Instead of malbona, why not unbona or ungood? Or to express a greater good, can I suggest doubleplusgood? It's so strange how some of the merits of esperanto you listed reminds me of the merits of 1984's Newspeak.
I caught the esperanto bug briefly in high school too, but I quickly gave up on it as the initial novelty wore off.
Esperanto is a nice idea but impractical. Idealism only gets you so far. There are hundreds or thousands of years worth of literature, history, culture, etc tied to the major languages that already exist. Esperanto is not going to overcome this advantage of incumbent languages.
You brought up an interesting point. What if the tables were turned and we had to learn mandarin? If I was forced to learn a language, I'd rather learn mandarin than esperanto. And as frustrating as irregular aspects of languages can be, the irregularity leads to the beauty of languages. There is history to the frustrating aspects of language.
And though esperanto might be useful for the UN, it is useless everywhere else. Almost everyone on earth lives with or near people who speak the same language as them. Think about it? In your day to day experience, when do you really need esperanto? For most people, the answer is never.
The goal of Esperanto is having a quick, easy way for people around the world to communicate with each other. You don't need to live near Esperanto speakers to use it online, by mail, or while traveling.
Esperanto is basically a ticket to joining a global diaspora where members are extremely supportive, they’ll go out of their way to meet up with you and be friends. In English you’re just another joe, so there’s that. It’s not for everyone, in fact this works only insofar as Esperanto is not mainstream!
Also I never use Esperanto at home, only when I travel. It’s a great way to meet people from all around the world and chat about culture and life.
I was waiting for the newspeak argument. If we were talking about Toki-Pona I would agree, but Esperanto doesn't dumb you down and Sapir-Whorf isn't proved either.
Also, I'd certainly talk to a whole lot more international folks if I could speak with them. I know a lot of people who travel places where the natives don't speak English. That alone would be helpful.
I caught the esperanto bug briefly in high school too, but I quickly gave up on it as the initial novelty wore off.
Esperanto is a nice idea but impractical. Idealism only gets you so far. There are hundreds or thousands of years worth of literature, history, culture, etc tied to the major languages that already exist. Esperanto is not going to overcome this advantage of incumbent languages.
You brought up an interesting point. What if the tables were turned and we had to learn mandarin? If I was forced to learn a language, I'd rather learn mandarin than esperanto. And as frustrating as irregular aspects of languages can be, the irregularity leads to the beauty of languages. There is history to the frustrating aspects of language.
And though esperanto might be useful for the UN, it is useless everywhere else. Almost everyone on earth lives with or near people who speak the same language as them. Think about it? In your day to day experience, when do you really need esperanto? For most people, the answer is never.