It Could Happen Here - Esperanto with Andrew

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

Andrew is joined by James to discuss the history and practice of Esperanto, the global language.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? How? Goes lower? From Blumhouse TV, iHeart Podcasts, and Ember 20 comes an all new fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hirst as he unravels the mystery of his vanished boyfriend. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi. And what's the way to find a missing person? Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously. Listen to The Hook Up on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Hi, I'm Sam Mullins, and I've got a new podcast coming out called Go Boy, the gritty true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable. Roger Caron was 16 when first convicted. Has spent 24 of those years in jail. But when Roger Caron picked up a pen and paper, he went from an ex-con to a literary darling. From Campside Media and iHeart podcasts, listen to Go Boy on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You Feeling This Too is a horror anthology podcast. It brings different

creators to tell 10 vile, grotesque, horrific stories on what scares them the most. You feeling this too? Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Israel Gutierrez, and I'm hosting a new podcast, Dub Dynasty, the story of how the Golden State Warriors have dominated the NBA for over a decade. The Golden State Warriors once again are NBA champions. Today, the Warriors dynasty remains alive, in large part because of a scrawny six foot two hooper who everyone seems to love.

For what Steph has done for the game, he's certainly on that Mount Rushmore. Come revisit this magical Warriors ride. Listen to Dubb Dynasty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. I want you to imagine a world where everyone shared a second language. Not because of imperial conquest, but out of a shared desire for unity and understanding. That was the dream behind Esperanto, a constructed language designed to be the basis for global

bilingualism. Long before I learned anything about anarchism, I spent some time trying to learn Esperanto. It had shown up on my Duolingo one day and it seemed like such a fascinating and simple project to pick up. I was enamoured with the philosophy behind it so I generally spent a few months on and off trying to learn it. That was probably a decade ago at this point so I don't remember too much about it but the connection was there. And it's really because I've been exploring this topic

for this episode that I ended up going back and dabbling in some of it again. I've learned recently that there's actually somewhat of a connection between Esperanto and anarchism. So let's take the time to explore the origins of Esperanto, its anarchist connections, its flaws and its future. My name is Andrew Sage and I'm here once again with... It's me, it's James again. Very excited for this one. Yes. You're familiar with Esperanto's me, it's James again. I'm very excited for this one. Yes.

You're familiar with Esperanto, right? Yeah, very familiar. I wrote about it a little bit in my first book and my PhD dissertation. Also the last living person to participate in the popular Olympics, which is what I wrote my book about, was an Esperantist. Part of the project of the Popular front in Catalonia was to bring people together through sport and then Esperanto is going to be this thing that would, as you mentioned, like bridge the gaps between people.

Right. Yeah. It's a really inspiring project. And so I know you'll probably know all this information, but I do have to share it with the audience. Yeah, I'm, I'm excited. I never like really did a full rundown on Esperanto. It just appeared and I was like, holy shit, that's cool. So I'm going to learn a lot.

Sure. So Esperanto was first constructed in a little booklet in 1887 by Polish Jewish ophthalmologist L. L. Sammenhoff. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the name itself comes from the pseudonym Heatzacon to publish the booklet. He called himself Doctoro Esperanto, Esperanto meaning one who hopes. And hope really analyzed the whole project. According to a BBC article written by José Luis Benaredonda, he lived as a Polish Jew in the multicultural Russian Empire, in a time rife with racial and national conflict. He was trying to promote peace and understanding and he saw an international language as a way to do that. With a flag

of green and white, the colours of hope and peace, for his efforts, Zamenhof himself was nominated 14 times for the Nobel Peace Prize. He genuinely believed that if we all shared a common second language, quote, education, ideals, convictions, aims would be the same too, and all nations would be united in a common brotherhood, end quote. Esperanto was created in a time when modernism was on the rise, and the idea of rationality and science was being used to quote unquote optimize the world. When it was featured in Paris's Exposition Universelle in 1900, the language caught on amongst

the French intelligentsia, who saw it as more optimal in the messy and illogical realm of natural languages. Because it was so easy, all words and sentences being built from 16 basic rules that could fit on a paper, and the language lacked the confusing exceptions and special rules of other languages, it was once seen as the language of the future. Esperanto made its full-fledged public debut in 1905, when Simon Hoff published the Fundamento d'Esperanto, which laid down the basic principles of language's structure and formation. Esperanto is designed to be simple, logical, and accessible,

