@Talka
>Esperanto is just plain silly.
Do you also belittle other manufactured and reformed languages (as below) or is it just language planning & reform itself that you so detest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_planning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_reform
Some more-or-less successful examples of planning/reform:
* Bahasa Indonesia - Indonesian is a normative form of the Malay language, an Austronesian (or Malayo-Polynesian) language, used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries. It was elevated to the status of official language with the Indonesian declaration of independence in 1945. Actually spoken as such by very few.
* Hungarian (late 18th and early 19th centuries) ? more than ten thousand words were coined,[1] out of which several thousand are still actively used today.
* Romanian (19th Century) ? replaced the Cyrillic alphabet with the Latin alphabet, dropped thousands of Slavic roots and replaced them with Romance ones.
* Portuguese (20th Century) ? replaced a cumbersome traditional spelling system with a simplified one (asthma, for instance, became asma and phthysica became t?sica).
* German (1901/02) ? unified the spelling system nationwide (first in Germany, later adoption by other Germanophone countries)
* Hebrew/Ivrit (1920s) ? Modern Hebrew was created from Ancient Hebrew by simplification of the grammar (especially of the syntax) according to Indo-European models, coinage of new words from Hebrew roots based on European models, and simplification of pronunciation rules.
* Chinese
o (1920s) ? replaced Classical Chinese with Vernacular Chinese as the standard written language.
o (1950s PRC) ? reformed the script used to write the standard language by introducing Simplified Chinese characters (later adopted by Singapore and Malaysia, but Traditional Chinese characters remain in use in the ROC on Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and various overseas Chinese communities).
* Turkish (1930s) ? language and writing system were reformed starting in the 1920s, to the point that the older language is called by a different name, Ottoman Turkish. The Ottoman alphabet was based on the Arabic alphabet, which was replaced in 1928 by the new, Latin-based Turkish alphabet. Loanwords of Persian and Arabic origin were dropped in favor of native Turkish words or new coinages based on Turkic roots.
* Vietnamese (20th Century)? replaced the classical vernacular script with the new Latin alphabet.
>It's silly to promote a manufactured language as an international language
Are you talking about a priori 'manufacturing', or a posteriori? I could conceivably agree about the former. There is a substantial difference, you know. And it's even sillier, and rather arrogant, to want to perpetuate 19th/20th century notions of imperialism, colonialism, ethnic and linguistic superiority in 2007, with total disregard for the rights of others as expressed in Article 2 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. And can I assume that you then also see little point in language revival either?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_revival
>and not think twice about defending linguistic heritages
or destroying Amazonian rain forests, or ravaging Atlantic fishstocks, or destroying the Buddhas of Bamiyan, Pacific coral reefs, contributing to global warming etc. etc. Is the enormous loss of human languages, documented by Unesco, and mainly cause by ethnic 'killer languages' of such little concern to you?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangered_languages
>Esperanto is just plain silly.
Do you also belittle other manufactured and reformed languages (as below) or is it just language planning & reform itself that you so detest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_planning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_reform
Some more-or-less successful examples of planning/reform:
* Bahasa Indonesia - Indonesian is a normative form of the Malay language, an Austronesian (or Malayo-Polynesian) language, used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries. It was elevated to the status of official language with the Indonesian declaration of independence in 1945. Actually spoken as such by very few.
* Hungarian (late 18th and early 19th centuries) ? more than ten thousand words were coined,[1] out of which several thousand are still actively used today.
* Romanian (19th Century) ? replaced the Cyrillic alphabet with the Latin alphabet, dropped thousands of Slavic roots and replaced them with Romance ones.
* Portuguese (20th Century) ? replaced a cumbersome traditional spelling system with a simplified one (asthma, for instance, became asma and phthysica became t?sica).
* German (1901/02) ? unified the spelling system nationwide (first in Germany, later adoption by other Germanophone countries)
* Hebrew/Ivrit (1920s) ? Modern Hebrew was created from Ancient Hebrew by simplification of the grammar (especially of the syntax) according to Indo-European models, coinage of new words from Hebrew roots based on European models, and simplification of pronunciation rules.
* Chinese
o (1920s) ? replaced Classical Chinese with Vernacular Chinese as the standard written language.
o (1950s PRC) ? reformed the script used to write the standard language by introducing Simplified Chinese characters (later adopted by Singapore and Malaysia, but Traditional Chinese characters remain in use in the ROC on Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and various overseas Chinese communities).
* Turkish (1930s) ? language and writing system were reformed starting in the 1920s, to the point that the older language is called by a different name, Ottoman Turkish. The Ottoman alphabet was based on the Arabic alphabet, which was replaced in 1928 by the new, Latin-based Turkish alphabet. Loanwords of Persian and Arabic origin were dropped in favor of native Turkish words or new coinages based on Turkic roots.
* Vietnamese (20th Century)? replaced the classical vernacular script with the new Latin alphabet.
>It's silly to promote a manufactured language as an international language
Are you talking about a priori 'manufacturing', or a posteriori? I could conceivably agree about the former. There is a substantial difference, you know. And it's even sillier, and rather arrogant, to want to perpetuate 19th/20th century notions of imperialism, colonialism, ethnic and linguistic superiority in 2007, with total disregard for the rights of others as expressed in Article 2 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. And can I assume that you then also see little point in language revival either?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_revival
>and not think twice about defending linguistic heritages
or destroying Amazonian rain forests, or ravaging Atlantic fishstocks, or destroying the Buddhas of Bamiyan, Pacific coral reefs, contributing to global warming etc. etc. Is the enormous loss of human languages, documented by Unesco, and mainly cause by ethnic 'killer languages' of such little concern to you?:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killer_language
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endangered_languages
) This is no doubt a tough slog for an well-informed idealist amongst a band of realists. I suspect if China becomes the next world economic and military superpower, there'll be far more advocates of esperanto as a neutral world second language. 
