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From: elna@netcom.com (Esperanto League N America)
Subject: talk & travel
Message-ID: <elnaD3oBsD.IE7@netcom.com>
Organization: Esperanto League for North America, Inc.
Date: Wed, 8 Feb 1995 09:02:37 GMT
Lines: 54

livesey@solntze.engr.sgi.com (Jon Livesey) writes in a recentposting (reference
 <3h9fpn$lpg@fido.asd.sgi.com>):
>
>Esperanto must be a very strange language; it's always growing
>by leaps and bounds, and yet it always seems to have from half
>a million to a few million speakers.
>
>And if you don't subscribe to conspiracy theories, there's a
>pretty simple explanation for this phenomenon, which is that
>large numbers of people *begin* to learn Esperanto, and the
>vast majority of them simply give it up as a lost cause after
>a short while.  So Esperanto always looks to be in the verge
>of takeoff, but never quite makes it.


At the risk of reviving arguments of dialectical materialism (now
out of fashion, it seems) let me point you to recent developments
which have greatly changed the nature of international communication.

1) inexpensive telephone linkage between nations.
2) satellite transmission of television programs.
3) ready access to intercontinental jet airliners.
4) breakdown of political barriers, esp. east/west Europe.
5) establishment of European Union.
6) citizen access to Internet.

This is all making the language barrier less abstract: one encounters 
the real lack of understanding engendered by the lack of a common language.

Direct neutral communication between people is not a lost cause; it is
already happening. Esperanto is already working. Take alook at 
soc.culture.esperanto to see its vital spirit. Visit an Esperanto 
conference and hear people from all over the world do whatever people 
do in any other international gatherings, but without interpreters. Tune 
in Radio Poland, Radio Vatican, Radio Cuba, etc. and hear it spoken 
and sung. Esperanto is alive!

Many people seem to resist this international communication tool
because they perceive some kind of cult lurking in its shadowy
recesses. Think of how the "Internet Crowd" looks to outsiders.
Esperanto speakers are often guilty of overindulgence in
enthusiasm; but discovery of methods of communication is pretty
exciting....

How useful is your telephone if you can push buttons on it to
connect to Japan or Finnland, but then cannot understand the
speaker on the line?
How useful is your television if you can capture programs from
France or the Phillipines, but cannot understand the dialogue?
What good is it to travel to the ends of the earth if you cannot
understand the people you meet there?
Esperanto is a tool which allows international understanding.

Miko.
