WEBVTT - How Come Esperanto Never Took Off?! 0:00:03.160 --> 0:00:06.519 You're listening to Part Time Genius, a production of Kaleidoscope 0:00:06.720 --> 0:00:14.240 and iHeartRadio. Guess what, Mango, what's that? Will? I just 0:00:14.320 --> 0:00:20.000 wanted to say, kium vibankas. What are you saying? You 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:23.959 don't know? I'm speaking nineteenth century constructed language Esperanto, And 0:00:24.160 --> 0:00:28.120 I asked, how much do you binch in Esperanto? Oh, man, 0:00:28.720 --> 0:00:33.800 I don't speak esperanto. Hmmm, hoto s doman gut? Was 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:37.320 that Esperanto? I mean, I'm pretty sure I butchered it. 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:40.280 But what I tried to say was, oh, that's a 0:00:40.360 --> 0:00:43.680 shame in esperanto. And all of our Esperanto speakers listening 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:46.639 are like, no, you didn't say that, But either way 0:00:46.640 --> 0:00:50.199 I tried. Well, I feel left out. Let me google this, 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:55.280 mevo las lendy Esperanton. All right, Mango, you're speaking esperanto. 0:00:56.760 --> 0:00:59.880 I guess it's pretty easy to speak esperanto. Yeah. I 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:02.200 mean that's kind of the point. And by the way, 0:01:02.240 --> 0:01:05.840 isn't it just fun to say esperanto? Yeah, esperanto and 0:01:06.000 --> 0:01:08.600 it rolls off the tongue Esperanto. Yeah. I feel like 0:01:08.640 --> 0:01:10.560 we should commit to saying and at least a thousand 0:01:10.600 --> 0:01:12.960 times in this episode, so now we have about a 0:01:13.040 --> 0:01:16.080 thousand people that have just dropped off from listening. But anyway, 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:19.399 still haven't told me how much you binge. Oh, I 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:22.000 definitely want to tell you all about my weightlifting prowess. 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:24.360 But before I do that, why do we dive in? 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:47.360 Welcome back to Part Time Genius. I'm Will and as 0:01:47.440 --> 0:01:50.360 always I'm here with my good friend Mango, And somewhere 0:01:50.360 --> 0:01:53.000 behind that big booth is our pal Dylan. Oh, there 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:55.720 he is. He's waving a big green flag and it's 0:01:55.720 --> 0:01:57.720 got this big green star in the corner, and he 0:01:57.840 --> 0:02:01.560 is just waving that thing at us. Yeah. I don't 0:02:01.600 --> 0:02:04.320 know how he's waiting that from that tiny studio booth, 0:02:04.360 --> 0:02:07.600 but look at him. Go, that's really it's impressive. Well, 0:02:07.840 --> 0:02:10.640 I'm excited about this show because I feel like Esperanto 0:02:10.760 --> 0:02:13.800 is kind of a punchline today, but the idea behind 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:16.359 it is actually really cool and it makes you wonder 0:02:16.400 --> 0:02:19.040 like what would have happened if the world had embraced it, 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:22.160 and if we'd all learned to speak Esperanto in school? 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:25.560 How might the world be different? Yeah, let's get into it. 0:02:25.760 --> 0:02:27.400 You know, at the top of the episode, I know 0:02:27.480 --> 0:02:30.520 you referred to it as a constructed language, and I'm 0:02:30.520 --> 0:02:34.120 curious about this. Aren't all languages basically constructed? You know? 0:02:34.160 --> 0:02:36.400 I was curious about that too, and I learned that 0:02:36.440 --> 0:02:40.800 the difference is that constructed languages are artificially created, meaning, 0:02:41.160 --> 0:02:44.240 instead of a language that evolves naturally over time, the 0:02:44.280 --> 0:02:47.680 words in grammar are actually planned out from the very beginning. 0:02:48.200 --> 0:02:51.280 So consider dat Rocky from Game of Thrones or Elvin 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:54.280 from Lord of the Rings. Both of these languages were 0:02:54.280 --> 0:02:57.640 invented and used in fictional worlds. Now, that said, if 0:02:57.680 --> 0:03:00.960 there's a community of fluent speakers, especially native speakers, who 0:03:01.000 --> 0:03:04.240 actually grow up speaking that language as their mother tongue, 0:03:04.440 --> 0:03:08.120 then the language can actually involve and lose that you know, 0:03:08.240 --> 0:03:11.440 constructed status. I like that, so I can get promoted 0:03:11.480 --> 0:03:14.320 from a constructed language to kind of a natural language. 