Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Esperanto

Episode Date: March 3, 2025

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why Esperanto is secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Esperanto, known for being a language. Famous for being a world language, I guess. Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Esperanto is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hello, everyone! Welcome to a brand new podcast episode. Podcast-a-what? Because you're more interested than people think. My name is Alex Schmidt. I'm not alone.

I'm joined by my colleague, Katie Golden Katie! When is your opinion about Esperanto? Don't change the channel! You are on the correct... You have the correct podcast. You're good. Come stai? Buon giorno?

Buon giorno? Yeah. Ciao. You can fight back with Italian. Come stai? I don't know Esperanto, Alex. I assume that that's what you're asking. What is my relationship to Esperanto in Esperanto?

And it's that I don't know it. I put the text of how I usually introduce the podcast into Google Translate from English to Esperanto. And we'll talk later about pronunciation. I did just what feels right. And yeah, so that's how it would sound in the Esperanto. And we'll talk later about pronunciation. I did just what feels right. And yeah, so that's how it would sound in the Esperanto language. Possibly. We're not going to teach it to you. This episode is about Esperanto in the world and all the

interesting things about it. Although knowing Google Translate sometimes you're probably like, hello, I am Alex. Your mother's calf is now listening to this, the peapod that speaks. Yeah, somehow I did a war crime in Esperanto and I don't know how, but there we are. I'm vaguely aware of Esperanto. I think it was, my understanding of it is some guy tried to create a language that would just be like the universal language for everyone to speak so that we could all communicate.

But now it's looking like it's a tight race between English and Mandarin. So Esperanto didn't really make it, but it was an idea of, hey, we should be able to unite everyone with one language. It just turns out that we picked English so far, which is the weirdest language. I'm really interested to hear about this because I've been sort of on a language learning journey because I live in Italy now. I have been trying to learn Italian and I'm learning it slowly, slowly, slowly, step by step, piano, piano. But it is- Piano, piano.

Right now, I'm at the point in learning Italian where my English is getting worse. And so sometimes I just simply cannot think of a word in Italian or English. So I'm just, it feels as if I'm getting dumber. I do hope that I progress past this point where it's like I get better at Italian and I don't lose my ability to speak English. But right now, I feel like I am dumb in both languages, which is cool. It sort of fits the purpose of this. What you said about the gist of why it exists is true. And it turns out all the details and background are amazing. So we'll get into that. And I had exclusively heard of Esperanto as a punchline. It's one of the many concepts in the world that

I found out about through hacky 1980s and 1990s comedians just making it the end of a sentence and then that's supposed to be funny. But it turns out it's a real thing that's interesting. I feel like so much of 80s and 90s comedy was making jokes about something that as an adult you realize is actually quite serious. Like all the jokes about like, oh, that lady that sued Starbucks for hot coffee and it turns out it like gave her... Oh, McDonald's. Yeah, yeah. And it gave her like third degree burns and it was like way too hot and she really did need to sue to recoup medical things. And then like, it's like, hey, what's the deal with this? And then it turns out like, oh, this was actually

something either really serious or really interesting with a lot more behind it than just what Jay Leno said. Darn that Jay Leno. I was thinking about Dennis Miller and I was thinking about Jay Leno,. Darn that Jay Leno. I was thinking about Dennis Miller and I was thinking about Jay Leno, that's correct. I always, he haunts my dreams, Jay Leno. He's my sleep paralysis demon. So Jay Leno, Freddy Krueger, like, have you heard about this?

I mean, he's just slashing things somehow, I don't know. You heard about this? Please let me sleep, Jay Leno. You hear about this? You see this? You hear about this? And yeah, I'm so glad listeners suggested this topic because it's a perfect, well-known thing that nobody really knows about. And thank you to Young Argonaut Pigeon and thank you to Sandcaster for suggesting it.

Support from Shane and Jason Stash and Jace Mooks and many others on the Discord. And on every episode we lead with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. Oh yeah, we do. And this week this segment called, Stats Got A Way About Them. Ooh, I don't know what it is, but I know my document has numbers. I like how in a lot of these renditions it does sound like you are trying to woo statistics. Like the entire field of statistics you are trying to woo. I'm at statistics' door with the love actually guy signs just not saying anything.

It's a bunch of graphs. Supply, demand. And the name was suggested by Willow Tanager. We have a new name for this every week. Please make a Miss Sillian Wacky Bass possible. Submit through Discord or to CivPod at gmail.com. Relatively short number section, it's all about Esperanto speakers today. Who's speaking it? And the first number is over 366,000. Over 366,000, more than a third of a million. It's the number of articles on the Esperanto language Wikipedia. Wow. That's a lot of articles.

Yeah, the existence of Wikipedia is very helpful here. Like as of this taping, there are 341 language versions of Wikipedia and users volunteer to write and edit them. Esperanto has a pretty large one, all things considered. Oh, okay, now I understand, because I thought you were saying there were 360,000 articles on Esperanto, not in Esperanto. Oh, I see.

I was like, how do you need so many articles on Esperanto? Oh, that'd be deranging. Yeah. Yeah. No. Okay. So I get so- That's an entire encyclopedia written in Esperanto.

It's wild. Interesting. Okay. So that, because we have talked a bit before about the use of Wikipedia as a gauge for like how dead is a language because there was a whole, wasn't there a whole attempt to use Wikipedia to, what was it, Welsh? It was called Scots. It's one of the early languages in Scotland. Some people still do. Yeah. And that, but that turned out to be some kid.

