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Lettre à California Aggie

       Dear Editor,

       My comments on your article about Esperanto (Nov.20, page 7, columns D-F) might interest your readers. I was for many years a translator at the UN (from Chinese, English, Russian and Spanish into French) and after leaving the UN I worked for WHO all over the world. I have used Esperanto in many countries, including Japan, China, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, a few places in Africa and Latin America, and almost all European countries. My experience can be summed up as follows:

1. Although I lived in New York and spent an enormous time learning English, I am never on an equal footing with a native speaker of your language. I will never master English as I master my mother tongue and Esperanto.
2. I've devoted infinitely less time to Esperanto, but I always feel on an equal footing with an Esperanto speaker, however exotic.
3. In my travels, I've had more contacts with average representatives of the local populations in Esperanto than in English. (English is OK with airlines, big hotels, travel agencies and business people; Esperanto much better for real contacts with the life of the people).
4. In an international setting, communicating in Esperanto is less tiring than in English or in another national language. Esperanto is structured in such a way that It requires much less effort from the brain.
5. Esperanto is easy to pronounce for practically all peoples, even Anglo- Saxons, whereas English is difficult to pronounce for most inhabitants of the planet. English has too many too fine phonetic differentiations, as in but, bat, bet or bet, bit, beat. I remember the laughs when a delegate at the UN pronounced "My Government sinks", before a short pause, instead of "thinks". The inadequacy of English as an international language has catastrophic consequences on aviation. Just ask pilots.
6. English has many international words with a meaning different from international use. Think of the plight of Danish Minister Helle Degn who meant to say, at the outset of an international meeting, that she had just taken up her functions and said: "I'm at the beginning of my period". It is much easier to be ridiculous in English, if you are not a native speaker, than in Esperanto. So Esperanto is fairer (or is it more fair?) than English, or, for that matter, than any other national language, as a means of intercultural communication.
7. Of all the foreign languages that can be learned, Esperanto is the most cost effective as to the relationship between effort and ability to communicate. On an average, one month of Esperanto affords a communication level equivalent to one year of another language.

       I could list many other reasons to learn Esperanto, including that it's great fun to form freely, yourself, hilarious words that can be immediately understood by people from all over the world, but I have already taken up too much of your time. I have dealt with many aspects of the question in a book, which, unfortunately, exists only in French: Le defi des langues (The Language Challenge), Paris: L'Harmattan, 1994. Maybe students who read French might be interested in it.

       Yours sincerely,
       Claude Piron

30/11/1996