Best case scenario for Esperanto, that is not ASB?

Created in 1887 by L. L. Zamenhof, Esperanto is today the most widely spoken constructed language in the world: thousands, if not millions of people can read and speak it, and it is also the only constructed language to have native speakers, in around 1,000 families.

However, it never became the official language of international communication Zamenhof hoped it would've become, and after a brief - and relative - golden age it became the exclusive domain of a large community of hobbyists and linguists, and the internacia lingvo itself was also subject to criticism both from within and from without Esperantism.

Would it ever be possible to turn Esperanto into a true language of international communication, even if not for the entire world? Given the Eurocentric nature of the language, it might fulfill its intended role in the European continent alone, maybe in a world where World War II never happened.

What do you think?
 
Best scenario? Make it the official language of a possible multinational nation in Europe (e.g. independent Turkish Straits, a Balkan federation, etc.) Personally, I don't believe in purely auxiliary languages.
 
Esperanto was considered as an official language of the League of Nations. If they had adopted it, that certainly would've expanded its popularity.
 
There was a plan to make Neutral Moresnet an independent Esperanto-speaking nation called Amikejo (friendship place). Maybe if that had have happened somehow, it could be a start.

Speaking of criticism, I would probably be fluent if not for my hang-up over how it handles gender. Like, c'mon guys, just add the -iĉo suffix to the language already.
 
There was a plan to make Neutral Moresnet an independent Esperanto-speaking nation called Amikejo (friendship place). Maybe if that had have happened somehow, it could be a start.

Speaking of criticism, I would probably be fluent if not for my hang-up over how it handles gender. Like, c'mon guys, just add the -iĉo suffix to the language already.

Yeah, that's my main beef with the language, too. But since it was made by only one person, who wasn't even a professional linguist, in the late 19th century, it was influenced by the prejudices of its era far more than it would've been if it had been created by a committee of actual linguists, like Interlingua; the fact that most of the words in Esperanto are of Germanic and Romance origin can be explained by the lack of resources on languages other than European ones available at the time, too; but for all his faults, Zamenhof was very serious about trying to make Esperanto as international as possible, if he'd had grammars on Bantu, Semitic and Sino-Tibetan languages available I'm sure there would've been far more words of African and Asian origin in Esperanto, and the grammar of the language itself could've been different.

Reno and ŝina instead of homo and nova, maybe? :p
 
Maybe make it an "official" language of some alternate Soviet Union? It wouldn't be widely spoken, if at all, but it could be a sort of try at being a "unifier" between cultures and language groups.
 
Maybe make it an "official" language of some alternate Soviet Union? It wouldn't be widely spoken, if at all, but it could be a sort of try at being a "unifier" between cultures and language groups.
Wouldn't happen. The Soviet Union was created with Russian domination in mind, which, I mean, is obvious, considering that they made up a majority of the people of the Soviet Union in 1922.
 
Due to the diverse nature of its member the pre ww1 Austro-Hungarian Army had a form of "barracks". An artificial language created so those from different backgrounds, (you know ethnic, racial etc) could effectively communicate between each other. Could such a concept be expanded to include the adoption of Esperanto, especially if the Great War ended up being a tad less harsh on the Austro Hungarians as in OTL and Emperor Karl succeeded in his plans for a Federated state. Maybe Esperanto could be adopted as the lingua Franca of the entire civil service, a Rosetta Stone if you will, so bureaucrats only had to learn one language other than their mother tongue but still be able to communicate with other bureaucrats from the rest of the empire. Just putting it out there.
 
Wouldn't happen. The Soviet Union was created with Russian domination in mind, which, I mean, is obvious, considering that they made up a majority of the people of the Soviet Union in 1922.

Actually, that wasn't always the case. It seems that during Lenin's period, at least, there were many genuine attempts to encourage multiculturalism in the Soviet Union. Of course, because such a concept was pretty ahead of its time, there were plenty of people that had internalised prejudices against non-European peoples in the Soviet Union (the Tashkent Soviet is a good example of this), but overall there was a lot of enthusiasm for getting rid of the 'Great Russian chauvinism' of the Empire.

This basically came to an end though, when Stalin liquidated most of the minority intellectuals, many of whom had supported the Bolsheviks, ironically because of 'petty bourgeois nationalism', even though 'Socialism in One Country' was accompanied by some pretty strong Russification policies.
 
But since it was made by only one person, who wasn't even a professional linguist, in the late 19th century, it was influenced by the prejudices of its era far more than it would've been if it had been created by a committee of actual linguists

I get that, but that doesn't mean it can't be changed now. Would it really be that hard to say that patro used to mean father back when the world was more sexist, and now in the modern day, patro is parent while patriĉo is father? This would be a much better balance with patrino (mother), and hey, English turned actor into a gender neutral word more or less. Why can't Esperanto do the same?

Anyway, if the League of Nations had adopted it, I wonder how widespread it would have become?
 
Best scenario? Make it the official language of a possible multinational nation in Europe (e.g. independent Turkish Straits, a Balkan federation, etc.) Personally, I don't believe in purely auxiliary languages.
Make it the official language of a multicultural colonial settlement in space or other currently uninhabited region on earth.
 
Many nationalist dictatorships and post-colonial regimes, both leftist and (to a lesser extent) rightist (Fascist Italy for instance) liked Esperanto somewhat. The reason is simple: it sounded a better international medium to them than another nation's language, essentially English or French, without "imperialist" connotation (of course, it had more traction in linguistically European areas; but Maoist China had an Esperanto propaganda section too). So, have some such states insist on adopting it as an official LoN or UN working language (with likely Soviet backing). That would boost the use of the language out bureaucratic inertia and provide more stimulus for producing learning material and make the language accessible. I am not sure, however, how such a proposal can get a majority in the UN General Assembly, with most of the Western block disliking it for political reasons (France may approve just to spite the Anglos on a relatively unimportant matter). The Spanish-speaking world is also unlikely to be very interested.
 
