Re: Esperanto!
Reply #91 - January 04, 2012, 04:03 AM
True -- in that situation, it wouldn't be a good idea to learn Esperanto. For me, personally, I like how you get to travel cheaply by staying with other Esperanto speakers abroad, who'll show you around the city, etc, I like the literature available in the language, which is of surprisingly good quality and international in nature, I like how there's so many gatherings and events in Esperanto all over the world, I like how I know that one day I'll be able to speak the language more or less perfectly, and I like how, apart from the languages I speak and probably Spanish, Esperanto is the one language that allows me to speak to diverse people from all over the world who're not concentrated in just one geographical location -- the language doesn't belong to any cultural group. And you know what I like best? I like how I can get all of that by learning a language that's 4-20 times easier than national languages to learn.
Also, even in the situation you mentioned, if you find just one or two Esperanto speakers in the Arctic, you'll be able to converse with them fluently and they'll be able to tell you all about the place (and even act as interpreters). Esperanto speakers tend to be very nice to samideanoj (those who also speak Esperanto), and a friend of mine told me it felt like having distant family all over the globe. Now while learning to speak an Inuit language fluently would definitely be better, it's extremely hard to achieve (especially if you're just going to spend 6 months there), and speaking Esperanto fluently with a couple of locals is better than speaking rudimentary Inuit with all of them, and plus: it only has to be learned once, while you'd have to learn a different language for each place you want to stay 6 months in.
Now that's just the way I look at it -- when I first read about Esperanto, I thought it was absolutely fascinating. If you feel naturally averse to the idea, then obviously you won't be motivated enough to learn it, and nothing can change that.
Now back to the one thing that we as ex-Muslims can all agree on -- Arabic would be a terrible international lingua franca!
قل للمليحة في الخمار الأسود
مـاذا فـعــلت بــناسـك مـتـعـبد
قـد كـان شـمّر لــلـصلاة ثـيابه
حتى خـطرت له بباب المسجد
ردي عليـه صـلاتـه وصيـامــه
لا تـقــتـلــيه بـحـق ديــن محمد
Topic: Esperanto!