drawn from the influence of Romance, Germanic, and Slavic languages in its construction. The orthography is phonetic, so all the words are spelled as pronounced, and the grammar is so straightforward, there's a consistent word ending for nouns, pluralisation, adjectives, and verbs. But although simple, it can convey complexity. There's a lot of suffixes you can add to give degrees of meaning, and there's room for compound words too. Its European focus would be the target of criticism later on, but it actually ended up being picked up in some unusual places anyway. Zamenhof translated literature and wrote original verse, and after years of effort, there were

speakers to be found across Europe, the Americas, China, and Japan. By 1908, the Universala Esperanto Asocio was founded, and it can now find members in 83 countries worldwide. Today there's also 15 national Esperanto associations and 22 international professional associations that use Esperanto. There's an annual World Esperanto Congress and more than a hundred periodicals published in Esperanto. Estimates range widely in terms of how many people speak Esperanto today.

There are apparently a handful of native speakers, folks who were raised speaking Esperanto. Oh wow. Yeah, it's really really really cool. But L2 speakers are somewhere between 30,000, L2 being second language speakers, are somewhere between 30,000 to 2 million. Oh wow. According to Wilferth's article on Esperanto and anarchism, there are tens

of thousands of books in Esperanto and several hundred mostly swamp periodicals that appear regularly. Harder day passes without international meetings such as those of specialized organizations, conferences, youth get togethers, seminars, group holidays and regional meetings. There are several radio stations that broadcast programs in Esperanto, and Esperanto has even been used by couples of different origins as a family language. Funny enough, as with every language, even an aspiring universal language, it has since had its offshoots. I saw on Wikipedia that, merely a year after Zamenhof's creation of Esperanto, in 1888, Dutch author Jay Brackmann proposed a few changes to the language, like combining the

ending for the adjective and adverb, changing conjugations, introducing more Latin roots, getting rid of the diacritics, and so on. This language would be called Mundo Lingo, and it was the first of many offshoots from Esperanto proper. Even Zamenhof would try to reform the language at one point in 1894 but it was rejected by the Esperanto community and eventually even himself. These reforms would later be used to develop Edo, another attempt at a universal language with far less success. I also learned via Wikipedia that there was an attempt to make Esperanto more complex by introducing Cherokee components, called Polispo, created by a Native American

activist named Billy Ray Walden. Esperanto speakers continue to play with the language in all sorts of ways to this day. Esperanto is an evolving language, and Sammohoff himself is honored as part of this global Esperanto culture. They celebrate his birthday, the 15th of December, there are statues and streets and plaques remembering him worldwide, and even an asteroid bears his name. At one point, according to the BBC article, there was an effort to establish an Esperanto-speaking land called Amiquejo, which would have been a 3.5 square

kilometer territory between the Netherlands, Germany and France. Yeah. Nice. 3.5 square kilometers. Yeah. Not huge. Yeah. It's like a, how big, I don't know.

We got a few of those like little ones in Europe, you know. Yeah. A couple of micro states. It could have been another micro state, but the idea was very quickly squashed following World War One. Yeah. I know this, uh, Senate David, Spanish anarcho-syndicalist union was like in its first Congress, like its foundational Congress, I suppose they were like, and everyone has to, everyone should

try and learn Esperanto. Like that was one of their, like the things at the foundation of like what became probably the most powerful anarchist movement the world's ever seen they were like Also, this is a big thing. Yeah. Yeah Esperanto was really huge in the anarchist movement at a certain point. Yeah But we're gonna get to those connections soon enough Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here? How goes lower? From Blumhouse TV, iHeart Podcasts, and Ember 20 comes an all-new fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hirst as he unravels the mystery of his vanished boyfriend.

And Santi was gone. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi. And what's the way to find a missing person? Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously. Hmm, pillow talk. The most unwelcome window into the human psyche. Follow our out of his element hero as he engages in a series of ill-conceived investigative hookups. Mama always used to say, God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. And as I was about to learn, no amount of showering can wash your hands of a bad hookup.

Now, take a big whiff, my brah. Listen to The Hookup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith. And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man, who my wife has always said is just a beardless, d***less version of me. And that's the name of our podcast, Beardless, D***less Me.

