Dear Dr - Weber State University: Fill & Download for Free

As Gary Rector put it, you probably mean, "Why don't more people learn Esperanto?" It seems there are three main reasons.They just don't know what Esperanto is. If you don't know that there is an international planned language called Esperanto, rather easy to learn, spoken by some people in more than one hundred countries, you just have no possibility to decide you want to learn it. Quite clear, no?The percentage of people who just don't know anything about Esperanto is rather high: I remember a study in the US about college students - just something like 6 % knew what Esperanto is. So 94 % didn't have any chance to decide to learn Esperanto. Completely independent of any properties of this wonderful language.I asked students in a German university in Berlin - 13 out of 30 didn't know what "Esperanto" means... They won't apply for an Esperanto language course...Other people are just misinformed about Esperanto.* Some authors tell their readers, no one would speak Esperanto.This is false:** You couldn't sell 120 new Esperanto books a year, if there were no Esperanto speakers. (Try "novaj varoj" in the book list of the World Esperanto Association.)** China wouldn't publish news in Esperanto on every week day, on China Interreta Informa Centro, esperanto.china.org.cn, if there were no public.** There wouldn't be over two hundred Esperanto meetings a year, see the list on eventoj.hu , if there were no Esperanto speakers to meet... :-)** Who wrote the over 200,000 articles in the Esperanto wikipedia?...It's a pity that even one of the most renowned newspapers of the world, the "Neue Zürcher Zeitung", continues to publish an "obituary" of Esperanto on its internet site, "Nachruf aufs Esperanto" - Neue Zürcher, NZZ Folio. Furthermore the article is full of false information about planned languages including Esperanto (or 'artificial languages'), see below. Just deplorable, the chief editor of this magazine NZZ Folio, Dr. Daniel Weber, a former English teacher, still refuses to inform the reader about the errors the article contains...Maybe, however, there is a grain of truth in this article: It seems the idea of Esperanto as a general language every state should teach to all of its pupils, is not very vivid nowadays. You have to be very very optimistic to believe in such a future... And you have to believe in compulsary instruction - how about just offering Esperanto with no obligation, just to enjoy the language?(So, please, dear opponents of Esperanto as a general language, just stop talking down our language and help young people to know about Esperanto and, maybe, to make the decision to begin learning it, for holidays and leisure time. Many of them will enjoy it.)Out of this idea of a general language for all the reality of a (small) international community of Esperanto speaking people was born. Everyone is free to learn Esperanto and to join this community. This is something the author, Wolf Schneider (who began his professional life as an interpreter), together with the editors of the newspaper Neue Zürcher just overlooked...Peter Greene, an English teacher, misinforms his readers in an article in the Huffington Post: "Latin and Esperanto are like a really nice set of paints that you lock up in a closet and never use because that would mess them up." Just not true. Pure imagination of the author.* Others tell their readers, Esperanto wasn't a full language or wouldn't have a culture of its own. They usually didn't even spend one hour learning Esperanto to understand it a bit, but they think they may present it to the public...** The author of the mentioned article in the Neue Zürcher newspaper, Wolf Schneider, tells the reader, artificial languages (i.e. planned languages like Esperanto) wouldn't have songs for children and no rhymes, no curses, no jokes, no idioms... All this is false for more than one hundred years. Just have a look in the first Esperanto text book from 1887 http://www.genekeyes.com/Dr_Esperanto.html to see three poems in Esperanto... (Search for "Heine")It's really a shame what the Neue Zürcher offers the reader (who has even to pay for such content...). And, quite sure, it's against the Swiss Code of Ethics for professional journalists. (The US version puts: "Journalists should: Take responsibility for the accuracy of their work. Verify information before releasing it. Use original sources whenever possible." ... And, certainly: "Acknowledge mistakes and correct them promptly and prominently. Explain corrections and clarifications carefully and clearly." Quite similar for the Swiss version, Erklärung der Pflichten und Rechte der Journalistinnen und Journalisten.)** Some people doubt about Esperanto having a culture. But, what do they imagine? Do they really think, people would enjoy being together in a community speaking a common language and _not_ having books and songs and all the like? They just create them, because they want to enjoy them :-)"Esperanto does not allow pupils to develop an interest in the culture of other nations or to communicate with native speakers as it does not have an associated culture or homeland," said a spokesman of the (former) British Department for Children, Schools and Families (as the BBC reported). I would like to listen to a conference about Esperanto of half an hour from this spokesman... It would be interesting what he would try to tell the public.For sure, Esperanto helps its speakers to "develop an interest in the culture of other nations". Before Esperanto I traveled mainly to France and Switzerland, once to England. With Esperanto I traveled to all but five European countries... And, quite sure, I got interested in the people there and their culture...I have the privilege to communicate several times a week with a native speaker of Esperanto, as my daughter (now 22 years old) happens to be one of them :-)Quite sure, Esperanto has an associated culture. Just have a look on our some ten thousand books or listen to Esperanto songs.Yes, we speak Esperanto not having a homeland. But I have a home where I speak Esperanto and I feel at home in the meetings of e.g. 'EsperantoLand', one of the associations that organize Esperanto meetings. For the moment being I'm quite happy with that.We shouldn't wait now for really many people to learn Esperanto. In the near future, even if everyone is well informed, there'll be only about 2 % of those who learn a foreign language who will be studying Esperanto as an additional language. Esperanto is not common now - that's why many people, about 98%, just won't consider learning it. No problem, they'll think it over later... :-)(The theory of the Diffusion of Innovations explains this.)It's rather evident - if someone thinks he or she would be the only one to speak Esperanto, there is no attraction in the language. And if you believe in the false assertions coming from publications like the Huffington Post or the Zürcher Zeitung or from the British Department for Children, Schools and Families, Esperanto doesn't seem very attractive. That's why many people who believe them (and others who spread such misinformation) are not interested in learning the language. And, anyhow, Esperanto is still a bit uncommon, so many people won't dare to learn it; others just don't like to travel a lot or are not interested in people from other countries...It'll be a long way to inform the public correctly. But, in the meantime, there'll be many others who understand what Esperanto really is - so they are attracted and some learn it. That's why the use of Esperanto is increasing more and more, see the wikipedia - Increasing use of Esperanto.What has to be done?I think, everyone has the right to be well informed about Esperanto and about the existing language community of Esperanto speakers from many countries. This is somehow part of the general Right to education. (And the wikipedia community considers, an article about Esperanto should be part of every wikipedia, see the List of articles every Wikipedia should have.)That's why- teachers should teach their pupils and students about Esperanto, maybe just one or two lessons. Don't teach them how to speak Esperanto, just tell them what it is. They may decide to learn Esperanto or not - up to them. The internet offers plenty of options to learn the language for those who want - no need nowadays to bother about this.- journalists should inform their readers about the state of Esperanto today and the language community and the culture.And I would like some Esperanto officials to stop speaking about Esperanto instruction for everyone. Please let the people decide for themselves. Just inform them - about the reality of today, not too much about the dreams, so far away. The reality of today is already really wonderful...Everyone is welcome to join this international language community :-)