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Esperanto was conceived as a language of international communication, more precisely as a universal second language. Since publication, there has been debate over whether it is possible for Esperanto to attain this position, and whether it would be an improvement for international communication if it did.
Common objections
There have been numerous objections to Esperanto over the years.[citation needed] For example, there have been criticism that Esperanto is not neutral enough, but also that it should convey a specific culture, which would make it less neutral; that Esperanto does not draw on a wide enough selection of the world's languages, but also that it should be more narrowly Western European.[citation needed]
Neutrality
Esperantists often argue for Esperanto as a culturally neutral means of communication. However, it is often accused of being Eurocentric.[citation needed] This is most often noted in regard to the vocabulary, but applies equally to the orthography, phonology, and semantics, all of which are thoroughly European. The vocabulary, for example, draws about two-thirds from Romance and one-third from Germanic languages; the syntax is Romance; and the phonology and semantics are Slavic. The grammar is arguably more European than not, but Claude Piron among others argues that the derivation system is not particularly European, though the inflection is.[1] Critics argue that a truly neutral language would draw its vocabulary from a much wider variety of languages, so as not to give unfair advantage to speakers of any of them. Although a truly representative sampling of the world's thousands of languages would be unworkable, a derivation from, say, the Romance, Semitic, Indic, Bantu, and Sino-Tibetan language families would strike many as being fairer than Esperanto-like solutions, as these families cover about 60% of the world's population, compared to a quarter for Romance and Germanic.[citation needed]
Gender-neutrality
Esperanto is frequently accused of being inherently sexist, because the default form of some nouns is masculine while a derived form is used for the feminine, which is said to retain traces of the male-dominated society of late 19th-century Europe of which Esperanto is a product.[2][3] There are a couple dozen masculine nouns, primarily titles and kin terms, such as sinjoro "Mr, sir" vs. sinjorino "Mrs, lady" and patro "father" vs. patrino "mother". In addition, neuter nouns are often assumed to be male unless explicitly made female, such as doktoro, a PhD doctor (male or unspecified) versus doktorino, a female PhD. This is analogous to the situation with the English suffix -ess, as in baron/baroness, waiter/waitress etc. Esperanto pronouns are similar. As in English, li "he" may be used generically, whereas ŝi "she" is always female.[4]
Case and number agreement
Speakers of languages without grammatical case or adjectival agreement frequently complain about these aspects of Esperanto. In addition, in the past some people found the Classical Greek forms of the plural (nouns in -oj, adjectives in -aj) to be awkward, proposing instead that Italian -i be used for nouns, and that no plural be used for adjectives. These suggestions were adopted by the Ido reform.[citation needed]
Achievement of its creator's goal
One common criticism made is that Esperanto has failed to live up to the hopes of its creator, who dreamed of it becoming a universal second language.[5][6] Because people were reluctant to learn a new language which hardly anyone spoke, Zamenhof asked people to sign a promise to start learning Esperanto once ten million people made the same promise, but the target has never been reached.[citation needed]
References
^Le Defi des Langues by Claude Piron. Harmattan, 1994.
^Saul Levin, 1993. "Can an Artificial Language Be More than a Hobby? The Linguistic and Sociological Obstacles". In Ian Richmond (ed.) Aspects of internationalism: language & culture.
