Esperanto with Andrew

Andrew is joined by James to discuss the history and practice of Esperanto, the global language.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Alz Media, 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

(00:23):
the basis for global bilingualism. Long before I learned anything
about anarchism, I spent some time trying to learn Esperanto.
It has shown up on my dual lingo one day,
and it seems like such a fascinating and simple project
to pick up. I was enamored with the philosophy behind it,
so I generally spent a few months on and off
trying to learn it. I was probably a decade ago

(00:46):
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 actually somewhat of a connection between Esperanto
and anarchism, so I stayed the time to explore the
origins of Esperanto. It's anarchist connections, it's flaws, and its future.

(01:12):
My name is Andrew Siege and I'm here once again
with it's me.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
It's James again. Very excited for this one.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Yes, you're familiar with Esperanto.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Right, yeah, very familiar I am. 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
Esperantis like. Part of the project of the Popular Front
in Catalonia was to bring people to diverstory sport, and

(01:41):
then Esperanto is going to be this thing that would,
as you mentioned, like bridge the gaps between people.

Speaker 1 (01:46):
Right. Yes, it's a really inspiring project. And so I
know you're probably gonna know all this information, but I
do have to share it with the audience.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah, I'm excited. I never like really did full rundown Esperanto.
It just paid now, So howly shit that's called so
learn a lot.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Sure. So. Esperanto was first constructed in a little booklet
in eighteen eighty seven by Polish Jewish ophthalmologist el El Samonhoff.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, the name itself comes from
the pseudonym he took on to publish the booklet. He
called himself doctorro Esperanto. Esperanto meaning one who hopes and

(02:24):
hope really analyzed the whole project. According to a BBC
article written by Jose Luis Benarredondo, 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 ways to do that, with a flag of

(02:45):
green and white, the colors of hope and peace. For
his efforts, Zamenhoff himself was nominated fourteen times for the
Nobel Peace Prize. He genuine 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

(03:10):
in a time when modernism was on the rise and
the idea of rationality and science was being used to
quote un quote optimize the world. When it was featured
in Paris's Exposition Universal in nineteen hundred, the language caught
on amongst the French intelligensia, who saw it as more
optimal than the messy and the logical realm of natural languages.

(03:33):
Because it was so easy, all words and sentences being
built from sixteen basic rules that could fit on a paper,
and the language lacked the confusing exceptions and special rules
or other languages, it was once seen as the language
of the future. Esperanto made its full fledged public debut
in nineteen oh five when seven Hoff published The Fundamental Esperanto,

(03:54):
which laid down the basic principles of languages structure and formation.
Esperanto designed to be simple, logical, and accessible, drawn from
the influence of Romance, Germanic, and Slavic languages and its construction.
The orthography is phonetic, so all the words are spelled
as pronounced, and the grammar is so straightforward. There's a

(04:15):
consistent word ending for nouns, pluralization, 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. It's European focus to
be the target of criticism later on, but it actually

(04:36):
ended up being picked up in some unusual places anyway.
Zamenhoff translated literature and wrote original verse, and after years
of effort, there were speakers to be found across Europe,
the Americas, China, and Japan.

Speaker 2 (04:51):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (04:52):
By nineteen oh eight, the Universala Esperanto a Socio was founded,
and it can now find members in eighty three countries worldwide. Today,
there's also fifty national Esperanto associations and twenty two international
professional associations that use Esperanto. There's an annual World Esperanto
Congress and more than one hundred periodicals published in Esperanto.

(05:13):
Estimates range widely in terms of how many people speak
Esperanto today. They are apparently a handful of native speakers,
folks who are raised speaking Esperanto. Oh wow, yeah, it's
really really really cool.

