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No. A standard language that makes logical, gramatic, and phonetic sense, is consistent and easy to learn, and is naturally extensible in a straightforward way is not a stupid idea. People always bring up the idea of how wonderful language diversity is. But it seems to me the concept pales next to the idea of any two or more of more of the 6.5 billion human beings on this earth being able to exchange ideas, rather than everyone being balkanized into small groups who happen to be able to communicate.

The Linux distros you refer to all share source compatibility, and in that way are more demonstrative of the advantages of a common standard than of the advantages of balkanization. And they are also exceedingly top-heavy... with language packs.

BTW, coincidentally, I have started self-studying Esperanto and am finding this site quite helpful for getting started:

http://en.lernu.net/

Edit: On Ubuntu Hardy an apt-cache search for the string "language-pack", which is hardly a comprehensive search, turns up nearly 1200 packages. Talk about wasted and redundant effort...

Edited 2008-05-02 23:24 UTC

Come on, Esperanto is a stupid idea. First of all, it is not "universal", or easy to learn for everyone - it is hugely biased toward latin language speakers. Esperanto is much more difficult to learn if you are an english speaker of a japanese speaker than if you speak, say, italian.

So all this stuff about how it is less culturally biased is a load of tommyrot.

Secondly, 51% of the population of the EU's 27 countries can speak english, right now. This compares to the 0.000000000000001% (or whatever it is) that can speak esperanto the language of latinate nerds.

So from a practical perspective you would have to retrain a huge population of people to speak your made up language all at once. A colossal waste of human time for billions of people. Nothing short of a brutal global totalitarian state could make esperanto a success, or ever could.

So there's no point whinging on about it and how superior it supposedly is. It's pointless and wrong in every way.

Languages do make logical and grammatical sense, but unfortunately, that logic is more complicated than most people care to deal with, so they just say "English is illogical and stupid! Waa waa waa". The reality is, every feature of English has been vetted by the usage of millions of people over thousands of years. It's all there for a reason and it serves the speakers well. A language designed by a guy with a Latin fetish is less logical and less likely to suit the needs of its speakers than any natural language. Esperanto, especially, has a number of problems.

http://www.cix.co.uk/~morven/lang/esp.html" rel="nofollow">http://web.archive.org/web/20020802185046/http://www.cix.co.uk/~mor...

but your post to this topic is in...english.