The bigger barrier in Cambodia isn’t necessarily english it is Internet access and perhaps the font issue. Connectivity in the home is low, most log on from Internet cafes. A good many of the bloggers from Cambodia are primarily high school or college students in Phnom Penh who are taking english. There were a few efforts to encourage more blogging from the provinces not too long ago, with group blogs being set up in various provinces by youth ngo groups. Not a lot of them were consistent.

Khmer language blogging software and the Khmer unicode font have encouraged some Khmer language blogging from Cambodian bloggers, mostly at the blog community site of Khmer Open Source and few here and there.

Actually I did try to find some Esperanto speakers in Armenia over ICQ today. However, they didn’t respond — I assume because they actually can’t speak Esperanto, but just listed it as a language for the fun of it. I think this is the case as I did manage to make contact with a girl in Tbilisi who listed Esperanto in her ICQ profile. Unfortunately, however, she didn’t speak the language. Still, she did turn out to be involved in management in the photo industry in Georgia so that was interesting.

BTW: I just sent you an email so you have my address in Armenia. Certainly, as a Stainless Steel Rat fan who always wanted to look into the language, I certainly will when I get the chance.

Cheers,

Re-reading my post now, it sounds more touchy — tetchy, even — than I’d intended, particularly bearing in mind the positive feedback you were giving me in the pub after GV2005. The perils of not having a “Preview post” button! (he says, trying to shift the blame onto the technology ).

By the way, if you decide you want to make use of the CD and give the language a try, I can put you in touch with half a dozen Esperanto speakers that I know of in Yerevan, who I’m sure would be happy to help. You never know, you might even get them blogging in return. )

Anyway, I was laughing (but not in a negative way — it just made me chuckle) at the enthusiasm for the language that you have, and that actually, assuming you can get people to learn the language (both readers and bloggers) you made a compelling argument for its adoption. Just that it was totallyunexpected. As I said, it’s unfortunate that the majority won’t take it up.

Could be wrong, of course, and as you remember, I took you up on the offer of taking the free CD with the esperanto language course on it. I also enjoyed the chat we had in the pub, and also on the tube back from Canary Wharf. Certainly, it is the most obvious option. As you said, it’s like an open source language (for humans).

Anyway, from one Stainless Steel Rat fan to another, no offense was intended. I found your suggestion funny not because it was stupid, but because it is an obvious solution to the problem of multi-lingual web sites and blogs. So obvious, in fact, that the rest of us — with our own arrogance attached to our native tongues — would rather not admit that esperanto is an ideal solution.

Anyway, once Bambir write their rock song in esperanto I’ll definitely get it to you as an MP3 as I said I would. Until then, there’s some stuff on the use of esperanto as a common language for blogs on the Global Voices Brainstorm page. Really, the argument is very strong. Unfortunately, and this is the point I was trying to make, it just seems unlikely that national pride will allow many people to adopt it. Hope I’m wrong.

Global Voices is clearly all about giving voice to the perifery and helping them be heard in the center. And trying to break down that center-perifery distinction. But using English simply reinforces that very distinction. It increases the value of the center at the expense of the perifery and undermines your stated goals. The goal of Esperanto has always been to provide a neutral means for intercomprehension that doesn’t impose special burdens on some peoples while giving special advantages to others. The use of English as an international language can be constructed as a form of imperialism, allowing the richest countries to shift the burden of language learning (and the costs and difficulties of operating in a second language) onto everyone else (see Phillipson’s Linguistic Imperialism.

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/globalvoices/wiki/index.php/BrainStorm#Think_about_using_Esperanto

Anyway, there’s more on Esperanto here, and Harry Harrison, author of the Stainless Steel Rat series of books, talks about Esperanto here.

Cheers,
Onnik

The relatively modest suggestion made was that Esperanto be considered as one possible way to ease the language problems that Global Voices is currently facing, and which will only get more difficult as the organisation grows. The fact that GV is almost entirely English orientated was acknowledged and talked about, and there are several very worthwhile iniatives to move beyond this walled garden, and I applaud them.

However, the GV manifesto talks about “direct connections” and “conversations across boundaries” being “essential to a future that is free, fair, prosperous and sustainable”, and these are precisely the kind of stimulating and exciting exchanges that take place whenever a dozen Esperanto speakers get together in the same room, whether you’re aware of it or not, and whether you find it funny or not. This summer, for instance, I spent a week in Lithuania for this year’s World Congress of Esperanto, where 2,300 people got together and indulged in “conversations across boundaries” all day and long into the night throughout the week.

There was a very striking comment during the meeting when Tha Rum was talking about the Cambodian blogosphere, saying it was still quite small but starting to grow, but that nearly all Cambodian bloggers write in English. Hang on — you’re saying that nearly all the bloggers come from the tiny minority of the population who have the level of English required not just to passively understand, but to actively create engaging content in a hideously difficult foreign language? If my experience of teaching English in neighbouring Thailand is anything to go by, this tiny minority will be made up almost exclusively from the richest sliver of the population — the ones who have the means to pay for private English tuition with foreign teachers at home and then go on to university in the UK or the US.

Somehow I can’t square that with the aim of “universal access to the tools of speech” so that “everyone can tell their stories to the world”.

Just to avoid being mis-quoted again, my intention is not to criticise the Cambodian blogosphere or its participants — I sincerely wish them every success. My comments are meant to draw attention to the major problems inherent in using English as a vehicle for the kind of communication that Global Voices strives for. And I repeat the modest suggestion that I made last weekend: that any Cambodian bloggers, or any other non-native English speaking bloggers for that matter, who are frustrated by their inability to express themselves easily and eloquently in English could do a lot worse than kick off an Esperanto course, either online, on paper or on cassette. They might just be surprised at how quickly they would soar past the level of English that they’ve been stuck at for years, and find themselves writing the compelling, attention-grabbing stuff that they’re dying to get off their chests.

Good esperanto sites:

http://www.esperanto.net/info/index_en.html

http://www.2-2.se/en/index.html