How would they benefit? Esperanto is, in a way, a normal language, just easier to learn than national languages. I don’t see how those concepts are useful when people want to chat with friends about politics, sports or whatever in the same way they would want to do it in their native language.

Nicole, I am sure that proponents of Esperanto would benefit from the linguistic insights provided by the theory of Natural Semantic Metalanguage and from the concept of the Minimal versions of the world’s languages.

One of the great beauties of the minimal version of any language is that one gets a wordy story, but a story whose meaning is clear. Another beauty is that the story is readily translatable.

But there is Esperanto which is used much more widely than many people assume. It is much easier to learn than national languages, so everyone can learn it in a reasonable amount of time and feel at ease speaking it. Nowadays even Japanese people, for example, who often spent thousands of hours studying English still feel very shy when they have to speak to a native English speaker.

By speaking Esperanto you get to know people in various parts of the world, people whose language we nearly never bother to learn, like Icelandic, Hungarian, etc. Just yesterday I took part in the world conference of Esperanto teachers, virtually this year. There was a lively discussion between people from Switzerland, India, Japan, Australia, etc. By having an easy way of communicating on an equal footing we do feel much more empathy towards people who are a bit different from us, we start to really understand them. We feel like a big family.

If some of you have a bit of free time, why not go to the free website Duolingo and see for yourself what Esperanto is really like. It deserves to be better known.