I'm the old one. I'm the young one. And every week we try to make each other laugh really hard. Sounds innocent, doesn't it? A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language. It's for adults only. Or listen to it with your kid. Could be a family show. We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress. Listen to Beardless **** with me on the iHeart radio app,

Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. On November 5th, 2018 at 6.33am, a red Volkswagen Golf was found abandoned in a ditch out in Sleephole Valley. The driver's seat door was open. No traces of footsteps leaving the vehicle. No belongings were found, except for a cassette tape lodged in the player. On that tape were ten vile... No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, Until now. You feeling this too? A horror anthology podcast.

Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Israel Gutierrez, and I'm hosting a new podcast, Dub Dynasty, the story of how the Golden State Warriors have dominated the NBA for over a decade. The Golden State Warriors once again are NBA champions. From the building of the core that included Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, to one of the boldest coaching decisions in the history of the sport. I just felt like the biggest thing was to earn the trust of the players and let the players know we were here to try to help them take the next step,

not tear anything down. Today, the Warriors dynasty remains alive, in large part because of a scrawny six-foot-two Hooper who everyone seems to love. For what Steph has done for the game, he's certainly on that like Mount Russmore for guys that have changed it. Come revisit this magical Warriors ride. This is Dubb dynasty. The Dubb's Dynasty is still very much alive. Listen to Dubb Dynasty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I want to bring up this other interesting story. There was actually an effort by Esperantists, including a delegate from Iran, to get the language to become the official language of the League of Nations.

But take one guess as to which country blocked that effort. Was it one of the Anglophone countries? No. Oh wow. The French. It was the French. There is not a state more invested in its language than France. Indeed.

They have laws, I think, about broadcasting music and dubbing films and things. Yeah, the French government seemingly hated Esperanto, at least according to an article on Imp of the Diverse blog site. They blocked its study in universities and public schools, and as the article quotes the opponents directly, quote, On September 10th, 1922, the New York Tribune ran a translation of a piece by the editor-in-chief of Le Martin, Stéphane Lausanne. Mr. Lausanne spent half his editorial writing about Esperanto. And I'm not gonna do a French accent for this section, but just imagine like the most French Frenchman reading

this. That Finns or Albanians favored such a propaganda is comprehensible. Their dialect has no chance of imposing itself on the universe. They need a second language. Just as well Esperanto as any other. But that French people, or English, or Germans, could have let themselves be alert by this linguistic Bolshevism. That is far more extraordinary. It is nevertheless a fact that Esperanto, which was born 25 years ago and ought to have died through ridicule, continues to have disciples in Europe. Every year in a different capital they hold a congress, at which they are not very numerous, but where they make a great noise. They get so excited that quite recently the Minister of Public

Instruction had to address a circular to all the French educational resorts to warn them against the danger of Esperanto. An article in the Washington Herald on that same day explained the danger, at least according to the Ministry of Public Instruction. The reason for this order, according to certain school teachers, is that teaching of a language as easy as Esperanto endangers the existence of the French language and thus the national solidarity of the country. They contend that their children will naturally take to an easy language as Esperanto, and in that time French and English would perish and the literary standard of the world would

be debased. Furthermore, they argue that a national language plays a predominant part in maintaining national unity and points to Poland and Lorraine as examples. Esperanto is an artificial language of no real merit, writes one professor. It has no very definite origin and while it aims to draw the scattered people of the world together, does it not rather tend to de-nationalization?" They're not wrong. France is a language, if you read Peasants into Frenchmen, it's kind of the classic work on French nationalization.

But in order to make people French, they did have to suppress Basque and Breton and Catalan and other languages, right? And make people go to schools where they learned French and conceived of themselves as French as a result of that. Yeah, their imposition of Daxian identity was perhaps among the most successful in the world. Yeah. In terms of its ugliness and its consistent enforcement. It shows, like, nations are always projects of the bourgeoisie, right? Like, at least, It shows like nations are always projects of the bourgeoisie, right? Like at least I would argue that and so a lot of other people, but like the French example

is one where we can see it more clearly than others. Like it's a state and specifically like a certain class within the state's project to enforce and continue to perpetuate this narrative of nation. And you know, they weren't the only enemies of Esperanto. And do you know that saying, judge me by my enemies? Yeah, who else have we got? Nazi Germany, Francoist Spain, and the Soviet Union also hated Esperanto. Gets cooler with everyone. The Nazis, they were nationalists and the Samminshoff was Jewish. So his family was actually targeted and the language was banned and Esperantists were targeted and put in camps during the Holocaust, which is really tragic.

