Speaker 1: You're listening to Part Time Genius, the production of Kaleidoscope
Speaker 1: and iHeartRadio. Guess what, Mango, what's that? Will? I just
Speaker 1: wanted to say, kium vibenkas. What are you saying? You
Speaker 1: don't know? I'm speaking nineteenth century constructed language Esperanto, And
Speaker 1: I asked, how much do you binch in Esperanto? Oh, man,
Speaker 1: I don't speak esperanto. Hmmm, hoto s doman gut? Was
Speaker 1: that Esperanto? I mean, I'm pretty sure I butchered it.
Speaker 1: But what I tried to say was, oh, that's a
Speaker 1: shame and esperanto. And all of our Esperanto speakers listening
Speaker 1: are like, no, you didn't say that, but either way
Speaker 1: I tried. Well, I feel left out. Let me google this.
Speaker 1: Mevo las lendi esperanto. All right, Mango, you're speaking esperanto.
Speaker 1: I guess it's pretty easy to speak esperanto. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: mean that's kind of the point. And by the way,
Speaker 1: isn't it just fun to say esperanto? Yeah, esperanto and
Speaker 1: it rolls off the tongue esperanto. Yeah. I feel like
Speaker 1: we should commit to saying and at least a thousand
Speaker 1: times in this episode. So now we have about a
Speaker 1: thousand people that have just dropped off from listening. But anyway,
Speaker 1: still haven't told me how much you binge. Oh, I
Speaker 1: definitely want to tell you all about my weightlifting prowess.
Speaker 1: But before I do that, why do we dive in?
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Part Time Genius. I'm Will and as
Speaker 1: always I'm here with my good friend Mango, And somewhere
Speaker 1: behind that big booth is our pal Dylan. Oh, there
Speaker 1: he is. He's waving a big green flag and it's
Speaker 1: got this big green star in the corner, and he
Speaker 1: is just waving that thing at us. Yeah. I don't
Speaker 1: know how he's waiting that from that tiny studio booth,
Speaker 1: but look at him. Go, that's really it's impressive. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm excited about this show because I feel like Esperanto
Speaker 1: is kind of a punchline today, but the idea behind
Speaker 1: it is actually really cool and it makes you wonder
Speaker 1: like what would have happened if the world had embraced it,
Speaker 1: and if we'd all learned to speak Esperanto in school?
Speaker 1: How might the world be different? Yeah, let's get into it.
Speaker 1: You know, at the top of the episode, I know
Speaker 1: you referred to it as a constructed language, and I'm
Speaker 1: curious about this. Aren't all languages basically constructed? You know?
Speaker 1: I was curious about that too, and I learned that
Speaker 1: the difference is that constructed languages are artificially created, meaning,
Speaker 1: instead of a language that evolves naturally over time, the
Speaker 1: words in grammar are actually planned out from the very beginning.
Speaker 1: So consider dat Rocky from Game of Thrones or Elvin
Speaker 1: from Lord of the Rings. Both of these languages were
Speaker 1: invented and used in fictional worlds. Now, that said, if
Speaker 1: there's a community of fluent speakers, especially native speakers, who
Speaker 1: actually grow up speaking that language as their mother tongue,
Speaker 1: then the language can actually involve and lose that you know,
Speaker 1: constructed status. I like that, so I can get promoted
Speaker 1: from a constructed language to kind of a natural language.
Speaker 1: So that's right. So tell me about Esperanto itself, Like,
Speaker 1: why was it invented in the first place. So, Esperanto
Speaker 1: falls under the category of international auxiliary languages, and it
Speaker 1: was created to facilitate international communication, which is why it's
Speaker 1: relatively easy to pick up. So Esperanto was dreamed up
Speaker 1: in the late eighteen hundreds by a Polish medical doctor
Speaker 1: and his name was el el Zamenhoff. I love that name,
Speaker 1: like elms. Yeah, like super steampunk or something. But it's
Speaker 1: also crazy that you said it's been around since the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred, so, like I just assumed it was kind
Speaker 1: of a modern language and came out in the nineteen fifties. Well,
Speaker 1: you're actually not totally wrong. So the UN and UNESCO
Speaker 1: gave Esperanto a p by officially recognizing it in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, but it was actually invented well before then,
Speaker 1: back in eighteen eighty seven. And just to put it
Speaker 1: in perspective for you, Esperanto is older than Helen Keller
Speaker 1: sliced bread and the invention of the zipper, three things
Speaker 1: that you talk about nonstin I'd say every day you
Speaker 1: mentioned these things at least once. Yeah, well it's also
Speaker 1: crazy though it's like basically created twenty years after the
Speaker 1: Civil War. Like that's nuts. So honest, tell me about
Speaker 1: the genius behind it. This guy ll Zemenhoff. Well, to
Speaker 1: start with, he spoke a ton of languages, so I
Speaker 1: think genius feels right here because get a load of this.
