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this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2024
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Big brain tech dude got yet another clueless take over at HackerNews etc? Here's the place to vent. Orange site, VC foolishness, all welcome.
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Oh, there are always those.
These kind of speakers can be found also offline. It's funny they are the result on one hand of the fondness to our little language and the reactions towards it by speakers of other languages. Esperanto gets a shitload of bad reputation and the resistance to it then creates such personalities.
In some sense they rightfully act like they act.
Funny that this thread re-appeared during the xz "scandal". I had a little bit of fun regarding it, when it initially appeared in the f-droid forum.
Yeah I mean I shouldn't be surprised really. I'm more surprised it took me so long to realize they were around. If nothing else Esperanto seems to have been losing mindshare to other conlangs like Toki Pona.
klingon still the all time fave
"Klingon Speakers Now Outnumber Navajo Speakers" (The Onion, 1999)
I don't know if it really is losing mindshare. Toki Pona is really popular among a very loud minority.
On one hand these people just may be learning it, because it's an interesting conlang, nothing against that. Learn whatever language you like.
Then the loud part of the Toki Pona community learn it partially because they think it's morally superior to other eurocentric conlangs like Esperanto. And those will eagerly say to you, that Toki Pona is the best language ever. So maybe is the perception that Esperanto is losing mindshare, because of Toki Pona, just a result of working propaganda by that very loud minority.
Esperanto is also in general not a very popular language, as its normally compared to English for its audacity to become a lingua franca. Still, to my knowledge it's still the largest constructed language community. Toki Pona or other languages need to get to that level of sophistication which Esperanto already aquired during 136 years of its existence.
I could barely learn a 3rd language (French) so the idea of trying to learn one more is daunting, even if Esperanto is designed to be easy to learn.
Even that would people contest. For me it was easier to learn and I think there things in the language, which make it easier to learn. BUT that idea that it's truly universal "easier" is often criticized and doubted. Which leaves me with a disappointing "maybe" with a slight tilt to "it's easier", so "maybe it's easier?".
If we keep in the idea set of how Esperanto came about, then the idea was to learn two to three languages and be a world citizen afterwards. Two languages, because that would be your mother tongue and Esperanto and for three languages that would be your mother tongue, the language of your region like for cultural heritage reasons and Esperanto to be a world citizen.
I learnt Esperanto after i learnt English in school. It's my third language and I belong to those who got afterwards more confident, that I could acquire another language by myself. So for some people it's easier to learn and it brings them then the confidence, that when they find motivation to learn a specific new language, that they could do that.
I myself am still stuck with three languages, because I did not had a strong motivation to learn an additional language. There are too much languages and there are too much conflicting incentives to learn one over another. Wanna understand China? Learn Mandarin! Learn one of the other big languages in the world for financial progress! Then learn Spanish! Be supportive of the deaf community! Then learn one of the many dialects of sign language!