The English language has been expanding its reach since…I’m no expert, but certainly long before those Mayflower men hit an American rock. Recently, English has made inroads in post-Soviet Russian. In Estonia meanwhile, everyone’s so busy learning English that they have forgotten that they are right next to Mother Russia. Then there’s Sol Steinmetz, a man of many tongues. Several decades ago, he was a boy of many tongues: he learned Hungarian, then Yiddish, then Spanish, then English. He still speaks all those other languages - and a couple more - but he feels most comfortable speaking English.
There are, of course, global rivals to English - Chinese, Spanish, French - but Esperanto is most assuredly not such a rival. Now there’s a new Esperanto for the text messaging generation. Someone in our newsroom said it should be called Textperanto. Alas, no: its name is NOL. That’s this week’s podcast. Listen to it here.
3 Comments
June 24, 2008 at 7:17 am
Is it possible for you to write something positive about Esperanto, a language that survived its creator? Imagine that he had internet at his disposal!
English looks like an unstable operating system that requires updating just at the moment you don’t have time.
It’s a pita (just an example of a word foreigners will have to look up).
June 24, 2008 at 8:18 am
BTW did you attend http://www.spellingsociety.org/media/items/cost_of_spelling and could you report on it?
June 25, 2008 at 4:49 am
Forgive me! I think you under-rate Esperanto. I speak it and find it useful.
I don’t suppose I can persuade you, but thank you for letting me air my voiew.
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