Yeah, pretty fucked. Yeah. His whole family was heavily targeted by Nazi Germany. Franco associated Esperanto with anti-nationalism and anarchism, which, true, so it was targeted for a while. And the Soviets, while originally recognizing Esperantists, eventually reversed that policy under Stalin during the Great Purge and executed, exiled, or gulagged Esperantists. And as you can imagine, all that repression all at once kinda killed Esperanto's momentum.

Today, despite its goal of being a truly international language, Esperanto's global reach remains uneven. While it has made some strides in recent years, it's still underrepresented in many parts of Africa and Asia. The majority of Esperanto speakers today are in Europe. Those development outside of Europe deserve some attention, as Esperanto managed to leave a mark in China, Iran, Togo, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But the response to Esperanto historically should give you an indication as to how anarchists must have felt about Esperanto. As an internationalist or anti-nationalist movement, anarchism was very supportive of

the Esperanto project. Let me run you through the timeline courtesy Wilfurth's Esperanto Anarchism. One of the earliest anarchist Esperanto groups was founded in Stockholm in 1905. The same year, the anarchist Paul Berthelot founded the monthly magazine Esperanto. Similar groups soon emerged in Bulgaria, China and other countries. In 1906, anarchist Anarchist Nicholas founded an international association, Paco Libereco, Peace Freedom, which published the Internacia Social Revue. By 1910, Paco Libereco merged with Esperantista Lavaristaro to form Liberiga Estilo, Star Liberation,

strengthening anarchist Esperanto networks. The 1907 International Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam formally addressed the role of Esperanto in international communication. Subsequent anarchist congresses continued to pass resolutions advocating for Esperanto's use within the movement. By 1914, these anarchist Esperanto organizations had published extensive revolutionary literature, including anarchist texts, in Esperanto. Around this time, correspondence between European and Japanese anarchists became more active,

facilitated by Esperanto. In Prague, Eugene Adam proposed the formation of Senasiesa Asosio Tutmunda, the SAT, or the World Inational Association. Unlike other Esperanto associations, SAT rejected nationalism wholesale and sought to create a transnational, class-conscious workers' movement. To quote Why Is There an Esperanto Workers' Movement by Gary Mickle, SAT was not meant to usurp the role of political parties by engaging in political struggles directly, but was to be a cultural association engaged in workers' education. One that would help to break down national and ethnic barriers between workers by involving them in practical collective activity. Bringing workers into

contact, freeing them from the shackles of nationalism. SAT's ideas, and especially the ideas of its Anationalist faction, were an early statement of an idea that has more recently come to be known as globalization from below. So in August 1921, 79 workers from 15 countries gathered in Prague to formally establish SAT. By 1929 to 1930, SAT had grown to 6,524 members across 42 countries, reaching its peak influence. The use of Esperanto flourished in German workers' movements between 1920 and 1933. By 1932, the German Workers' Esperanto League had 4,000 members, leading to Esperanto being called the Workers' Latin. But as you can imagine, this was not to last by the time Hitler came into power. The Scientific Anarchist Library of the International Language, or ISAB, was founded in the USSR

in 1923, publishing anarchist works by Kropotkin and Anborovoy in Esperanto. This also would not last the great purge. The Berlin Group of Anarchists and Nicholas Esperanto. This also would not last the Great Purge. The Berlin Group of Anarcho-Cynicalist Esperantists greeted the second congress of the International Workers' Association in Amsterdam in 1925 and reported that Esperanto had become so integrated into their movement that an international libertarian Esperantist organisation had formed. This likely referred to the TLES, the World League of Stateless Esperantists, which later merged with SAT. Esperanto was also popping off amongst anarchists and socialists in Korea, China, and Japan.

Liu Shifu, a key figure in Chinese anarchism, began publishing La Vocho del Populo, The Voice of the People, in 1913, the first anarchist periodical in China. His work relied heavily on information from Internacia Social Revue and helped popularize Esperanto in China. Japanese anarchists and socialists as I mentioned were among the earliest Esperantists in the country, but faced heavy persecution. And sadly, between Imperial Japan, Franco-Spain, Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, the rise of totalitarian regimes leading to World War II largely suppressed the anarchist Esperanto movement. After the war, the Paris Anarchist Esperanto Group was the first to resume organized work, launching the publication Sen Si Tartano in 1946. Most anarchist Esperantists have since been organized within SAT, with an anarchist faction

maintaining its autonomy. In 1969, this faction began publishing the Liberazana-Bulteno, later renamed the Liberazana-Liguilo. By 1997, SAT membership had dwindled to fewer than 1500 members. The initial radical vision of SAT was weakened by political shifts and the growing dominance of English as a global lingua franca. The early separation between SAT and mainstream Esperanto organizations was a response to bourgeois political neutrality, but it also contributed to its marginalization. And today the anarchist Esperanto movement exists largely as a niche within SAT. Do you remember what you said the first night I came over here?

