Can Esperanto Make a Comeback? (2015)

I speak 4 languages (including 3 fluently that I use everyday) and I very often come across ideas or subtleties that just does not exist in one of those languages. When I started learning Japanese, I clearly remember understanding naturally some concepts in it that just cannot be expressed that precisely in English or French.

One example that I come across often is the word "fluent" that just does not exists in French (there are equivalent translations, but no way to convey the very same idea).

Once you speak if fluently, some words in Japanese have a very deep meaning that just cannot be translated while keeping the same exact meaning, like the words yabai or sugoi (to take very easy examples).

You can even tell that Esperanto is very Western-centric just by looking at it structure anyway. It is written from the left to the right, has spaces between words, the same 3 different sets of characters (caps, non-caps and hand-written) with similar rules, same punctuation...

I am actively learnkgn Esperanto and find it deeply enjoyable - I speak English, German and French (mostly) fluently and have dabbled in Spanish, Portuguese, Hindi, Malayalam, Mandarin and a tiny bit of Lojban. None of them have given me this sense of joy while learning vocabulary or practising as its really just a matter of 'recognising' a word - usually from your own native language and sometimes from others.

I'd dare to say this is the key feature of Esperanto: its incredibly pleasant and beginner friendly.

As to Lojban, I was incredibly motivated but just had to give up after a few weeks. Its like Latin or Sanskrit, a mostly theoretical written language with overly stingent rules. Lojban words can be used as verbs or nouns, but when used as verbs they have a strict fixed order where subject and objects go that you simply have to learn by heart. All words are 'averaged' from the most common languages and follow a common scheme - so pretty much none of them are recognisable to anyone. As such just a horror to learn.

That said I still admire the effort. Learning different languages opens wide horizons and completely new conceptual worlds and anyone who doesn't try at least to learn a second language really misses out even on understanding their own language better.

Personally my drive of choice is Torx - they're six-sided so they're easier to align the driver, they have excellent torque transfer, they're hard to "wallow out", and the drivers are relatively inexpensive to manufacture. Beyond that, hex ("Allen") head are good for smaller fasteners where the "wings" on a Torx driver are so small they're fragile, Phillips is good for applications where you don't want it to be easy to over-torque, and plain old "flat head" is very well-suited for dirty environments where grease and debris may end up coating the head. I'd certainly not want Torx heads on the bolts under my Jeep, for instance, because they're a pain to clean out. I can clean out a flat head with the corner of the driver and be able to use it effectively, which is practical unique to that design and very important for those applications.

I have nothing against Robertson. They're as good as anything for 90%+ of applications, it's just that they're uncommon enough where I am that it doesn't make sense to use them.

It is sad when cultural heritage is lost because it was written in a language no one speaks anymore. But this problem is caused by having many different languages. In a parallel reality, where the culture spoke the same language as other countries, the cultural heritage would not be lost.

It is sad when a group of people is discriminated or has fewer oportunities, because they cannot use their language. But again, in a parallel reality, where these people didn't grow up speaking a different language, the problem doesn't exist.

If you could magically change the world so that it would have 10× more languages, 10× more scripts, and 10× more USB connector types, would it make the world a better place? If not, then why changing it in the opposite direction wouldn't make it better?

When a language disappears today, it is bad because we lose information, and because the last users of the language have a problem communicating. But if you could magically change the past to replace that language by English centuries ago, there would be no lost information and no suffering users. And if we could agree on a common language today, we would be magically changing the future just like that. (Esperanto gives the additional advantage of being more regular.)

The drift would probably be much smaller than historically, because now we have the internet and global culture. And the common language would make the world even more connected.

If Esperanto would come into common use tomorrow, Hollywood would start producing movies in Esperanto, and people around the world would be watching them. That would already be a force acting against local drift. If people around you decide to replace X by Y, but 9 out of 10 movies keep using X, the change is less likely to stick.

Neologisms and idioms, I agree, but there is a chance they would spread to other countries.