0:03:15.000 --> 0:03:18.240 So that's right. So tell me about Esperanto itself, Like, 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:21.120 why was it invented in the first place. So, Esperanto 0:03:21.200 --> 0:03:26.040 falls under the category of international auxiliary languages, and it 0:03:26.120 --> 0:03:30.280 was created to facilitate international communication, which is why it's 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:34.040 relatively easy to pick up. So Esperanto was dreamed up 0:03:34.040 --> 0:03:37.000 in the late eighteen hundreds by a Polish medical doctor 0:03:37.080 --> 0:03:40.800 and his name was el El Zamenhoff. I love that name, 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:46.520 like elms. Yeah, like super steampunk or something. But it's 0:03:46.520 --> 0:03:49.320 also crazy that you said it's been around since the 0:03:49.360 --> 0:03:52.160 eighteen hundred, so, like I just assumed it was kind 0:03:52.200 --> 0:03:55.520 of a modern language and came out in the nineteen fifties. Well, 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:58.680 you're actually not totally wrong. So the UN and UNESCO 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:03.360 gave Esperanto a by officially recognizing it in the nineteen fifties, 0:04:03.720 --> 0:04:06.120 but it was actually invented well before then, back in 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:09.200 eighteen eighty seven. And just to put it in perspective 0:04:09.200 --> 0:04:13.000 for you, Esperanto is older than Helen Keller sliced bread 0:04:13.440 --> 0:04:15.640 and the invention of the zipper, three things that you 0:04:15.680 --> 0:04:18.840 talk about, nonsta, I'd say every day you mentioned these 0:04:18.839 --> 0:04:22.920 things at least once. Yeah, well it's also crazy though 0:04:22.960 --> 0:04:26.559 it's like basically created twenty years after the Civil War. 0:04:27.040 --> 0:04:30.880 Like that's nuts. So honest, tell me about the genius 0:04:30.880 --> 0:04:34.560 behind it. This guy ll Zemenhoff. Well, to start with, 0:04:34.720 --> 0:04:37.680 he spoke a ton of languages, so I think genius 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:39.960 feels right here because get a load of this. So 0:04:40.080 --> 0:04:43.520 Russian was his mother tongue, but because he lived in Poland. 0:04:43.520 --> 0:04:46.480 He spoke Polish too. He learned Yiddish from his mother. 0:04:46.839 --> 0:04:54.640 He also studied German, English, Spanish, Lithuanian, Italian, French, Hebrew, Latin. 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:57.159 I'm not making this up, and to round it all out, 0:04:57.279 --> 0:05:01.600 a little bit of Aramaic. And so before he invented Esperanto, 0:05:01.720 --> 0:05:08.520 Zemenhoff even learned another constructed language, VALLAPUKH Wait, what's what's Valapouk? 0:05:09.839 --> 0:05:11.600 I actually thought this would be one that you knew 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:13.280 for some reason, you just strike me as the type 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:16.680 that would speak vallipuuk. But actually that's really the problem 0:05:16.760 --> 0:05:20.200 here is with with Valapuk. It's very, very hard to learn. 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:23.000 It was constructed back in eighteen eighty, it was about 0:05:23.000 --> 0:05:26.480 a decade before Esperanto, but it was just too complicated, 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:29.400 so it never took off. And Zaemonhoff saw that and 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:31.640 he realized that if he was going to get Esperanto 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:34.600 to catch hold, it had to be much easier to learn. 