Critical Response to Esperanto articles Huynh Pham Ngoc Tram

Globalization makes the world a smaller place. People travel and do business with others from different corners of the world. For a long time, English has been the means of international communication. However, learning English is sometimes complicated, time and money consuming. Therefore, there are people who believe that Esperanto can challenge English to become the worlds lingua franca. Yan Rado, in his article Esperanto, the hope of the world (June 2011), claims that Esperanto is more suitable for international communication. While Dr. Angla Sola, in Whats the point of Esperanto? (2011), has the opposite belief. This essay will critically respond to whether it is possible for Esperanto to become a new lingua franca. Rado believes that Esperanto is a better means of international communication. He argues that, compared to English, learning Esperanto is much easier. It is because the language, according to Rado, is constructed for simplicity and is culture free. Unlike English, Esperanto requires no culture understanding.The language is relatively easy to learn. His second argument is that Esperanto is a neutral language created to bring peace to the world. He also claims that given proper support, Esperanto could have been the worlds lingua franca. Sola, on the other hand, sees no point in using and learning Esperanto. His biggest argument is that the language is useless. Nothing worthy has been written in Esperanto. The language cannot compare to English. He also claims that the language is not as unbiased as it is declared to be; it is Euro centric. Finally, he argues that Esperanto does not lack of support. In fact, Esperanto has the approval of the most populated country, China. The failure of the language cannot be a result of lacking backing. It is true that Esperanto is much easier than English. The language has logical and systematic rules for both vocabulary and grammar. For example, all nouns end with o, all adjectives end with a; and for plural form, j will be added (Aktuale, n.d., p. 10 of 24).This means learners are no longer bother with knife and knives or ox and oxen. With about 160,000 words (Wolff 1993, p. 19 of 22), Esperanto that can be used efficiently in daily conversations or intellectual discussions. Of course, English has more than one billion words. But again, Shakespeare and James Joyce regularly use only 30,000 words all their life and an ordinary American usually uses around 8,000 common words for perfect communication (John May 1993).

Sola correctly asserts that English is dominating the worlds media, business communication and many other areas. However, it is unfair to conclude that Esperanto is useless. In fact, there are over two million active and fluent Esperantists in more than 100 countries worldwide (Wolff 1993, p. 11 of 22). This is a small amount compared to approximately one billion English speakers. However, not everyone of those one billion can speak English fluently. More importantly, if in 500 years, the number of English speakers can increase from 6 million to almost one billion, who will know for sure that Esperanto could not do the same? Besides, it is ignorant assuming there are no newspapers or information of any value written in Esperanto. There are many worthy newspapers, magazines, radio programs, and books written in Esperanto. One persuasive example for that is William Auld - a Scottish poet, author and magazine translator - who wrote mainly in Esperanto. He was nominated for the 1999, 2004 and 2006 Noble Prize in Literature for his works, which are written in Esperanto (National Library of Scoland, n.d.). In conclusion, there are no convincing arguments against Esperanto to become the new lingua franca. Though English is powerful, Esperantists are trying to make Esperanto a popular language. Of course, at the moment, English is a sensible choice for language learners. But the future is undecided. Therefore, it could not be wrong to expect a future where people speak Esperanto worldwide. References Aktuale, n.d., Esperanto A fascinating language, viewed 12 September 2012, http://ikso.net/broshuro/pdf/malkovru_esperanton_en.pdf May, J 1993, Curious facts, Collins & Brown, NY. National Library of Scoland, n.d., Auld Collection, viewed 15 September 2012, http://www.nls.uk/catalogues/online/snpc/detail.cfm?id=442&keyword=esperanto&subje ctid=-99&collection=442&passedsubject=-99&passedcollection=99&passedkeyword=esperanto&origin=listresults Wikipedia, September 2012, Esperanto, viewed 12 September 2012, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto Wolff, D 2003, Questions and answers about Esperanto A guide for activists, viewed 12 September 2012, http://www.esperanto-usa.org/posters/QA.pdf