Isles... and over 300 languages are spoken in London. Polish is actually the second most spoken language in England as we have 500,000 Poles in England.... and we have between 300,000 and 400,000 French citizens in London, which officially makes London as the sixth largest French speaking city in the world!

I've never learnt Spanish, but I studied French at school which is similar to other Romance languages, so I can understand the meanings of various words in Italian and Spanish. I've seen some sentences that are written in Spanish and I can automatically recognise the meanings of words without having Spanish lessons or using google translate. They have a similar vocabulary in French that I can recognise in English.

I can recognise the meanings of some words in German and Norwegian and Danish and Dutch that are similar to English words. But I can't understand Welsh, despite having a paternal Welsh great grandmother and despite living on the same island as the Welsh. Most of my relatives stem from the West Country of England (south west England where I was born and raised) and I had an Irish great grandmother on my maternal side. The western side of England is geographically close to Wales and I can culturally relate to the Welsh as they're also British, but not linguistically.

I relate more to the Romance, Latin, and Germanic languages.

I made a video tribute on behalf of the endangered Celtic languages a few years ago. They can speak in whichever language they want, but only half of the people in Wales speak in Welsh, and the other half of them don't bother to learn their native language.