WEBVTT - How Come Esperanto Never Took Off?! 0:00:03.160 --> 0:00:06.559 You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope 0:00:06.680 --> 0:00:14.239 and iHeartRadio. Guess what, Mango, what's that? Will? I just 0:00:14.280 --> 0:00:20.000 wanted to say, kium vibenkas. What are you saying? You 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:23.919 don't know? I'm speaking nineteenth century constructed language Esperanto, And 0:00:24.160 --> 0:00:28.080 I asked, how much do you binch in Esperanto? Oh, man, 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:34.280 I don't speak esperanto. Hmmm, hoto s doman gut? Was 0:00:34.320 --> 0:00:37.000 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 --> 0:00:43.640 shame and esperanto. And all of our Esperanto speakers listening 0:00:43.680 --> 0:00:46.599 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 --> 0:00:55.240 Mevo las lendi esperanto. All right, Mango, you're speaking esperanto. 0:00:56.720 --> 0:00:59.880 I guess it's pretty easy to speak esperanto. Yeah. I 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:02.120 mean that's kind of the point. And by the way, 0:01:02.200 --> 0:01:05.840 isn't it just fun to say esperanto? Yeah, esperanto and 0:01:06.000 --> 0:01:08.560 it rolls off the tongue esperanto. Yeah. I feel like 0:01:08.600 --> 0:01:10.479 we should commit to saying and at least a thousand 0:01:10.560 --> 0:01:12.960 times in this episode. So now we have about a 0:01:13.000 --> 0:01:16.080 thousand people that have just dropped off from listening. But anyway, 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:19.320 still haven't told me how much you binge. Oh, I 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:21.880 definitely want to tell you all about my weightlifting prowess. 0:01:22.000 --> 0:01:24.240 But before I do that, why do we dive in? 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:47.320 Welcome back to Part Time Genius. I'm Will and as 0:01:47.400 --> 0:01:50.280 always I'm here with my good friend Mango, And somewhere 0:01:50.360 --> 0:01:52.960 behind that big booth is our pal Dylan. Oh, there 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:55.680 he is. He's waving a big green flag and it's 0:01:55.720 --> 0:01:57.640 got this big green star in the corner, and he 0:01:57.800 --> 0:02:01.520 is just waving that thing at us. Yeah. I don't 0:02:01.560 --> 0:02:04.240 know how he's waiting that from that tiny studio booth, 0:02:04.360 --> 0:02:07.520 but look at him. Go, that's really it's impressive. Well, 0:02:07.800 --> 0:02:10.600 I'm excited about this show because I feel like Esperanto 0:02:10.760 --> 0:02:13.760 is kind of a punchline today, but the idea behind 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:16.280 it is actually really cool and it makes you wonder 0:02:16.400 --> 0:02:18.959 like what would have happened if the world had embraced it, 0:02:19.320 --> 0:02:22.079 and if we'd all learned to speak Esperanto in school? 0:02:22.639 --> 0:02:25.400 How might the world be different? Yeah, let's get into it. 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:27.359 You know, at the top of the episode, I know 0:02:27.440 --> 0:02:30.480 you referred to it as a constructed language, and I'm 0:02:30.520 --> 0:02:34.040 curious about this. Aren't all languages basically constructed? You know? 0:02:34.120 --> 0:02:36.359 I was curious about that too, and I learned that 0:02:36.440 --> 0:02:40.760 the difference is that constructed languages are artificially created, meaning, 0:02:41.120 --> 0:02:44.160 instead of a language that evolves naturally over time, the 0:02:44.240 --> 0:02:47.639 words in grammar are actually planned out from the very beginning. 0:02:48.200 --> 0:02:51.239 So consider dat Rocky from Game of Thrones or Elvin 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:54.240 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 --> 0:03:00.920 there's a community of fluent speakers, especially native speakers, who 0:03:00.960 --> 0:03:04.079 actually grow up speaking that language as their mother tongue, 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:08.040 then the language can actually involve and lose that you know, 0:03:08.240 --> 0:03:11.400 constructed status. I like that, so I can get promoted 0:03:11.440 --> 0:03:14.239 from a constructed language to kind of a natural language. 