Speaker 1: So Russian was his mother tongue, but because he lived
Speaker 1: in Poland. He spoke Polish too. He learned Yiddish from
Speaker 1: his mother. He also studied German, English, Spanish, Lithuanian, Italian, French, Hebrew, Latin.
Speaker 1: I'm not making this up, and to round it all out,
Speaker 1: a little bit of Aramaic. And so before he invented Esperanto,
Speaker 1: Zemenhoff even learned another constructed language, Vllapoukh. Wait, what's what's valapouk?
Speaker 1: I actually thought this would be one that you knew
Speaker 1: for some reason, you just strike me as the type
Speaker 1: that would speak vallipuuk. But actually that's really the problem
Speaker 1: here is with with Valapuk. It's very, very hard to learn.
Speaker 1: It was constructed back in eighteen eighty, it was about
Speaker 1: a decade before Esperanto, but it was just too complicated,
Speaker 1: so it never took off. And Zaemonanhoff saw that and
Speaker 1: he realized that if he was going to get Esperanto
Speaker 1: to catch hold, it had to be much easier to learn.
Speaker 1: So Zemanhoff was fixated on this idea that if we
Speaker 1: could speak a common language and one with you know,
Speaker 1: no cultural baggage or ideas of superiority or inferiority, that
Speaker 1: it would create this more tolerant world, and so what
Speaker 1: was driving that fro him? Was it like partially because
Speaker 1: he was a Jew? Yeah, that's exactly it. So this
Speaker 1: is the eighteen eighties. He's a Jew in Poland at
Speaker 1: the time of the Russian pogor RUMs, and you know,
Speaker 1: anti Semitism is on the rise, and Zamenhoff thought if
Speaker 1: he could make an international auxiliary language, he could bring
Speaker 1: people together. So I notice you keep using the word auxiliary,
Speaker 1: and I'm curious, like why is that. Well, like, Esperanto
Speaker 1: is just another word that I like to say over
Speaker 1: and over, so it's just just kind of fun. Sure,
Speaker 1: But I mean the reality is that Esperanto isn't meant
Speaker 1: to replace your mother tongue, like whatever that may be,
Speaker 1: that's fine for that to still be there. Zaymanhoff really
Speaker 1: saw it as a second language, like something people could
Speaker 1: learn quickly to facilitate easy conversation with anybody there. So
Speaker 1: they're speaking to around the world, and so we worked
Speaker 1: really hard to make the language as easy as possible
Speaker 1: to pick up. Well, before we get into just how
Speaker 1: fast you can pick up Esperanto, why don't we take
Speaker 1: a quick break. Welcome back to part time Genius where
Speaker 1: we're talking all things Esperanto. So I don't know about you,
Speaker 1: but when I learn languages, I'm great for like the
Speaker 1: first six months, Like vocab is easy, pronunciation is really easy,
Speaker 1: but eventually the grammar just catches up to me and
Speaker 1: it stifles me and gives me like total anxiety. And
Speaker 1: instead of getting pleasure from speaking a new language, I
Speaker 1: really get in my head and get very tongue tied.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious, like, how did Zamon Hoff go about
Speaker 1: making Esperanto easy for new students. Well, I mean, like
Speaker 1: any language, it does have grammar rules and vocabulary, so
Speaker 1: you can't get around memorizing those rules. But what he
Speaker 1: tried to do is to make those as simple as possible,
Speaker 1: and not only that, but to make them very consistent.
Speaker 1: And if you're already familiar with a romance language, you're
Speaker 1: going to recognize a lot of it. I mean, here's
Speaker 1: an example of something that makes Esperanto easier to learn.
Speaker 1: There's no ambiguity how you pronounce it. Zam and Hoff
Speaker 1: wanted it to have a one to one letter to
Speaker 1: sound correspondence, meaning there are literally extra letters in Esperanto
Speaker 1: and within the alphabet, just so you can never have
Speaker 1: to guess how something is spelled or pronounced from its context.