How goes lower? From Blumhouse TV, iHeart Podcasts and Ember 20 comes an all new fictional comedy podcast series. Join the flighty Damien Hirst as he unravels the mystery of his vanished boyfriend. And Santi was gone. I've been spending all my time looking for answers about what happened to Santi. And what's the way to find a missing person? Sleep with everyone he knew, obviously. Hmm, pillow talk.

The most unwelcome window into the human psyche. Follow our out of his element hero as he engages in a series of ill-conceived investigative hookups. Mama always used to say, God gave me gumption in place of a gag reflex. And, as I was about to learn, no amount of showering can wash your hands of a bad hookup. Now, take a big whiff, my brah. -♪ BGM playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over radio playing over Listen to the hookup on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith.

And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man, who my wife has always said is just a beardless, d***less version of me. And that's the name of our podcast, Beardless D***less Me. I'm the old one. I'm the young one. And every week we try to make each other laugh really hard. Sounds innocent, doesn't it?

A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language. It's for adults only. Or listen to it with your kid. Could be a family show. We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress. Listen to Beardless,

with me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Israel Gutierrez, and I'm hosting a new podcast, Dub Dynasty, the story of how the Golden State Warriors have dominated the NBA for over a decade. The Golden State Warriors once again are NBA champions.

From the building of the core that included Klay Thompson and Draymond Green, to one of the boldest coaching decisions in the history of the sport. I just felt like the biggest thing was to earn the trust of the players and let the players know that we were here to try to help them take the next step, not tear anything down. Today, the Warriors dynasty remains alive, in large part because of a scrawny

six-foot-two Hooper who everyone seems to love. For what Steph has done for the game, he's certainly on that like Mount Russmorph for guys that have changed it. Come revisit this magical warrior's ride. This is Dubb Dynasty. The Dubb's dynasty is still very much alive. Listen to Dubb Dynasty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Are your ears bored? Yeah.

Are you looking for a new podcast that will make you laugh, learn, and say, gah? Are your ears bored? Yeah. Are you looking for a new podcast that will make you laugh, learn, and say que? Yeah! Then tune in to Locatora Radio Season 10 today. Okay! I'm Diosa. I'm Mala. The host of Locatora Radio, a radiophonic novella.

Which is just a very extra way of saying, a podcast. We're launching this season with a mini series, Totally Nostalgic, a four-part series about the Latinos who shaped pop culture in the early 2000s. It's Lala checking in with all things Y2K 2000s. My favorite memory, honestly, was us having our own media platforms like Mundos and MTV 3. You could turn on the TV, you see Talia, you see JLo, Nina Sky, Evie Queen, all the girlies doing their things, all of the beauty reflected right back at us. It was everything.

Tune in to Locatora Radio Season 10. Now that's what I call a podcast. Listen to Locatora Radio Season 10 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, what can we say about the role of Esperanto today? Well, one of the more interesting currents I found within the Esperanto community mentioned by Firth is Raumismo, a philosophy named after the Finnish city of Rauma, where a youth congress in 1980 helped define this approach. Raumismo views Esperanto speakers as a kind of linguistic diaspora,

a cultural group bound together by a shared language rather than a national identity. Instead of focusing on making Esperanto a universal second language, Rauhimi Stoich embraced it as just one language among many, valuing its use in literature, culture, and everyday communication without any grand ideological ambitions. But it's possible Esperanto can still play a role in facilitating exchange and collaboration between people of different linguistic backgrounds. A German anarchist once lamented the Barriers International understanding, quoted in Firth's article, More or less in isolation from one another, we work and fight, without engaging in exchange

about our victories and defeats, and without supporting and encouraging one another. Intensifying contact above the regional level with people having similar ideas and aims should be an important component of our work in order to make effective active solidarity possible." And that's the trouble even today. Linguistic barriers hinder international cooperation. Groups struggle to maintain foreign language correspondence, organize multilingual meetings, or find interpreters. Instead, communication tends to rely on chance. You know if someone in a group happens to speak a certain language, that determines who they can connect with. But when those key individuals move on, those connections