Speaker 2 (05:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:26):
But L two speakers are somewhere between thirty eight thousand
l to being you know, second language speakers are somewhere
between thirty eight thousand to two million. According to Wildfith's
article on Esperanto and anarchism, there are tens of thousands
of books in Esperanto and several hundred, mostly small periodicals

(05:46):
that appear regularly. Partly a day passes about international meetings,
such as those of specialized organizations, conferences, youth get togethers, seminars,
group holidays, and regional meetings. There are several radio stations
that podcast programs in Esperanto, and Esperanto has even been
used by couples of different origins as a family language.

(06:07):
It's cool, funny enough. As with every language, even an
aspiring universal language, it has since had its offshoots. I
saw on Wikipedia that nearly a year after Salmonhoff's creation
of Esperanto, in eighteen eighty eight, Dutch author J. Brachmann
proposed a few changes to language, like combining the end
in for the adjective and adverb, change in conjugations, introducing

(06:30):
more Latin roots, getting rid of the diacritics, and so on.
This language would be called Mundolinko, and it was the
first of many offshoots from Esperanto proper. Even zalmon Hooff
would try to reform the language at one point in
eighteen ninety four, but it was rejected by the Esperanto
community and eventually even himself. These reforms would later be

(06:50):
used to develop Edo, another attempt at universal language, with
far less success. I also learned view Wikipedia there was
an attempt to make Esperanto more complex by introducing Cherokee
components called policepo created by a Native American activist named
Billy ray Walden. Esperanto speakers continue to play the language

(07:11):
in all sorts of ways. To this day. Esperanto is
an evolved in language and Samanhoff himself is honored as
part of this global Esperanto culture. They celebrate his birthday
the fifteenth 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

(07:33):
an effort to establish an Esperanto speaking land called ami Kejo,
which would have been a three point five square kilometer
territory between the Netherlands, Germany and France. Yeah. Nice, three
point five square kilometers.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
Yeah, not huge, Yeah, it's like how big. Well, I know,
we've got a few of those, like little ones in Europe, you.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
Know, Yeah, a couple of micro estates. It could have
been another micro state, but the idea was very squashed
follow World War One.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yeah, I know. This SENATEAVI, the Spanish Anarchosynthicalist 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 that at the foundation of what became
probably the most powerful anarchist movement the world's ever seen.

(08:22):
They were like, also, this is a big thing.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
Yeah. Yeah, Esperanto was really huge in the anarchist movement
at a certain point. Yeah, but we're going to get
to those connections soon enough. I wanted to bring up
this other interesting story. There was actually an effort by esperantists,

(08:49):
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 block that effort.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
Was it one of the anglophone countries? No, oh, wow,
the French.

Speaker 1 (09:06):
It was the French.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
Yeah, there is not a state more invested in its
language than France. Indeed, they have laws I think about,
like broadcasting music and dubbing films and things.

Speaker 1 (09:19):
Yeah. The French government seemingly hated Esperanto. At least according
to the 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 tenth,
nineteen twenty two, the New York Tribune ran a translation

(09:40):
of a piece by the editor in chief of the
Martin Stefan Lausanne miss Lasan spent half his editorial writing
about Esperanto. And I'm not going to do a French
accent for this section. But just imagine, like the most
French Frenchman reading this, that Finns or Albanians but such
a proper gander is comprehensible. Their dialect has no chance

(10:05):
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 allured by this linguistic bolsheviser that is far more extraordinary.
It is nevertheless a fact that Esperanto, which was born

(10:26):
twenty five 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.

(10:52):
An article in the Washington Herald on that same day
explained the danger, at the 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 consent
that children will nationally take to an easy language is Esperanto,

(11:15):
and in that time French and English would perish, and
that 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.
Right to one professor, it has no very definite origin,

(11:37):
and what it aims to draw the scattered people of
the world together? Does it doth rather tend to denationalization?
End quote.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
They're not wrong, Like France is the language if you
read like a peasants into Frenchman is kind of the
classic work on like French nationalization, but like in order
to make people French, they did have to suppress like
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.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
Yeah, their imposition of DaShan identity was perhaps among the
most successful in the world. Yeah, in terms of its
iliness and its consistent enforcement.