Speaker 1: Oh that's really cool, you know, Hindi is actually like that,
Speaker 1: it's fanatic. And I remember thinking, like, it's so much
Speaker 1: better for beginners to be able to spell that way
Speaker 1: because it's just, you know, no ambiguity. But I actually
Speaker 1: remember in college one of my professors talked about this
Speaker 1: movement to change English and make all the spellings more phonetic.
Speaker 1: And part of the reason was that if a language
Speaker 1: is spelled phonetically, it supposedly reduces, you know, the difficulties
Speaker 1: for people with learning disabilities like dyslexia and so like,
Speaker 1: if you spell things exactly the way you pronounce them,
Speaker 1: spelling tests aren't a thing anymore. Yeah, I mean, and
Speaker 1: that's I mean, I find that really interesting. And fixing
Speaker 1: spelling wasn't the only thing Zamenhoff was concerned with, Like
Speaker 1: he did other things to just try to simplify the language,
Speaker 1: like the nouns have no gender, which can be a
Speaker 1: real stumbling box to speaking a language you know fluently,
Speaker 1: and the verbs are all regular. There's only one standard form, pertense,
Speaker 1: And he worked to really simplify the grammar as well like, actually,
Speaker 1: before he constructed Esperanto, Zamenhoff had these dreams of reviving
Speaker 1: Latin and making that the language that everyone could communicate in.
Speaker 1: But he decided the grammar was just too hard, so
Speaker 1: he decided to work to make the rules as simple
Speaker 1: as possible. Anyway, Zemanhoff laid out all the Esperanto basics
Speaker 1: in his book Unua Libro aka first Book, and this
Speaker 1: was in July of eighteen eighty seven, and Mengo, can
Speaker 1: I tell you the pseudonym that he published it under?
Speaker 1: This is pretty great. Yeah, I'd love to hear it
Speaker 1: Doctro Esperanto. I love that. I knew you would. It's
Speaker 1: kind of like an off friend X men character. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it actually, I think that's spot on because it translates
Speaker 1: as doctor hopeful, which is kind of bittersweet, given that
Speaker 1: Zamenhoff died in nineteen seventeen and Esperanto largely died off
Speaker 1: during World War One. I guess the World War made
Speaker 1: the mission of kind of bringing people together seem futile,
Speaker 1: and that, you know, there were some dedicated speakers that
Speaker 1: kept it alive. But then, of course there was World
Speaker 1: War Two, and you know, the rest is history there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it couldn't have been good for pushing Esperanto forward. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In fact, Esperanto had two formidable opponents during World War Two,
Speaker 1: Joseph Stalin and Hitler. So Stalin sent Esperanto speakers to
Speaker 1: the gulags, and Hitler wrote in mindcomf that Esperanto was
Speaker 1: a language being used by Jews as a method of
Speaker 1: world domination. Wow, which of course was not Zamenhoff's point.
Speaker 1: But what's really devastating is zaemon Hoff's three children, who
Speaker 1: were of course also Jewish, were actually all killed during
Speaker 1: the Holocaust. Oh that's uh, you know, it's crazy to
Speaker 1: think that, like Esperanto is almost like a Miller joke
Speaker 1: or something these days. But yeah, it wasn't that long
Speaker 1: ago that, you know. I guess just speaking it could
Speaker 1: get you killed or thrown in prison. Yeah. Think about
Speaker 1: a lot of our younger listeners here. I love that
Speaker 1: you just made a Dennis Miller reference, so they can
Speaker 1: they can do their homework on hewe but he was
Speaker 1: also from right after the Civil War, I believe. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty pretty sure a little bit a little bit after.
Speaker 1: But what's amazing is that somehow Esperanto managed to survive
Speaker 1: and was taught in concentration camps spoken by true believers.
Speaker 1: And after World War Two Esperanto was almost completely gone,
Speaker 1: but it somehow managed to survive into the twentieth century.
Speaker 1: And that really was thanks to these small groups of
Speaker 1: Esperanto enthusiasts. And it's hard to know exactly how many
Speaker 1: people speak Esperanto, but according to some estimates, there are
Speaker 1: at least two million speakers in the world today, which
Speaker 1: I found shocking when I saw that number. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: even though Esperanto was made to be this auxiliary language,
Speaker 1: there is a cohort of about a thousand people who
Speaker 1: speak Esperanto as their first language. Isn't that wild? Wow,
Speaker 1: that's really cool. So Esperanto kind of ended up transcending
Speaker 1: that constructed language status and I guess evolved into a
Speaker 1: real language. Yeah, yeah, it makes me wanted to say that.