0:05:34.960 --> 0:05:37.560 So Zemanhoff was fixated on this idea that if we 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:40.479 could speak a common language and one with you know, 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:45.520 no cultural baggage or ideas of superiority or inferiority, that 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:49.200 it would create this more tolerant world, and so what 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:52.280 was driving that fro him? Was it like partially because 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:55.360 he was a Jew? Yeah, that's exactly it. So this 0:05:55.440 --> 0:05:57.800 is the eighteen eighties. He's a Jew in Poland at 0:05:57.839 --> 0:06:00.960 the time of the Russian pogo RUMs, and you know, 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:04.520 anti Semitism is on the rise, and Zaymanhoff thought if 0:06:04.520 --> 0:06:07.719 he could make an international auxiliary language, he could bring 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:12.240 people together. So I notice you keep using the word auxiliary, 0:06:12.279 --> 0:06:15.440 and I'm curious, like, why is that. Well, like, Esperanto 0:06:15.560 --> 0:06:17.680 is just another word that I like to say over 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:20.360 and over, so it's just just kind of fun, sure, 0:06:20.440 --> 0:06:23.280 But I mean the reality is that Esperanto isn't meant 0:06:23.320 --> 0:06:26.479 to replace your mother tongue, like whatever that may be, 0:06:26.680 --> 0:06:30.159 that's fine for that to still be there. Zaymanhoff really 0:06:30.200 --> 0:06:32.680 saw it as a second language, like something people could 0:06:32.760 --> 0:06:37.479 learn quickly to facilitate easy conversation with anybody there sore 0:06:37.560 --> 0:06:40.400 speaking to around the world, and so we worked really 0:06:40.480 --> 0:06:43.080 hard to make the language as easy as possible to 0:06:43.120 --> 0:06:46.279 pick up. Well, before we get into just how fast 0:06:46.279 --> 0:06:48.240 you can pick up Esperanto, why don't we take a 0:06:48.320 --> 0:07:06.200 quick break. Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:09.840 talking all things Esperanto. So I don't know about you, 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:12.880 but when I learn languages, I'm great for like the 0:07:12.920 --> 0:07:17.560 first six months, Like vocab is easy, pronunciation is really easy, 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:21.640 but eventually the grammar just catches up to me and 0:07:21.720 --> 0:07:25.040 it stifles me and gives me like total anxiety. And 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:28.280 instead of getting pleasure from speaking a new language, I 0:07:28.320 --> 0:07:30.880 really get in my head and get very tongue tied. 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:34.720 So I'm curious, like, how did Zamon Hoff go about 0:07:34.720 --> 0:07:37.920 making Esperanto easy for new students. Well, I mean, like 0:07:37.960 --> 0:07:41.560 any language, it does have grammar rules and vocabulary, so 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:44.360 you can't get around memorizing those rules. But what he 0:07:44.440 --> 0:07:47.120 tried to do is to make those as simple as possible, 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:49.560 and not only that, but to make them very consistent. 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:52.680 And if you're already familiar with a romance language, you're 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:55.559 going to recognize a lot of it. I mean, here's 0:07:55.640 --> 0:07:58.679 an example of something that makes Esperanto easier to learn. 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:01.480 There's no ambiguity and how you pronounce it. Zam and 0:08:01.560 --> 0:08:04.000 Hoff wanted it to have a one to one letter 0:08:04.080 --> 0:08:08.120 to sound correspondence, meaning there are literally extra letters in 0:08:08.280 --> 0:08:11.640 Esperanto and within the alphabet, just so you can never 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:14.800 have to guess how something is spelled or pronounced from 0:08:14.840 --> 0:08:18.600 its context. Oh that's really cool, you know, Hindi is 0:08:18.600 --> 0:08:21.840 actually like that, it's fanatic. And I remember thinking, like, 0:08:22.080 --> 0:08:24.160 it's so much better for beginners to be able to 0:08:24.160 --> 0:08:26.560 spell that way because it's just, you know, no ambiguity. 