What's so great about Esperanto, you ask? Well, in a word,

Itt failed forced memes?

>>1456888
Sure, if you call around a million speakers and a thousand native speakers 'failed'. That's more total speakers than Icelandic! That means that when Páll Óskar recorded Gordjöss in Esperanto (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OkQA3G-lwA) there are more people who can understand that version than can understand the original.

>>1456942
Yes, I call that a failure for a language that was supposed to be the global language

Million is literally nothing
Six or seven times that speak Finnish

>>1456978
The people who speak it actively use it for international communication, i.e. for communicating with other Esperantists who share no other language in common. And it's growing: Nearly half a million people are learning it on Duolingo, and even if only a fraction of those carry through to the point of actually having a grasp of the language, it's a major increase in the proportional number. It's not happening in a single dramatic leap, but things are starting to come up Esperanto. Why get left behind? It takes no effort to learn compared to national languages.

>>1456888
Pretty much this.

>>1456863
Mi ankaŭ tre ŝatas Esperanton, sed ĉi tie ĝi verŝajne nur prenos fek. El kion mi vidas 4chanistoj simple ne ŝatas la lingvon

>>1456978
I have never met a Finn in my life. Much less an Espwranto memespeaker.

>>1456998
Eble, sed ni ne rezignu. Eĉ se nur malgranda ono de 4ĉananoj interesiĝus pri Esperanto tio estus granda kresko, do ni tutforte propagandu ĝin. Kiel diris Zamenhof:
Eĉ guto malgranda, konstante frapante,
traboras la monton granitan.
kaj en la sama poemo:
Ni semas kaj semas, neniam laciĝas,
pri l' tempoj estontaj pensante.
Cent semoj perdiĝas, mil semoj perdiĝas, –
ni semas kaj semas konstante.
"Ho, ĉesu!" mokante la homoj admonas, –
"Ne ĉesu, ne ĉesu!" en kor' al ni sonas:
"Obstine antaŭen! La nepoj vin benos,
se vi pacience eltenos".

>>1457015
excuse me, we speak american here

>>1457035
Esperanto is the universal language. It is equally the language of every country, so it is foreign nowhere.

>>1457040
This is an American Catholic board
Get the fuck out

>>1457056
So does that mean it's Irish, or Mexican?

>>1457064
What's the difference?

>>1457056
Catholic? So we're supposed to believe that wafers and wine can not just represent but physically and literally become the body and blood of a first-century carpenter? No thanks.

>>1456888
It's pretty popular in China.
So much, they can speak it without dialect, unlike English, where the accent of their best speaker makes words indistinguishable.

>>1457337
>English
>where the accent of their best speaker makes words indistinguishable
But this applies to them speaking just English too

Just learn Latin. Internationalist, and has pedigree.

File: 12963649_1052528678139015_346982416626886323_n.jpg (59KB, 960x720px) Image search: [Google]

59KB, 960x720px

>>1456863
Sounds like you have to learn a few words then learn how to mix and match them. What isn't great about that?

>>1457388
I know, right? Also, what's the picture have to do with anything?

>>1457376
Have you ever even TRIED to learn to use the subjunctive correctly? Or the ablative?

>>1457452
Yeah, they're easy. If you were to try, you may find it easy too.

That was one.

>>1457108
Some eat potatoes with beans and the others eat beans with potatoes. Both have an inferiority complex.

>>1456978
Also, the figures are completely made up. There are only a few thousand people who can actually use it. Don't fall for the meme.

>>1457489
The Latin subjunctive is not the same thing as the modern English subjunctive; it included constructions akin to "Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow..."

>>1457452
They're easy as shit, kiddo. PROTIP: we're writing in a language that has a subjunctive.

>>1457512
hoho man, using the subjunctive for polite commands, fucken monk witchcraft there.

>>1456995
> why get left behind?
because everybody always uses english as the lingua franca anyways you autist

>>1457512
No. That is the 'imperative mood'. The subjunctive imperative was rare in the second person.

> not the same thing as the modern English subjunctive
Kind of is, since the English were huge Latinaboos and made English fit the Latin.

>>1457507
The statistical inquiries that came up with the 'million' number used the same methods that they did for every other language, and came up with numbers for other languages consistent with existing statistics. Why should we suppose that Esperanto is somehow different?

>>1457552
Early Modern English subjunctive, maybe. But in Modern English the use of the subjunctive has reduced, e.g. "If there be any who object" sounds archaic at best.

>>1457568
Archaic or not. People judge on whether you can use the subjunctive when required. It's best to know of it and not use, than not to know it at all.

>>1457581
Actually, there's probably some people who wouldn't even approve "if there be any who object" by now.

>>1457564
Gee, maybe because it's an extremely atypical speech community?

>>1457589
Depends where you're from. This kind of thing is common in formal, British language like that of Parliament or the Crown.

>>1457622
In the sense of having almost entirely non-native speakers? That's no different from, for example, Standard Arabic, which is different enough from the regional vernaculars to be a separate language.

>>1457633
>In the sense of having almost entirely non-native speakers?
That would be one thing, yeah. There's also the highly cosmopolitan distribution and lack of a core territory, the ideological dimension of the Esperantist project, etc. BTW I would not rest easy on any estimate out there of Modern Standard Arabic speakers. There's too much to encourage people to distort their competency.

>>1457644
What about, say, percentage of people who are able to pass such-and-such test of MSA level? That seems harder to distort.

>>1456863
> esperanto
> not ithkuil

>>1458374
Is there a single living person who's actually capable of carrying on a live conversation in Ithkuil?

>>1458374
>not ido

>>1458420
In Esperanto, there is basically one rule about the accusative: Nouns in the object case take the accusative -n ending.
In Ido, there are two rules: Nouns in the object case are not specially marked, unless they come before the subject in which case they take the accusative -n ending.
Ido's attempt at 'simplifying' the accusative literally made it more complicated.