One kid wrote the entire thing and he didn't really speak it, but he used sort of a translator to try to do it. And he didn't realize that he wasn't doing it correctly. Yeah. And this one, there's like a relatively substantial amount of people making it. By article number, Esperanto is the 37th largest Wikipedia, three-seven. So if there are 341 Wikipedias, Esperanto is just short of the top 10% in terms of article amounts for a Wikipedia. That's a substantial

encyclopedia in the world. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, you know what? But we don't, do we not really know how many people actually speak it? We don't. And all my sources this week, they cited a wild range of estimates. Like some estimates are as low as a few thousand and some are up to around two million. Research on this is a mess. And so Wikipedia, Esperanto has an actual community writing it. It ranks 48th in terms of active editing Wikipedia. As of this taping, 328 people are active users of Esperanto Wikipedia.

Wikipedia says an active user is somebody who's made at least one edit in the last 30 days. So not just reading, like hundreds of people are editing this regularly. But for comparison, English language Wikipedia has almost 128,000 active editing people in the last 30 days. Second place is French with over 19,000. So like there's actual people working on this, but it's still pretty small at the same time. So if we don't know that much about how many people are speaking it, do we know that for sure nobody is speaking it as their primary language?

This would only be as a secondary language? That's a great question. In general, the philosophy of Esperanto is that it should not be anybody's native language or first language. The philosophy is that it's specifically supposed to be a second language. And so there's some debate about whether anyone is a native speaker. Like apparently a few parents have tried to make their kids primarily Esperanto speakers, but philosophically it's believed nobody is primarily an Esperanto speaker.

So it's meant to be sort of a something where we're all in the same playing field in terms of learning this language. So we're all, it's everyone's second language so that we're all kind of united in how frustrating it is to learn a new language. I dig it. I want other people to feel my pain of trying to learn a new language. No, I enjoy learning a new language. It's just, it is, you get to a certain point where you start to get close to being like conversationally

fluent but you're not there yet. And then you just feel dumb all the time. And that's where I am right now. Yeah. And I think Esperanto is viewed as one way to approach that or make that simpler globally. Theoretically, you could just work on our native language English and then Esperanto and that's it, but instead you're working on English and Italian and that has limited utility elsewhere. I mean, first of all, how dare you? I feel like Italian, you can use it in restaurants to order spaghetti literally everywhere. Yeah, no, I mean, it is, I think it's actually really, it's a really cool concept. It's just like any kind of like cool concept

where it really would require every single person on earth to adopt. It's hard to do. It's hard to get that to happen. Cause I do remember, I have a vague recollection of hearing about Esperanto in high school. And I think maybe there was like some, I don't think it was like an actual class,

but I think there was a club where you would go to the club and try to learn it. I never went because, you know, it was too cool for that. I definitely, definitely was not. But it is, yeah. Cause like I had a vague awareness that like, and I didn't know what it was. I just thought, ah, Esperanto from Esperantoica? I don't know. I didn't think about it. I just assumed it was a language from like a country, not a language that was created with the entire purpose of being a new language.

was created with the entire purpose of being a new language. Yeah, it also, it turns out the name Esperanto comes from the Esperanto words for one who hopes, which is silly, but also if you think about it, every language name is from the language and just as invented. So whatever. Yeah. Somehow Esperanto does sound like, it sounds like to say like, I hope in Italian it's spero, sperare. And then in English, like aspire is a way to say hope.

Esperanto, I mean, that kind of sounds like it's maybe not too dissimilar from current languages. Yeah. We'll talk about that in a sec, because you've got these Wikipedians and our one other useful measurement of Esperanto speaking is Duolingo. In 2016, Duolingo reached... Alstead, by the way, as of today, right? Or did they bring them back?

The Duo, the Lingo Owl. I heard about it, and I really have tried not to follow it. What? You're not into blatant, flagrant marketing gimmicks, Alex? Oh no, oh no, it's going to get in my head. Yeah, so in the summer of 2015, Duolingo added a course in Esperanto and as soon as the end of 2016, about a year and a half later, they hit their one millionth user who'd at least try to. One million Esperanto learners. Right. As of 2017, the Guardian says Duolingo

had more Esperanto learners than Hungarian learners or Czech learners to name a few other languages. There's more people trying out Esperanto. That's got to be a big ouch for Hungarians and people from Czechoslovakia. I wish they'd given me more examples. I feel like I'm picking on those languages. Yeah. Sorry guys. You are being beaten out by a fake language.

Do they have other things? I don't mean to be insulting, but do they have Klingon and stuff on Duolingo? Probably not, right? Yeah, they've added Klingon. When you Google Duolingo Klingon, you get the world's best way to learn Klingon about Duolingo. Do they have like Elvish? They have a high Valyrian course, high Valyrian from Game of Thrones.

They've been like having fun, but also Esperanto is not from Star Trek or a book. It's a thing that somebody made to use in the real world. And so it's an interesting in-betweener that way too. Right. Although, are you telling me Klingons aren't real, Alex? Come on. That's why I wear hats when I make TikToks. I'm going to hide the ridges. I'm a Klingon this whole time. That's why I grew up bangs. Yeah, you do. We can take out our bat lefts.

We're Klingons. That's the reveal. Actually, that was when Kirk was fighting a Gre, not a, not a Klingon. I like that Captain Kirk will come up later for real in the episode. So. Really? Yeah, that's wild. I'm a prophet. It's really freaky. Specifically when it comes to old Star Trek. Very useful.

