[tokenadult]

This is attracting some reader interest here, so I should probably mention, for other Hacker News participants deeply interested in human languages, a definitive analysis of Esperanto[1] explaining why Esperanto has not caught on with more speakers.

[1] http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ranto/

[ketralnis]

I don't think that explains anything; it looks like a list of aesthetic "faults" that the author finds, unlikely to be recognised by anyone without a degree in linguistics. Surely those faults exist, but it's a stretch to pretend that they alone explain anything.

I speak some Esperanto but I'm no zealot. The "explanation" that your neighbours don't speak Esperanto, if such a simplified thing can exist, is probably as simple as network effects. I can learn German and speak to the man next-door, or I can learn Esperanto and speak to some theoretical people that may exist somewhere but I don't know them and they are mostly a bunch of nerds that meet at the local co-op to speak in Esperanto mostly about how great Esperanto is.

Go ahead. Ask your neighbour why he doesn't speak Esperanto. Does he say " The 'basic' number‐terms tri, trio, tria ('three, threesome, third') are a crowded jumble, making a mockery of the regular root/noun/adjective pattern they imitate" (K5 in the article)?

Or does he say "what's that?"?

[Pamar]

Agreed: studying Esperanto now makes as much sense as striving to provide CP/M compatibility in your product.

[ketralnis]

Please don't put words in my mouth, I don't think you agree with me at all.

I think Esperanto is a fun hobby and I have fun toying with it every few years, even if I'm under no delusion that it's a practical way to, say, do international business. I do think that if it or any universal second language (French, English, Mandarin, whatever) were to suddenly become more widespread, the world would be better off.

My claim was only that the reason that it's not more widespread has nothing to do with subjective flaws in the language itself.

[Pamar]

Sorry, I wasn't trying to put words in your mouth. I was just trying to underline the fact that if you put "CP/M compatible" in the ad for your product you'd get exactly the same response from most people, i.e. "uh, what?"

And probably the same response after you patiently explained them what CP/M (or Esperanto) was: "Why the hell should I care about that? Give me something that works with Windows (or Mandarin) so I can work with a sizeable portion of the rest of the world !!!"...

[scythe]

After reading it, I would say it is really written badly, but the author's point seems to be that most of Esperanto's structure was basically designed at random, with no particular goals in mind, other than looking superficially similar to other European languages. His substantive objections are as follows:

* the language has an excessive number of phonemes

me: On this point I disagree strongly. A language with more phonemes can form shorter words and convey information faster. that's just basic math (43^9 >> 16^9)

* the vocabulary is too large to be practical and has dubious links to other languages. specifically, Basic English requires far fewer (>10x fewer!) words for competence and is more recognizeable due to worldwide borrowing.

me: Here I agree. The amount of memorization required is quite large and borrowing words doesn't make up for it. Interlingua took a better path, but it targeted the only continent that doesn't need it.

* synthesis mechanisms are irregular and insufficiently general. in particular, esperanto's semantic structure and word synthesis fail to allow the speaker to compensate for missing vocabulary by using compound words or overly general words with attached descriptors

[I don't understand this sort of thing, but it sounds serious]

* the alphabet is needlessly complex. it uses symbols people do not recognize and cannot type in favor of ASCII digraphs with wide recognition.

me: Also, it does not accord significant importance to the way that an orange bikeshed would clearly clash with the trees in the background.

Okay, fine, I agree. This is just putting the nail in the coffin at this point.

* the noun-to-verb-to-adjective declension is not compatible with the structure of meaning, and so cannot be extended in a consistent, predictable way. that is to say, the variety of possible verbs is such that it is basically undecidable what noun should correspond to a given verb in the general case, and vice versa.

me: I don't know this but as far as I can tell he's right. For example, what is the "verb" associated with "electron"?

* the language is inherently sexist.

me: This is not a trivial criticism.

So there are some substantial criticisms in the article, methinks. And you can't discount the impact of difficulty on network effects: if one person has too much trouble learning Esperanto, they're not going to pass it on to their friends, who will not pass it on to their friends.

I wonder if a language designed to be usable with as small a core as possible -- something the author suggests -- could have a substantially better chance of catching on? Perhaps if it were also good at borrowing words from other languages ("extensible"), and grew in the right community for a little while...

