To think I have an NYU degree and still haven't mastered pig latin.  

And to think so many village languages are dying out now...maybe because you can't inscribe them into a clunky dull gold ring?  

Heh. Well, seeing as how it went from one speaker to millions around the world in less than a century, Esperanto seems to have "caught on" surprisingly well for a language without a military or an economy to coerce people into using it.  

>Esperanto didn’t quite catch on, Says who? You either haven't checked into it sufficiently or have been looking in all the wrong places. Or else have a very demanding definiton of 'catch on'! I think that in 120+ years without the backing of any large state, with very few financial resources and with only grass-roots support from private individuals, Esperanto has made quite remarkable progress around the world. Perhaps you don't know what happened to many Esperanto-speakers living under Hitler and Stalin? Maybe a quick look at this: [www.uea.org] or the Prague Manifesto: [lingvo.org] or a daily Esperanto broadcast from Radio Polonia: [www.polskieradio.pl] could help change your mind?  

Perhaps not. In as much as it started with a circulation of 0 and has, in little over a century, expanded its base to 1 million, you could say it hasn't entirely failed. However, Zamenhof intended it to be a universal language, one which would help level cultural and sociological differences. Today, the majority of its users employ it as a side or second language, and not as a basic means of communication. I think it was an interesting concept, but not a practical one, for language is a very rooted part of identity, and needs a culture and history to root it.