But yeah, so anyway, the gist is Esperanto is like weirdly not popular, but not gone. People are, are doing it maybe as a hobby, maybe very seriously, and we'll talk about why. But the last number to get into all the takeaways about this, the number is 1887. The year 1887 is basically Esperanto's birthday. It's when an ophthalmologist named L. L. Zamenhof published a book called Dr. Esperanto's International Language 138 years ago. Dr. Esperanto? He like kind of for fun did a pen name.

He didn't put his name on this first book about it. I see. And he is an eye doctor, but he just coined the nickname for himself, Dr. Esperanto. I see. And again, Esperanto is a word coined from the Esperanto language to mean one who hopes. I see. Sort of like English is a word from English meaning English. I forgot.

Is this the guy with the little glasses and he's bald and he's got a beard and a mustache. The art sources have a picture of him, L. L. Zamenhof. He was born in the mid 1800s, died in 1917. He's the person, like the specific person who created this at a specific time, specific date. Where was he born? That leads perfectly into mega takeaway number one. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] leads perfectly into mega takeaway number one. Esperanto was invented as a global second language and a humanist movement by a Polish Jewish

inventor. Hey, see, this is why I never trust Jay Leno when he makes fun of things. Because it always like has some kind of inspiring or tragic backstory. Like, you know, airline peanuts. And then it turns out airline peanuts was invented by a nun who saved the lives of 200 golden retrievers or something, you know?

Sure. The Disney movie 201 Golden Dalmatians is about that story. Oh my god. Oh man, can you imagine Disney movie 201 Golden Dalmatians and they all teach us Esperanto. That's how you get people to adopt Esperanto. I think we did just riff the most popular possible movie, but anyway, moving on. They're air buds who are Dalmatians, Disney's.

Anyway, moving on. They're air buds who are Dalmatians, Disney's. Anyway, cool. Yeah, this came from a highly multicultural and specific location and sort of a perfect guy to do it. It's a town called Białystok, which is now in the northeastern corner of modern Poland. At the time, it was territory of the Russian Tsars. I mean, look, I'm not going to have an opinion on borders around Russia. No, but... It did make me think about when you talked about relatives leaving Ukraine, which was not its own country.

Yeah, Odessa. Yeah, like it used to be part of Russia. I had relatives that left Odessa, yeah. It used to be part of Russia. I had relatives that left Odessa. And yeah, I mean, it was its own country, then it was part of Russia, then it was like part of the USSR, then it was its own country again. There's a lot of Jewish people who are from Eastern Europe who pre-World War II, even like before the Holocaust, were forced to leave because of mass pogroms. And this Jewish person stayed in what's now Northeastern Poland in spite of all that.

Yeah. Along the way it led him to invent Esperanto. Two key sources for the whole episode are two books. One of them is called Bridge of Words, Esperanto and the Dream of a Universal Language. And that's by Esther Shore, who's a professor of English and director of humanistic studies at Princeton University. The other book is Esperanto and Its Rivals, the Struggle for an International Language. That's by Roberto Garvia, associate professor of sociology at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.

I mean, one book sounds really like sweet and wholesome and the other one sounds like language Pokemon where we make different languages fight it out. The bonus show is basically about language Pokemon and why Esperanto both was the top choice and not. I choose you, Pig Latin. Uzche, uye, or Latin. Ooz-chay, oo-yay, or whatever. Yeah, right. Pig Latin is a nightmare for those of us who struggle with spoonerisms.

Ash-etchum-kay. Now, the key location here is Bialystok. And if you want to know how that's spelled, it might help if you've seen the Mel Brooks musical and movie called The Producers. Oh, I was thinking it sounded like Max Bialystok. Yeah. It's spelled exactly like that last name. He seems to have taken it from the city, partly because the city became famous in 1943.

It was occupied by the Nazis. They'd set up a Jewish ghetto and then the ghetto had a pretty successful major uprising. Nice. They fought the Nazis for five days. Hundreds of people either got to flee or got to link up with resistance fighters in the countryside. But this is a city that's been repeatedly invaded and traded with. It's very multicultural.

I've seen the original producers like a billion times and I had no idea of the origins of Max Bialystok's name. I just thought it was a funny name and that's why it's just... It was a really wild learning and learning about Esperanto. Yeah, it's spelled like Max Bialystok and it's apparently pronounced Bialystok. And the city has ended up being parts of lots of different histories because it's in what's now modern Poland. It's been part of Polish states, very close to Lithuania, very close to Belarus. It's been controlled by Russian kingdoms, been part of the Soviet

Union. Napoleon marched through at one point, the Prussians conquered it, unified Germany took it in both world wars. And so between militaries and trade and so on, it had several established communities of different languages in 1887 when our guy L.L. Zamenhof was making a language. They spoke so many languages in that city, we don't quite know what the L.L. stood for because it got transliterated and translated so many times. It's from L.L. Bean. Oh yeah. Esther Shore says it's probably Ludovic Lazarus Sammanhoff, but it was also written as Ludwig and some of the languages, they were different alphabets too. Like there's

a lot of change going on. Ludovic Lazarus sounds like a Marvel mutant character who like his superpower is coming back from the dead. Bringing back dead languages. It's like, why does my mutant name have to be Grave Guy? My real name is so cool. It stinks. And Professor X is like, too bad. I do really like that idea of both valuing the existence of other languages, but then also having a common tongue that you can communicate with other people in so that there aren't linguistic barriers.

Yeah. And Zamenhof was better at languages than you and me. He spoke five languages fluently and didn't necessarily have to. He was a trained eye doctor. When you're doing a crucial high paying service, you can just put the burden on your patients of learning your language, but he just loved language. And so he was fluent in Russian, Polish, German, a language called Belarusian. I didn't know Belarus had its own language. And then the fifth and probably most important for the story is Yiddish.

