Can an artificial language have its own literature?
Duncan C Thomson: Esperanto has just as much literature (original, not just translated) as any other language of a similar number of speakers. Just because you haven’t heard of it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Have you heard of Auld, Szathmari, Kalocsay? Galloway, Gray, Kelman? None of them, probably, but you would probably not be as quick to claim that Scotland did not have a literary culture. [Several tens of thousands of books have been published in Esperanto; the library of the British Esperanto Association has 30 000 volumes. There are about 100 periodicals of some importance, plus countless local bulletins and newsletters. At one point there was even a daily newspaper in Esperanto! I have no idea how they managed to distribute it to the subscribers in a timely manner. — Ed.