Speaker 1: You know, look, Japeto, I'm a real, live language. You know,
Speaker 1: Pinocchio was actually written in Esperanto. Wait, you're kidding, because
Speaker 1: I said, is that actually true? No, it's not true,
Speaker 1: but it sounds like a lie that Pia would tell.
Speaker 1: But you know, who actually is a native speaker of
Speaker 1: Esperanto and I found this in research and was fascinated
Speaker 1: by this. George Soros. Okay, so this is your second line?
Speaker 1: Is that? Is that actually true? It is true? And
Speaker 1: also George Santos speaker? No good, Yeah, George Soros actually
Speaker 1: is a speaker. Apparently, his father, Tivadar Soros, was a
Speaker 1: huge proponent of Esperanto, and in fact, Tivadar published his
Speaker 1: memoir in Esperanto in nineteen twenty three. It's really it's
Speaker 1: about being held in a prisoner of war camp in
Speaker 1: Siberia and how he kind of led this escape of
Speaker 1: his companions. They fled by foot and made it all
Speaker 1: the way back to Hungary. And so how does Sourus's
Speaker 1: dad learn Esperanto? So Sourus's dad is from Budapest, and
Speaker 1: by all accounts he was a genius. He was a doctor,
Speaker 1: a lawyer, he was a writer and an editor. But
Speaker 1: early in his life, after fighting in World War One,
Speaker 1: he escaped Russia and returned to Hungary, and in this
Speaker 1: period he picked up the language. In his twenties, and
Speaker 1: then a little later he actually helped start this literary journal.
Speaker 1: It was called Literature Amando, and it published works in Esperanto.
Speaker 1: And I assume that that's how George Soros grew up
Speaker 1: speaking it or what. Yeah, so George and his brother
Speaker 1: grew up speaking it. They grew up in Budapest in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties and forties, and in fact, when he
Speaker 1: was seventeen, George left Budapest to seek his fortune in England,
Speaker 1: and he said, quote, one of the first things I
Speaker 1: did was seek out the Esperanto society in London, because
Speaker 1: it was basically this refuge for him. I do like
Speaker 1: how speaking a common language can almost make you a
Speaker 1: citizen of a country, or at least give you this
Speaker 1: shared background, which is nice. Yeah, it's funny, my family.
Speaker 1: I mean you know this, but we speak this tiny
Speaker 1: dialect of a dialect that basically no one speaks, like
Speaker 1: maybe like twenty five thousand people in that world. But
Speaker 1: when I hear someone speaking it, you feel immediately connected
Speaker 1: to them. But unlike Esperanto speakers, Conkany speakers never almost
Speaker 1: had our own country. Wait, was there actually almost an
Speaker 1: Esperanto country? Yeah, so the long lost Esperanto nation was
Speaker 1: called I'm a Kajo. And in eighteen fifteen, this is
Speaker 1: after the fall of Napoleon, the borders within Europe had
Speaker 1: to be re established, right, So, like Prussia and the
Speaker 1: Kingdom of the Netherlands were fighting over this territory known
Speaker 1: as Moresnet, where an important zinc mine was located. And
Speaker 1: so eventually more as I was divided into three parts.
Speaker 1: One went to the Netherlands, one went to Prussia, and
Speaker 1: one was declared a neutral territory around this disputed zinc
Speaker 1: mind called Neutral Moorsnet. And it's sort of a little
Speaker 1: like No Man's Land or something. Yeah, and it's a
Speaker 1: tiny space, like it was only like seventy acres or so,
Speaker 1: but by eighteen sixteen there were I guess, like two
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty two hundred and fifty five people living there.
Speaker 1: But because of the zinc mine, the number of inhabitants
Speaker 1: grew and by eighteen fifty eight there were about twenty
Speaker 1: five hundred people there. Anyway, one of the immigrants to
Speaker 1: Neutral Moresnet was this German doctor named doctor Wilhelm Molly.
Speaker 1: He was a really popular doctor because he kept his
Speaker 1: fees very low, and he actually became super popular when
Speaker 1: he helped to like end this cholera epidemic there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's so at all the popular kids in
Speaker 1: my high school. They helped, you know, clear cholera. Yeah, sure, sure.
Speaker 1: Well doctor Molly was also really big into Esperanto, and
Speaker 1: when he met this professor named Gustav Roy, who was
Speaker 1: also an Esperantis, they decided to establish an Esperanto state
Speaker 1: in this area. In nineteen oh eight, there was this
Speaker 1: big demonstration with speeches and this effort to establish this
Speaker 1: Esperanto free state, and they wanted to call it Amika Joe,
Speaker 1: which means friend place in Esperanto. That's actually pretty funny.