Mm-hmm. And that's the other big inspiration for Esperanto is within the Jewish community, Yiddish was a handy second language, if not first language for people. I never actually learned Yiddish. I think my grandma spoke it at some point. She didn't really speak it around me, but her mother spoke it quite a bit. But I, yeah, like I definitely use a lot of words

from Yiddish like schlep. It's, cause it's the best way to say that. Yeah. Yeah. Like, oh, I can't believe I have to carry this item. It's not as fun. It's not good. Yeah, it's swept across the city. Yeah.

No, there's a lot of really good words from Yiddish. And it seems like Yiddish really helped him conceptualize, hey, what if the whole world got to have what our Jewish community in Central and Eastern Europe has? Because super brief history of Yiddish, several centuries before Zamenhof, there were Ashkenazi Jewish people using pieces of Hebrew, pieces of German, pieces of other European languages and making something they could share.

And Zamenhof says, what if I kind of put all of the European languages into a machine of my own brain and then invented an extremely simple second language for everybody. And in terms of why did Jewish people come up with Yiddish to share among themselves, this was not like a club, an exclusive club that they were forming in order to exclude other people. It was because they were generally persecuted

and shunned by the rest of society, therefore necessitating a lot of more insular communities. It was a self-protective thing. It was not just like, oh, it's not a Mean Girls clique that they were forming. A hundred percent. And that will come up later too, yeah, in the show. Because Zamenhof, he says from a very early age, I'm a humanist, I want unity between

all peoples. And as early as 18 years old, in the year 1878, Zamenhof starts showing friends ideas he's just coming up with for a new language. At his 19th birthday party, he presents them with a written out grammar and lexicon for a universal language. And he performs a poem that he's written in his new language to his friends. That's so cute. That's so nerdy and cute. I wish that he and JR Tolkien, wait, what am I saying?

Yeah, two Rs. Yeah, JRR. JRR Tolkien. I always tripped. There's too many authors that use little letters in their names and I'm tired of it. LL Bean, JR Tolkien, MRRP Martin. The parody of JLL Bean's fantasy realm where it's like a pleasant lake in Wisconsin is really funny to me. Having some, a nice corduroy jacket and the journey to bring the corduroy jacket back to the store to buy one in a larger size.

And Esther Shore in her book, she has the text of it. It does rhyme in like her Esperanto, but here's the English version, quote, let the hatred of the nations fall, fall. The time is already here. All humanity must unite in one family." That's the English of the Zamenhof Esperanto poem at 19. That's very sweet, but I bet because it sounded a little bit communist that he got targeted. That's exactly what happened, but later. Oh my god, damn it. Alex, I hate being right all the time. I really do. Gosh darn it.

We have a whole takeaway about it, but Zamenhof truly devoted his life to this and as just like a side joy besides eye doctoring day to day. Universal joy. That sounds a little bit too much like communism to me. That's exactly what happened. And so, you know, 1878, he's a kid thinking about this. And then nine years later, 1887, he publishes that first book of just all his private labor and ideas. Dr. Esperanto's International Language is a book of all of Zamenhof's philosophies. It's 16 rules for the grammar and a glossary of basic vocabulary. He goes on to write more books about this,

but it expands on it. It's always the same basic principles. First principle is he doesn't want to dictate anything or be in charge of anything. He wants to help make it, but the dedicate- God, I feel that. I really feel that. I feel like I have a lot of ideas. It's like I got an idea, but I don't want to be in charge. Are you kidding me? I'm not going to write out my JLLB idea. I hope someone does. It's great.

Yeah. In the dedication of Dr. Esperanto's international language, he declares that Esperanto is, quote, the property of society and explicitly tells people, like, this is a starter set of words and rules. I only codified it to help make new words. I haven't made the language yet. Please complete it as a community. Open source.

Get them. Exactly. Yeah. Open source, get him. Exactly. Yeah, that, especially Roberto Garvia's book, he says that this was like an analog version of open source technology and like a forerunner of all that. It's really cool. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyways, I, this is, this feels like we're going up the roller coaster of hope and that we're gonna Will will go down and then up again, yeah, but the okay, you know, he does build something there are some ideas He lays out. He also had no formal linguistics training So he borrowed heavily from the elements of existing European languages He told people he wanted to capture the spirit of European languages languages. He told people he wanted to capture the spirit of European languages. And if you speak more than one European language, you might just be able to guess what a lot of Esperanto words mean. For example, his first book, Esperantists don't usually call it Dr. Esperanto's International Language. They usually just call it Unua Libro.

That sounds like one book. Yeah, like I know I told people what it means, but it also, you could have probably guessed it means first book or book number one or something. Unua Libro, especially if you speak Spanish, it just sounds like that or Italian probably. Yeah, yeah, no, I like Esperanto and Libro and Unua are very, like those are words that I could guess based on Italian. And then Zamenhof's other big principle was aggressively eliminating systems and rules and parts of grammar that you can just do without, hopefully. I really like this guy.

I'm so sold on this guy. Please don't let him be a milkshake duck. I hope it's like, and then he blew up an entire city. Not a milkshake duck. It seems like he was good. Sweet! So he was a good guy. It's just bad stuff happened to him. All right, right on. The bonus show will talk about the biggest fight he ever got in. And he mostly got in a fight because he doesn't like fights.

