Re: Promote Esperanto at Obama's Change.org

christopherculver.com wrote:

For my part, I dislike the Esperanto movement because it falsely
represents itself to get people into it, and then makes them confess
total allegiance to it.

Not at all. Partial allegiance is very much appreciated (which,
actually, probably irritates people a lot more).

In my experience, including attendence of many
congresses and a year of working in the central office of World
Esperanto Association, this movement for "language diversity" scolds
you if you are interested in learning any other languages than
Esperanto.

If language is a means of communication, then language diversity makes
no sense -- and vice versa, if language diversity is a good thing,
Esperanto is objectively a part of it, no matter what its community
wants or does. The linguists are right in accusing the Esperanto
movement of wanting to keep the cake and eat it, but the Esperantists
are also right in accusing the linguistic community of not being able
to explain what sense there actually is in language diversity.

Jens S. Larsen
.

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