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Why do people hate Esperanto?

 Language Learning Forum : Esperanto Post Reply
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Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
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Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
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 Message 17 of 72
06 May 2010 at 6:29am | IP Logged 
GREGORG4000 wrote:
Volte wrote:

GREGORG4000 wrote:
I like Esperanto. I would like it so much better if it wasn't so Romance-centric, and if it didn't have politics often bundled in.


What politics do you see bundled in? Why do you consider it Romance-centric, other than word roots?

Get the EU to support Esperanto, make Esperanto a school subject, Hitler and lots of bad people persecuted Esperantists


I can agree on the first two. The last is a matter of historical fact, not politics. The simple and ugly truth is that Esperanto speakers were murdered in a number of countries, Esperanto has been illegal and suppressed in various regions and times, and so forth.

GREGORG4000 wrote:

And yeah, word roots, exactly that. Sure, it's got the affix system and the agglutinative-ish grammar, but it still sounds like really weird Spanish.


Fair enough.
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Volte
Tetraglot
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Switzerland
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 Message 18 of 72
06 May 2010 at 6:50am | IP Logged 
mrhenrik wrote:
Volte wrote:
That said, I have seen things which I would qualify as hatred. Refusal to
acknowledge that a language has a culture or literary tradition, despite people
repeatedly pointing out evidence to the contrary, strikes me as qualifying - and I've
seen that both on this forum and elsewhere, with a variety of languages. Disparaging
people for speaking or learning a specific language also often wanders into the
territory of hatred, in my opinion.


As eventually became somewhat evident from the discussion on Esperanto's culture, the
main problem seemed to be the very loose definition of culture. For some people,
culture is people in national costumes dancing in ways you'd never dance without said
costume on and eating strange food. For others, culture is a collection of similar
opinions and the people sharing them. Of course you also have everything in between.


Indeed, culture is tricky. Literature is simpler, though - Esperanto has literature, for any sane definition of literature I can think of. There are a lot of books in it, some of which are quite good, one of which was repeatedly nominated for a Nobel prize in literature, etc.

If someone has a well-thought-out definition of culture which excludes Esperanto, I'll disagree with them but try to see where they're coming from. If someone defines culture in a way that includes Esperanto but simultaneously claims Esperanto doesn't have a culture, it's another matter. That said, I've seen this be a problem more often for three non-Esperanto cultures which have been occasionally disparaged on this forum; I honestly don't consider it to be much of a problem with Esperanto in particular here. My post really wasn't meant to be purely about Esperanto.

mrhenrik wrote:

My
point here is that I wouldn't call that hating either. You could perhaps call this
discussion of what hate is fairly uselessly semantic, but I'd argue that once we've
successfully branded someone "hater", we're way too free to ignore everything they have
to say.


We probably draw the line of where hatred starts at slightly different points, but I otherwise fully agree with you.

mrhenrik wrote:

Disparaging people for speaking or appreciating a language is indeed something we don't
want, here on the forum at least, and as far as I know at least one person with some
edgy opinions on the subject got removed from the forum.


Yes.

mrhenrik wrote:

Quote:

Saying something incorrect out of ignorance isn't hatred. Clinging to disparaging views
in the face of clear contrary evidence can be. I know multiple Esperanto speaking forum
members have been extremely frustrated by some anti-Esperanto comments in threads in
the past, to the point of decreasing forum participation at least temporarily - even
when there's no hatred (and I think there usually isn't), you're entirely correct that
many of these threads do end up feeling like tilting at windmills, and that is not at
all pleasant.


Clear contrary evidence according to your definition. Others may have completely
different opinions on both what might be considered evidence, and what is indeed being
proven.


They may. I try to be rather liberal in what I accept as a legitimate opinion. If someone wants to have a definition of culture which revolves around food, words for animal husbandry, and clothing styles, excluding literature and shared history as insufficient, I'll agree with them that Esperanto is heavily lacking in culture by that definition, though not entirely devoid of it.

If someone claims Esperanto doesn't have literature after being pointed to the "Concise Encyclopedia of the original literature of Esperanto", I'll be rather befuddled. If someone persists in claiming Esperanto has no native speakers after being pointed to evidence to the contrary (that it does is rather thoroughly 'proven', if the word is to have any meaning - they exist, they're documented, etc), I'll again be befuddled.

mrhenrik wrote:

Discarding a different opinion there as hate seems to be a self-destructive
short cut.


Absolutely and fully agreed.

mrhenrik wrote:

There were some posts that indeed crossed the line, and as I said earlier in this post
at least one person has been removed as a result of them.