Like it seems like he was pretty good. My favorite example of him eliminating stuff is Esperanto does not have genders for nouns. Ah hell yeah! I love this guy! Woo! I feel like basically every American who's taken a European language is like, why does French, Italian, especially German gender the nouns? It's such a chore. English is hard, but Skip's that as nice, you know. Abolish gender, especially when it comes to me having to learn ill or la. It's infuriating.

This is kind of subjective, but he tried to have no irregular verbs. I know that's all what you think, but he tried to make spellings phonetic as much as a European feels like it's phonetic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm into this. And interestingly, he eliminated indefinite articles. That's a grammar thing. I don't know what that means, but I love it. In English, that's words like a or an. Hmm. Sure, why not? Get rid of it. The example, if I translate it to English,, in English you say, I want an apple.

Esperanto, you say the words for I want apple. Perfect. Man, I love this guy. He would have been so peak early Twitter with Esperanto where you only got like, what was it, a hundred and two hundred and fifty characters or something. Man, those were- I think it was a hundred forty. Isn't that small?

What? Yeah, it was like 140. That was peak. I want Apple. Send. Tweet. You know, we really made a mistake when we added more. I think that's when we diverged into the bad universe is when we increased the character limit on Twitter.

Yeah. These are his main principles. And then one last principle is far beyond language. He was explicitly political and cultural about he's a humanist, he wants fair, equal, positive treatment for everybody, dismantle racism, dismantle nationalism, dismantle all the divisions that lead people to harm people at scale. And that was universal and it was also very specific to his experience of anti-Semitism in Tsarist Russia.

Yeah. Because he's a Jewish person. That's why my family went to Canada. In a letter in 1905, Zamenhof says, quote, my Jewishness has been the main reason why from earliest childhood, I gave myself completely to one crucial idea, one dream, the dream of the unity of humankind." End quote. That's very nice.

I like this guy. So he specifically wants to end anti-Semitism, and also for the reason that he wants to end every bad ism, every bad thing. Right. And for this, he was probably on a number of hit lists. That, like you said, this kind of the top of the roller coaster will have a little of a dip in a fascinating way. Because all this begs the question, like, did Zamenhof succeed? Did Esperanto become the world's second language? It didn't. Why not? Right. One reason is takeaway number two.

Why not? Right. One reason is takeaway number two. Esperanto had its biggest chance to become a global language in the 1920s, but that got blocked by the French. Gosh darn it. Listen France, stick to having really good butter, croissant, and duck sauce and we're good. Everything, also protests, you're good at that, you know, like respect. Respect, everything else, knock it off. Just stop.

Yeah, it's unclear if it would have become a major phenomenon, but there was a turning point in 1920 at the first meeting of the League of Nations. The League of Nations is a forerunner to the United Nations that forms after World War I. Keesler's is here. The books have been mentioned. Also a Smithsonian magazine piece by Joshua Holzer, associate professor of political science at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. Turning point is 1920 because people organize a League of Nations after the First World

War. The agenda includes the topic of whether the world should adopt a universal second language. And a strong proposal from a dozen countries including China, India, and Brazil sign onto a motion recommending that children of all nations from now on would know at least two languages, their own mother tongue and an easy means of international communication." And then the delegation from Iran proposed Esperanto as the specific choice with approval from everybody involved. And then the French just took a big baguette all over it. Exactly. Like that proposal, China, India, Brazil, Iran, other countries, those countries are

now more than a third of the world's population. And they all said, let's make Esperanto our global second language. And France unilaterally vetoed it on its own. Oh my God. France, come on guys. Again, again, I got to say, your croissants are amazing. I can't even look at a croissant from anywhere else now that I've tried it in France.

So yes, you guys nailed croissant. Why would you take away Esperanto from us? Why? Because in super general terms, the UN has a council of a few countries that can veto stuff. And the League of Nations had something like that. France was one of four permanent members has a council of a few countries that can veto stuff. And the League of Nations had something like that. France was one of four permanent members of a council that could decide a lot of international

issues and veto them all on their own. And the main reason was that the French kind of hoped that instead of Esperanto being the world's second language, French could be the world's second language. Oh. Like, what if we just really push French? You know? Soccer blue. And basically English outraced French to do that. But that was their idea.

Well, I mean, I guess, yeah, I think that kind of sucks. And on the past episode about World's Fairs, we talked about the French being like where the World's Fair country were the Olympics country. Like they were in the 1920s, they were on a kick of this. Chill out guys. Is it not enough to be the Ducal Orange country? And they said no. And so, French was one of the two working languages of the League of Nations. It's one of the working languages of the UN. The furthest the UN has ever pushed Esperanto It's one of the working languages of the UN. The furthest the UN has ever pushed Esperanto is a non-binding UNESCO resolution in 1985

saying Esperanto would be good to have in school curriculum. It'd be nice. We're just saying it would be nice. So these world governments basically never really picked up Esperanto. And the other coda to it is that in 1922, two years after France killed the League of Nations proposal, they banned Esperanto in France. Like explicitly banned the teaching of it on the grounds that Esperanto. Increible.

Yeah, and they banned it explicitly on the grounds that Esperanto was a tool of communist propaganda. Oh, for goodness sakes. France, listen, look at me. Look at me in the eyes, France. Look at me, France. France. The fact that you guys like fashion and buttery desserts means that most Americans think you

guys are communists. Also, I just watched highlights of Keely and Mbappe scoring a hat trick. It was awesome. Keep being awesome in the ways you're awesome. And stop this. Come on. Stop this. I know that modern French people have nothing to do with the crimes of their recent ancestors.