[smsm42]

>>> A language with more phonemes can form shorter words and convey information faster.

Shorter words, yes. Convey information faster - only if you have perfect speakers and perfect listeners. Otherwise, in the best case you'd just have people ask - did you just say "hélló" or "hëllò"? In the worse case, they'd just misunderstand what you're saying. And since you strive to eliminate redundancy, instead of nonsense which would trigger request for repetition, you'd get meaning - but meaning something else that you didn't intend to say.

[scythe]

>Shorter words, yes. Convey information faster - only if you have perfect speakers and perfect listeners. Otherwise, in the best case you'd just have people ask - did you just say "hélló" or "hëllò"? In the worse case, they'd just misunderstand what you're saying. And since you strive to eliminate redundancy, instead of nonsense which would trigger request for repetition, you'd get meaning - but meaning something else that you didn't intend to say.

Perhaps I didn't include enough context from the document. He cited Esperanto as containing 34 phonemes, compared to English at 43, and then a list including Andean Spanish with 17, Japanese with 14, Hawai'ian with 8, or Rotokas with 6. That is, he cited (what seem to be) outliers with the smallest number of phonemes and implied that these were desirable. Later he notes that Eastern Polish has 49 phonemes.

I agree that a language can certainly have phonemes which are difficult to distinguish (Mandarin Chinese is famous for this) or hard to pronouce (the voiced "th" in English "the" is famous for this) or inscrutable for some listeners (most English speakers cannot distinguish dz from d), but I thought his minimalism was too extreme.

[throwaway_phd]

I have a lot of respect for your opinions on language (given your background as a professional translator and the solid advice you regularly give here on HN and your website).

Whenever a post about constructed languages comes up, you post this link, which I find disappointing: Rye's rant is, well, just a rant and his reasons for not learning Esperanto are just bad.

There was a time when I spent a few months learning Esperanto. I eventually gave up because 1) whilst it is relatively easy to get going with Esperanto, speaking it comfortably would require about as much work as any other language and 2) the Esperanto community is made up out of folks that are either much older than me or a little strange.

I don't think my first criticism is a fault of Esperanto. Human languages require a lot of convention and shared cultural ideas in order for communication to be compact and, at the same time, clear. No language, auxiliary or otherwise, can magically remove these requirements.

The second criticism is perhaps a little unfair but still important. Cultural cachet is important for a language and a language that appears to cater only to certain groups is going to have a tough time.

But if someone is keen to learn a new language, especially if that person is a monoglot, they should be encouraged to give it a try, even if their language of choice is Esperanto. They can only improve their linguistic skills.

[hooobert]

There is also other criticism of Esperanto that's worth reading (imho). Here's a linguist and former Esperanto-proponent's opinion on the community surrounding the language.

http://www.christopherculver.com/writings/esperanto.html

[tripzilch]

One of the final paragraphs really resonates with my own experiences of international (mostly EU) meetings:

""" During recent travels to Spain, I had the opportunity to observe participants in a pan-European seminar on youth and globalisation. While English was the default language of this group, in conversations between any two people the participants would often switch to the native language of one or the other. For example, a young man from France would greet another in English, but upon discovering that his conversation partner is from Italy, would switch to Italian. This would not find approval among Esperantists. Ironically, English proves the neutral choice here. It is often seen as a sure bet for international communication among young people in many countries, but it is well understood that other languages may serve just as well. In the Esperanto movement, on the other hand, there is an ideological attachment to Esperanto which mandates its use even if there are other, more culturally rich possibilities. """

My experience was at large international demo-parties. I mainly noticed this for English and German, but that's because I speak those two languages relatively fluently (Dutch is my mother tongue). The same must have been happening around me for French or Spanish (or who knows what else) as well, but I don't speak those languages well enough to tell for sure whether they were using (say) Spanish as a common bridging language or were native speakers.

And yes, English is usually the sure bet. Although some of the comments elsewhere ITT have piqued my interest to perhaps learn some Spanish in the future, especially if it's really that easy to learn. Funny, I used to hate learning language (French and German) in high school. It's only later in my life that I found out I actually have quite a knack for it :) (I should probably blame the way it was taught, but I can't really get that much worked up about it, I'm pretty satisfied with the quality of my education overall)

[BillChapman]

Hello. You cite the case where "a young man from France would greet another in English, but upon discovering that his conversation partner is from Italy, would switch to Italian." I'm not sure how frequent such a case would be. The dominance of English has pushed other languages to the sidelines in France.