0:03:14.960 --> 0:03:18.200 So that's right. So tell me about Esperanto itself, Like, 0:03:18.280 --> 0:03:21.079 why was it invented in the first place. So, Esperanto 0:03:21.200 --> 0:03:25.959 falls under the category of international auxiliary languages, and it 0:03:26.080 --> 0:03:30.240 was created to facilitate international communication, which is why it's 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:34.000 relatively easy to pick up. So Esperanto was dreamed up 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:36.920 in the late eighteen hundreds by a Polish medical doctor 0:03:37.080 --> 0:03:40.760 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 --> 0:03:49.280 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 0:03:52.160 --> 0:03:55.440 of a modern language and came out in the nineteen fifties. Well, 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:58.640 you're actually not totally wrong. So the UN and UNESCO 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:02.320 gave Esperanto a p by officially recognizing it in the 0:04:02.400 --> 0:04:05.720 nineteen fifties, but it was actually invented well before then, 0:04:05.800 --> 0:04:08.320 back in eighteen eighty seven. And just to put it 0:04:08.400 --> 0:04:11.680 in perspective for you, Esperanto is older than Helen Keller 0:04:12.160 --> 0:04:15.360 sliced bread and the invention of the zipper, three things 0:04:15.400 --> 0:04:18.200 that you talk about nonstin I'd say every day you 0:04:18.360 --> 0:04:22.400 mentioned these things at least once. Yeah, well it's also 0:04:22.440 --> 0:04:25.720 crazy though it's like basically created twenty years after the 0:04:25.839 --> 0:04:30.320 Civil War. Like that's nuts. So honest, tell me about 0:04:30.360 --> 0:04:33.920 the genius behind it. This guy ll Zemenhoff. Well, to 0:04:34.000 --> 0:04:36.960 start with, he spoke a ton of languages, so I 0:04:37.000 --> 0:04:39.640 think genius feels right here because get a load of this. 0:04:39.800 --> 0:04:42.880 So Russian was his mother tongue, but because he lived 0:04:42.880 --> 0:04:46.040 in Poland. He spoke Polish too. He learned Yiddish from 0:04:46.080 --> 0:04:54.599 his mother. He also studied German, English, Spanish, Lithuanian, Italian, French, Hebrew, Latin. 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:57.039 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, Vllapoukh. Wait, what's what's valapouk? 0:05:09.800 --> 0:05:11.520 I actually thought this would be one that you knew 0:05:11.640 --> 0:05:13.240 for some reason, you just strike me as the type 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:16.599 that would speak vallipuuk. But actually that's really the problem 0:05:16.720 --> 0:05:20.120 here is with with Valapuk. It's very, very hard to learn. 0:05:20.240 --> 0:05:22.960 It was constructed back in eighteen eighty, it was about 0:05:23.000 --> 0:05:26.400 a decade before Esperanto, but it was just too complicated, 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:29.320 so it never took off. And Zaemonanhoff saw that and 0:05:29.400 --> 0:05:31.599 he realized that if he was going to get Esperanto 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:34.560 to catch hold, it had to be much easier to learn. 0:05:34.960 --> 0:05:37.480 So Zemanhoff was fixated on this idea that if we 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:40.400 could speak a common language and one with you know, 0:05:40.680 --> 0:05:45.480 no cultural baggage or ideas of superiority or inferiority, that 0:05:45.560 --> 0:05:49.120 it would create this more tolerant world, and so what 0:05:49.360 --> 0:05:52.200 was driving that fro him? Was it like partially because 0:05:52.320 --> 0:05:55.280 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 --> 0:06:00.880 the time of the Russian pogor RUMs, and you know, 0:06:01.000 --> 0:06:04.520 anti Semitism is on the rise, and Zamenhoff thought if 0:06:04.520 --> 0:06:07.640 he could make an international auxiliary language, he could bring 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:12.120 people