Yeah, a lot from 103 years ago. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, I knew like as soon as you're like he was like I want this to like all peoples to be able to communicate freely and to you know And that he was a humanist like I knew he would like people and be like that's communist. That's gotta go down Yeah, what's he even was he even a communist at all? Because that was the thing people would do at the time. Zamenhof, it's sort of important that he died in 1917 and was also just so focused on Esperanto because it means we don't really have opinions from him about communism or about Zionism.

People are mostly just kind of guessing what he would have thought of that stuff. Or he like maybe mentioned it in letters, but wasn't big either way. I'm curious what he would have thought about the Klingon language, but he died too soon. Right. Cause we're Klingons. We're focused on our own experience and culture. Yeah. I'll see you on the bridge later. Yeah. Yeah, I'll see you on the bridge later, the bird of prey. Yeah, let's do the Klingon knife dance. They kind of have one. I know you aren't big on Star Trek.

They have. Don't they have one where they hit you, the gauntlet where they hit you with pain sticks? Oh, that's kind of a separate sport, but it is good training for that. Oh, yeah. Okay. Hahaha. Folks, that's our numbers and two huge takeaways. We're going to take a quick break, then return with more oppression of Esperanto, and then also really surprising pop culture Esperanto.

Folks, very happy to have support for today's show from the UNC Keenan-Flagler Business School and their Master of Accounting program. If you thrive on diving into the details, like basically every listener of this show, your curiosity makes you a great fit for a career in accounting. No matter the state of the job market, every industry needs accountants, and accountants are always in demand. UNC Kenan Flagler offers one of the top ranked online Master of Accounting degrees. If you've been thinking of switching industries or you want to set yourself up for a lifelong career, pick the program with proven ROI and a 98% job placement rate. You could be a tar heel in less than one year. Learn more at accounting.unc.edu.

Again that's accounting.unc.edu. We're back with two more Esperanto takeaways, because takeaway number three, after a series of events in late 1800s Russia, the world's authoritarians oppressed and hunted Esperantists. Of course they did. I don't know if I said Esperantist is someone who speaks Esperanto. That's the word. Okay. I mean, I guess that. Yeah, it makes sense. It's like, hey, what if we were all unified in love and harmony? It's like, I gotta kill you. That's a love, harmony, that's them fighting words.

Yeah. And a big part of it was anti-Semitism because if Semenhof had not been Jewish, he could have had this exact same idea. It's just that his experience influenced it and informed it. And then people said it's probably a Jewish plot and like dictatorships in Europe. It's just so funny. It's like authoritarians being like, it's a Jewish plot for control. Meanwhile, I have control of everything, including the trains. They're like invading Poland and saying, oh, the dangerous people I'm invading are doing something. Yeah, like punching people in the face

and going like, why did you attack my fist with your face? Yeah, I mean, so it's not, if you guys are wondering like if the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories are like a new thing because of QAnon and the internet? Nope. Yeah, QAnon is one of the least creative things it's ever been. It's just, it has no new ideas. Yeah, QAnon's a hack.

QAnon's a hack, yeah. It's a hack. Get new material, anti-Semites. Key source is here because there's history, it's very old. There's the blog of the British Library. They have an amazing piece by Renato Corsetti, who's a professor of psycholinguistics at La Sapienza University, Rome. Sweet. And we're also citing a New York Times piece by Corey Kilgannon. Because again, L.L. Zamenhof

explicitly all the time said, I want humanism and global unity. And was also Jewish and none of that was exciting to the rulers of Tsarist Russia in the late 1800s. They, in Zamenhof's lifetime, did pogroms in the Aue Stuck specifically. They were after Jewish people and also wanted to spread Russian language and culture in an imperial way. Is that why he went by like a pen name? Did that protect him at all? It seems like he was mostly having fun. Like he came out as the person pretty quickly. So yeah, it's a pen name for goofs mostly. That's bold.

And the Russians did one of the first ever censorship of Esperanto. In 1895, they went after a magazine called La Esperantisto, partly because it published an article by the novelist Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina wore in peace that novelist. Right. And they published it in Esperanto? The magazine was both in Esperanto and other languages to bring people in. Oh, okay.

I see. But he just published an article saying how much he loved Esperanto. At one point, Tolstoy claimed he became fluent in Esperanto after studying it for just a few hours because it's that well-built and easy to learn. That's probably not true. Tolstoy. But Tolstoy was... He likes to talk a big talk. And Tolstoy was already in trouble with the Russian government because he was a pacifist and he was a Christian anarchist. Boo pacifist, boo Christian anarchists. Yeah, and like a very military government czar does not like pacifism or anarchism. And so because Tolstoy hung out with these guys, they went after the whole thing. The Russian government does not like Esperanto, but then basically

a set of tough coincidences happen. Esperanto gains popularity in Russia. It was made by a Russian subject in Russian territory. And then also Russia pretty much invents the practice of being a communist country. It's just like two basically coincidences that this happens. And so then the rest of the world says, hey, Esperanto is communist. And then the Russians keep saying Esperanto is anti-authoritarianism. And so everybody demonizes Esperanto. God. That is pretty funny that it's like they're're being persecuted by Russian and then everyone else is like, oh no, look at this scary Russian thing. Exactly.

There's a bizarre thing where France, for example, says we're banning Esperanto because it's communist. And then the actual communists, they name it communism, but it's an authoritarian dictatorship. And so they hunt down and investigate and demonize Esperantists. Apparently the Soviets didn't allow a public Esperanto club until 1979. And they still had like secret police infiltration of it to check if it was going to bring down the Soviet government. Checking all these like linguist nerds just like.