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:30.720 But actually, remember in college, one of my professors talked 0:08:30.720 --> 0:08:33.360 about this movement to change English and make all the 0:08:33.400 --> 0:08:36.560 spellings more phonetic. And part of the reason was that 0:08:36.600 --> 0:08:40.679 if a language is spelled phonetically, it supposedly reduces, you know, 0:08:40.720 --> 0:08:44.480 the difficulties for people with learning disabilities like dyslexia and 0:08:44.559 --> 0:08:46.320 so like, if you spell things exactly the way you 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:49.839 pronounce them, spelling tests aren't a thing anymore. Yeah, I mean, 0:08:49.840 --> 0:08:52.280 and that's I mean, I find that really interesting. And 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:56.280 fixing spelling wasn't the only thing Zamanhoff was concerned with, 0:08:56.400 --> 0:08:59.120 Like he did other things to just try to simplify 0:08:59.200 --> 0:09:02.439 the language, like the nouns have no gender, which can 0:09:02.600 --> 0:09:05.160 be a real stumbling box to speaking a language you 0:09:05.160 --> 0:09:08.920 know fluently, and the verbs are all regular, there's only 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:13.120 one standard form, pertense, And he worked to really simplify 0:09:13.160 --> 0:09:16.760 the grammar as well, like Actually, before he constructed Esperanto, 0:09:16.920 --> 0:09:20.920 Zamenhoff had these dreams of reviving Latin and making that 0:09:21.200 --> 0:09:24.840 the language that everyone could communicate in. But he decided 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:27.760 the grammar was just too hard, so he decided to 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:31.360 work to make the rules as simple as possible. Anyway, 0:09:31.440 --> 0:09:34.760 Zemenhoff laid out all the Esperanto basics in his book 0:09:35.160 --> 0:09:38.679 Unua Libro aka first book, and this was in July 0:09:38.760 --> 0:09:41.360 of eighteen eighty seven, and mango, can I tell you 0:09:41.440 --> 0:09:44.400 the pseudonym that he published it under? This is pretty great. Yeah, 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:49.760 I'd love to hear it Doctro Esperanto. I love that. 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:53.439 I knew you would. It's kind of like an off 0:09:53.440 --> 0:09:57.920 friend X men character. Yeah, it actually, I think that's 0:09:57.920 --> 0:10:01.880 spot on because it translates as doctor hopeful, which is 0:10:01.960 --> 0:10:05.280 kind of bittersweet given that Zamenhoff died in nineteen seventeen 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:09.320 and Esperanto largely died off during World War One. I 0:10:09.320 --> 0:10:12.080 guess World War made the mission of kind of bringing 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:15.360 people together seem futile, and that, you know, there were 0:10:15.360 --> 0:10:18.040 some dedicated speakers that kept it alive, but then, of 0:10:18.080 --> 0:10:20.280 course there was World War Two, and you know, the 0:10:20.320 --> 0:10:22.720 rest is history there. Yeah, it couldn't have been good 0:10:22.720 --> 0:10:27.040 for pushing Esperanto forward. Yeah. In fact, Esperanto had two 0:10:27.240 --> 0:10:32.319 formidable opponents during World War Two, Joseph Stalin and Hitler. 0:10:32.679 --> 0:10:36.440 So Stalin sent Esperanto speakers to the Gulags, and Hitler 0:10:36.480 --> 0:10:39.800 wrote in mindcomf that Esperanto was a language being used 0:10:39.800 --> 0:10:43.560 by Jews as a method of world domination. Wow, which 0:10:43.640 --> 0:10:47.840 of course was not Zamenhoff's point. But what's really devastating 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:51.240 is Zamenhoff's three children, who were of course also Jewish, 0:10:51.559 --> 0:10:54.520 were actually all killed during the Holocaust. Oh that's uh, 0:10:55.000 --> 0:10:58.600 you know, it's crazy to think that, like Esperanto is 0:10:59.320 --> 0:11:02.560 almost like a Miller joke or something these days. But yeah, 0:11:02.920 --> 0:11:05.720 it wasn't that long ago that, you know. I guess 0:11:05.720 --> 0:11:08.360 just speaking it could get you killed or thrown in prison. Yeah. 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:10.880 Think about a lot of our younger listeners here. I 0:11:10.920 --> 0:11:13.520 love that you just made a Dennis Miller reference, so 0:11:13.960 --> 0:11:16.120 they can they can do their homework on hew. But 0:11:17.360 --> 0:11:21.040 he was also from right after the Civil War, I believe. Yeah. Yeah, 0:11:21.080 --> 0:11:23.559 I'm pretty pretty sure a little bit a little bit after. 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:28.240 But what's amazing is that somehow Esperanto managed to survive 0:11:28.400 --> 0:11:32.479 and was taught in concentration camps spoken by true believers, 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:36.240 and after World War Two Esperanto was almost completely gone, 0:11:36.320 --> 0:11:39.640 but it somehow managed to survive into the twentieth century. 