Speaker 1: It's like Amity Island and Jaws or Amnyville from Amnityville
Speaker 1: Horror in both these movies where everything goes, you know,
Speaker 1: super smoothly in this friend place. Yeah, I guess naming
Speaker 1: your new nation friend place is sort of a kiss
Speaker 1: of death. But they really wanted to make this place happen.
Speaker 1: So the zinc miners there even had a band and
Speaker 1: they played a proposed national anthem, the Amika Joe March,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure you're familiar with, definitely, and the New
Speaker 1: York Times covered it in nineteen oh eight and they
Speaker 1: heralded Amika Joe as a new European state. But of
Speaker 1: course it did not last. When the zinc mine got depleted,
Speaker 1: Prussia began to reassort his claim over the territory and
Speaker 1: the inhabitants of Moors that petitioned for annexation by Belgium.
Speaker 1: In nineteen nineteen, the terror Ratory was seated to Belgium,
Speaker 1: and that kind of brought an end to the existence
Speaker 1: of Nu film War'snet and also the dream of Mikicho.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about a few more constructed languages before we
Speaker 1: get to that, though, Let's take a quick break. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to part time Genius. We were talking about Esperanto,
Speaker 1: So will I think you were just about to walk
Speaker 1: us through a few more constructed languages that you found.
Speaker 1: It's funny because before going into this, I knew about Esperanto,
Speaker 1: but I didn't realize how many constructed languages there are
Speaker 1: out there. It's kind of like this Pandora's box, Like,
Speaker 1: way before Esperanto, there was Lingua ignata. This was thousand
Speaker 1: years ago, and it's kind of a divine language. So
Speaker 1: you've got the Benedictine Abbess Hildegarde von Bingen. It's quite
Speaker 1: the name, right, the Benedictine Abbess Hildegarde von Bingen, who
Speaker 1: had these religious visions, probably brought on by intense migraines,
Speaker 1: and she constructed this glossary of a thousand words. She
Speaker 1: arranged them hierarchically, beginning with the words for God and
Speaker 1: the angels, than human beings, than other animals, plants, and
Speaker 1: so on. And the abbess used Latin for the grammar
Speaker 1: of her language, but also wrote in this made up
Speaker 1: script literary ignante or unknown letters. You know, one thing
Speaker 1: that's funny about Esperanto or volapuk is that they're both
Speaker 1: supposedly universal languages, but they're also super Eurocentric. They're mostly
Speaker 1: based on Latin or Romance languages, so of course they're
Speaker 1: easy to learn if you're from Europe. But there are
Speaker 1: obviously other continents where people speak languages with wildly different constructions.
Speaker 1: You know, there are two thousand different Asian languages alone,
Speaker 1: which asproto completely ignores. And I found a couple of
Speaker 1: these con langs that actually addressed this. So are we
Speaker 1: the kind of people that say con langs? Now? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've decided to, you know, break that barrier on this show.
Speaker 1: But it is a thing. Con Lang is the actual
Speaker 1: term for constructed languages. Anyway, one con lang that addresses
Speaker 1: this eurocentrism problem is Lingua de Planeta, which is based
Speaker 1: on Arabic, Mandarin, English, French, German, Hindi, Persian, Portuguese, Russian,
Speaker 1: and Spanish. That feels like a lot of very different languages. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I mean it's got Planeta in the name, so
Speaker 1: you know it's true to that's true, I get it.
Speaker 1: The language was invented in twenty ten by Dmitri Ivanoff
Speaker 1: and a group of fellow language enthusiasts in Saint Petersburg, Russia,
Speaker 1: and it was based on the most widely spoken languages
Speaker 1: in the world. The unfortunate part is that it is
Speaker 1: really really hard to learn, so you didn't pick up
Speaker 1: Samenhoff's lesson. But the good thing is that wherever you're from,
Speaker 1: at least some words will be familiar to you. But
Speaker 1: because most of the words sound completely different, and because
Speaker 1: you're combining elements of Russian and Portuguese and Hindi, it's
Speaker 1: it gets a little complicated. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't
Speaker 1: exclude whole portions of the earth population, which is a
Speaker 1: nice idea, but it sounds almost impossible to learn, which
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like a great strategy for spreading a language. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that kind of highlights the dilemma of this
Speaker 1: whole ideal interra language, right, like how do you compress
Speaker 1: thousands of global languages and cultures into one universal standard.