together. So I notice you keep using the word auxiliary, 0:06:12.279 --> 0:06:15.400 and I'm curious, like why is that. Well, like, Esperanto 0:06:15.560 --> 0:06:17.640 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 --> 0:06:23.240 But I mean the reality is that Esperanto isn't meant 0:06:23.320 --> 0:06:26.440 to replace your mother tongue, like whatever that may be, 0:06:26.680 --> 0:06:30.080 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 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:37.320 learn quickly to facilitate easy conversation with anybody there. So 0:06:37.320 --> 0:06:39.920 they're speaking to around the world, and so we worked 0:06:40.040 --> 0:06:42.960 really hard to make the language as easy as possible 0:06:43.000 --> 0:06:45.920 to pick up. Well, before we get into just how 0:06:45.960 --> 0:06:48.160 fast you can pick up Esperanto, why don't we take 0:06:48.160 --> 0:07:06.040 a quick break. Welcome back to part time Genius where 0:07:06.040 --> 0:07:09.720 we're talking all things Esperanto. So I don't know about you, 0:07:09.880 --> 0:07:12.840 but when I learn languages, I'm great for like the 0:07:12.920 --> 0:07:17.480 first six months, Like vocab is easy, pronunciation is really easy, 0:07:17.600 --> 0:07:21.520 but eventually the grammar just catches up to me and 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:24.920 it stifles me and gives me like total anxiety. And 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:28.200 instead of getting pleasure from speaking a new language, I 0:07:28.280 --> 0:07:30.800 really get in my head and get very tongue tied. 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:34.640 So I'm curious, like, how did Zamon Hoff go about 0:07:34.720 --> 0:07:37.840 making Esperanto easy for new students. Well, I mean, like 0:07:37.920 --> 0:07:41.480 any language, it does have grammar rules and vocabulary, so 0:07:41.560 --> 0:07:44.320 you can't get around memorizing those rules. But what he 0:07:44.400 --> 0:07:47.080 tried to do is to make those as simple as possible, 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:49.520 and not only that, but to make them very consistent. 0:07:50.080 --> 0:07:52.640 And if you're already familiar with a romance language, you're 0:07:52.720 --> 0:07:55.520 going to recognize a lot of it. I mean, here's 0:07:55.640 --> 0:07:58.600 an example of something that makes Esperanto easier to learn. 0:07:59.080 --> 0:08:01.760 There's no ambiguity how you pronounce it. Zam and Hoff 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:04.080 wanted it to have a one to one letter to 0:08:04.360 --> 0:08:08.800 sound correspondence, meaning there are literally extra letters in Esperanto 0:08:08.960 --> 0:08:11.800 and within the alphabet, just so you can never have 0:08:12.000 --> 0:08:15.520 to guess how something is spelled or pronounced from its context. 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:19.160 Oh that's really cool, you know, Hindi is actually like that, 0:08:19.440 --> 0:08:22.760 it's fanatic. And I remember thinking, like, it's so much 0:08:22.800 --> 0:08:24.640 better for beginners to be able to spell that way 0:08:24.640 --> 0:08:27.840 because it's just, you know, no ambiguity. But I actually 0:08:27.880 --> 0:08:31.040 remember in college one of my professors talked about this 0:08:31.240 --> 0:08:34.600 movement to change English and make all the spellings more phonetic. 0:08:35.200 --> 0:08:37.200 And part of the reason was that if a language 0:08:37.240 --> 0:08:41.319 is spelled phonetically, it supposedly reduces, you know, the difficulties 0:08:41.360 --> 0:08:44.920 for people with learning disabilities like dyslexia and so like, 0:08:44.960 --> 0:08:46.880 if you spell things exactly the way you pronounce them, 0:08:46.960 --> 0:08:49.880 spelling tests aren't a thing anymore. Yeah, I mean, and 0:08:50.040 --> 0:08:52.920 that's I mean, I find that really interesting. And fixing 0:08:53.000 --> 0:08:56.439 spelling wasn't the only thing Zamenhoff was concerned with, Like 0:08:56.520 --> 0:08:59.800 he did other things to just try to simplify the language, 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:02.760 like the nouns have no gender, which can be a 