5: Creating a Language

Hello everyone and welcome to episode 5 of Intermediate English with me, Benjamin. This is a podcast for people learning English, people who want to learn about a particular topic at the same time. If you're listening to this, you already know that English is one of the most important global languages, but today we're going to talk about a different language, one which didn't evolve naturally, but which was created. The idea of a created language is maybe a bit of an unusual one, because when we speak a language, we all collectively create it. Languages are living things, so when we speak it or write it, we leave a little bit of our own personality on it, like leaving a fingerprint. Over time these changes catch on, they spread, and the language begins to change. That's why there are so many differences in languages, even those which have similar roots, but not all languages evolve naturally. Some are created, and the most widely spoken constructed language is Esperanto. So what is Esperanto? Esperanto is a language which is spoken by around 2 million people across the world. It was invented in 1887, and it was intended originally as an international language. It's basically a mix of two different language families. The vocabulary mostly comes from Romance languages, which means that it shares properties with Latin, Italian, French, Spanish, etc. But the grammar is borrowed from Slavic languages such as Polish and Russian. Today, it's by far the most successful constructed language. It's been on the language-learning app Duolingo since 2015, and although numbers are unclear, millions of people have started courses in Esperanto on Duolingo. There are Esperanto conferences around the world. They have things like flag-passing ceremony, yes, they have their own flag. Also, the Chinese government publishes daily news in Esperanto, and the Vatican has an Esperanto version of its website. So it's used maybe a little bit more than you think. To find out more about Esperanto, I called up Richard Delamore in Sydney, Australia. He makes YouTube videos about his daily life, or subjects which interest him, all of them in Esperanto. He's pretty well known in the Esperanto community, and he's very knowledgeable about the subject. So I'd like to play you some of our conversation. This is an authentic conversation, and because it's an interview, we aren't really being careful to speak particularly slowly. So don't worry if you don't understand everything. Just pick up what you can. I was at work, and I was during a break, and for several years on and off, I had been trying to learn new languages, so I tried French, Japanese, but nothing really stuck, nothing drew my interest. One day I was on Wikipedia, and I was just reading about languages in general, and I stumbled across something that said international languages, so I was like, "Oh, okay, I assumed it was just English." So I clicked on that, and I found out that there was actually a whole field of designed languages designed to solve the international language problem, and it was through going through those links that I basically found out that the only serious attempt and the only one that has a large speaker base was Esperanto. So I thought, "I'd give it a try." And I did a couple of lessons, and I figured that, "Wow, I could actually speak a little bit this after a few hours of effort, so I just kept going down that path, basically." Great, so that's what made you want to learn it to be able to communicate with other people more easily. More just to prove to myself that I'm not stupid, and I can learn another language. Okay, great. So I picked the easiest. And do you speak any other languages as well? Well I speak conversational Mandarin now, because my wife is Chinese, so I guess I've kind of proved it to myself after all, in the end, but yeah. Great, could you tell me a little bit about what Esperanto is and how it's different from other languages? Okay, so Esperanto is a designed language. It first appeared in 1887 as a booklet, and basically it was designed to be an easy to learn language that took on aspects of the different international languages at the time, which was like French, Latin, German, English, some Russian, and a bunch of other languages of Europe, because that was basically the center of the world at the time, at least according to the Europeans, and it wanted to be just easy, because at the time, people were like, well, if you want science, you go to German. If you want diplomacy, you go to French. And if you want to speak to your local citizens, you maybe you go Russian or Polish. So everyone had to learn a bunch of languages, and what was also happening is people were sticking to their language groups, and there was a lot of fighting between the language groups. So the person who created Esperano, or I suppose like, started this whole language, his name was Zamankov, and he figured, look, if everyone had the same language, maybe there'd be a chance of us not fighting so much. So he created something that was easy to learn, and it was international, in a sense, it wouldn't take sides realistically, and it would be something that would help bring people together. So that was basically it. OK, and where was Zamankov from? OK, so he was from Poland, which at the time was part of Russia. And in the town where he was living, I think like, in his family, he spoke Russian, Yiddish, he also had to learn Hebrew because he was Jewish, and then there was also German that he had to learn Latin, French, so he had a whole heap of languages under his belt. And are there different versions of Esperanto, or is it completely the same no matter where you are in the world? The core of Esperanto, what 99% of the language is exactly the same, but there is regional like slang that's used