Why not to learn the most popular constructed languages

Before I begin, I would just like to say that my intention here is not to dissuade anyone who wishes to learn Esperanto or Interlingua (or any other language) from doing so. However I would like to suggest that you may wish to consider learning one of the lesser known international auxiliary languages.

This post is about why I believe the successful constructed languages of the future, which will gain popular acceptance, have either not yet been invented or are currently unpopular and have only tiny communities. That is, it is my opinion that none of the relatively famous languages are likely to succeed. Further, it is my opinion that those constructed languages which currently have only tiny communities are, paradoxically, much more likely to succeed.

In response to a recent post, a very kind reader commented that I should take a look at Occidental (also known as Interlingue and not to be confused with Interlingua), Novial, and Ido. I will report on these languages in my next post.

My kind correspondent also supplied some very nice links to comparative translations between the above languages, Latin, and English.

Traumatised as I am by my recent attempts to learn Esperanto, rather than evaluating three more languages I prefer to assume the fetal position and listen to Diana Krall crooning The Girl from Ipanema until all memory of constructed languages is erased from my mind. According to Wikipedia, the fetal position:

is used in the medical profession to minimize injury to the neck and chest. Sometimes, when a person has suffered extreme physical or psychological trauma (including massive stress), they will assume the fetal position or a similar position in which the back is curved forward, the legs are brought up as tightly against the abdomen as possible, the head is bowed as close to the abdomen as possible, and the arms are wrapped around the head to prevent further trauma.

Unfortunately that is how learning Esperanto made me feel. Trying to summon the enthusiasm to look at another three constructed languages was very difficult. Because of Esperanto I nearly didn't bother. After all, since Esperanto is far more popular than all other constructed languages combined, one assumes it must be the best language out there and the easiest to learn. One assumes that Esperanto must be much better than all those pesky, little, itty-bitty languages with weird names that nobody's ever heard of, right? Therefore when one actually discovers that Esperanto is surprisingly difficult to learn to speak well, the natural reaction is to conclude that all constructed languages are impractical and to give up. And the vast majority of people who might be interested in learning an international auxiliary language will have heard of only one such language: Esperanto. So they will try Esperanto first.

In my humble opinion, I expect the majority of those people find Esperanto too difficult and simply give up on learning any international auxiliary language (especially since much Esperanto literature opines that most other constructed languages are either clearly inferior or insignificantly better). A few brave souls will push on, undaunted, and try Interlingua or Ido. Most will find Interlingua somewhat easy to read, if they are speakers of a major European language, but disappointingly difficult in its grammar and too irregular in its vocabulary to be practical (except as a passive language for reading). Many of those who turn to Ido will probably wish they had simply learned Ido in the first place and bypassed Esperanto entirely. Certainly Ido seems like a significant improvement over Esperanto and probably a larger proportion of the tiny number of people who stumble across it will choose to stick with it. Of course to make it that far they have to see past the barrage of negative propaganda which is aimed at Ido by some parts of the Esperanto community; unfortunately many people will not see past that propaganda and will never try Ido.

And so, what are we left with: a moderately large Esperanto community populated by those who were able to grasp the language, and two much smaller communities for Interlingua and Ido. Overall, the growth of international auxiliary languages as a whole goes, roughly speaking, nowhere.

I have come to the conclusion that the 'big three' international auxiliary languages have probably already failed. By that I do not mean they are bad languages or that they are not reasonably widely used for successful international communication. I mean they have failed to gain popular acceptance. By popular acceptance I mean that millions of tourists would be learning these languages prior to going on vacation; travel agents would be handing out brochures of travel phrases in these languages; businesses would be training their staff to speak these languages; and your corner bookshop would stock pocket dictionaries. And why have these languages never gained popular acceptance? Because they are too difficult. Even Ido, which is significantly easier than Esperanto, is in my opinion probably still a bit too difficult although perhaps not without hope (oh, the irony). Which leads me to my personal conclusion:

Any constructed language which had more than 1,000 to 10,000* reasonably fluent speakers in 1993, when the World Wide Web was popularised, and which has had a considerable online presence (including lessons and dictionaries) for several years, and which nevertheless has not grown exponentially in number of speakers since that time, has already failed. That is, the language has failed to gain popular acceptance and probably never will gain popular acceptance (unless induced artificially, such as by government decree). This is probably due to the language being more difficult than consumers were willing to accept, relative to the perceived benefits of learning the language.

