From: 72627.2647@compuserve.com (Don HARLOW)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.esperanto
Subject: Re: Recruiting Esperantistojn
Date: 4 Sep 92 04:49:10 GMT
Distribution: inet
Organization: The Internet

To: Esperanto >INTERNET:esperanto@rand.org

Dato: 920903

This is in answer to B. Robert Helms' second posting.

>I could be missing some historical context, of course.  Have
>Esperantists had bad experiences with mass exposure?  Did the Reed
>article in Time Magazine lead to piles of hate mail on the desks at
>ELNA?  Have mass methods been tried and abandoned?

Local mass exposure is usually favorable. National mass exposure 
is often less so, for various reasons about which we can only theorize; 
see e.g. the winter, 1991, Chicago Trib article about Esperanto, or 
what happened to James Fallows' "Atlantic" article about the 1986 
world Esperanto congress in China when it went through the editors' 
hands. (The Reed essay in "Time", I'm told, started out as a veritable 
bashing of Esperanto, and only some really quick thinking on the part 
of one Esperantist turned it around.) But none of these really resulted 
in much of any response to ELNA; our best advertiser in the past has 
been Harry Harrison with his "Stainless Steel Rat" novels!

>As an alternative to the `gutoj malgrandaj' approach, Esperantists
>could put more resources into building support that is broad, rather
>than deep.  They could try to create a base of numerous
>fellow-travelers, rather than the small, committed core of true
>believers that exists today.

This is a good idea, and the only problem is to acquire those 
necessary resources. (These are, of course, not only financial, 
but also human.)

>While the candidates do spend ridiculous amounts of money
>on TV commercials, they also stage idiotic media stunts to pull in
>free publicity.  Could Esperantists cheaply create spectacles that
>would attract at least local reporters?

Having an Esperantist commit an Esperanto-connected murder has 
been a popular fantasy among some Esperantists over the years. 
Fortunately, no one (as far as I know) has yet taken this rather drastic 
step to draw media attention. Maybe a demonstration at some political 
rally?

>But from the figures I've heard in this newsgroup, it appears the
>number of speakers and occasional users has shrunk over the years; in
>any case, it has not kept up with world population growth.

A 1928 survey by Dr. Johannes Dietterle of the Reich Institut fuer 
Esperanto in Leipzig showed a total number of Esperanto speakers 
throughout the world of about 127,000 (or was it 128,000 in 1927? 
I can never keep those figures straight, and it doesn't really matter 
anyway!). At that time, the world's population was perhaps 1.5 billion. 
Today there are some 2,000,000 speakers of Esperanto (World Almanac 
and Book of Facts) out of some 5.6 billion people. I'll leave the requisite 
arithmetic up to you.

=============================================
Don HARLOW                                Redaktoro Esperanto U.S.A.
tel. (1 510) 222 0187
CompuServe [72627,2647]
Internet 72627.2647@compuserve.com

"The support of artificial auxiliary languages such as Esperanto 
has no place in the national socialist state. Their use leads to 
a weakening of the essential values of national characteristics. 
This is why all promotion of the teaching of such languages 
should be avoided and classrooms should not be made available 
for teaching them."
                               Decree of the National and 
                               Prussian Minister for Science, 
                               Training and People's Edu-
                                cation Bernhard Rust, May 
                                17, 1935, The Third Reich
(By their enemies ye shall know them.)
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