0:11:39.840 --> 0:11:42.160 And that really was thanks to these small groups of 0:11:42.320 --> 0:11:46.280 Esperanto enthusiasts. And it's hard to know exactly how many 0:11:46.280 --> 0:11:49.800 people speak Esperanto, but according to some estimates, there are 0:11:49.840 --> 0:11:53.360 at least two million speakers in the world today, which 0:11:53.400 --> 0:11:56.400 I found shocking when I saw that number. Yeah, and 0:11:56.480 --> 0:11:59.880 even though Esperanto was made to be this auxiliary language, 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:02.440 there is a cohort of about a thousand people who 0:12:02.440 --> 0:12:06.480 speak Esperanto as their first language. Isn't that wild? Wow, 0:12:06.600 --> 0:12:09.960 that's really cool. So Esperanto kind of ended up transcending 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:13.600 that constructed language status and I guess evolved into a 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:16.480 real language. Yeah, yeah, it makes me wanted to say that. 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:19.960 You know, look, Japeto, I'm a real, live language. You know. 0:12:20.160 --> 0:12:23.480 Pinocchio was actually written in Esperanto. Wait, you're kidding, because 0:12:23.480 --> 0:12:25.840 I said, is that actually true? No, it's not true, 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:29.160 but it sounds like a lie that would tell But 0:12:29.400 --> 0:12:32.800 you know who actually is a native speaker of Esperanto? 0:12:32.840 --> 0:12:34.880 And I found this in research and was fascinated by this. 0:12:35.160 --> 0:12:39.080 George Soros. Okay, so this is your second line. That 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:41.920 is that actually true? It is true? And also George 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:49.560 Santos speaker, No good, Yeah, George Soros actually is a speaker. Apparently, 0:12:49.600 --> 0:12:53.640 his father, Tivadar Soros, was a huge proponent of Esperanto, 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:57.720 and in fact, Tivadar published his memoir in Esperanto in 0:12:57.800 --> 0:13:01.760 nineteen twenty three. It's really fascinating. It's about being held 0:13:01.880 --> 0:13:04.920 in a prisoner of war camp in Siberia and how 0:13:05.000 --> 0:13:07.920 he kind of led this escape of his companions. They 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:09.800 fled by foot and made it all the way back 0:13:09.800 --> 0:13:13.360 to Hungary. And so how does Sourus's dad learn Esperanto? 0:13:14.320 --> 0:13:18.240 So Sourus's dad is from Budapest, and by all accounts, 0:13:18.280 --> 0:13:21.560 he was a genius. He was a doctor, a lawyer, 0:13:22.040 --> 0:13:24.560 he was a writer and an editor. But early in 0:13:24.600 --> 0:13:27.400 his life, after fighting in World War One, he escaped 0:13:27.440 --> 0:13:30.520 Russia and returned to Hungary, and in this period he 0:13:30.520 --> 0:13:33.520 picked up the language. In his twenties, and then a 0:13:33.520 --> 0:13:36.360 little later he actually helped start this literary journal. It 0:13:36.440 --> 0:13:40.640 was called Literature Amando, and it published works in Esperanto. 0:13:41.320 --> 0:13:43.720 And I assume that that's how George Soros grew up 0:13:43.720 --> 0:13:46.280 speaking it or what? Yeah, so George and his brother 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:49.200 grew up speaking it. They grew up in Budapest in 0:13:49.240 --> 0:13:52.640 the nineteen thirties and forties, and in fact, when he 0:13:52.720 --> 0:13:56.720 was seventeen, George left Budapest to seek his fortune in England, 0:13:56.960 --> 0:13:59.679 and he said, quote, one of the first things I 0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:03.400 did was seek out the Esperanto society in London because 0:14:03.480 --> 0:14:06.680 it was basically this refuge for him. I do like 0:14:06.760 --> 0:14:08.960 how speaking a common language can almost make you a 0:14:09.000 --> 0:14:11.160 citizen of a country, or at least give you this 0:14:11.240 --> 0:14:14.520 shared background, which is nice. Yeah, it's funny, my family, 0:14:14.720 --> 0:14:16.760 I mean, you know this, but we speak this tiny 0:14:17.000 --> 0:14:19.520 dialect of a dialect that basically no one speaks, like 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:22.160 maybe like twenty five thousand people in that world. But 0:14:22.240 --> 0:14:25.600 when I hear someone speaking it, you feel immediately connected 0:14:25.600 --> 0:14:31.160 to them. But unlike Esperanto speakers, Conkany speakers never almost 0:14:31.160 --> 0:14:34.320 had our own country. Wait, was there actually almost an 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:38.840 