* That is, a population of reasonably fluent speakers which numbered in the thousands rather than in the hundreds. By reasonably fluent I mean either able to correspond as a pen pal by writing simple letters, and/or able to read texts such as easy Wikipedia articles, and/or able to have spoken conversations.

Now, if China suddenly mandated that all its schoolchildren must learn Esperanto, or the European Union enforced the use of Esperanto as its primary language for official business, and this created fifty million Esperanto speakers, then many millions of people around the world would probably gladly learn it even though many of them would still find it quite difficult. After all, this is why we learn natural languages such as English: they are terribly difficult to learn to speak well but we learn them because of the clear benefits of doing so. However, this is irrelevant. As of 2010 the benefits of learning any international auxiliary language, for most individuals, are significant but not so great as to overcome the barrier of a language being rather difficult to learn.

Therefore, for the period 1993 to 2010 I think it is entirely reasonable to conclude that any very popular constructed language which has not shown exponential growth in number of speakers, despite being freely available on the internet, has failed. By failed I mean such a language has demonstrated that it is too difficult to learn to ever gain popular acceptance without either government intervention, a change in education policy in schools, or a major change in market conditions. Specifically, I believe Esperanto and Interlingua have already failed. This also corresponds to my personal experience of attempting to learn Esperanto and Interlingua; they certainly are, for me personally, unacceptably more difficult to learn than several other constructed international auxiliary languages. I am inclined to think that Ido probably falls into the same unhappy category, although perhaps the Ido community may have been much smaller than its proponents would generally have liked us to believe. Were that the case, such that Ido had only several hundred reasonably fluent speakers throughout the 1990s, then it could be mere obscurity and not a fundamental difficulty of the language which has prevented its success.

In any case, I would suggest that, in order to facilitate international communication, rather than campaigning for policy change on the part of governments and schools to accept languages which internet consumers have already largely rejected, it would be wiser to design new languages which are so easy to learn that internet consumers naturally adopt them. Thus, relatively easy languages would naturally propagate around the world.

Languages which were highly popular before the advent of the World Wide Web, but which have not been popular at all since its advent, should in my opinion not be discounted by the student seeking a worthwhile constructed language to study. For example, Occidental (also known as Interlingue) was virtually unknown when the World Wide Web became popular and remains extremely obscure today. Occidental therefore has largely not been market-tested by internet consumers because it has lacked sufficient fame to come to their attention. Similarly, Novial may well have potential yet to succeed.

Languages which have never really found any popularity also should not be discounted. They are simply untested by consumers at large. Outstandingly well designed examples, pleasingly easy to learn, such as Lingua Franca Nova, may well enjoy exponential growth this decade. Interestingly, my initial impression of Occidental is that it is astoundingly easy to read, just as Interlingua is easy to read but markedly more so, and has much of the same amazing ease of use as Lingua Franca Nova (although the latter remains easier overall).

Finally, someone may invent a new language, with a simple grammar, cleverly building it upon an existing vocabulary, thus making it extremely quick and easy to learn for consumers, and that new language may well gain millions of speakers within a decade. There is no reason at all why such a language could not be released in the next couple of years, building on the lessons learned from currently available constructed international auxiliary languages.

The best, very possibly, is yet to come.

Please note: I am not a language designer myself and I have no personal connection to any of the aforementioned languages. I have no personal hidden agenda to promote one language over another. I would be very happy to see all constructed languages widely used and studied, including Esperanto and Interlingua. However I do think they are not the best choices available.