Depends on the context. If it is written/talked about in a geographic context, it will usually mean “the Americas”. If it’s in a political context, it will mean “the USA”.

That’s a good point.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amerika

Ja

Esperanto has 100× the traction of any of those, though.

Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, and James Connolly learned it.

It definitely has flaws, that other International Auxiliary Languages do better on.

Lingua Franca Nova, Ido, Novial , Lingwa de Planeta, Lingua sistemfrater – all technically better than Esperanto

Esperanto – way better than any of those for adoption, actual community, a million or 2 million speakers

To give an idea of adoption:

• https://eo.wikipedia.org/ – 359 344 artikoloj en Esperanto

• https://io.wikipedia.org/ – Hodie (jovdio, 3 di oktobro 2024), ni havas 50 461 artikli tote en Ido

• https://ia.wikipedia.org – Al momento nos ha 29 719 articulos.

• https://ie.wikipedia.org/ – 12,858 articules in Interlingue/Occidental

• https://lfn.wikipedia.org/ – Aora nos ave 4,446 articles.

• https://nov.wikipedia.org/ – Disum es li Wikipedie in Novial! Nus nun have 1,665 artikles.

And when you compare it to a language like English… like it’s 6× easier to learn than English. And yeah maybe Ido is 10% better than that… but say English is 600 difficulty points, Esperanto is 100, Ido is 90… you’re pretty much fiddling in the margins at that point.

Doesn’t really apply to Israel/Palestine/Lebanon tho

Esperanto is extremely Eurocentric

It gets too much shit for this, IMO

The two choice were:

• be similar to the world’s largest language-family, so that speakers of that family pick it up quicker

• be distant from all languages, so that nobody picks it up extra quickly

The alternative to making speakers-of-european-languages winners was making everybody everywhere losers

I’m not a campist, but Europe definitely needs to plough its own furrow apart from them two.