by, like say, that group or this group or that group, or intergenerational slang that exists. But overall, it's the exact same language, no matter where you go, like if you go to China, Japan, Brazil, and you speak Esperanto with a proficient speaker, it's the same language. OK, that's really interesting. Could you tell me about how Esperanto speakers speak to each other, because you live in Sydney, right? I guess there aren't a lot of Esperanto speakers in Sydney. There's actually a fair few, I'd say there's probably like 100+ that I know about, there's more than that, realistic, OK, so most of my friends are Esperanto speakers, just because that was kind of the group I first met up with when I came to Sydney. So, pretty much my entire friend circle are Esperanto speakers here, so it's not a problem for me. I think the only person who doesn't speak Esperanto is my life, but she knows what I'm talking about, so that's enough. But yeah, it's not an issue here, in any major city, you're going to find a couple of hundred speakers, no problem. OK, so one thing that you mentioned is that there are some slightly different versions of Esperanto, and you mentioned the word slang, so an informal type of Esperanto. Could you give me some examples of how Esperanto slang has developed or, you know, why it exists? OK, so it's like anything, I'll give you an example of one word, more yossa, which is the Esperanto version of the English call, OK? So back in, this is like one of those rare slang words where they actually know the history of it. So, here what happened is back in about 2005, I think it was, there was a bunch of young Esperanto speakers who met up in Europe, and they were talking and then, you know, a couple of them threw in the English word "cool", and it was like a little bit stunted from an English word in Esperanto, so they were just like discussing them among themselves how they could express this idea of something that's cool, and it was just meant to be like a little in-group thing. So they added three words together and made like an acronym, which is like Moderna, which means modern, "yuna, young, stilor" style, so modern, new style, basically. So Moderna, "yuna, stilor" became "mojosa", and they were just going to leave it at that and just have it as an in-group thing, but it literally spread through the Esperanto community and pretty much anyone anywhere knows it, and the biggest Esperanto course is actually now teach it, so it's not really swaying in the sense anymore because you can find it in dictionaries. As Esperanto been affected by the internet a lot. Oh yeah, so I would say the Esperanto community has grown in waves and shrunken in waves over time, so like when it first appeared, it exploded, just prior to World War I, everyone was very idealistic, you know, the future is now, we're going to make a better world type of thing, and then of course World War I came along and said, "Yeah, no, that's not happening." And then the Esperanto community basically just crashed and died off, because everyone was like torn apart by the wars, then after World War I ended, it kind of came back through this resurgence thing, then World War II tore it apart again. And then it went through different surges and different parts of the world. So for instance, Esperanto, it takes on different meanings in different groups, like it was part of a lot of different communist groups, it was part of a lot of different religious groups, and then it was part of just like the hippie lifestyle as well, you know, peace and love. So, there's been different points and tire words taken off, but once the internet hit, that's when it just became accessible to everyone. And now you find pretty much anyone from any group that speaks it, you'll be surprised. And have there ever been any attempts to make Esperanto an official language of a state or an organisation? Well, okay, so there's no like state officialisation, there's like an old story of a place called a Mikael, which means like place of friendship, kind of a weird native English. But this was like just prior to, I think World War II, there was like some territory just between maybe Poland and Germany or something, it was like it was like it across roads where both countries didn't claim that little spot. And there was a lot of Esperanto speakers there who started like to set up their own little nation thing and then World War II happened and kind of wiped it out. So that was a close officialisation, there was also the League of Nations, which are for those who don't know, the League of Nations came before the United Nations. And it was actually proposed, I believe, by the Japanese Esperanto speaking diplomats, to try and get Esperanto's the official language of the League of Nations, which would have made it like a worldwide official language. Pretty much every nation signed up, except for the French, because they said French is the international language and will always be the international language. So they vetoed it and then Esperano went off the radar there, it's kind of funny now because now English is taken over and there's a lot of Esperanto speakers in France, but yeah. Okay, that's great, thank you. I was just wondering about Esperanto conferences, because I've heard that these are events where Esperanto speakers meet up from all over the world. Have you ever been to any? Yes, I've been to quite a few, I guess. The first big conference I went to was here in Australia, and I pretty much primarily met Australia and New Zealand Indonesian Esperano speakers. After that I went to Poland and in Poland I met a lot of European Esperano speakers. I've also gone to China, South Korea, also to Indonesia where they had their own conference. I've got around a fair bit, I've gone to a few conferences, yes. What do these