end up falling apart. So I get the appeal, I mean, wouldn't it be beneficial for these movements, and for any interest group working across language barriers, to have a relatively easy to learn, politically neutral means of communication. Major languages like English, Spanish or French don't fully solve the problem, as they come with historical baggage and imbalances in fluency levels. Esperanto, on the other hand, provides a more equitable solution, because everybody is starting from the same point. Since it isn't tied to any one nation, it avoids the power dynamics that arise when non-native speakers must conform to the linguistic norms of dominant cultures. Unlike English, which often privileges native

speakers and places others as perpetual learners, Esperanto fosters a more level playing field. English is treated like a global lingua franca right now, but a lot of people leave school without ever developing enough fluency to navigate an English-dominated world. And English is not the easiest language to learn. Esperanto, regardless of whether it ever becomes a global standard, offers an alternative path. It can help people overcome language learning anxieties, particularly those who feel disempowered by additional educational systems, and it can inspire an interest in language itself. If you've ever met an Esperanto speaker, you know that they

are very passionate about linguistics, more often than not. Many of its speakers go on to study linguistics, language politics, or even lesser-known languages. It's also a great way to develop translation skills in a friendly, cooperative environment. For monolingual English speakers, using Esperanto can be an eye-opening experience. It puts them in the shoes of those who never got to rely on their native language in international settings. Rather than viewing Esperanto as a competitor to other languages, perhaps a more productive approach is to see it as a tool for promoting multilingualism, cultural exchange, and a more cosmopolitan mindset.

Within the Esperanto-speaking community, opinions on its future vary widely. But one thing is clear, the question of how we communicate our cross-linguistic divides is still very much alive, and Esperanto offers but one possible answer. However, as I alluded to earlier, Esperanto is not without its critiques, as covered by Firth. Let's start with one of the most frequent critiques, Esperanto is an artificial language. Unlike the so-called natural languages which evolved organically over time, Esperanto was deliberately constructed. But here's the thing, since the rise of the nation state, the line between natural

and artificial languages has become increasingly blurry. Many national languages, like standard German or standard French, have been shaped by deliberate standardization, legal regulations, and media influence. In that sense, every language is to some degree engineered. Authors, storytellers, and ordinary speakers continuously influence language development, meaning that Esperanto is not as different after all, it does continue to evolve. And here's where I think James C. Scott had a rather negative characterization of Esperanto as a purely high modernist endeavour, as though all Esperantists sought to make Esperanto the official international language.

In St. Michael's State, he claims that Esperanto was created to replace the dialects and vernaculars of Europe. But such was never the case. It was always meant to be a language used to facilitate communication. There was more than one motivation for Esperanto's use, and boiling such an exercise in human creativity and attempt at a connection down to just that status focus, to me, seems needlessly reductive. He also calls it quote, an exceptionally thin language, without any of the resonances, connotations,

ready metaphors, literatures, oral histories, idioms and traditions of practical use that any socially embedded language already had." Which may be true when it began, but is certainly not true now, with over a century of use and evolution. His analogies between Esperanto and planned cities also miss the mark for me, as Esperanto has clearly operated as a self-organised and grassroots movement for most of its history, and has never really received the backing of states or their enforcement. It's a weird angle from Scott, because normally he'd advocate for what he calls the anarchist squint, right?

Like, in seeing history through a perspective of anarchism, I guess, or like an anarchist lens. And I feel like this is very applicable with Esperanto, like the only language which isn't inherently tied to any state or nation or ethnicity. Exactly. When I saw that, I remember reading, seeing like a state some years ago, and I've already got lost to for that. But in doing the research for this, I ended up, you know, stumbling upon it again. And I was like,

after reading the history is like, this wasn't quite accurate. Yeah. Yeah. That's a bummer. Yeah. Do you really like Scott? Me as well. Yeah. Recently, some listeners very kindly, James C. Scott passed away out of this net, as I'm sure you know, Andrew. Yes. But his library was donated to a local secondhand bookshop and some folks I asked online and

they went and got me some books and sent them, which was really kind. So I have some of his books now. Well, that's nice. Yeah. There's another common claim about Esperanto, which is that it's Eurocentric, right? And linguistically, there's some truth to this. Esperanto originated in Eastern Europe, and it still carries structural elements that resemble Indo-European languages. The majority of Esperanto speakers today are European, and its vocabulary is largely drawn from European

