I am an Esperantist and a Baha’i and would be happy to help, if you haven’t found it already. (Your post is over two years old at this time.) I will email my contact details to you.

Hello Susan,

Thank you for sharing. I just wanted to add that Dr. Zamenhoff did construct the initial foundation of the lanuguage alone before presenting the the language to others. He was also resposible for forming a council of sorts to assist in the improvement and advancement of the language, menaing their suggestions and research were added to and in instances replaced his original work. So he is seen as the father of Esperanto but he did not create the language as we know it today by himself, but with the assitance and suppot of Esperantist from many naitons. In my opinion I think Esperanto is worth considering as it includes so any major world lanugages. Just my opinion.

Peace and blessings.

Eble vi proponu tian skribaĵon?

Actualy, I think you just provided such an article. Thank you!

If it’s possible to comment at this late date in relation to a 15 month old posting then this remarkable site is even better than I’ve often opined here already over the last few months

Given that Dr. Zamenhof’s language of peace (Esperanto) has been repeatedly and emphatically praised by the Master, the Guardian and by the Universal House of Justice and even by Baha’u’llah too in 1891 on one take from the “Epistle to the Son of the Wolf”, John i m o quite correctly updates David’s stats and wisely questions the possibly unintentional overlooking of Esperanto on David’s part in his otherwise typically brilliant BT-article titled ‘A Universal Language’..

In my own droll way deploying Socratic irony, given Esperanto’s low profile, I respond to Esperanto-skeptics and naysayers by joking: “Yes, Esperanto? Is it a French or Spanish operetta set in Utopia?” In other words, let’s never argue acrimoniously whether privately in small groups or in large public meetings. But, for God’s sake, academe, let’s talk and walk this issue through and thoroughly investigate the truth for the layperson’s sake and “for righteousness sake”! (Matthew 5:10)

Baha’i love

Paul

I feel your article on the Baha’i teachings on a universal language (http://bahaiteachings.org/bahai-principles-a-universal-language) could be improved.

First, your statistics could be improved and are currently possibly misleading. Statistics about the numbers of people speaking various languages are of necessity only best guesses and vary on the basis of differing professional judgments as to what constitutes a language. Nevertheless, according to Ethnologue.com and Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_native_speakers), the top seven languages in terms of native speakers, in order of percentage of world population, are:

Mandarin (14.4%),
Spanish (6.15%),
English (5.43%),
Hindi (4.70%),
Arabic (4.43),
Portuguese (3.27%), and
Bengali (3.11%)

Thus Russian is not among the top seven, and the total percentage of the world population represented by the top seven languages is, in fact, less than a majority, namely, only 41.49%.

To reach an actual majority of the world’s population a person would need to know, in addition, another six languages, namely:

Russian (2.33%)
Japanese (1.90%)
Punjabi (1.44%)
German (1.39%)
Javanese (1.25%), and
Wu (1.20%).

Knowing these 13 top languages would in theory enable one to reach and understand 51.00 percent of humanity, a bare majority.

According to http://www.vistawide.com/languages/top_30_languages.htm, the top 30 natively spoken languages on Earth include only roughly 60 percent of the world’s population.

The implication is that language diversity among human beings is really much more profound than the article suggests and that this problem really, truly, cannot be overcome by the mere learning of multiple national languages, as might be the implication if, as you article currently reads, a “majority” of humanity could be reached through only seven languages.

Second, in fact, and as a result of humanity’s deep linguistic dispersion, an Esperanto-type solution is the only one that can in theory achieve communication with justice, namely, a relatively inclusive linguistic fairness and also a minimal and justly distributed global learning burden.

However, for some reason that is not clear in an article about the Baha’i teachings on Universal Language, you deliberately choose to omit any reference to Esperanto and to ‘Abdu’l-Baha’s and Shoghi Effendi’s repeated encouragements to Baha’is to learn Esperanto, to get it into schools, and to use it for the “divine benefits” that ‘Abdu’l-Baha said it can bestow.

You also choose not to mention the creation by the Universal House of Justice in 1973 of the Baha’i Esperanto League.

I think these need to be included.

Do you omit them because think these parts of the Baha’i position and program are invalid in some way, or unrealistic in some worldly sense? The world language barrier is both a material and a spiritual problem. Are you among those who think that English has already solved it in both aspects and has dispelled the need for a spiritualizing component such as what Esperanto can add?

For Esperanto can synergize and accelerate the learning of English and other languages, can mitigate the “baggage” associated with them, and can also directly remind us of our second-order spiritual nature as ethically and morally self-improving, self-transcending creatures. Nor is it the case that Esperanto has “died out” and thus deserves no mention. It is in fact among the roughly top 30 languages of Wikipedia and is credited with a following of roughly 1 to 2 million around the world, putting it in the same league as the Baha’i Faith itself and numerically among the top 300 to 400 languages on Earth out of what Ethnologue.com now counts as 7100.

Third, your article could be improved in that it presents the Baha’i position as consisting only of support for government actions based on some international commission. You give, as part of the Baha’i position, no active role to the peoples of the world in terms of their own actual experimentation and experience with a language such as Esperanto that would constitute a foundation for governments or experts to think about and act on. This is seriously not the case. Both Zamenhof, the initiator of Esperanto, and ‘Abdu’l-Baha saw Esperanto as simply the beginning of an evolving global citizen initiative and as part of the “end of foreignness.” Neither ever said, “Do nothing; wait for governments to act.”

In actual fact, the major national governments on Earth, driven as we all know by the psychopathology of alpha-male competition for power, have shown almost no interest at all in choosing an easy and relatively neutral language for the solidarity and benefit of the common peoples of the world, the so-called 99 Percent. The topic has never come up in the UN General Assembly, and this despite massive international citizen petitions in the 1950s and 1960s to put it on the agenda.

In conclusion, if the Baha’i position on a universal language were really as it comes across here, namely, for we the peoples to sit back in our comfy chairs and wait for governments to act on our behalf, then I would have to reject it as one of inaction and of failure to solve the problem.

But popular inaction is not the solution and is not the Baha’i position, which is one of urgent concern and action by every soul.

As a Baha’i Esperantist I make an active use of Esperanto for the benefits and for the sense of community that I can achieve through it right now, as ‘Abdu’l-Baha and Shoghi Effendi told us to.

As good as government action would be, I do not need to wait for governments in order to achieve my own immediate personal benefits through Esperanto, and neither does anyone else.

If everyone simply acted for the immediate “divine benefits” that ‘Abdu’l-Baha said Esperanto would bestow, those people be a lamp unto others, and humanity would gain illumination and begin to move rapidly and holistically toward its true linguistic destiny.

Revising your article to make these points more evident would be in the interests of all your readers.

Warmly yours,

John Dale
Milwaukie, Oregon
Bahai_Esperanto_Youth_Projects@yahoo.com