They're nerds, right, exactly. Like this one's talking about dangling participles. Get them! Yeah, and then outside of the Soviet Union, a lot of countries, especially in the 1920s, 1930s, adopt their own authoritarian dictatorships in like fascist ways. Well. And so they demonize Esperanto as communist or Jewish or both. In 1934, the Japanese government shuts down Esperanto clubs in Japan.

In 1937, forces of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco round up and execute Esperanto speakers in Cordoba. In Portugal, they had a dictator named Salazar from the 1930s till the 1970s, and Esperanto speakers can't form a public club until his regime starts to fall apart in the early 1970s. It's so wild because the concept behind it is literally just, what if we could share a language so we could speak to our neighbors? And it's like that is dangerous. And I mean, when you think about it,

I guess that is kind of dangerous to fascists and authoritarians, right? Because once you start being able to communicate with and humanize your neighbors and people from other countries, that is a threat to authoritarianism. That's a threat to fascism because you are

not vilifying people from other countries. You're forming bonds with them. You're sharing information and you're making friends from other countries. And that's very scary to authoritarians. Precisely. Yeah. Some of my sources, they talked to people who basically said you can measure the repressiveness of a country by how it treats Esperantists, right? It makes sense. Yeah. I mean, and that's interesting. I mean, kind of bringing it back to sort of like how in the 80s and 90s, it was like the butt of a lot of jokes. I feel like kind of like what we're talking about in the beginning, where a lot of 80s and 90s jokes were things where it's like, oh, this is actually like, this has a chilling history or this is really

a sign of something much more important. And even when you don't have maybe like a authoritarian government, but like the history of say trying to crush a movement to have more unity kind of results in like, hey, just like making fun of it, just like making fun of hippies or something, right? And then it's when you actually look into the history of it, it's like, oh, actually this was a great idea and it was violently and brutally suppressed. Exactly. Yeah. And we're going to have the darkest suppression here because maybe the most famous opponent of Esperanto was Fali Hitler. In his book Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler takes time to say that Esperanto is part of a Jewish plot for world domination. In Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler takes time to say that Esperanto was part of a Jewish plot

for world domination. Sorry. And when Germany occupies Poland and later invades Russia, the Gestapo, the German secret police force, they received specific orders to find the descendants of L. L. Zamenhof. What? And they go on to kill all three of his children. Oh my God. Like specifically, somebody wrote a memo that said like,

while you're hunting all the Jews, find the Zamenhof kids. And sort of like the history of Yiddish being partly a survival of oppression kind of thing, Esperantists have built a lot of community partly to survive oppression like this. There is an Esperanto flag. It is green and white. It has a large green star. Their annual world gatherings of Esperantists. At the 2015 Universal Congress of Esperanto, they formed an Esperanto soccer team and played basically an international match against the country of Western Sahara, which is a disputed country.

So that kind of brought them together. And there's also a tradition called Pasporta Servo. That, oh, wait, wait, wait. Does that have something to do with brain passport? Yes. It's Esperanto. You can kind of figure it out if you know languages. I can kind of understand it.

Great. Yeah, it's a tradition where, and especially flourishes with internet interconnection, Esperantists offer to lodge other Esperantists when they're traveling in their home. So you can travel relatively cheaply around the world, and then they hang out, speak Esperanto with each other. That's super cool.

It's like a global community and nation unto themselves. It's really cool. Oh, that's global community and nation onto themselves. It's really cool. Oh, that's wonderful. Unlike authoritarianism, it's a community that wants to invite everyone in. And, you know, so that's why it's not bad and why they don't like it.

And I mean, the fact, the way that, like, if you know any, it sounds like if you know any romantic language that you can kind of understand Esperanto, like, because right now, given that I'm like learning Italian, I cannot try to learn another language or I will confuse myself and I will hurt myself in my confusion. But that is pretty neat that it was like, it was kind of designed to be easy. Like, it's the opposite of gatekeeping.

It's like gate opening, trying to make it more accessible. Yeah, exactly. So that's wonderful about it. And it's surprisingly important. It's not just a for goofs thing. It's been a movement against bad things across the 1900s and today. Yeah. Yeah. Which I think is an important, important to keep in mind for no particular reason. And off of that we have one last takeaway number four. Esperanto is an influence on fictional languages, but surprisingly rarely used as one, except in a US military war game.

What? Okay, I'm scared. In the Cold War, the US military did a practice war game where it was US troops versus US troops who'd been trained to speak Esperanto to pretend to be from an Esperanto country that's like neutral and anonymous. Okay, were we attacking the Esperanto country?

No, the concept was... It's an amazing story because the concept was one side is the US and the other side is a fictional country named Aggressor that's attacking us. Oh. Well, I know the first problem with your country. You probably don't want to name it Aggressor. Yeah, and the thing was this was you know, a war game that helps the troops practice, but also not escalate the Cold War at all. They were like,

if spies look at this, they see nothing about their country. I mean, but, you know, it's- Even though we all know it's the communists, but like, you know. They started this in the 1950s and did it until the 1970s. They would train entire forces of US troops to know Esperanto, to speak Esperanto to each other in communications for this practice, like for practicing a war, which is a really long way to go to make it not specifically anybody else that we know in the world. I see. And so it's supposed to emulate sort of the intercepting other languages or so that the other side doesn't know what they're talking about. What was the whole point of

that? Just because they want to have fun? Yeah, it was supposed to be like the US troops being US troops, if you hear their communications, it's like if you're hearing the Soviets talking to each other and you don't know Russian or the Arabs talking to each other and you don't know Arabic kind of thing. I see. Okay. Okay. But they were definitely just the Eastern the other side of the Cold War.