0:09:02.800 --> 0:09:06.000 real stumbling box to speaking a language you know fluently, 0:09:06.160 --> 0:09:10.640 and the verbs are all regular. There's only one standard form, pertense, 0:09:11.200 --> 0:09:15.160 And he worked to really simplify the grammar as well like, actually, 0:09:15.240 --> 0:09:19.120 before he constructed Esperanto, Zamenhoff had these dreams of reviving 0:09:19.240 --> 0:09:23.640 Latin and making that the language that everyone could communicate in. 0:09:24.080 --> 0:09:27.000 But he decided the grammar was just too hard, so 0:09:27.120 --> 0:09:29.480 he decided to work to make the rules as simple 0:09:29.679 --> 0:09:33.920 as possible. Anyway, Zemanhoff laid out all the Esperanto basics 0:09:34.000 --> 0:09:37.959 in his book Unua Libro aka first Book, and this 0:09:38.120 --> 0:09:41.000 was in July of eighteen eighty seven, and Mengo, can 0:09:41.040 --> 0:09:43.120 I tell you the pseudonym that he published it under? 0:09:43.200 --> 0:09:45.319 This is pretty great. Yeah, I'd love to hear it 0:09:45.920 --> 0:09:52.520 Doctro Esperanto. I love that. I knew you would. It's 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:55.720 kind of like an off friend X men character. Yeah, 0:09:55.760 --> 0:09:59.559 it actually, I think that's spot on because it translates 0:09:59.640 --> 0:10:03.000 as doctor hopeful, which is kind of bittersweet, given that 0:10:03.120 --> 0:10:07.439 Zamenhoff died in nineteen seventeen and Esperanto largely died off 0:10:07.520 --> 0:10:10.320 during World War One. I guess the World War made 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:13.959 the mission of kind of bringing people together seem futile, 0:10:14.080 --> 0:10:16.480 and that, you know, there were some dedicated speakers that 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:19.040 kept it alive. But then, of course there was World 0:10:19.080 --> 0:10:21.800 War Two, and you know, the rest is history there. Yeah, 0:10:21.840 --> 0:10:25.360 it couldn't have been good for pushing Esperanto forward. Yeah. 0:10:25.800 --> 0:10:29.679 In fact, Esperanto had two formidable opponents during World War Two, 0:10:30.280 --> 0:10:34.920 Joseph Stalin and Hitler. So Stalin sent Esperanto speakers to 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:38.520 the gulags, and Hitler wrote in mindcomf that Esperanto was 0:10:38.559 --> 0:10:41.360 a language being used by Jews as a method of 0:10:41.520 --> 0:10:45.720 world domination. Wow, which of course was not Zamenhoff's point. 0:10:46.240 --> 0:10:49.640 But what's really devastating is zaemon Hoff's three children, who 0:10:49.720 --> 0:10:52.880 were of course also Jewish, were actually all killed during 0:10:52.960 --> 0:10:56.280 the Holocaust. Oh that's uh, you know, it's crazy to 0:10:56.360 --> 0:11:00.679 think that, like Esperanto is almost like a Miller joke 0:11:00.760 --> 0:11:03.920 or something these days. But yeah, it wasn't that long 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:06.439 ago that, you know. I guess just speaking it could 0:11:06.480 --> 0:11:09.000 get you killed or thrown in prison. Yeah. Think about 0:11:09.000 --> 0:11:11.160 a lot of our younger listeners here. I love that 0:11:11.240 --> 0:11:14.240 you just made a Dennis Miller reference, so they can 0:11:14.360 --> 0:11:17.640 they can do their homework on hewe but he was 0:11:17.679 --> 0:11:21.000 also from right after the Civil War, I believe. Yeah. Yeah, 0:11:21.080 --> 0:11:23.480 I'm pretty pretty sure a little bit a little bit after. 0:11:23.679 --> 0:11:28.200 But what's amazing is that somehow Esperanto managed to survive 0:11:28.400 --> 0:11:32.400 and was taught in concentration camps spoken by true believers. 0:11:32.559 --> 0:11:36.199 And after World War Two Esperanto was almost completely gone, 0:11:36.280 --> 0:11:39.480 but it somehow managed to survive into the twentieth century. 