conferences like? Well, each one is different, like some of them are like music festivals, like you literally just go there and it's Esperano musicians playing Esperano music and just young people being young people. And then other ones like the one I went to in South Korea, they were more like a formal meetup of diplomacy and international politics and learning, they're very, very different. Like you can find a conference for whatever you're interested in. Sure. Okay, and are Esperanto speakers just like normal people or do you notice that there are certain personal qualities that stand out? I would say overall that most Esperano speakers are just open-minded people who want to just try something different. You get a lot of different people, like one of the Esperano speakers I met over in Germany, she spoke Esperano because her parents spoke Esperano and her kids speak Esperano and they break, they break, grandparents spoke Esperano so it's just a family language for them, that's all it is. And then you get others that are very idealistic and then you get others where they're just, I guess, very fascinating, one topic and others that are just, I hope, on normal, so me. So lots of people think that Esperanto is only spoken as a second language but there are a very small number of people in the world who speak it as a native language, right? Yeah, so there's last estimate which was like 15 plus years ago, maybe longer. It was 2000, no one, Esperano speaking native, so basically they speak it natively along with whatever their country's language is. I've met a few of them, like there's one that lives here in Sydney and I've had a few that have, like, visited and was spoken with, so yeah, there is a few but they're not the majority. And how does that come about that it's actually started to be a native language rather than just a second language? So I guess imagine the situation, there's two Esperano speakers they meet at an international conference. One comes from, say Australia and one comes from China and the one in China doesn't speak English and the one in Australia doesn't speak Chinese. So they met through Esperano, the only language that they share and fell in love through is Esperano, so they use Esperano and naturally their child grows up and if they grow up in China they speak Chinese, English and Esperano. Great, and do you think that technology is going to help to change Esperanto in the future as well? Can you imagine any ways that Esperanto might continue to develop? Well, the good thing with technology in Esperano is that it's very easy to teach Esperano. It was designed to be taught through a pamphlet type of thing. It's grown in a lot since then, so you need, like, a book now to learn it in depth. But because it was designed to be easy to learn, you've got all these apps that are designed for teaching complex languages like English and Chinese. It's a very easy process to then simplify those and teach Esperano, so the more the internet basically takes over the world, the more it helps Esperano. Could you tell me a couple of basic phrases in Esperanto? Things like "hello, how are you?" stuff like that. Okay, so if you want to say "hello" in a formal way and "how are you?" you would say "saluton" "kei allevi fattatas" which means "hello, how are you fair and how are you?" But if you just want to be young, hip and cool, you'd say "sal kilvi", "sal" is like a shortened "saluton", so "sal kilvi". And how would you say what your name is? How would you say "hello", my name is Richard. So I'd say "sal", that's "hello", "mi", "ai", "nomi-jas", "m" named or being named, "richen", so "sal", "mi", "nomi-jas", "richen". Great. And if anyone is interested in learning Esperanto, could you tell them how they could go about doing that? What's the way you would recommend the most? Okay, so it depends on your learning style, but the websites I recommend or the apps and websites. The app doorlingo has a great course for learning Esperanto. It'll give you the recordings there are from really proficient speakers and it goes quite indefinite and available in a few languages. If you're more like a book type and you like the grammar and getting into it, then there's a great website that's called learno.net, and that's L-E-R-N-U. And either of those two, great starting, and as soon as you get into those, they actually both recommend further resources you can take. Great. And would you like to tell people how they can find your videos and find out about you on YouTube? Okay, so a little bit of warning, I'm a Esperanto vlogger, so I make random videos in Esperanto, basically just about my daily life, my gripes, last recently, there's been a lot of gripes. And I just like, randomly chat, but I also go to these conferences we spoke about and I've filmed them. So if you want to follow me and not understand what I'm saying, but just like not a lot, you can go to YouTube and search for evildeer, that's E-V-I-L-D-E-A, and you'll find my YouTube channel. Fantastic, Richard. Thank you so much for speaking to us today. Go from there. All right, take care. Bye-bye. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you'd like to see the full interview with Richard, you can go to YouTube and search intermediate English. We went into a bit more depth on a couple of topics, so I'd recommend it if you'd like to find out more about Esperanto. By the way, thank you for your emails. It's really touching to get so many positive responses, and to hear about your lives. Next time, I'll read out an email on the podcast. So if you're sending me an email now, let me know if you're happy to read it out. An email address is [email protected] If you enjoyed this podcast, remember to tell your friends about it, and review it on Apple Podcasts and Stitcher. Stay safe and and see you next week.