Esperanto country? Yeah, so the long lost Esperanto nation was 0:14:38.880 --> 0:14:43.240 called I'm a Kajo. And in eighteen fifteen, this is 0:14:43.280 --> 0:14:46.120 after the fall of Napoleon, the borders within Europe had 0:14:46.160 --> 0:14:49.080 to be re established, right, So, like Prussia and the 0:14:49.160 --> 0:14:52.400 Kingdom and the Netherlands were fighting over this territory known 0:14:52.440 --> 0:14:56.920 as Moorsnet, where an important zinc mine was located. And 0:14:57.000 --> 0:15:00.080 so eventually mores I was divided into three parts. One 0:15:00.160 --> 0:15:02.840 went to the Netherlands, one went to Prussia, and one 0:15:02.920 --> 0:15:06.680 was declared a neutral territory around this disputed zinc mind 0:15:06.720 --> 0:15:10.400 called neutral Moresnet. And it's sort of a little like 0:15:10.520 --> 0:15:14.040 No Man's Land or something. Yeah, and it's a tiny space, 0:15:14.080 --> 0:15:16.440 like it was only like seventy acres or so, But 0:15:16.720 --> 0:15:20.160 by eighteen sixteen there were I guess, like two hundred 0:15:20.160 --> 0:15:22.240 and fifty two hundred and fifty five people living there. 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:24.640 But because of the zinc mine, the number of inhabitants 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:27.960 grew and by eighteen fifty eight there were about twenty 0:15:27.960 --> 0:15:31.160 five hundred people there. Anyway, one of the immigrants to 0:15:31.360 --> 0:15:35.400 Neutral Moresnet was this German doctor named doctor Wilhelm Molly. 0:15:35.720 --> 0:15:38.280 He was a really popular doctor because he kept his 0:15:38.360 --> 0:15:41.240 fees very low, and he actually became super popular when 0:15:41.280 --> 0:15:44.760 he helped to like end this cholera epidemic there. Yeah, 0:15:44.760 --> 0:15:46.360 I mean, that's what all the popular kids in my 0:15:46.400 --> 0:15:50.640 high school did they helped, you know, clear cholera. Yeah, sure, sure. 0:15:51.080 --> 0:15:54.800 Well doctor Molly was also really big into Esperanto, and 0:15:54.920 --> 0:15:58.320 when he met this professor named Gustav Roy, who was 0:15:58.400 --> 0:16:01.920 also an Esperantis, they decided to establish an Esperanto state 0:16:02.080 --> 0:16:04.800 in this area. In nineteen oh eight, there was this 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:08.280 big demonstration with speeches and this effort to establish this 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:11.600 Esperanto free state, and they wanted to call it Amika Joe, 0:16:11.800 --> 0:16:16.440 which means friend place in Esperanto. That's actually pretty funny. 0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:19.720 It's like Amity Island and Jaws or Amneyville from Amnityville 0:16:19.760 --> 0:16:22.880 Horror in both these movies where everything goes, you know, 0:16:23.040 --> 0:16:27.160 super smoothly in this friend Place. Yeah, I guess naming 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:29.480 your new nation friend place is sort of a kiss 0:16:29.480 --> 0:16:32.800 of death. But they really wanted to make this place happen. 0:16:32.920 --> 0:16:35.680 So the zinc miners there even had a band and 0:16:35.720 --> 0:16:39.040 they played a proposed national anthem, the Amika Joe March, 0:16:39.200 --> 0:16:41.880 which I'm sure you're familiar with definitely, and the New 0:16:41.960 --> 0:16:44.680 York Times covered it in nineteen oh eight and they 0:16:44.720 --> 0:16:48.200 heralded Amika Joe as a new European state. But of 0:16:48.280 --> 0:16:51.520 course it did not last. When the zinc Mine got depleted, 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:54.440 Prussia began to reassort his claim over the territory and 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:58.360 the inhabitants of Moors that petitioned for annexation by Belgium. 0:16:58.680 --> 0:17:01.440 In nineteen nineteen, the terror Ratory was seated to Belgium, 0:17:01.560 --> 0:17:03.600 and that kind of brought an end to the existence 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:08.920 of nutral Warsnet and also the dream of Mikicho. Let's 0:17:08.920 --> 0:17:12.200 talk about a few more constructed languages before we get 0:17:12.240 --> 0:17:30.040 to that, though, Let's take a quick break. Welcome back 0:17:30.080 --> 0:17:32.600 to part time Genius. We were talking about Esperanto, so 0:17:33.080 --> 0:17:35.080 will I think you were just about to walk us 0:17:35.119 --> 0:17:38.440 through a few more constructed languages that you found. It's 