Speaker 2 (12:20):
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

(12:40):
narrative of nation.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
And you know, they weren't the only enemies of Esperanto.
And do you know that's saying judge me by my enemies.

Speaker 2 (12:51):
Yeah, who else have we got?

Speaker 1 (12:52):
Nazi Germany, Francoist Spain and the Soviet Union also heated.

Speaker 2 (12:58):
Esperanto gets cooler with every the.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
Nazis, they were nationalists and the Zawonhoff 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.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
Yeah, pretty fucked.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, his whole family was heavily targeted by Nazi Germany.
Franco associated Esperanto with anti nationalism and anarchism, which true. Yeah,
he wasn't wrong, So it was targeted for a while. Yeah,
and the Soviets, while originally recognizing Esperantists, eventually reversed that

(13:36):
policy under Stalin during the Great Purge and executed exiled
or guvagh Esperantists. And as you can imagine, all that
repression all at once kind of killed Esperanto's momentum. Today,
despite its goal of being a truly international language, Esperanto's
global reatremain's une fun well. It has made some strides

(13:59):
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 deserves some attention,
as Esperanto manage to levermarque 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

(14:20):
must have felt about Esperanto as an internationalist or anti
nationalist movement. Anarchism was very supportive of the Esperanto project.
When running through the timeline could to see Wilfirth's Esperanto
and Anarchism. One of the earliest anarchist Esperanto groups was
founded in Stockholm in nineteen oh five. The same year,
the anarchist Pull Up with a Lot founded the monthly

(14:42):
magazine Esperanto. Similar groups suonnimmersed in Bulgaria, China and other countries.
In nineteen oh six, anarchists anarchist Synicolis founded an international association,
Paco Libreco Peace Freedom, which published the Internacia Socia Review.
By nineteen ten, Paco Libireco merged with Esperantista Lawari Staro

(15:03):
to form Liberiga Stello star Liberation, strengthening anarchist Esperanto networks.
The nineteen oh seven International Anarchist Congress in Amsterdam formally
addressed their role of Esperanto in international communication. Subsequent anarchist
congresses continue to pass resolutions advocating for Esperanto's use within
the movement. By nineteen fourteen, these anarchists esperantist organizations had

(15:25):
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 Sena Sisa Associo Tutmunda the SAT or the World
in National Association. Unlike other Esperanto associations, SAT rejected nationalism

(15:52):
wholesale and sought to create a transnational class conscious workers movement.
To quote why is there an Esperanto Workers Movement by
Gary Michel, 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,

(16:12):
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 a nationalist faction,
were an early statement of an idea that has more
recently come to be known as globalization from below. So

(16:35):
in August nineteen twenty one, seventy nine workers from fifteen
countries gathered in Prague to formally established SAT. By nineteen
twenty nine to nineteen thirty, SAT had grown to six
five hundred and twenty four members across forty two countries,
reaching its peak influence. The use of Esperanto flourished in
German workers' movements between nineteen twenty and nineteen thirty three.

(16:58):
By nineteen thirty two, the Workers Esperanto League had four
thousand 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 nineteen twenty three, publishing anarchist works by

(17:19):
Kropotkin and a. Borivoi in Esperanto. This also would not
last the Great Purge. The Berlin group of anarchistyniclist Esperantis
creeated the second Congress of the International Workers Association in
Amsterdam in nineteen twenty five and reported that Esperanto had
become so integrated into their movement that an international libertarian
Esperantist organization had formed. This likely referred to the TLEs

(17:42):
the World League of Titless Esperantists, which later merged with SAT.
Esperanto was also popping off amongst anarchists and socialists in Korea, China,
and Japan. Liushifu, a key figure in Chinese anarchism, began
publishing La Vocho de la Popolo The Voice of the
People in nineteen thirteen, the first anarchist periodical in China.