Yes.

mrhenrik wrote:

Concerning the fighting windmills analogy I used - actually that's not quite what I
meant. I'd apologise for that, I reckon that might be because I'm not too familiar with
the saying - I haven't even read the book.

mrhenrik wrote:

What I meant was that the threadstarter
seemed to see "haters" where there according to my definition of the word were none.


It doesn't seem to me that the thread starter was referring to this forum in particular, though I could be wrong. I can't think of anyone currently on this forum who I'd classify as hating Esperanto. That said, people who hate it have and do exist - three nationalistic politicians who systematically killed Esperanto speakers immediately come to mind as the most famous examples.

On the less extreme side, Piron's Psychological Reactions to Esperanto points out that some people have strong emotional reactions to Esperanto and say verifiably untrue things about it, with a great deal of certainty, despite no actual knowledge.

Between these extremes, at some difficult to define point, hate does start. Fortunately, it's rare.

mrhenrik wrote:

In

In any case, personally I'd be very happy if we'd all stop using words such as "hate".
It's just one giant simplification which allows for some very destructive short cuts in
logic and communication. Things are way too complicated for someone to just plainly
"hate" Esperanto, there is always (from my experience) a much more complex reality than
the vastly simplified "hate".

Here I'd write what my point is, but I'm not too sure any more. Oh well, it's late.


I definitely agree that the word 'hate' gets overused in discussions about criticism of Esperanto, and that reducing the frequency drastically would be a good thing.

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mrhenrik
Triglot
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 Message 19 of 72
06 May 2010 at 2:12pm | IP Logged 
It would seem that we agree on a lot of points, which is great.

Volte wrote:

mrhenrik wrote:

What I meant was that the threadstarter
seemed to see "haters" where there according to my definition of the word were none.


It doesn't seem to me that the thread starter was referring to this forum in particular, though I could be wrong. I can't think of anyone currently on this forum who I'd classify as hating Esperanto. That said, people who hate it have and do exist - three nationalistic politicians who systematically killed Esperanto speakers immediately come to mind as the most famous examples.


I'm not familiar with the other two in this dark trio, but I believe one of them would be Stalin? Now, I'm not particularily familiar with communist history, but from what I understand there wasn't any targeted persecution at Esperantists in particular, but rather a more general persecution towards everything "impure" according to his ideology. People being different would end up in that category, so people seeking to forward a very liberal mindset would probably not be welcome - Esperantists or not. I might be completely off the mark here though.

Quote:

On the less extreme side, Piron's Psychological Reactions to Esperanto points out that some people have strong emotional reactions to Esperanto and say verifiably untrue things about it, with a great deal of certainty, despite no actual knowledge.


Piron's article strikes me as fairly unprofessional. There are undoubtedly some very unjustified opinions towards Esperanto, but his conclusion seems exceptionally subjective and in blind favour of Esperanto. If looking for a balanced view on Esperanto critisism, I'd keep looking. To me this seems like a very subjective defense of Esperanto written in an academic format.

Quote:

Between these extremes, at some difficult to define point, hate does start. Fortunately, it's rare.


That could be, but I'd love to see some actual examples. As I mentioned earlier in the thread I haven't seen any blatant hate against Esperanto yet, although that could have something to do with my definition of hate.


- Henrik
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Splog
Diglot
Senior Member
Czech Republic
anthonylauder.c
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 Message 20 of 72
06 May 2010 at 2:47pm | IP Logged 
Akao wrote:
One of the sites said that Klingon had more speakers than Esperanto. Clearly false.


Not false if you include actual Klingons!
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Splog
Diglot
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Czech Republic
anthonylauder.c
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 Message 21 of 72
06 May 2010 at 3:10pm | IP Logged 
Lenin once said "It is with absolute frankness that we speak of this struggle of the proletariat; each man must choose between joining our side or the other side. Any attempt to avoid taking sides in this issue must end in fiasco."

In other words, as the IRA (and plenty of others) have since put it: "You are either with us, or you are against us". They don't allow any middle ground.

The truth is, only a tiny percentage of people have any kind of strong opinion about Esperanto. There is a super-small group of Esperanto fanatics, many of whom treat it like a religion and feel the urge to "convert" the masses, and an even tinier group of Esperanto "haters" who like to ridicule its failure to live up to its original ambitions.

The vast majority of people, though, don't really have strong opinions either way. You just don't read about them because, well, they don't have much to say on the topic because it simply isn't important to them.
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Volte
Tetraglot
Senior Member
Switzerland
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Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian
Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese

 
 Message 22 of 72
07 May 2010 at 10:07pm | IP Logged 
mrhenrik wrote:
It would seem that we agree on a lot of points, which is great.


