Ideal Nol versus Esperanto
After having received several valuable comments from readers, I’ve looked into Ideal Nol and Esperanto a bit more in an effort to differentiate their purposes, current and projected usage, and challenges that the languages face.
Esperanto was created with the most honorable of ambitions: promote international understanding in an effort to foster wold peace. Creator Dr. Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof’s romantic and idealistic goal for the language was for it to become the world’s second language. Ideal Nol was also of course created for a sort of international understanding, but more so between college students texting one another than the entire world. Another significant difference is that while Ideal Nol can be spoken, it’s niche lies more in the digital realm of SMS and MSN.
Finding current (and accurate) figures on the number of Esperanto speakers is quite difficult, but the most widely-circulated statistic puts the number of Esperanto speakers at somewhere between one and two million. There are songs in Esperanto, films produced completely in Esperanto and numerous books and magazines in the language. Ideal Nol is quite young, so there are no figures available for it yet, but what the creators lack in followers, they make up for in optimism (talk of a Nobel Prize). The idea of a native Ideal Nol speaker sounds preposterous, but who knows..
Esperanto’s biggest foes have been Hitler, Stalin and English. While the first two made active efforts to suppress “the language of spies,” the latter has crept into a position as the world’s unofficial second language. Ideal Nol also has its detractors, as can be evidenced by the comments on last week’s post, and may prove to be nothing more than a flash in the pan.
You’ve given a fair presentation of Esperanto here, but there is one thing I would like to add.
Esperanto is of immediate use today. I have used it on my travels over many years. I have been given guided tours of a number of cities (Berlin, Milan, Sofia …) over the years and have been given a local’s insights into the politics and customs of the country I am visiting.
A good introduction can be found at http://www.esperanto.net
You’ve given a fair presentation of Esperanto here, but there is one thing I would like to add.
Esperanto is of immediate use today. I have used it on my travels over many years. I have been given guided tours of a number of cities (Berlin, Milan, Sofia …) over the years and have been given a local’s insights into the politics and customs of the country I am visiting.
A good introduction can be found at http://www.esperanto.net
There will never be one language, one religion or one culture.
Or maybe there will… After world war 3 when there will be one human…
There will never be one language, one religion or one culture.
Or maybe there will… After world war 3 when there will be one human…
It’s true that the current dominance of English is one huge obstacle to the rise of Esperanto. But ironically it was the French who in the early 1920s rejected a proposal to make Esperanto the working language of the League of Nations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Esperanto). They did not realize that English was coming. That’s one reason why it’s hard to believe the French nowadays when they try to promote cultural and linguistic diversity.
It’s true that the current dominance of English is one huge obstacle to the rise of Esperanto. But ironically it was the French who in the early 1920s rejected a proposal to make Esperanto the working language of the League of Nations (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Esperanto). They did not realize that English was coming. That’s one reason why it’s hard to believe the French nowadays when they try to promote cultural and linguistic diversity.
[…] with rudimentary social networking features. By accepting messages from sms, web, mobile web Ideal Nol versus Esperanto – spanish-translation-blog.spanishtranslation.us 04/14/2009 After having received several valuable […]
вот прям очень бы хотелось видеть больше постов
вот прям очень бы хотелось видеть больше постов