(18:05):
His work relied heavily on information from Internacia Socier Review
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, Francoist Spain,
Nazi Germany, and Stalinist Russia. The rise of tatalitarian regimes

(18:26):
lead into World War II largely suppressed the anarchist esperanto movement.
After the war, the Paras Anarchist Esperanto group was the
first to resume organized work, launching the publication Sen Santano
in nineteen forty six. Most anarchist esperantists have since been
organized within SAT, with an anarchist faction maintaining its autonomy.

(18:48):
In nineteen sixty nine, this faction began publishing the Liberal
Sana Bultano, later a day in the Liberate Sana Ligillo.
By nineteen ninety seven, SAT membership had dwindled to fewer
than fifteen one hundred members. The initial radical vision of
SAT was weakened by political shifts and the growing dominance
of English as a global lingua franca. The only separation

(19:09):
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. So what can we say about the

(19:34):
role of Esperanto today. Well, one of the more interesting
currents I found in the Esperanto community mentioned by Firth
is Raumismo, a philosophy named after the Finnish city of Rauma,
where a youth congress in nineteen eighty helped define this approach.
Braumismo views Esperanto speakers as a kind of linguistic diaspora,

(19:57):
a cultural group bound together by a shared language rather
than an national identity. Instead of focusing on making Esperanto
a universal second language, browingy storage embrace 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,

(20:17):
who can still play a role in facilities in exchange
and collaboration between people of different linguistic backgrounds. A German
anarchist once lamented the barriers international understanding, quoted in Food's article,
more or less in isolation from one another, we work
and fight without engaging in exchange about our victories and defeats,
and with thoughts supporting and encouraging one another. Intensifying contact

(20:39):
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,

(21:01):
communication tends to rely on chance. You know 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 can have fallen 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

(21:23):
means of communication. Major languages like English, Spanish or French
don't fully solve the problem, as they come with historical
baggage and imbalances influency levels. Esperanto, on the other hand,
provides a more equitable solution because everybody is from this
starts and from the same point. Since it isn't tied
to any one nation, it avoids the poodynamics that arise

(21:45):
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 playin field English like a global linguid franca right now,
but a lot of people leave school without ever developing
an effluency to navigate an English dominated world, and English

(22:09):
is not the easiest language to learn. Esperanto, regardless of
weather ever, becomes a global standard, offers an alternative path.
It can help people overcome language learning anxieties, as particularly
those who feel disempowered by additional educational systems, and it
can inspire an interest in language itself. If you've ever

(22:30):
met an Esperanto speaker, you know that they are very
passionate about linguistics. More often than not, many of the
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,

(22:51):
using Esperanto can be an eye opening experience. It puts
them the shoes of those who never got to rely
on their native language in international settings. Rather than view
an 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

(23:12):
within the Esperanto speaking The community. Opinions and its future
vary widely, but one thing is clear. The question of
how we communicate a cross linguistic divides is still very
much alive, and Esperanto offers but one possible answer. However,
as I alluded to Ilier, Esperanto is not without its critiques,
as covered by Firth, Let's start with one of the

(23:34):
most frequent critiques, Esperanto is an artificial language. Unlike the
so called natural languages, which evolved organically over time, Esperanto
is 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

(23:56):
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 influenced language development, meaning that Esperanto is not as different.
After all, it does continue to evolve. And here's where

(24:19):
I think. James Scott had a rather negative characterization of
Esperanto as a purely high modernist endeavor, as though all
esperandos sought to make Esperanto the official international language in
se Meca 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

(24:39):
language used to facilitate communication. There was more than one
motivation of Esperando's use, and boil in such an exercise
and human creativity, and attempted 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 metaphor literatures, oral histories, idioms, and

(25:02):
traditions of practical use that any social embedded language already
had end quote, which may be true when I began,
but it's certainly not true now was over a century
of use and evolution.

Speaker 2 (25:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
His analogies between Esperanto and plant cities also missed the
mark for me, as Esperanto has clearly operated as a
self organized and grassroots movement for most of its history
and has never really received the back end of states
or their enforcement.

