There are a lot of them about, and some of them have been visiting New English Review. They all seem to feel very strongly about their pet language. No Volapük fans have visited, so that battle, at least, has been won. Esperanto: 1. Volapük: nil.

"It's bein' so cheerful as keeps me goin'"

I once read somewhere that when Morris Dancing was a real tradition, the dancers looked miserable and lacklustre. Now they look jolly and enthusiastic - and self-conscious. Likewise, most speakers of real living languages are indifferent to them, abuse them and would not bother to defend them - they are too busy watching someone else abuse them in a soap opera or sports commentary. Methinks the Esperantist doth protest too much.

Nobody has answered my point about language change, and the way it threatens the much vaunted simplicity and regularity of Esperanto - assuming the latter were to take off and become a proper living language:

Then there is the regularity of the made-up language, a regularity which, according to its founder and its proponents, will ensure that it is successful. This idea is Utopian. It presupposes, as did Communism and Socialism, that human beings will behave in a predictable and ideal way. Neither humans nor their languages have ever been regular. Even if a language has been created regular, to be successful it must cease to be artificial and come alive. If it does so, like all languages, indeed all living things, it will change. Languages always change. It  will develop irregularities, dialects, slang, pidgins or Creoles. Some dialects - those of a  commercially or politically dominant group - will come to prominence, and perhaps, in time, become languages in their own right; others will die out. Language change will be seen as decay. Curmudgeons will write to the Daily Telegraph, or Doelligkhyy Tugglibarf, complaining how young Volapukes today say “vädelik” when they mean “nindukolös”.

Still, let's be open-minded about this. Watch the video here, and try not to giggle or fall asleep.