Lexipoeia: Engsperanto
This article does NOT advocate cultural Imperialism. No, really!
By Sam Linton
Posted June, 4th, 2007.
Esperanto is a constructed language, designed to facilitate communication across cultures through its use of several different linguistic features found across several different families of language (Slavic, Indo-European, etc.) More can be found on in the wiki article, but I warn you, it is a dry read.
Esperanto is also, to put it bluntly, a failure.
Wikipedia's source, one professor Jouko Lindstedt, estimates its speakers at anywhere from 100,000 to 2,000,000 people. For a language designed to facilitate communication across a globe of more than 6 billion people, this is nothing. More people have seen the Youtube video of talking cats than can speak Esperanto at the highest estimate of speakers. For something to facilitate cross-culturally, it needs to already have some type of base and appeal, and I would argue that the best language to take Esperanto's ideal role is English. Hell, even cats can speak it.
Interestingly enough, the idea for this article came out of one of the many fascinating conversations I periodically get into involving spelling. Did you ever wonder why some words follow "I before e, except after c" and some don't? No, the culprit isn't global warming, it's foreigners! Apparently, because of its unique linguistic history, being bounced around between language groups such as Celtic, Latin, Germanic (a bunch of times), and then Latin (French) again with the Norman invasion, English borrows rules from all these groups, forming a delicious, linguistic goulash.
And then there's imperialism; yes, British colonial rule left a legacy on the world which continues to breed social inequality to this day, but they did pick up some nice words while they were at it. For example, did you know that the word "cummerbund" was "borrowed" (stolen) into English from Hindi in 1616? (Thank you again, Wikipedia) Yes, this can be seen as the hidden legacy of colonialism, the fashion accessories of high society reflecting the economic exploitation of the lands under colonial rule, but it also carries in it the English language's fine tradition of incorporating new words from new sources into its own structure, whether suffering through wave after wave of seaborn invaders or doing a little seaborn invading of its own.
And it is this tradition, minus the ravages of colonial exploitation and its earlier predecessor, Viking-style piracy, which I believe leads English to be the best choice for an eventual, world-unifying language, uniting us all in brotherhood and harmony à la Star Trek, and not only because it's my language. Practically anywhere English is spoken alongside other languages, you see this wonderful tradition, as each language bleeds into the other. Just look at Canada's own "Franglais", or Southern California and probably other places in the U.S.'s "Spanglish" (a much less elegant name; they couldn't have chosen "Engspañol?")
Anyway, it's already the world's Lingua Franca (Again, thank you Wikipedia, for giving me a source for this other than "out of my ass") for business, communication, etc., so it's already taken over Esperanto's expressed purpose. All we really need to do is let it continue on in this fashion; with the wonders of the internet, English and English-speaking internauts have access to any number of languages from all over the world, and it is their, our duty to take any words we like and make them into English words. Like "internaut", for example; that's French, but it works well in English, because the French liked the word "internet" enough to make it their own. This is exactly the type of cultural back'n'forth I'm talking about: the kind that makes it so that one day, it won't matter if you're speaking English, French or Mandarin because they'll all be pretty much the same. English just has the most experience in this type of thing.
Until next time, it's a living language — they're all living languages — let's keep them that way!