Speaker 2 (25:31):
It's a weird angle from Scott because normally he'd advocate
for like what he calls like the anarchist squint right
like in seeing history through a perspective of anarchism, I
guess like an anarchist lens, and I feel like, exactly
this is very applicable with Esperanto, the only language which
isn't inherently tied to any state or nation or ethnicity.

Speaker 1 (25:53):
Exactly when I saw that, I remember reading seeing like
the States some years ago and I've already lost to that,
But in doing the research for this, I ended up
stumbling upon it again and I was like, h after
reading the history, it's like this wasn't quite accurate.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Yeah, yeah, that's about it. Yeah, generally like Scott.

Speaker 1 (26:12):
Me as well.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
Yeah, recently some listeners very kindly. James Scott passed away
out of this year, as I'm sure you know, I do, yes,
But his library was donated to a local second hand
bookshop and some folks that 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.

Speaker 1 (26:32):
Oh that's nice.

Speaker 2 (26:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
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 to example,
Indo European languages. The majority of Esperanto speakers today are European,
and its vocabulary is largely drawn from European languages. Whoever,

(26:56):
critics who make this argument often suggest alternatives like English
or Spanish languages that are just as if not more
e're centric in the 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. It's a
glassative word formation, a feature more common in languages like

(27:18):
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 is exclusively European
in character. Another critique is that Esperanto is sexist. The
argument goes that because feminine forms are typically created by

(27:39):
adding in to a base form like laboristo worker becoming
Labrestino female worker, the language assumes masculinity as a default,
and while this is a valid concern, Esperanto differs from
any European languages in a key way. It is not
assigned grammatical gender to inanimate objects. A chair isn't arbitrarily

(28:00):
feminine like in French or masculine like in German. However,
in practice, gender bias can still creep in the basic
form of 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.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
Yeah, that's an interesting one. Like we see this in
Spanish too, write like with attempts to create like gender
neutral forms, they presumptive masculine or if you're addressing a
mixed gender group then 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,

(28:41):
like when I hear in English language media it's referred
to as latinx. But like that's kind of a word
that I struggle to say in Spanish, like Latin eki
or like is it latiniques, And so there's this very
kind of clumsy gender neutral form which seems to be
easier to say in English. Spanish.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
Yeah, I've seen Latin used in some circles. Yeah, Latine, latine.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
Yeah, when I speak to non binary people in Spanish,
that's what they prefer to use. 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

(29:28):
Spanish first language speakers to create a organic, like gender
neutral form, which could also happen in any language. Right Like,
just because Esperanto has a certain form doesn't mean that
people within that language who don't feel represented by them
couldn't create forms within that language that better represent them exactly.
And it's easier because you don't have like a government

(29:49):
telling you you can't use it or whatever exactly exactly.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
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 Esperando
is that it never achieved its original goal of becoming
a universal second language. Zamenhoffit's creator, envisioned a world where
Esperanto would bridge linguistic divides, but for many learnar language

(30:14):
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 two hundred and forty thousand articles, putting it

(30:36):
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 their platforms for years, and
language learning services like due Lingo have helped introduce it
to a new generation of learners like myself. In fact,
the people who developed Esperanto courses for du Lingo did
so voluntarily, simply because they believed in the languages potential.

(31:00):
Esperanto has fostered a unique online community, and there's even
a free hospitality network called passporta 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

(31:21):
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 fulfillment,
social inclusion, civic engagement, or just the simple joy of
learning a new language. It's important and not to reduce

(31:44):
Esperanto learners to stereotype. Their reasons for participating are as
diverse as the language itself. So where does Esperanto stand today?
It may never replace English as the global lingua franca,
but perhaps there was never the point. Instead, it serves
us a tool for promoting bilingualism, foster and cross cultural connections,

(32:06):
and encouraging people to think differently about language itself. And
I think that is worthy of Atoinner Award. That's what
I have for today. All power to all the people. Peace.

Speaker 2 (32:22):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts, you can
now find sources for it could Happen Here.

Speaker 2 (32:36):
Listened directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.