But in order to anonymize it to not heighten tensions, they gave the troops special uniforms, they gave them entire identity documents written in Esperanto. In order to also do military purposes, the US Army coined a bunch of new Esperanto words for military stuff. Because this pacifist language didn't have words for a lot of military stuff. That's kind of heartbreaking. It's like, huh, Esperanto doesn't have a word for child killer gun. Pretty much.

Like an armored carrier is Quiris Portillo, a bombing run is Bambarda Proximigo, tear gas is Lar Magasso, barbed wire is Piquildrato. My favorite is that malobeo is the new Esperanto word for insubordination. So they could maintain harsh discipline. Did you just malobey me? And you can kind of tell what it means, right? Did you just taco-baco me? Did you just taco-baco me?

That's how I talk to my dog. Did you malobey me? Did you taco-baco me? But yeah, they picked Esperanto because any real language was a diplomatic problem and it was easier than inventing a new language and Esperanto is built to be easy. So they- Could have been Klingon. Could have been Klingon because that would be canonically probably better and also Klingons

definitely would name a country aggressor. That's true. Yeah. And then in fiction, there's a weird lack of people just picking up Esperanto and using it for their story. Because it is so basically friendly and so anonymous. Writers want their stuff to be interesting and distinctive and weird. And so Klingon, Dothraki, Elvish, they made it weird on purpose. And a lot of writers did that even though they love Esperanto. J. R. R. Tolkien was an avid Esperantist in his spare time. Yay, we got back to JRR Tolkien. Yeah, like Jules Verne learned it.

Leo Tolstoy, obviously a writer, he's not doing sci-fi, but apparently also there's not numbers, but just lots of modern writers like to play with Esperanto in their spare time. But then when they sit down to write, they throw it away because they want their fictional world to be weirder. They wanna do like their own language. So that means that it's like,

we can just use it for our 201 Golden Retriever Dalmatian movie. And they all speak Esperanto and they're all pacifists. They're possivists. Doggo Tulsoy. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's like surprisingly rare to see it just used straight up in fiction. Apparently the movie Blade Trinity, the third Blade movie, they put up bilingual English Esperanto road signs to make the location feel like no particular place. The graphic novel series Saga uses it for the language of a planet called Reith.

The video game Final Fantasy XI has an Esperanto language theme song, just because. And there's been only a few movies where they used a bunch of Esperanto as spoken language. Apparently the earliest is 1939, a movie starring Clark Gable called Idiot's Delight. They had like an anonymous European country in it and had the actors speak Esperanto. And then the other really fun example, I'm going to try to play a little clip of it. Apparently Esperantists like get together and make fun of a 1966 horror movie called Incubus, which is entirely scripted in Esperanto, and it starred William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk.

We brought it all back to Klingons. Yeah. So here's a little clip of William Shatner and his co-star in Incubus. Not bad. Yeah. And he did that like a couple weeks before starting to film Star Trek as Captain Kirk. No, it sounded a lot more natural than I thought. I thought it would be Captain Kirk going, Malo-Bael, Doggus Badus. We'll put that into our movie. Bale? Dog is bad-us.

We'll put that into our movie. It's gonna be great. Salutons, amos! That is the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Mega takeaway number one, Esperanto was invented as a potential global second language and humanist movement by a Polish-Jewish inventor. Takeaway number two, Esperanto had its biggest chance to become a global language at the 1920 first meeting of the League of Nations, and that chance got vetoed by the French. Takeaway number three, after a series of events in late 1800s Russia, the world's authoritarians oppressed and

hunted Esperantists. Takeaway number four, Esperanto is an influence on decades of fictional languages, but almost never used as a fictional language, except in one war game. And those were huge takeaways. We had a relatively quick stats and numbers at the beginning, mostly about the surprising prevalence of Esperanto in the world, and the surprising way the internet, Wikipedia and Duolingo in particular, has measured that for really the first time. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now If you support this show at MaximumFund.org

Members are the reason this podcast exists members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story Related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the three main competitors of Esperanto, including the English language. Visit sifpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than 19 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of Max Fun bonus shows. It's special audio, it's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include two wonderful books about all things Esperanto. One book is called Bridge of Words, Esperanto, and the Dream of a Universal Language.

That is by Esther Shor, who is professor of English and director of humanistic studies at Princeton University. That book also has descriptions of her visiting Białystok today and seeing monuments to L. L. Zamenhof, built by Esperantists and by locals in that town. The other book is Esperanto and Its Rivals, the Struggle for an International Language. That's by Roberto Garvia, associate professor of sociology at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. On top of that, some really wonderful digital resources this week, in particular a Smithsonian magazine piece by Joshua Holzer, associate professor

of political science at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. Another wonderful digital source is the blog of the British Library, a piece there by Renato Corsetti, professor emeritus of psycholinguistics at La Sapienza University, Rome. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, a traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skatigok people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy.

And I want to acknowledge that in my location and in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord. And hey, would you like a tip on another episode?

Because each week I'm fighting is something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 102. That's about the topic of manatees. Fun fact there, some of the Florida manatees use the discharge warm water of power plants as wintertime hot tubs. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Goldin's weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals,

science, and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the BUDOS Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to The Beacon Music Factory for taping support. Extra extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating.

So how about that? Tiam Parolu Convy. Maximum Fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.