neal@druny.UUCP (Neal D. McBurnett) (02/23/85)
Bernard Cavanagh on dialects and Esperanto: "The tendency to dialect formation, notable *in the past* in many languages, has long lost momentum owing to the greater mobility of the populations, and, for some time, has been observably in reverse over most of the world." He goes on to attribute this to general literacy and mass communication. "The older Esperantists often compare the degree of uniformity which they knew in the early days of the movement with that which prevails now, and always in favour of the latter." Indeed there were great schisms in the past (e.g., the Ido movement), but they were so traumatic that most Esperantists now shun reform movements. While there probably are improvements that could be made, their utility would be quite minor in comparison to the damage they would cause to the 10,000 books and millions of speakers! -Neal McBurnett PS keep those copies of Lesson One of the Postal Course rolling in: the people at the other end love it - you do good work!