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:42.119 funny because before going into this, I knew about Esperanto, 0:17:42.240 --> 0:17:45.320 but I didn't realize how many constructed languages there are 0:17:45.359 --> 0:17:48.879 out there. It's kind of like this Pandora's box, Like, 0:17:49.040 --> 0:17:53.320 way before Esperanto, there was Lingua ignata. This was thousand 0:17:53.400 --> 0:17:56.480 years ago, and it's kind of a divine language. So 0:17:56.560 --> 0:18:00.400 you've got the Benedictine Abbess Hildegard von Bingen. It's quite 0:18:00.400 --> 0:18:04.520 the name, right, the Benedictine Abbess Hildegarde von Bingen, who 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:09.720 had these religious visions, probably brought on by intense migraines. 0:18:09.760 --> 0:18:13.600 And she constructed this glossary of a thousand words. She 0:18:13.760 --> 0:18:17.560 arranged them hierarchically, beginning with the words for God and 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:21.480 the angels, than human beings, than other animals, plants, and 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:24.560 so on. And the abbess used Latin for the grammar 0:18:24.600 --> 0:18:27.679 of her language, but also wrote in this made up 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:32.159 script literary ignante or unknown letters. You know, one thing 0:18:32.160 --> 0:18:36.120 that's funny about Esperanto or volapuk is that they're both 0:18:36.160 --> 0:18:41.399 supposedly universal languages, but they're also super Eurocentric. They're mostly 0:18:41.400 --> 0:18:44.680 based on Latin or Romance languages, so of course they're 0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:47.159 easy to learn if you're from Europe. But there are 0:18:47.240 --> 0:18:51.600 obviously other continents where people speak languages with wildly different constructions. 0:18:51.880 --> 0:18:54.080 You know, there are two thousand different Asian languages alone, 0:18:54.119 --> 0:18:56.960 which as proto completely ignores. And I found a couple 0:18:57.000 --> 0:19:00.480 of these con langs that actually addressed this. So are 0:19:00.480 --> 0:19:04.200 we the kind of people that say con langs? Now? Yeah, 0:19:04.280 --> 0:19:07.440 I've decided to, you know, break that barrier on this show. 0:19:08.080 --> 0:19:10.560 But it is a thing. Con lang is the actual 0:19:10.680 --> 0:19:15.400 term for constructed languages. Anyway, one con lang that addresses 0:19:15.520 --> 0:19:20.080 this eurocentrism problem is Lingua de Planeta, which is based 0:19:20.119 --> 0:19:25.800 on Arabic, Mandarin, English, French, German, Hindi, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, 0:19:25.960 --> 0:19:32.680 and Spanish. That feels like a lot of very different languages. Yeah, 0:19:32.720 --> 0:19:35.160 but I mean it's got Planeta in the name, so 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:37.800 you know it is true too. That's true, I get it. 0:19:38.119 --> 0:19:42.520 The language was invented in twenty ten by Dmitri Ivanoff 0:19:42.600 --> 0:19:46.600 and a group of fellow language enthusiasts in Saint Petersburg, Russia, 0:19:47.119 --> 0:19:50.320 and it was based on the most widely spoken languages 0:19:50.359 --> 0:19:53.000 in the world. The unfortunate part is that it is 0:19:53.119 --> 0:19:55.639 really really hard to learn, so you didn't pick up 0:19:55.680 --> 0:19:59.160 Samenhoff's lesson. But the good thing is that wherever you're from, 0:19:59.280 --> 0:20:01.800 at least some words will be familiar to you. But 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:04.560 because most of the words sound completely different, and because 0:20:04.560 --> 0:20:08.080 you're combining elements of Russian and Portuguese and Hindi, it's 0:20:08.640 --> 0:20:12.040 it gets a little complicated. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't 0:20:12.080 --> 0:20:15.320 exclude whole portions of the earth population, which is a 0:20:15.400 --> 0:20:18.480 nice idea, but it sounds almost impossible to learn, which 0:20:18.600 --> 0:20:22.119 doesn't seem like a great strategy for spreading a language. Yeah, 0:20:22.200 --> 0:20:24.600 I mean that kind of highlights the dilemma of this 0:20:24.720 --> 0:20:29.200 whole ideal interlanguage, right, like how do you compress thousands 0:20:29.200 --> 0:20:33.440 of global languages and cultures into one universal standard. Even 0:20:33.560 --> 0:20:36.040 uniting a continent with a single language can be a 0:20:36.080 --> 0:20:38.520 real challenge. There was another example of this that I 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:42.200 was looking at, Afriheli, for example, which was created by 0:20:42.240 --> 0:20:46.480 this Ghanian civil engineer ka Kumi Autobra. This was back 0:20:46.520 --> 0:20:51.159 in nineteen sixty seven, and Afriheli takes vocabulary from languages 0:20:51.280 --> 0:20:54.240 all over the African continent and the whole goal of 0:20:54.280 --> 0:20:58.200 this was to be adopted as the lingua franca of Africa. 