Why wasn Esperanto ever globally adopted as the universal language?
Anon Jan 7th, 2007 Because, believe it or not, people have never needed a universal language. Learning a language is not easy and most people do not learn another language unless they have a pressing need to use it. For most people, there is no need to learn more than one language (i.e. the language of the place where they live). When there is the need to communicate across different languages, it is more efficient for a few people to learn other languages and translate what is necessary than for an entire society to learn another language. A universal language would never be agreed upon because some would prefer one choice over the other whether because of ease of acquisition or history or cultural connotations (just using a Latin instead of a Cyrillic script to write in, for instance, can be a political and religious issue even today in some places). Even if it was it would result in the death of other languages since there would be no reason for people to expend the time and energy