0:11:39.800 --> 0:11:42.079 And that really was thanks to these small groups of 0:11:42.320 --> 0:11:46.199 Esperanto enthusiasts. And it's hard to know exactly how many 0:11:46.280 --> 0:11:49.760 people speak Esperanto, but according to some estimates, there are 0:11:49.800 --> 0:11:53.320 at least two million speakers in the world today, which 0:11:53.360 --> 0:11:56.319 I found shocking when I saw that number. Yeah, and 0:11:56.480 --> 0:11:59.720 even though Esperanto was made to be this auxiliary language, 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:02.360 there is a cohort of about a thousand people who 0:12:02.440 --> 0:12:06.440 speak Esperanto as their first language. Isn't that wild? Wow, 0:12:06.559 --> 0:12:09.880 that's really cool. So Esperanto kind of ended up transcending 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:13.559 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 --> 0:12:19.880 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 --> 0:12:25.839 I said, is that actually true? No, it's not true, 0:12:25.880 --> 0:12:28.199 but it sounds like a lie that Pia would tell. 0:12:29.040 --> 0:12:32.280 But you know, who actually is a native speaker of 0:12:32.400 --> 0:12:34.559 Esperanto and I found this in research and was fascinated 0:12:34.600 --> 0:12:38.439 by this. George Soros. Okay, so this is your second line? 0:12:38.840 --> 0:12:41.160 Is that? Is that actually true? It is true? And 0:12:41.240 --> 0:12:48.000 also George Santos speaker? No good, Yeah, George Soros actually 0:12:48.200 --> 0:12:51.760 is a speaker. Apparently, his father, Tivadar Soros, was a 0:12:51.960 --> 0:12:55.640 huge proponent of Esperanto, and in fact, Tivadar published his 0:12:55.800 --> 0:13:00.640 memoir in Esperanto in nineteen twenty three. It's really it's 0:13:00.640 --> 0:13:03.040 about being held in a prisoner of war camp in 0:13:03.160 --> 0:13:06.520 Siberia and how he kind of led this escape of 0:13:06.840 --> 0:13:09.320 his companions. They fled by foot and made it all 0:13:09.360 --> 0:13:12.160 the way back to Hungary. And so how does Sourus's 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:16.880 dad learn Esperanto? So Sourus's dad is from Budapest, and 0:13:17.160 --> 0:13:20.600 by all accounts he was a genius. He was a doctor, 0:13:20.920 --> 0:13:23.679 a lawyer, he was a writer and an editor. But 0:13:24.160 --> 0:13:26.640 early in his life, after fighting in World War One, 0:13:26.880 --> 0:13:29.959 he escaped Russia and returned to Hungary, and in this 0:13:30.080 --> 0:13:32.920 period he picked up the language. In his twenties, and 0:13:33.240 --> 0:13:36.160 then a little later he actually helped start this literary journal. 0:13:36.280 --> 0:13:40.600 It was called Literature Amando, and it published works in Esperanto. 0:13:41.320 --> 0:13:43.680 And I assume that that's how George Soros grew up 0:13:43.720 --> 0:13:46.240 speaking it or what. Yeah, so George and his brother 0:13:46.320 --> 0:13:49.160 grew up speaking it. They grew up in Budapest in 0:13:49.200 --> 0:13:52.559 the nineteen thirties and forties, and in fact, when he 0:13:52.720 --> 0:13:56.640 was seventeen, George left Budapest to seek his fortune in England, 0:13:56.920 --> 0:13:59.640 and he said, quote, one of the first things I 0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:03.320 did was seek out the Esperanto society in London, because 0:14:03.440 --> 0:14:06.640 it was basically this refuge for him. I do like 0:14:06.720 --> 0:14:08.880 how speaking a common language can almost make you a 0:14:09.000 --> 0:14:11.120 citizen of a country, or at least give you this 0:14:11.240 --> 0:14:14.439 shared background, which is nice. Yeah, it's funny, my family. 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:16.680 I mean you know this, but we speak this tiny 0:14:16.960 --> 0:14:19.480 dialect of a dialect that basically no one speaks, like 0:14:19.560 --> 0:14:22.040 maybe like twenty five thousand people in that world. But 0:14:22.200 --> 0:14:25.520 when I hear someone speaking it, you feel immediately connected 0:14:25.600 --> 0:14:31.080 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 0:14:34.440 --> 0:14:38.760 Esperanto country? Yeah, so the long lost Esperanto nation was 0:14:38.880 --> 0:14:43.160 called I'm a Kajo. And in eighteen fifteen, this is 0:14:43.280 --> 0:14:46.080 after the fall of Napoleon, the borders within Europe had 0:14:46.120 --> 0:14:49.040 to be re established, right, So, like Prussia and the 0:14:49.160 --> 0:14:52.360 Kingdom of the Netherlands were fighting over this territory known 0:14:52.440 --> 0:14:56.800 as Moresnet, where an important zinc mine was located. And 0:14:57.000 --> 0:14:59.640 so eventually more as I was divided into three parts. 