languages. However, critics who make this argument often suggest alternatives like English or Spanish, languages that are just as, if not more, Eurocentric in their historical and political reach. Esperanto in contrast has evolved through influence from non-European languages as well, particularly through its development in China and Japan, its alternative word formation, a feature more common in languages like Turkish or Japanese, and what some call the Hungarian period of Esperanto's history. So while Esperanto has European roots, its global evolution challenges the idea that

it's exclusively European in character. Another critique is that Esperanto is sexist. The argument goes that because feminine forms are typically created by adding "-in"- to a base form, like labaristo, worker, become a labrastino, female worker. The language assumes masculinity as a default. While this is a valid concern, Esperanto differs from many European languages in a key way. It does not assign grammatical gender to inanimate objects. A chair isn't arbitrarily feminine like in French or masculine like in German. However, in practice, gender bias can still creep in.

The basic form of a noun is often assumed to be masculine, even though Esperanto allows for explicitly male forms as well. Like in any language, reducing linguistic sexism in Esperanto requires conscious effort in how people actually use it. Yeah. That's an interesting one. Like we see this in Spanish too, right? Like with attempts to create like gender neutral forms, the presumptive

masculine, or if you're addressing a mixed gender group, then you would, you would use the masculine, but like people who are first language Spanish speakers can correct me. I'm sure you will on the subreddit if you want to. So like when I hear in English language media, it's referred to as Latin X, but like that's kind of a word that I struggle to say in Spanish, like is it Latin X or like, is it Latin X? And so there's this very kind of clumsy gender neutral form, which seems to be

easier to say in English and Spanish. Yeah. I've seen Latin used in some circles. Yeah. Latina. Latina. Yeah. When I speak to non-binary people in Spanish, that's what they prefer to use.

Um, of this relatively small sample size, given that there are probably millions of non-binary Spanish speaking people, I haven't obviously spoken to all or most of them, but like, it's very interesting to see this like outside critique of the language, which seems to also ignore an inside movement within people who are Spanish first language speakers to create a organic, like gender neutral form. Yeah. Which could also happen in any language, right? Like, like just because Esperanto has these certain forms doesn't mean that people within that language who don't feel represented by them can create forms within that language to better represent them.

Exactly. And it's easier because you don't have like a government telling you you can't use it or whatever. Exactly. Exactly. Esperanto is and continues to be a grassroots movement. And that has actually been a subject of critique for some. You know, perhaps one of the biggest critiques for Esperanto is that it never achieved its original goal of becoming a universal second

language. Zamenhof, its creator, envisioned a world where Esperanto would bridge linguistic divides. But for many, learning a language that relatively few people spoke simply wasn't practical. But the rise of the internet changed the game for Esperanto. What was once difficult to learn and use daily has become far more accessible. For example, Esperanto is actually one of the most overrepresented languages on the internet. The Esperanto Wikipedia has around 240,000 articles, putting it in the same league as languages spoken by tens of millions of people like Turkish and Korean. Google and Facebook have offered Esperanto versions of millions of people like Turkish and Korean. Google and Facebook have

offered Esperanto versions of their platforms for years, and language learning services like Duolingo have helped introduce it to a new generation of learners, like myself. In fact, the people who developed Esperanto courses for Duolingo did so voluntarily, simply because they believed in the language's potential. Esperanto has fostered a unique online community, and there's even a free hospitality network called Pasporta Servo, where Esperanto speakers can stay with each other around the world, no money required, just a shared language and a common philosophy of global connection. Not everyone learns Esperanto for the same reasons. Some people seek intellectual challenge, some want

a sense of unique community, and others are drawn to its political neutrality. As communications lecturer Sara Marino points out in the BBC article, people engage in Esperanto for many different motivations, whether it's personal fulfilment, social inclusion, civic engagement, or just the simple joy of learning a new language. It's important not to reduce Esperanto learners to a stereotype. Their reasons for participating are as diverse as the language itself. So where does Esperanto stand today? It would never replace English as the global lingua franca, but perhaps that was never

the point. Instead, it serves as a tool for promoting bilingualism, fostering cross-cultural connections, and encouraging people to think differently about language itself. And I think that is worthy of its own reward. That's all I have for today. All power to all the people. Peace. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media.

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