0:20:58.240 --> 0:21:00.520 And of course there would be lots of benefits to that, 0:21:00.640 --> 0:21:03.800 right like not only can a unified language promote unity 0:21:03.840 --> 0:21:08.119 and understanding among different peoples, you could improve education and 0:21:08.240 --> 0:21:11.119 of course you can boost trade from this. So in 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:15.560 nineteen seventy one, the Afriheeally Center began publishing a newspaper 0:21:15.560 --> 0:21:18.879 in Afriheally called The Sun, and according to a nineteen 0:21:18.920 --> 0:21:21.920 eighty seven press release for the twenty fifth anniversary of 0:21:21.960 --> 0:21:26.119 the language, about one thousand people learned Afrihally, but the 0:21:26.200 --> 0:21:30.120 last published reference to afriheally seems to be nineteen eighty eight, 0:21:30.240 --> 0:21:34.680 so it unfortunately wasn't that successful. Yeah, I mean, while 0:21:34.680 --> 0:21:37.520 we're counting up all these failed attempts to unify real people, 0:21:37.680 --> 0:21:40.600 we should definitely talk about the fictional con lingus which 0:21:40.640 --> 0:21:46.040 tend to be more successful, including Klingon, which I know 0:21:46.680 --> 0:21:49.520 you have a story about Klingon right, Yes, I had 0:21:49.520 --> 0:21:51.679 not thought about this in a while. So you and 0:21:51.720 --> 0:21:53.840 I when we were back at Mental Floss, we were 0:21:53.840 --> 0:21:57.880 invited to give a talk to the team at Google, 0:21:58.359 --> 0:22:00.240 and so we thought, ah, this was in the time 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:03.320 there was all this talk about how smart you had 0:22:03.359 --> 0:22:05.399 to be to work at Google and how many tests 0:22:05.440 --> 0:22:07.840 you had to pass to get you know, hired there, 0:22:07.840 --> 0:22:09.800 and so we thought, you know what, we're going to 0:22:09.840 --> 0:22:12.600 come up with a challenge that these guys are not 0:22:12.760 --> 0:22:15.439 going to be able to solve. And so we were 0:22:15.480 --> 0:22:17.800 working with a puzzle creator, and the puzzle creator had 0:22:17.800 --> 0:22:21.560 this amazing idea of coming up with a crossword puzzle 0:22:21.960 --> 0:22:26.000 that was all in constructed languages, so like Klingon and 0:22:26.080 --> 0:22:28.680 Elvish and Esperanto was of course one of them, and 0:22:29.359 --> 0:22:31.640 several others. And so we thought, you know what, the 0:22:31.640 --> 0:22:35.600 one who completes this. If anybody does, will win a prize. 0:22:35.680 --> 0:22:37.800 I can't remember what we were giving away, a subscription 0:22:37.880 --> 0:22:40.560 to Mental flows or something. Well, anyway, I think there 0:22:40.560 --> 0:22:43.399 were like ten people that brought it up complete. Not 0:22:43.440 --> 0:22:46.600 only that, they were actually correcting our grammatical mistakes in 0:22:46.640 --> 0:22:51.240 these constructed languages. So it was it was pretty amazing 0:22:51.359 --> 0:22:55.240 and proved that they were, you know, pretty smart. I guess, yeah, yeah, 0:22:55.240 --> 0:22:57.480 but a little So you were talking about this, but 0:22:57.840 --> 0:23:03.240 they actually hired a linguist to create a whole Klingon language. Yeah, 0:23:03.280 --> 0:23:06.840 so Klingon was created for Star Trek by a linguist 0:23:06.920 --> 0:23:10.200 named Mark Okrnd. And you know, he didn't actually create 0:23:10.240 --> 0:23:13.600 the whole language at one time, which is kind of interesting. Basically, 0:23:13.600 --> 0:23:16.120 the story goes in the Wrath of Khan. There were 0:23:16.119 --> 0:23:18.880 two Vulcan characters speaking to each other in a corridor, 0:23:19.400 --> 0:23:22.400 and the producers shot the scene with the actors speaking English, 0:23:22.480 --> 0:23:26.280 but later they decided to change it to a Vulcan language, 0:23:26.520 --> 0:23:29.320 but there wasn't one yet, so Okrn told the Washington 0:23:29.359 --> 0:23:31.760 Post quote, they wanted a linguist to come and make 0:23:31.800 --> 0:23:34.920 up gobbledygook that matches the lip movements and I said, 0:23:35.240 --> 0:23:37.960 I can do that, and from then on Okren kind 0:23:38.000 --> 0:23:40.600