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:02.400 One went to the Netherlands, one went to Prussia, and 0:15:02.560 --> 0:15:06.360 one was declared a neutral territory around this disputed zinc 0:15:06.440 --> 0:15:10.240 mind called Neutral Moorsnet. And it's sort of a little 0:15:10.320 --> 0:15:13.240 like No Man's Land or something. Yeah, and it's a 0:15:13.320 --> 0:15:16.080 tiny space, like it was only like seventy acres or so, 0:15:16.360 --> 0:15:19.800 but by eighteen sixteen there were I guess, like two 0:15:19.880 --> 0:15:22.080 hundred and fifty two hundred and fifty five people living there. 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:24.600 But because of the zinc mine, the number of inhabitants 0:15:24.680 --> 0:15:27.920 grew and by eighteen fifty eight there were about twenty 0:15:27.960 --> 0:15:31.120 five hundred people there. Anyway, one of the immigrants to 0:15:31.320 --> 0:15:35.360 Neutral Moresnet was this German doctor named doctor Wilhelm Molly. 0:15:35.720 --> 0:15:38.200 He was a really popular doctor because he kept his 0:15:38.320 --> 0:15:41.240 fees very low, and he actually became super popular when 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:44.720 he helped to like end this cholera epidemic there. Yeah, 0:15:44.760 --> 0:15:46.240 I mean that's so at all the popular kids in 0:15:46.280 --> 0:15:50.520 my high school. They helped, you know, clear cholera. Yeah, sure, sure. 0:15:51.080 --> 0:15:54.560 Well doctor Molly was also really big into Esperanto, and 0:15:54.920 --> 0:15:58.280 when he met this professor named Gustav Roy, who was 0:15:58.360 --> 0:16:01.880 also an Esperantis, they decided to establish an Esperanto state 0:16:02.080 --> 0:16:04.720 in this area. In nineteen oh eight, there was this 0:16:04.840 --> 0:16:08.240 big demonstration with speeches and this effort to establish this 0:16:08.480 --> 0:16:11.520 Esperanto free state, and they wanted to call it Amika Joe, 0:16:11.800 --> 0:16:16.360 which means friend place in Esperanto. That's actually pretty funny. 0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:19.680 It's like Amity Island and Jaws or Amnyville from Amnityville 0:16:19.760 --> 0:16:22.840 Horror in both these movies where everything goes, you know, 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:27.120 super smoothly in this friend place. Yeah, I guess naming 0:16:27.160 --> 0:16:29.360 your new nation friend place is sort of a kiss 0:16:29.480 --> 0:16:32.720 of death. But they really wanted to make this place happen. 0:16:32.920 --> 0:16:35.640 So the zinc miners there even had a band and 0:16:35.680 --> 0:16:38.960 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 --> 0:16:44.640 York Times covered it in nineteen oh eight and they 0:16:44.720 --> 0:16:48.120 heralded Amika Joe as a new European state. But of 0:16:48.280 --> 0:16:51.480 course it did not last. When the zinc mine got depleted, 0:16:51.760 --> 0:16:54.360 Prussia began to reassort his claim over the territory and 0:16:54.480 --> 0:16:58.160 the inhabitants of Moors that petitioned for annexation by Belgium. 0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:01.360 In nineteen nineteen, the terror Ratory was seated to Belgium, 0:17:01.520 --> 0:17:03.560 and that kind of brought an end to the existence 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:07.440 of Nu film War'snet and also the dream of Mikicho. 0:17:08.720 --> 0:17:11.960 Let's talk about a few more constructed languages before we 0:17:12.040 --> 0:17:29.879 get to that, though, Let's take a quick break. Welcome 0:17:29.920 --> 0:17:32.320 back to part time Genius. We were talking about Esperanto, 0:17:32.520 --> 0:17:34.840 So will I think you were just about to walk 0:17:34.920 --> 0:17:37.800 us through a few more constructed languages that you found. 