I'll be that guy that brings up Esperanto. I don't speak it fluently yet, but know it faaar better than Spanish which I have years of formal instruction in and have been exposed to a lot of Latin American culture. The important point is I've gotten very comfortable with Esperanto with only < 50 hours of learning. When around the house I can think of small things in Esperanto without trying. Esperanto was invented to be an easy auxiliary language to easily allow the world to communicate. It is against language imperialism.
> Esperanto was invented to be an easy auxiliary language to easily allow the world to communicate. It is against language imperialism.
It is only a rather recent development, since roughly the 1960s, that the Esperanto movement has advertised itself as a force against language imperialism and as purely an international second language for everyone, one that supposedly “protects” their native languages. Some Esperantists have criticized this change in marketing as simply trying to jump on the anti-imperialism and anti-globalization bandwagon just to get more attention for Esperanto.
L. L. Zamenhof himself hoped that Esperanto – or at least something like it – would eventually replace all world languages, because he saw those differences between peoples as purely a negative thing. (Just like his Homaranismo was an attempt to level out religious differences with a single spirituality that hopefully would be taken up by all.) Zamenhof’s own writings and his lifelong efforts show that he did not really care for cultural diversity as many people today would understand it and hope for.
