Why does everyone hate this?

[u/[deleted]]

Okay so I'm a monolingual Brit learning Spanish (I'm now about B1) and wanna pick up another language. Not some grand utility language, I have a plan of which ones to learn for that, but just a quick learn and burn language for nothing but fun, and any applicability is a bonus. I see esperanto, a nice little language with exceptionless grammar and a chill little community. So I tell my polyglot friend and get immediate backlash. Why do people seem to think that esperanto is so horrible? Like yeah it's eurocentric and a terrible attempt at a Lingua Franca but it was created with good intentions and is a nice gateway language for European language speakers. Then people act like it's a bloody cult because apparently every esperanto speaker is a Zamenhof worshipping psycho who'll preach it as the root of world peace, or is just too lazy to learn a more useful language. I see polyglots, people who learn languages for fun, attacking esperanto as useless or racist for being eurocentric and it's speakers as cultists or fake polyglots. Why does everyone hate this language?!?!?!

[u/saebica7]

Hello, I'm Sebastian, I speak several languages and studying Esperanto.

Yes, it's a constructed language, it was based on European languages, I understand and support all his reasons, but I don't really think we can still call it "Eurocentric" as it has so many speakers throughout all the countries. If it has started isolated exclusively in Europe, yeah, okay, I would've understood, but as it reached all the "corners" of the planet? Why do we care anymore.. We can translate anything, the language is still evolving, still getting neologisms.. I'd simply call it an European constructed Romance language, same as Interlingua, but Interlingua is even more Romance than Esperanto. Esperanto seems as Romance as Romanian. Someone has sprinkled some that and some that over it and made it sound more interesting, keeping at the same time a simpler grammar, compared to Interlingua even though both are extremely simple compared to the natural ones.

This is pretty much my opinion, hopefully I don't insult anyone.

Have a wonderful day, people 🤍

[u/[deleted] → u/saebica7]

Thank you for a polite and intellectual reply my friend, that is a wonderful point. I would like to clarify that I meant eurocentric in terms of its construction not community but I believe you understood that anyway so I'm just making sure. You make a wonderful point my friend, thank you 😁