Esperanto has certainly caught on. It just hasn&#x27;t been more successful than English has been, which was always kind of a ridiculous goal anyway.<p>Many of the reasons people give for learning a language are highly ideological and often propaganda. &quot;no one speaks it&quot; is one of these: it usually just means that one thinks the people who speak it are not important. There is more to a language than network effects; languages tie together families and communities. If you are the kind of person who likes Esperanto and the company of Esperantists (open-minded, internationalist, cosmopolitan) appeals to you, then that is reason enough to speak it.<p>Languages have carrots and sticks driving people to learn them. But then, languages that have sticks are usually using them to beat the snot out of minority groups in order to assimilate them to the national state. Esperanto has only carrots, such as a rich literature (some translated into English) and plenty of maps.<p>The primary function of the United Nations is to prevent large-scale interstate wars. Translation is a small price to pay for that, and certainly less costly than trying to force everyone in the world to use and understand a single language. It&#x27;s really more costly to provide translations than try to open English programs in every country, even in places where children have difficulty getting access to quality instruction even in their native language?