I get that, but that doesn't mean it can't be changed now. Would it really be that hard to say that patro used to mean father back when the world was more sexist, and now in the modern day, patro is parent while patriĉo is father? This would be a much better balance with patrino (mother), and hey, English turned actor into a gender neutral word more or less. Why can't Esperanto do the same?

Anyway, if the League of Nations had adopted it, I wonder how widespread it would have become?

Not knowing much about Esperanto, I think it's fascinating that even for an artificially constructed language that is barely a century old, there are calls for reform of it. Humans are strange creatures when it comes to languages (and a few other things).

Could you just use the preferred suffix if you wanted to? Or would comprehension be difficult?
 
Not knowing much about Esperanto, I think it's fascinating that even for an artificially constructed language that is barely a century old, there are calls for reform of it. Humans are strange creatures when it comes to languages (and a few other things).

Could you just use the preferred suffix if you wanted to? Or would comprehension be difficult?

The -iĉo suffix is not a standard suffix, so I might not be understood if I used it. Also, if I said patro for example, people would think I meant father and not parent. The standard Esperanto word for parent is... nothing. There isn't one. Some people have back-formed gepatro for parent using the ge- prefix, but ge- really means "a group of both sexes". As far as I know, gepatro and other constructions of that style see wider use than -iĉo, but they still aren't standard, and are a much more awkward workaround.

The thing is, add -iĉo and a gender neutral pronoun to the language and boom, fully gender neutral language with ease of specifying gender when needed. English on the other hand, with various feminine suffixes like -ess and -trix and no conceivable masculine equivalents, not to mention gender pairs such as cow and bull, not so much. Also, English father and mother seem to have different connotations than parent, the later being even more formal and detached than the former pair, and with no neutral casual form in line with mom and dad.

When it comes to a gender neutral pronoun for Esperanto, there are a few proposals, but personally I'm a fan of hiismo (article in Esperanto, sorry, couldn't find an English one atm). In standard Esperanto li is he and ŝi is she. Basically, hiismo makes li gender neutral while adding hi for he (hi is pronounced identically to he). As ŝi has an obvious parallel with she, being pronounced exactly the same, it only makes sense to use hi as well. Also, li is sometimes used as a gender neutral anyway, I believe primarily in older texts, but I think some speakers might still use it this way. Plus, li bears resemblance to Spanish le, which is gender neutral, and to Esperanto ili, which means they.
 
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Also, li is sometimes used as a gender neutral anyway, I believe primarily in older texts, but I think some speakers might still use it this way.
Lernu, a website for learning Esperanto, gives the definition of li as: he "the male person or person of unknown gender talked about"

Anyway, I wonder if there's any possibility of some alternate US type entity with a lot more Spanish speaking territory that adopts Esperanto as an auxiliary between English and Spanish?
 
I looked up the wikipedia article on language revitalization, which is essentially what one hopes to do here with Esperanto. It had a series of steps to take a language from death to having a stable population of native speakers:

  1. Acquisition of the language by adults, who in effect act as language apprentices (recommended where most of the remaining speakers of the language are elderly and socially isolated from other speakers of the language).
  2. Create a socially integrated population of active speakers (or users) of the language (at this stage it is usually best to concentrate mainly on the spoken language rather than the written language).
  3. In localities where there are a reasonable number of people habitually using the language, encourage the informal use of the language among people of all age groups and within families and bolster its daily use through the establishment of local neighbourhood institutions in which the language is encouraged, protected and (in certain contexts at least) used exclusively.
  4. In areas where oral competence in the language has been achieved in all age groups, encourage literacy in the language, but in a way that does not depend upon assistance from (or goodwill of) the state education system.
  5. Where the state permits it, and where numbers warrant, encourage the use of the language in compulsory state education.
  6. Where the above stages have been achieved and consolidated, encourage the use of the language in the workplace (lower worksphere).
  7. Where the above stages have been achieved and consolidated, encourage the use of the language in local government services and mass media.
  8. Where the above stages have been achieved and consolidated, encourage use of the language in higher education, government, etc.

So ideally for Esperanto you'd want to start with a population of adults, men and women, who must learn and then regularly use the language and concentrate them together long enough to have and raise children, teaching them the language in the home and then in school.

A democratized/federated Austria-Hungary that does well in the war and makes some decisions that would be freakishly prudent might be your best bet here. Esperanto becoming a sort of shared language in the army is a good idea, but the real rub is having it taught to women as well, they'll be the ones which children spend most of their time with while very young, and then having men and women of different languages marrying so that the use of it in the household is more necessary. Women might pick it up as part of training to work in factories, farms and army hospitals. A postwar 'Land Fit For Heroes' spending bill promising modern housing and good jobs to veterans could keep many of them from returning to linguistically homogenous communities, especially if those tasked with the programme take care to mix up ethnicities in the new neighborhoods. With elementary teachers using Esperanto basically out of necessity you'd have a first generation of urban, literate children who primarily speak, maybe even think, in the language. Following that is associations, workplace environments, and print media that is native-Esperanto, small but concentrated enough to absorb new members rather than the other way around. There might be a nationalist reaction against it, but it would hopefully be mollified by the experience of a well-fought and victorious war, and it would perhaps in fact contribute to Esperantists forming a group identity as natural supporters of federation.
 
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