Who speaks Esperanto ?

There is always a conflict between European Esperantists and Asian Esperantists. 

The question is Esperanto has a longer history in Europe because it was borne in Europe. But to Asians, Esperanto is another imported language.

As I was on the road of promoting Esperanto language, I encounter many questions and one of the question is WHO SPEAKS ESPERANTO ?

In this digital age, many Esperantists still hold onto the view of peace and travel as the main course of Esperanto. With a click of the mouse, there are tons of information appearing in front of you. The couchsurfing would be a beat to Esperanto pasportaservo.

In ASEAN, even the hosting nation of 97^th UK, that is,Vietnam, Esperanto is not being known in the whole country. There are many Vietnamese working in Malaysia and the survey that I did with one simple question “Do you know what Esperanto language is ?” drew a negative answer NO.

I do not like to dwell in European affairs as I am more concerned with how ASEAN can do with it.

If it were for language lover, all kinds of languages will interest him/her just as the music lover does. But for many, learning a language is based much on the economy returns. Besides Esperanto, most languages would take years to master and the time and money involved is in great amount. If I would not see the prospects of learning a language, why I would be spending time in learning it.

In ASEAN, there is a good place for the development of Esperanto if KAEM is smart enough to invest some money to fund the activities. The budget airlines, Air Asia flies to most of the cities in ASEAN, this would provide good opportunities for the trade and tourism.

Malaysia is the only country in ASEAN that still practises multilingual country, though Singapore tries to show the world with its multicultural events, Singapore does not have that multilingual scenario as the education system emphasis on English. The rest of the countries in ASEAN would very much monolingual besides, Brunei which looks more like Singapore duplicate.

Therefore, we in ASEAN has the big potential to make Esperanto stay. To survive, we must have the support from all corners of our life.

There are thousands of cities and towns in ASEAN which may not be known to the people. With the facebook, we can have many names of unknown towns springing up as the Esperanto group. Who would know where these towns are ?

Thus, I suggested to the Esperantists, do look forward with new ASEAN prospective but not from the past experience of the past Europe. The ASEAN organisation does not have many official languages, only English and the possible of replacing it with Esperanto is great if the people demand for it. It is another E for E.

With the new E, the sons and daughters of the poor people can be a part of the ASEAN.ORG