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:42.080 It's funny because before going into this, I knew about Esperanto, 0:17:42.200 --> 0:17:45.280 but I didn't realize how many constructed languages there are 0:17:45.320 --> 0:17:48.840 out there. It's kind of like this Pandora's box, Like, 0:17:49.040 --> 0:17:53.280 way before Esperanto, there was Lingua ignata. This was thousand 0:17:53.400 --> 0:17:56.399 years ago, and it's kind of a divine language. So 0:17:56.560 --> 0:18:00.360 you've got the Benedictine Abbess Hildegarde von Bingen. It's quite 0:18:00.359 --> 0:18:04.439 the name, right, the Benedictine Abbess Hildegarde von Bingen, who 0:18:04.560 --> 0:18:09.679 had these religious visions, probably brought on by intense migraines, 0:18:09.760 --> 0:18:13.520 and she constructed this glossary of a thousand words. She 0:18:13.720 --> 0:18:17.480 arranged them hierarchically, beginning with the words for God and 0:18:17.600 --> 0:18:21.399 the angels, than human beings, than other animals, plants, and 0:18:21.520 --> 0:18:24.520 so on. And the abbess used Latin for the grammar 0:18:24.600 --> 0:18:27.639 of her language, but also wrote in this made up 0:18:27.680 --> 0:18:32.119 script literary ignante or unknown letters. You know, one thing 0:18:32.160 --> 0:18:36.080 that's funny about Esperanto or volapuk is that they're both 0:18:36.119 --> 0:18:41.359 supposedly universal languages, but they're also super Eurocentric. They're mostly 0:18:41.400 --> 0:18:44.640 based on Latin or Romance languages, so of course they're 0:18:44.680 --> 0:18:47.119 easy to learn if you're from Europe. But there are 0:18:47.240 --> 0:18:51.520 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 --> 0:18:57.000 which asproto completely ignores. And I found a couple of 0:18:57.080 --> 0:19:00.480 these con langs that actually addressed this. So are we 0:19:00.520 --> 0:19:04.120 the kind of people that say con langs? Now? Yeah, 0:19:04.240 --> 0:19:07.280 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 --> 0:19:15.359 term for constructed languages. Anyway, one con lang that addresses 0:19:15.520 --> 0:19:20.040 this eurocentrism problem is Lingua de Planeta, which is based 0:19:20.119 --> 0:19:25.760 on Arabic, Mandarin, English, French, German, Hindi, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, 0:19:25.960 --> 0:19:32.480 and Spanish. That feels like a lot of very different languages. Yeah, 0:19:32.720 --> 0:19:35.040 but I mean it's got Planeta in the name, so 0:19:35.560 --> 0:19:37.760 you know it's true to that's true, I get it. 0:19:38.119 --> 0:19:42.440 The language was invented in twenty ten by Dmitri Ivanoff 0:19:42.560 --> 0:19:46.520 and a group of fellow language enthusiasts in Saint Petersburg, Russia, 0:19:47.080 --> 0:19:50.320 and it was based on the most widely spoken languages 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:52.879 in the world. The unfortunate part is that it is 0:19:53.119 --> 0:19:55.600 really really hard to learn, so you didn't pick up 0:19:55.680 --> 0:19:59.080 Samenhoff's lesson. But the good thing is that wherever you're from, 0:19:59.240 --> 0:20:01.760 at least some words will be familiar to you. But 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:04.520 because most of the words sound completely different, and because 0:20:04.560 --> 0:20:08.040 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 0:20:12.040 --> 0:20:15.240 exclude whole portions of the earth population, which is a 0:20:15.400 --> 0:20:18.440 nice idea, but it sounds almost impossible to learn, which 0:20:18.560 --> 0:20:22.000 doesn't seem like a great strategy for spreading a language. Yeah, 0:20:22.160 --> 0:20:24.520 I mean that kind of highlights the dilemma of this 0:20:24.720 --> 0:20:28.560 whole ideal interra language, right, like how do you compress 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:32.480 thousands of global languages and cultures into one universal standard. 