Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Esperanto and the Search for a Global Language (Encore)

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is an encore presentation of Everything Everywhere Daily. In the 1880s, a Polish optimologist set out to create a universal language, a language that could be a second language for everyone around the world that no country or no one people could control. It was a good idea, but things didn't quite pan out as he had hoped, and along the way, there was a shockingly violent resistance to this new idea. Learn more about Esperanto, how it was developed and its status in the world today. on this episode of Chi-O-Chii-Chi-Tago.

Starting point is 00:00:46 Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep only to have your mind start racing the moment your head hits the pillow? Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day or jumping ahead to tomorrow? That is exactly why Catherine Nikolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down, and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. And millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever

Starting point is 00:01:23 struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've been missing. You can listen to nothing much happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. Depending on how you define a language versus a dialect, most linguists claim that there are about 7,000 languages in the world today. The vast majority of these languages are spoken by a very small number of people. So the number of languages by speakers is actually very top-heavy. There are currently only 15 languages that are spoken by more than 100 million people. If you get down to the 100th most spoken language, there are only around 10 million speakers. So even if we were to only look at the top languages, there are still more languages than

Starting point is 00:02:09 even the most talented polygots could ever possibly learn. The idea of a universal language isn't a crazy idea, at least in theory. If there could be one universal tongue that everyone could speak, even if they spoke their native language at home, it would certainly solve many problems in the world. However, what language would you use? There's no one language that has anything close to a majority of speakers. You could use a dead language like Latin, but that has its own set of problems as well. The solution to this problem for one Polish optomologist by the name of Ludwig Lazier Zamenhof was to create a language completely from scratch. He could create a language that was logical and didn't have any of the odd exceptions that

Starting point is 00:02:49 most languages that grew organically have. Zamanov is a pretty qualified guy to create such a language. He lived in the city of Biawistock, which is today part of Poland, but was then part of Russia. His native languages were Russian, and because he was Jewish, he also grew up speaking Yiddish. Given the city he lived in, he also spoke the local languages of Polish and Belarusian. His father taught French and German, which he also taught his son. When he went to university, he studied Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic. Afterwards, he studied English as well as Lithuanian and Italian, and even a language invented over a decade earlier by a German priest called Volapuk.

Starting point is 00:03:25 Based on his wide knowledge of languages, he set out to make a brand new language, based roughly on many European languages and taking the best elements of each. So, how does Esperanto work? Esperanto is broadly based on various Indo-European languages. Much of the vocabulary comes from romance languages, with some words being derived from German or Greek, and some of the sounds coming from Slavic languages. The language has a shockingly small vocabulary of root words. Many new words are then created by adding prefixes or suffixes to those root words. A root word can be turned into a verb, an adverb, an adjective, or a noun based on which suffix is used. For example,

Starting point is 00:04:03 the root word vid has to do with sight. In English, we have the words visual or video. In Esperanto, if you add an O at the end, you get the noun Vito, which means vision. If you add an A, you get Vita, which is the adjective visual. If you add an E, you get Vidae, which is the adverb visually. And if you add an I, you get Vidi, which is the verb to C. If you want to make something plural, you just add a J at the end. There were a couple of things that were actually taken from English. Unlike other European languages, there's no complicated system of gendered nouns in English.

Starting point is 00:04:36 As with English, there is one definite article. In English, it's the word the, and in Esperanto, it is La. In Esperanto, there's actually no indefinite article like a or Anne, which is even simpler than English. If a noun is by itself, it's implied to be indefinite. Another thing that was taken from English is that there isn't a complicated system of verb conjugations. Word order is like many European languages, including English. It is subject, verb, object. The Esperanto alphabet is based on the Latin alphabet with small modifications. There are no letters Q, W, X, or Y. However, there are six letters with diacritical marks that have different sounds than the same letter without the diacritical mark.

