If the US switches its official language to Esperanto, wouldn’t it be imperialist as well?

The idea behind a language like Esperanto isn’t necessarily that any one country uses it as their primary language. It’s that it can be rapidly learned as a second language (or in parallel with a primary language) and spoken with just about anyone.

What about that in the context of using it for software engineering?

Esperanto already adapted to programming decades ago; in fact there’s a programming language made in Esperanto: PROGRESSO.

Here are some root words related to programming:

• Program for programs.
• Entjer for integer. (Ent for int.)
• Por for for.

People seem to have developed it in the 1800s; so outdated.

Yet Esperanto still adapts to today and is still used by at least a million speakers; it was even compulsory in Poland!

English developed in the 1200s, so outdated! /s

Also many issues https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto#Criticism like bias and the gender non-neutrality;

How is bias an issue?

Gender neutrality exists through the prefix ge-. (e.g gepatro)

Yeah, I don’t approve of the gender-default words either. I just use ina and masklna rather than -in-.

I would discard it. I would suggest to come up with a better language for the 21st century.

Why not just improve Esperanto? We shouldn’t discard a language just because of it’s flaws. It’s the only language that has speakers.

The Russian language has gendered words; and so does English (like father and mother); but that doesn’t mean we should immediately discard them.

This one seems better https://www.globasa.net/eng

How so? I haven’t heard of Globasa before.

Also, isn’t this an XY problem? The problem is that many people do not know the current dominant language that people use in science, technology, so on. So you propose Esperanto. Well, now you gatekeep it to people who know Esperanto, which is a way less demography than English.

Difference is that Esperanto is Indo-European and was designed to be easily adaptable across multiple languages; English is a Germanic Indo-European language.

Then just teach Esperanto in schools, like Poland did.

But since learning languages that are more close to one’s native language is easier, that would allow people from Latin/Roamance/Germanic-based languages to possibly learn it faster? That would not be true to Asiatic languages, …

You’d be right. As Esperanto is Indo-European, it naturally wouldn’t be as easily grasped in Asia (so Siberia, China, Vietnam, etc.) as in Europe and India. Hence, we should motivate the Asian and African groups to develop their IALs.

(However, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. At this time, it would be impossible for humanity to develop an IAL that perfectly encapsulates all language groups.)

Why another language is the correct solution?

Because English has historically spread through imperialism; and it would be unfair to impose to other language groups to use English for their native projects. (Remember: UTF-8 was originally built off ASCII, which prioritized English.)

Humans are also globally interconnected as a result of the development of the internet and imperialist capitalism; this leads to conflicts between foreign languages, as not everyone has the ability to learn every language spoken. This is why I think it’s important to utilize an IAL to help mediate communication.

Why not improve current education systems?

1. We can’t always do that, especially under capitalism.
2. Education everyone on all languages would be time consuming and unrealistic.

Why not machine translation?

Machine translation is beautiful and will get better with development. However, machine translation cannot always be utilized when e.g in emergencies or when access to electronic devices is cut off.

Also, Esperanto would be a good intermediary language to translate from (at least for Indo-European languages, not sure about Asiatic languages).

If the US switches its official language to Esperanto, wouldn’t it be imperialist as well?

Esperanto is not supposed to be a primary language; it’s an auxiliary language. It also wouldn’t be a problem if the people themselves choose to speak in Esperanto and their state supported Esperanto as a result.

Language dominance is linked to socioeconomic development.

Yes, that’s why I refer to English as an imperialist language.

You need countries like US to actually adopt it;

1. What if other countries want to adopt a different language?
2. Then the U.S would just stick with English to maintain a stranglehold on linguistic hegemony.

Esperanto is pretty popular in Europe too. The League of Nations suggested using Esperanto back in the 1900s. It was blocked only by France; other countries supported the decision.

Quote: > After the Great War, a great opportunity seemed to arise for Esperanto when the Iranian delegation to the League of Nations proposed that it be adopted for use in international relations, following a report by Nitobe Inazō, a Japanese official delegate of the League of Nations during the 13th World Congress of Esperanto in Prague.[20] Ten delegates accepted the proposal with only one voice against, the French delegate, Gabriel Hanotaux. Hanotaux opposed all recognition of Esperanto at the League, from the first resolution on December 18, 1920, and subsequently through all efforts during the next three years.[21] Hanotaux did not approve of how the French language was losing its position as the international language and saw Esperanto as a threat, effectively wielding his veto power to block the decision.

(France literally whined about french becoming unpopular because wanted to be able to communicate easier. LMAO!)

otherwise it would be just another language to learn besides English.

That’s the point. Esperanto is meant to be taught alongside the native speaker’s language so that they can easily communicate with other people. How is it any different from teaching Spanish alongside English in the U.S to help USians communicate with the local spanish population?

You are just making it harder.

It wouldn’t be harder; it’d be easier.