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Okay, Jonex.  You win, man

Oh, and by the way, it's 'gramatiko' in Esperanto.  'Gramatika' is 'grammatical', 'gramatike' is 'gramatically'.

And excellent point, KTottE, I certainly hear you on that.  I just meant when it comes to having an accent, rapid-fire fluent speech, stumbling/stuttering, mixing verb forms, etc.

In that case, we should use Esperanto so you don't feel disadvantaged next to me, a native speaker of 19 years.  Although I must say, in written form your English is great!

Esperanto uses the Latin alphabet (that's the same as English's alphabet), but doesn't use w, x, q, or y, and has a couple other letters with 'hats' on them, like the French do.  You can type it using any keyboard, and, if for some reason you can't use the hats (because you're not supporting UTF-8 encoding, *cough*), the official 'workaround' is to use 'h' after the letter, much like you use 'e' after a German vowel to show that it has an umlaut.

Esperanto is as widespread as English, it just doesn't have the same number of speakers...Esperanto is spoken in at least 85 countries and has an estimated 8 million speakers.  However, that number may be bigger now, as it's taken from my 1999 edition of "Teach Yourself Esperanto", but really it doesn't matter.  It's like asking, "How many people play chess?" - nobody knows, and it doesn't matter. 

As to you seeing Esperanto being no different from English as a second language...look at this:

Drink
Drank
Drunk

but not

Think
Thank
Thunk

Computer - Computers

but not

Mouse - Mouses

Eight different ways of pronouncing 'ough', 'g' sometimes being 'j', 'j' sometimes being 'y' and 'x' sometimes being 'z' or even 'sh'!  Irregularities among dialects (I didn't do anything vs I didn't do nothing), a vocabulary that's swollen rather than rich and it taking a lifetime to master rather than a few months/a year...et cetera.  It's just not suitable.

As you can see, English is full of irregularities, weird spellings and grammatical burdens.  Esperanto is streamlined, has a vocabulary common to all European languages and no irregular verbs/grammar rules at all.  It's the only spoken language of its kind, and is in the Guiness Book of Records as the only language with no irregular verbs.  With 16 grammar rules (yep, that's all...versus the countless number of rules in English) and 400 'root words', you can understand and be understood in about 80% of the language.  The rest you pick up as you go.  I became fluent in a year, practising only an hour a day.  It really is that simple.

Oh, and about the French parasite thing - I mentioned the French thinking English to be a parasite language because the English language is associated with American culture.  The French are a proud nation and won't tolerate that (they won't use our word "e-mail", for example, as they see it as too American.  They'll make up their own word instead.  Same goes for MANY techincal terms).  Esperanto belongs to no nation, has no cultural bias and is for everybody.  That is why they wouldn't see it as a parasite language.

Imagine a world where we all spoke TWO languages - our native, and one common language that we used between those who didn't know our own.

Say, for example, that you're French.  You're proud of your French heritage, and see English as a parasite language that's a poison.  You refuse to speak it.  I'm Australian, and so I speak English.  I see the French language as too "poofy" and flowery, and I refuse to speak that.

However, if we both spoke ANOTHER language, such as Esperanto...we could communicate.  More than that, we could communicate on LEVEL GROUND.  I speak Japanese, and I speak it pretty well.  However, whenever I'm speaking with a native Japanese speaker, I always feel a little lower than them, and I know the reverse is true when they speak English with me.  But if we were both to use a language that we don't speak natively, neither would have an advantage over the other.

The cool thing about Esperanto though, is that it's so simple and easy that even though it's your second language, you can speak it as well as you speak your first.  I've got a Viet Namise friend with whom I speak Esperanto all the time - I kind of have to, as she speaks no English and I speak no Viet Namise.  It's really a phenominal experience.

But, I digress - I support world bi-lingualism, not world monolingualism.  Keep your own language and use that in your country and with people you already speak that with, thus preserving the culture your language has, and speak Esperanto (or another bridge language), that's neutral, doesn't give any advantages to any one country/ethnic group, and facilitates business and cultural understanding.

You...type it into your addressbar?

I seriously hope you're kidding, Rickard.

I have a Japanese domain (using katakana), and one in Esperanto.  They're fantastic.  I understand where this article is coming from, but I can't say I agree with it.

That's cool.  Thanks for the quick response, I'll give it a shot.

EDIT:  Worked like a charm, thanks SO much.