0:20:33.200 --> 0:20:35.879 Even uniting a continent with a single language can be 0:20:35.960 --> 0:20:38.320 a real challenge. There was another example of this that 0:20:38.359 --> 0:20:41.800 I was looking at, Afriheli, for example, which was created 0:20:41.880 --> 0:20:46.240 by this Ghanian civil engineer ka Kumi Autobra. This was 0:20:46.280 --> 0:20:50.439 back in nineteen sixty seven, and Afriheli takes vocabulary from 0:20:50.560 --> 0:20:54.080 languages all over the African continent and the whole goal 0:20:54.119 --> 0:20:56.520 of this was to be adopted as the lingua franca 0:20:56.760 --> 0:20:59.560 of Africa. And of course there would be lots of 0:20:59.600 --> 0:21:02.479 benefit to that, right like, not only can a unified 0:21:02.560 --> 0:21:06.680 language promote unity and understanding among different peoples, you could 0:21:06.680 --> 0:21:10.119 improve education and of course you can boost trade from this. 0:21:10.840 --> 0:21:14.640 So in nineteen seventy one, the Afriheeally Center began publishing 0:21:14.760 --> 0:21:18.320 a newspaper in Afriheally called The Sun, and according to 0:21:18.400 --> 0:21:20.960 a nineteen eighty seven press release for the twenty fifth 0:21:21.040 --> 0:21:25.400 anniversary of the language, about a thousand people learned Afriheally. 0:21:25.840 --> 0:21:28.600 But the last published reference to afriheally seems to be 0:21:29.000 --> 0:21:33.640 nineteen eighty eight, so it unfortunately wasn't that successful. Yeah, 0:21:33.880 --> 0:21:36.320 I mean, while we're counting up all these failed attempts 0:21:36.359 --> 0:21:38.840 to unify real people, we should definitely talk about the 0:21:39.000 --> 0:21:43.320 fictional con lingus which tend to be more successful, including Klingon, 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:49.200 which I know you have a story about Klingon right, Yes, 0:21:49.320 --> 0:21:51.119 I had not thought about this in a while. So 0:21:51.400 --> 0:21:53.480 you and I when we were back at Mental Floss, 0:21:53.560 --> 0:21:57.120 we were invited to give a talk to the team 0:21:57.240 --> 0:21:59.760 at Google, and so we thought, ah, this was in 0:21:59.840 --> 0:22:03.040 the time there was all this talk about how smart 0:22:03.080 --> 0:22:04.720 you had to be to work at Google and how 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:07.000 many tests you had to pass to get you know, 0:22:07.200 --> 0:22:09.520 hired there, and so we thought, you know what, We're 0:22:09.560 --> 0:22:12.240 going to come up with a challenge that these guys 0:22:12.280 --> 0:22:14.600 are not going to be able to solve. And so 0:22:15.160 --> 0:22:17.280 we were working with a puzzle creator, and the puzzle 0:22:17.320 --> 0:22:20.560 creator had this amazing idea of coming up with a 0:22:20.640 --> 0:22:25.000 crossword puzzle that was all in constructed languages, so like 0:22:25.160 --> 0:22:28.560 Klingon and Elvish and Esperanto was of course one of them, 0:22:28.640 --> 0:22:31.280 and several others. And so we thought, you know what, 0:22:31.480 --> 0:22:35.040 the one who completes this, if anybody does, will win 0:22:35.119 --> 0:22:37.160 a prize. I can't remember what we were giving away, 0:22:37.200 --> 0:22:40.159 a subscription to Mental flows or something. Well, anyway, I 0:22:40.200 --> 0:22:42.720 think there were like ten people that brought it up complete. 0:22:43.240 --> 0:22:46.440 Not only that, they were actually correcting our grammatical mistakes 0:22:46.520 --> 0:22:50.679 in these constructed languages. So it was it was pretty 0:22:50.720 --> 0:22:54.080 amazing and proved that they were, you know, pretty smart, 0:22:54.119 --> 0:22:56.280 I guess, yeah. Yeah, but a little star so you 0:22:56.359 --> 0:22:59.920 were talking about this, but they actually hired a linguist 0:23:00.080 --> 0:23:04.280 to create a whole Klingon language. Yeah, so Klingon was 0:23:04.600 --> 0:23:07.960 created for Star Trek by a linguist named Mark Okrind. 0:23:08.560 --> 0:23:10.840 And you know, he didn't actually create the whole language 0:23:10.880 --> 0:23:13.639 at one time, which is kind of interesting. Basically, the 0:23:13.680 --> 0:23:16.280 story goes in the Wrath of Khan. There were two 0:23:16.440 --> 0:23:19.399 Vulcan characters speaking to each other in a corridor, and 0:23:19.640 --> 0:23:22.280 the producers shot the scene with the actors speaking English, 0:23:22.440 --> 0:23:26.160 but later they decided to change it to a Vulcan language, 0:23:26.520 --> 0:23:29.280 but there wasn't one yet, so Okran told the Washington 0:23:29.320 --> 0:23:31.720 Post quote, they wanted a linguist to come and make 0:23:31.800 --> 0:23:34.840 up gobbledygook that matches the lip movements and I said, 0:23:35.200 --> 0:23:37.919