Bahai-Esperanto-USA organizigxas per informilo.
Neil Blonstein
The Bahá’í Esperanto League USA Using Esperanto as a tool for Earth Community and children’s global education The Top Ten Languages on Earth by Numbers of Native Speakers In terms of native speakers, here are the top ten languages on Earth—those spoken by over 100 million people—according to SIL Ethnologue (www.ethnologue.com, Table 3) and as reported in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers. Estimates vary based on inclusionary decisions and date of estimate. (“L1” and “L2” mean “as a first language” and “as a second language,” respectively. “EFL” means “English as a foreign language. “M” means “million.”) .
The world population in 2012 is over 7000M. The total number of native speakers of the top ten languages is 2708M. This accounts for only 2708/7000 = 0.39 or 39 percent of the human race. If we extend this to native speakers of the top 20 languages, the percentage becomes roughly 53. If we count total speakers of the top ten languages, the figure is 3949/7000 = 0.56 or 56 percent of humanity. In total, Ethnologue counts 6909 living languages; 389 have over one million speakers and comprise 94 percent of humanity. The 389 includes the designed language Esperanto, now 125 years old in 2012. In short, humanity, even at the beginning of the 21st century, is very dispersed in relation to languages. This could be one of the reasons why, in the Bahá'í Revelation, God so strongly emphasizes the principle of a universal auxiliary language. The Status of English. In terms of L1 + L2 speakers, English (750M) is second after Mandarin Chinese (1051M) and comprises 10.7 percent of humanity. Adding the estimated 750M who have learned some English as a foreign language (EFL) raises the total for English to 1500M, which is 21 percent of humanity. Thus, statistically, one out of every five people on Earth can speak some amount or degree of English. Because of its irregularities, however, English is one of the most difficult languages for most people to try to learn. This difficulty imposes an extra—and unnecessary—learning burden and a structure of linguistic, economic, political, and cultural inequality onto the 80 percent of the human race that has not learned English and that can least afford to do so. Current global language dispersion implies both that language barriers are stubborn and that language identities are to be respected. Despite over 300 years of military, economic, political, and cultural domination by English-speaking powers, 80 percent of humanity has still not learned English. However, humanity’s “global brain” still suffers from the linguistic analogue of multiple personality disorder, where various segments of the global brain function in linguistic isolation and communicate only very poorly. We see the effects every day in terms of human disunity and global media bias. A Better Strategy. We need a cooperative, win-win linguistic strategy for the 21st century. If we would use Esperanto (“the world’s easiest language”) as a catalytic language-learning template and accelerator, the strategy of “Esperanto first, English second” would reduce the overall learning burden (i.e., Esperanto + English < English alone). This would seem to be the quickest and fairest way to move humanity toward Earth Community and a healthy global brain. As Bahá'ís, we need to ponder why ‘Abdu’l-Bahá gave such praise to, and put so much emphasis on, cooperating with Esperanto. Have we taken him seriously? Perhaps it is time for us to do so. 125 years has shown that where people try it, Esperanto works. So, be willing to try it! To begin, visit www.lernu.net, www.uea.org, and www.esperanto-usa.org. For further guidance and Bahá'í resources, contact the Bahá'í Esperanto League USA at Bahaa_Espera...@yahoo.com and join our question and answer group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Bahaa-Esperanto-Ligo-USA. |