As an Esperanto speaker, I have no objection to anyone using any language on any occasion, and I'm happ. I have just returned from an Esperanto conference in Dinan, Brittany. I was able to use some basic Breton with a few individuals, but the sky did not fall on my head.

I wish you well with your language learning. You may wish to add Esperanto one day.

[andreasvc]

That rant is certainly not definitive, he clearly has a chip on his shoulder. He lists a lot of reasons why Esperanto is not a perfect language, but (obviously) no language can be; when a language is constructed people suddenly set way higher standards, but this is not reasonable and leads to endless bikeshedding.

Still, I'd say Esperanto is an interesting case because it is undeniably the most successful constructed language, with the longest continuous (still continuing) history. It is interesting to learn it for that reason alone, and as far as learning second languages go, it is also one of the easiest to learn. That could make it a useful first step towards learning other second languages.

Why hasn't Esperanto caught on with more speakers? Maybe it has something to do with the reasons in his rant; personally I find it much more likely that it's due to network effects. Even a "perfectly" constructed language would be very unlikely to win over the vested interests and inertia of people.

[WildUtah]

What I wrote about Esperanto and its failure to go viral:

"There's already an existing language that fulfills so many of those criteria that it's going to be very hard to organize a new one from scratch. And the existing language already has a deep legacy of literature and culture.

That language is the world's second most widespread: Spanish.

Spanish has been destroying the dreams of Esperantists and others over the years who hope to build a more regular, orderly, and easy to learn common language based on common Indo-European roots.

Turns out that it's dang hard to design anything easier or more accessible to speakers of any European language than Spanish already is. The spelling and pronunciation are already completely regular and predictable. The grammar is straightforward and common to almost all European tongues. The vocabulary is mostly based on Latin with some Arabic variety thrown in, but it's been standardized over the centuries so that a lot of it has a simpler and more natural morphology. The sounds are a simple subset of what most languages already use.

It's a great second language: it's fairly easy, the world's second most widespread tongue, and spoken in warm countries with very friendly natives. It's not likely to provide you with many lucrative business opportunities, though. None of the world's financial capitals use it."

[scythe]

Spanish is a beautiful language, I speak some myself, it's probably better than Esperanto or the more European-focused Interlingua, but... consider the number of forms of a regular verb:

(lavar (present lavo lavas lava lavamos lavan) (past lavé lavaste lavó lavámos lavarón) (imperfect lavaba lavabas lavabamos lavaban) (future lavaré lavarás lavará lavaramos lavarán) (conditional lavaría lavarías lavaríamos lavarían) (present-subjunctive lave laves lavemos laven) (gerund lavando) (participle lavado))

And that's ignoring the twenty or so irregular verbs and roughly ten "irregular" patterns (e.g. querer). It's a lot simpler than French or Italian, to be sure, or Latin, for that matter, but it could be a lot easier.

[notahacker]

That's not to mention that Spanish is deletive so those sometimes subtly different verb conjugations are often the only way of conveying the subject of the sentence. It seems much more optimised for speaking rápidamente than listening, especially for non-native speakers.

If you were designing a language from scratch you also wouldn't choose features like the unnecessary grammatical gender (even though it's relatively consistent and easy to get right) and the b/v distinction in the orthography that's unpronounced in most dialects.

On paper it's still a far, far better auxiliary language than English though (I wouldn't be surprised to live to see a day when most people worldwide speak a regularised English with much more basic grammar and sensible orthography one day though; it's easier to build momentum taking the second language people are most exposed to as the starting point)

[lloeki]

Every time I encounter irregular verb forms, I remember I have a personal hunch for Japanese (basically a handful of exceptions and only two tenses). The leverage of context is powerful and concise in a way strangely similar to Perl. Also I can't decide if their way of typed counting is brilliant or cumbersome. As for writing systems, I have a particular hunch for Hangul.

I wish it would be as easy to prototype human languages as it is for software...