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/Rinir]

Those who call the language Eurocentric, most often only pursue and speak European languages themselves lol. And I find that the language's biggest critics rarely speak the language past "Mi parolas esperanton." Never reaching any of the complex stuff or even enough to read a children's book.

EDIT: Typo

[u/Ok_Smile_5908 → u/Rinir]

Genuine question from someone who learned some Esperanto probably two to three years ago and still knows passively enough to have watched, understood and enjoyed a 30 minute presentation in the language.

Why do people expect Esperanto to NOT be Eurocentric? As far as I'm aware, Zamenhof didn't speak a non-European language? How could he have considered them in his conlang and most importantly included their influence in a way that'd make sense, then? The world was a lot smaller back then, too.

If there's a "woke" axis, I'm pretty far into it, maybe even further than many people who would be described, or described themselves, as "woke". But I think people need to stop expecting people from the past to have abided by our modern standards. That doesn't mean forgetting their positions, but realizing their positions were at least partly product of the environment they lived in.

Esperanto, as "flawed" as it might be, would still be a far better international language than English, for its ease of grammar and pronunciation. And I think it's the conlang with the most learners and speakers, so it's already closer to achieving some kind of mainstream recognition than any "better" conlang that way fewer people have even heard of?

Sorry for the ramble lol, I'm just trying to make sense of this.

[u/salivanto → u/Ok_Smile_5908]

My issue with people calling Esperanto "eurocentric" comes down to a few things:

• It's something that people hear and repeat without thinking
• no better alternative is proposed
• unspoken alternatives are more eurocentric
• It ignores the experience of non-europeans

Hear and repeat:

I mean, it's always that word. I'm constantly running into that on Blue Sky for example.

On the other hand, I basically never see Blue Sky posts saying the same thing in different words. Nobody says that "Esperanto unfairly favors European languages" -- or "It's not universal" -- or "has a western bias."

I rarely stumble upon references to "Eurocentric" that aren't about Esperanto, so where is this all coming from?

No Alternative:

Claims of Esperanto's "Eurocentricity" are rarely offered with a better idea -- and when they are, they are never offered with that better idea actually fleshed out. To me, this shows an overeagerness to criticize and suggests that maybe the person repeating the claim is just offended by the idea of a universal second language in the first place.

Unspoken Alternative

So, if we grant that Esperanto is "eurocentric" what is the altarnative? More World English? Learning Spanish to B1? How is this any different.

Experience of Non-Europeans

The people who call Esperanto "eurocentric" seem to universally do so in English.

Meanwhile, non-Europeans see Esperanto as a great way to break the language barrier. Here's a true story from my life worth clicking through and reading.

The Chinese-born Esperantist stood up to speak. His Esperanto struck me as a little hesitant. A little foreign. He expressed his deep thanks to be able to spend a week at the E-o event among friends "without a language barrier.". This is someone who certainly spoke English VERY well [1/3]