A forum section in Esperanto?

[Dakkus]

Well.. Esperanto is easy if you know some Romanic or Germanic language. For a Finn, English is just as easy to understand as Esperanto, as Esperanto and Finnish have NOTHING in common at all. It's the same for Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenians and the Greek.

The whole idea that it's somehow a mix of all used languages feels somehow very imperialistic to me. It is based on the thought that only Germanic and Romanic languages are the only real languages and the others are just crap that shouldn't be taken into consideration.

And besides.. How big a part of Esperanto-speakers use the Euro as their currency? Not many. Not having Esperanto in EBT has apparently not reduced our userbase with even one user.
We currenlty have at least 3204 users that speak fluent Slovenian.
Do we have even 500 users that speak fluent - or even good - Esperanto?
EBT has 674 Greek users. And look at the activity of the Greek forum. You're not gonna find even that many Esperanto speakers, so the forum will never be very active.

It might be that five, maybe even ten of the active forum members will start writing in Esperanto. The result is that we others will no more see them talk so much in languages more people can understand. I have no interest in learning an artificial language whose idea is to be easy to learn, if it even isn't easy to learn for me. Do we want that?

I am afraid that having such a forum would bring anything good with it. If it was even somewhat succesful, it would be bad for the other forums.

[Beatminister]

Btw: what is the difference between written Austrian and German?

The servus.

Ok, they do have some special words different to the "german" German... the most fascinating for me always was "heuer" - which can mean anything between "right now" and "sometimes this year".
But I dont think we need a seperate Forum because of that...

[j3paris]

I can speak Esperanto almost fluently, and would love to have a place on the EBT forum where I could use the language with other trackers. A big "dankon" to WinstonSmith for suggesting it.

I can also understand that there probably aren't enough Esperanto-speakers on EBT to warrant creating a new language section.

Maybe at first we could start with an Esperanto thread on the off-topic (or users?) section, and see how that goes?

[nickx]

IMHO, the only difference between Esperanto and Slovenian or Estonian (or any other language with a 1/2-million-people-wide speaking community) is that Esperanto is much easier to learn

(I'm not sure what you meant with 1/2 - is it between 1 and 2 or is it 0,5)

1. Slovenia has a population of 2 millions inside our borders and there are large Slovenian minorities across border in Austria and Italia, due to unfair determining of borders in the past. So there are well over 2 million people speaking Slovenian, more or less as their mother tongue (there is also a big number of immigrants from ex-Yugoslavia here, whose mother tongue is not Slovenian, but they are Slovenian citizens and their children speak Slovenian better than the language of their parents.

2. Though Slovenian language is said to be one of the most difficult to learn, it's enormously easier to learn it for us native Slovenians than it would be esperanto. Of course - it's our mother tongue. But even English is easier to learn than esperanto - English is practically in the air, coming through music, films (we do not sinchronize films, it's disgusting for us - we subtitle them) etc. etc.

However, I'm not against Esperanto forum here, I just don't care about it. So I haven't voted either.

[Jes]

I can also understand that there probably aren't enough Esperanto-speakers on EBT to warrant creating a new language section.

Maybe at first we could start with an Esperanto thread on the off-topic (or users?) section, and see how that goes?

I completely agree!

but...

But even English is easier to learn than esperanto

You obviously never tried to learn Esperanto...

[WinstonSmith]

I'm a little off topic , but I need to make clear that my earlier comparison between Esperanto and Slovenian wasn't at all meant to say that Slovenian is unimportant; it was meant to say that Esperanto is equally important!
And when I say "easy" I'm just referring to the regularity of grammar, not to the vocabulary. From this point of view Esperanto is a very regular agglutinative language, like Ugro-Finnic languages, and unlike pretty much everything else we speak in Western Europe.
Anyway this was not supposed to start a war between languages j3paris's proposal is not bad.

[nickx]

But even English is easier to learn than esperanto

You obviously never tried to learn Esperanto...

Well I did . When I was about 15, there were lessons in one of our weekly nespapers (Nedeljski). But I soon lost interest in it as there was nobody to practice with, no literature and so on.

I frankly believe that the idea of Esperanto as a unique and universal language will eventually dissapear, as this place has been taken by English long since, some like it or not.

[nickx]

I need to make clear that my earlier comparison between Esperanto and Slovenian wasn't at all meant to say that Slovenian is unimportant

I took no offence whatsoever, I didn't understand it that way.

However - I do not agree that Esperanto is equally important as Slovenian. My opinion is that Esperanto is a "nice try", but will not survive, while Slovenian language has been alive for long centuries despite all irregularities that it contains, and there is a bright future ahead.

For my taste Esperanto is "simply too simple", too correct and regular, what makes it boring. But of course: de gustibus non est disputandum - there is not to be discussion regarding tastes o okusih ne kaže razpravljati

[j3paris]

I frankly believe that the idea of Esperanto as a unique and universal language will eventually dissapear, as this place has been taken by English long since, some like it or not.

Esperanto was never meant to be a unique and universal language, nor to replace other languages. It was designed to be a neutral second or auxiliary language, which could also avoid what could be perceived as an unfair advantage/disadvantage in exchanges between a native and non-native speaker of a language.

Although personally, I just learned it for fun

[nickx]

Yes, but this world tends to unfairness rather than to fairness.

[Jes]

Maybe at first we could start with an Esperanto thread on the off-topic (or users?) section, and see how that goes?

Nu... Oni bone povus komenci cxi-tie mem... cxu ne?

[WinstonSmith]

Mi tion nomig'us "krokodili" (= paroli nian lingvon inter ni, ec' se c'i tie oni devus paroli angllingve, kaj multaj personoj ne komprenas esperanton).
Do, ni malfermu novan diskuto en la 'Off Topic' forumo, esperante ke la moderigantoj ne kolerig'os pro tio!

EDIT: http://forum.eurobilltracker.eu/viewtopic.php?t=10152