Yes.

mrhenrik wrote:

Volte wrote:

mrhenrik wrote:

What I meant was that the threadstarter
seemed to see "haters" where there according to my definition of the word were none.


It doesn't seem to me that the thread starter was referring to this forum in particular, though I could be wrong. I can't think of anyone currently on this forum who I'd classify as hating Esperanto. That said, people who hate it have and do exist - three nationalistic politicians who systematically killed Esperanto speakers immediately come to mind as the most famous examples.


I'm not familiar with the other two in this dark trio, but I believe one of them would be Stalin? Now, I'm not particularily familiar with communist history, but from what I understand there wasn't any targeted persecution at Esperantists in particular, but rather a more general persecution towards everything "impure" according to his ideology. People being different would end up in that category, so people seeking to forward a very liberal mindset would probably not be welcome - Esperantists or not. I might be completely off the mark here though.


Persecution against Esperantists (in Esperanto, on Wikipedia) gives a brief summary. Stalin is indeed one of them. The third, I had badly misremembered, though there are a number of regimes which persecuted Esperanto to a lesser degree.

Hitler had clear ideas about Esperanto. In "Mein Kampf", he wrote: As long as the Jew has not become the master of the other peoples, he must speak their languages whether he likes it or not, but as soon as they became his slaves, they would all have to learn a universal language (Esperanto, for instance!), so that by this additional means the Jews could more easily dominate them!.

On the other hand, some authoritarian regimes embraced Esperanto to various degrees, including Stalin before he turned against it, and fascist Italy. Despite Esperanto being frequently tied to socialism (both by a subset of its supporters, and by many of its detractors), communist regimes were often not fond of it. The history of which regimes supported and repressed it and why is surprisingly complex - but a number had quite decided ideas specifically about Esperanto.

mrhenrik wrote:

Quote:

On the less extreme side, Piron's Psychological Reactions to Esperanto points out that some people have strong emotional reactions to Esperanto and say verifiably untrue things about it, with a great deal of certainty, despite no actual knowledge.


Piron's article strikes me as fairly unprofessional. There are undoubtedly some very unjustified opinions towards Esperanto, but his conclusion seems exceptionally subjective and in blind favour of Esperanto. If looking for a balanced view on Esperanto critisism, I'd keep looking. To me this seems like a very subjective defense of Esperanto written in an academic format.


I agree entirely. Nonetheless, I think he does raise an important point with concrete examples. I've really been astonished by the fervor a minority of people have while making absolutely unjustifiably false claims about Esperanto, with no actual knowledge of it. I've seen this happen with other languages, but with nowhere near the same frequency.

mrhenrik wrote:

Quote:

Between these extremes, at some difficult to define point, hate does start. Fortunately, it's rare.


That could be, but I'd love to see some actual examples. As I mentioned earlier in the thread I haven't seen any blatant hate against Esperanto yet, although that could have something to do with my definition of hate.


I haven't seen anything on this forum which I'd classify as hate, though some posts have come close at times. Do you want examples from outside this forum?

On another note, Splog is right - most people just don't care either way, and most of those who do care don't care strongly.

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Juаn
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 Message 23 of 72
08 May 2010 at 12:41am | IP Logged 
Volte wrote:
Indeed, culture is tricky. Literature is simpler, though - Esperanto has literature, for any sane definition of literature I can think of. There are a lot of books in it, some of which are quite good, one of which was repeatedly nominated for a Nobel prize in literature, etc.


Let's say I invent a language, Adxeds, where:

* action = bannemd
* and = siffe
* are = macvubv
* evil = caxosd
* from = lañolñakh
* good = sedeffad
* inseparable = arthirt

and then posit that sedeffad siffe caxosd macvubv arthirt lañolñakh bannemd.

Let's suppose further that I keep this up for a whole book, and that a couple thousand scattered individuals across America and Europe become entranced by my new language and write as many books, pamphlets and poems in it. Do we have now a literature in Adxeds in the same sense that we have German or Russian or Arabic or Indian literature and philosophy?
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GREGORG4000
Diglot
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United States
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 Message 24 of 72
08 May 2010 at 1:08am | IP Logged 
Juаn wrote:

Let's say I invent a language, Adxeds, where:

* action = bannemd
* and = siffe
* are = macvubv
* evil = caxosd
* from = lañolñakh
* good = sedeffad
* inseparable = arthirt

and then posit that sedeffad siffe caxosd macvubv arthirt lañolñakh bannemd.

Let's suppose further that I keep this up for a whole book, and that a couple thousand scattered individuals across America and Europe become entranced by my new language and write as many books, pamphlets and poems in it. Do we have now a literature in Adxeds in the same sense that we have German or Russian or Arabic or Indian literature and philosophy?

Yes


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