Re Katie Thornton’s article (Nudists, peaceniks and freeloading travellers: the people keeping the Esperanto dream alive, 28 July), Esperanto was an important initiative and the aims were creditable. The concept of an international auxiliary language (IAL), a neutral means of international communication without “bigger” languages dominating “smaller” ones, and one which was easy for anyone to learn, is sensible.
Unfortunately, Esperanto has sufficient linguistic flaws that promoting it risks making adoption of an IAL less likely. Its many problems include the complicating use of diacritics, a sound structure which causes serious pronunciation difficulties for people from some linguistic backgrounds, and the choice of root words.
It would be nice to think the altruistic motives of Esperantists mean they would accept the need to get behind one of the many other IALs – with fewer flaws – before pushing for wider acceptance of an IAL. Though experience suggests that’s not the case.
Albert Beale
London
As an idealistic 10-year-old in the 1960s, I set about teaching myself Esperanto, because I too thought that a universal language would enable mutual understanding and thus lead to world peace. I filled a notebook with long lists of vocabulary, even though I had no one with whom to practise.
However, I became disillusioned with the idea that a language could be created artificially, and switched, at school, to French, German and Russian, adding, later in life, Italian and Welsh. Unfortunately, being able to conduct conversations with other Europeans has not helped me to enable world peace either, though I optimistically believe it will help keep Alzheimer’s at bay.
One of my favourite things about Esperanto, though I didn’t realise where it came from until I learned Welsh, is the fact that it has borrowed its stress patterns from Welsh, placing the stress always on the penultimate syllable of each word.
English speakers who persist in calling LlanGOLLen LANgolen and DolGELLau DOLgeleye might benefit from a bit of Duolingo Esperanto.
Fiona Collins
Carrog, Sir Ddinbych
Your article on Esperanto says nothing about how useful – and how much fun – it can be in the world of video conferencing. During lockdown I spent every Saturday morning enjoying games, competitions and general chat with a group of Esperantists across six continents, many of whom had no other language in common. Esperanto not only allows people of all nations to communicate, but it also allows them to communicate “on an equal footing” – i. It is a great leveller when not everyone is speaking in their mother tongue.
Amike,
Martin S Taylor
Byfleet, Surrey