Starting point is 00:05:17 C, G, H, J, S, and U. There is obviously a lot more to it, but the point is that because Esperanto was an invented language, it was able to avoid many of the problems that other organic languages have. There is a very regular system of pronunciation, a regular system of grammar, no gender nouns and simplified verbs. Zamanhof published a book in 1878 called Linguay Universale, which outlined a prototype of Esperanto. He kept working on the language for years as he went to medical school in Moscow and began an ophthalmology practice. He finally published a book in 1887 entitled Unua Libro,

Starting point is 00:05:53 which means the first book. He published it under the name Doctoro Esperanto, and the word Esperanto in Esperanto means hope. The original name for the language was The International Language, but the name Esperanto stuck, and that's what it's called today. The book was actually ready to publish before 1878, but the Tsarist censors in Russia wouldn't allow it to be published, and it was the first of what would become many problems with governments. The language first developed interest in Eastern Europe, but quickly spread over the next decade around the world, and several Esperanto magazines began to spring up. This led to the first international Esperanto conference, which was held in

Starting point is 00:06:32 in 1905. There were 68 Esperanto speakers from 20 countries in attendance. It was here that Zamenhoff resigned as the leader of the international Esperanto movement because he didn't want anti-Semitism against him to hold the movement back. It was soon after this conference in 1908 that the only real official adoption of Esperanto ever took place. It was a tiny sliver of land called Neutral Morassnet, which was between Germany and Belgium. It was only one mile by three miles, but Esperanto was accepted as an official language alongside Dutch, German, and French. In the 1920s, Iran actually suggested that Esperanto be adopted as the official language of the United Nations, but it was vetoed by France who didn't want to see French lose its primacy.

Starting point is 00:07:15 After this, Esperanto saw a lot of state-sponsored resistance to its adoption. The Nazis, and in particular Adolf Hitler, hated Esperanto. In Mein Kampf, he wrote that he saw it as the international language of the Jewish diaspora. Esperantus were sent to concentration camps, and everything possible was done to quash the few remaining speakers. Likewise, it wasn't really supported in the Soviet Union either. It was initially tolerated under Lenin, but it was effectually banned for the entire length of Stalin's rule. The argument against it is that it encouraged international contact with foreigners, and it was called the language of spies. Portugal's dictator Antonio Salazar and Spain's dictator

Starting point is 00:07:53 Francisco Franco, both also cracked down on Esperanto speakers. Despite these attempts at suppressing the language, it did still see some modest growth. The International Conference has been held every year since 1905 outside of the World Wars, and the number of attendees has usually been between 2 to 6,000. There was a huge spike in interest in Esperanto in Iran in 1975, and it was actually promoted after the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Today, Iran still has one of the largest Esperanto communities in the world, although it still isn't very large in the big scheme of things.

Starting point is 00:08:26 One of the big debates in the Esperanto community is how many speakers there actually are. Many Esperantists claim that there are 2 million speakers worldwide. However, other estimates based on Esperanto organizations and activity in Esperanto websites puts the number between 30,000 to 180,000. That being said, there are many Esperanto resources. Duolingo has Esperanto as one of the languages you can learn online for free. And there is a full edition of Wikipedia known as Vikipedia with 316,000 articles. Google Translate also offers Esperanto as one of its languages.

Starting point is 00:09:00 Of the estimates I've read, the time it takes to become reasonably fluent in Esperanto is around 3 to 12 months, which is much less than other languages. So if you're looking for an easy way to get out of a foreign language requirement in school, Esperanto might just be your ticket. So if Esperanto is reasonably easy to learn, and very straightforward, why is it never caught on? Basically, almost anyone who knows a language does so out of necessity, as a trance. child, you learn to speak the language of your parents. If you live in a border area of a country, you might learn another language to communicate with the people next to you. Many people learn a second language to engage in international business. Most Esperanto speakers, however, often take up the language just out of intellectual curiosity. Moreover, there is a language which checks many

Starting point is 00:09:46 of the boxes that Esperanto does. It's a language that has vocabulary from both Germanic and Romance languages. It has a simple system of verbs, and it doesn't have gendered nouns or complicated articles. That language is English. English has its problems, as there are so many things which make absolutely no sense, particularly in the spelling of words. But I addressed that in a separate episode on the history of English. If Esperanto is something that interests you, you'll actually find quite a few resources online. The internet has made it much easier for Esperantus to talk to each other, so there's been a bit of a resurgence in the language. But at the end of the day, despite all it has going for it,

Starting point is 00:10:24 it's still a very niche language with a small, if enthusiastic, population of speakers. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. I just want to thank everyone, including the show's producers, who support the show over on Patreon. If you'd like to support the show, just head over to patreon.com, which is currently the only place where you can get show merchandise. Also, if you want to talk to other listeners about the show, head over to our Facebook group or Discord server, both of which have links in the show notes.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - Esperanto and the Search for a Global Language (Encore)

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