Speaker 1: Even uniting a continent with a single language can be
Speaker 1: a real challenge. There was another example of this that
Speaker 1: I was looking at, Afriheli, for example, which was created
Speaker 1: by this Ghanian civil engineer ka Kumi Autobra. This was
Speaker 1: back in nineteen sixty seven, and Afriheli takes vocabulary from
Speaker 1: languages all over the African continent and the whole goal
Speaker 1: of this was to be adopted as the lingua franca
Speaker 1: of Africa. And of course there would be lots of
Speaker 1: benefit to that, right like, not only can a unified
Speaker 1: language promote unity and understanding among different peoples, you could
Speaker 1: improve education and of course you can boost trade from this.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen seventy one, the Afriheeally Center began publishing
Speaker 1: a newspaper in Afriheally called The Sun, and according to
Speaker 1: a nineteen eighty seven press release for the twenty fifth
Speaker 1: anniversary of the language, about a thousand people learned Afriheally.
Speaker 1: But the last published reference to afriheally seems to be
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight, so it unfortunately wasn't that successful. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, while we're counting up all these failed attempts
Speaker 1: to unify real people, we should definitely talk about the
Speaker 1: fictional con lingus which tend to be more successful, including Klingon,
Speaker 1: which I know you have a story about Klingon right, Yes,
Speaker 1: I had not thought about this in a while. So
Speaker 1: you and I when we were back at Mental Floss,
Speaker 1: we were invited to give a talk to the team
Speaker 1: at Google, and so we thought, ah, this was in
Speaker 1: the time there was all this talk about how smart
Speaker 1: you had to be to work at Google and how
Speaker 1: many tests you had to pass to get you know,
Speaker 1: hired there, and so we thought, you know what, We're
Speaker 1: going to come up with a challenge that these guys
Speaker 1: are not going to be able to solve. And so
Speaker 1: we were working with a puzzle creator, and the puzzle
Speaker 1: creator had this amazing idea of coming up with a
Speaker 1: crossword puzzle that was all in constructed languages, so like
Speaker 1: Klingon and Elvish and Esperanto was of course one of them,
Speaker 1: and several others. And so we thought, you know what,
Speaker 1: the one who completes this, if anybody does, will win
Speaker 1: a prize. I can't remember what we were giving away,
Speaker 1: a subscription to Mental flows or something. Well, anyway, I
Speaker 1: think there were like ten people that brought it up complete.
Speaker 1: Not only that, they were actually correcting our grammatical mistakes
Speaker 1: in these constructed languages. So it was it was pretty
Speaker 1: amazing and proved that they were, you know, pretty smart,
Speaker 1: I guess, yeah. Yeah, but a little star so you
Speaker 1: were talking about this, but they actually hired a linguist
Speaker 1: to create a whole Klingon language. Yeah, so Klingon was
Speaker 1: created for Star Trek by a linguist named Mark Okrind.
Speaker 1: And you know, he didn't actually create the whole language
Speaker 1: at one time, which is kind of interesting. Basically, the
Speaker 1: story goes in the Wrath of Khan. There were two
Speaker 1: Vulcan characters speaking to each other in a corridor, and
Speaker 1: the producers shot the scene with the actors speaking English,
Speaker 1: but later they decided to change it to a Vulcan language,
Speaker 1: but there wasn't one yet, so Okran told the Washington
Speaker 1: Post quote, they wanted a linguist to come and make
Speaker 1: up gobbledygook that matches the lip movements and I said,
Speaker 1: I can do that, and from then on Oakren kind
Speaker 1: of designed the language as needed based on the needs
Speaker 1: of the scenes. The language was built kind of one
Speaker 1: line at a time to suit the story of the show,
Speaker 1: and you'd actually coach the actress to say the lines
Speaker 1: to get through the process and then moved on. But
Speaker 1: actually there are people who can speak Klingon right, yeah,
Speaker 1: today they are are more than two hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand copies of Okrin's Klingon dictionary that so old, and
Speaker 1: Duo Lingo even has a Klingon language course, which is amazing.
Speaker 1: No way. The funny thing is that some Klingon speakers
Speaker 1: aren't even Treky's like, they just love languages and wanted
Speaker 1: to expand this one. So there's a group of speakers
Speaker 1: that formed the Klingon Language Institute in nineteen ninety two
Speaker 1: and it's a full nonprofit organization dedicated legitimately teaching Klingon.
Speaker 1: They have translators, they have other online resources. And the
Speaker 1: strange thing is like, unlike Esperanto, Klingon is not easy.
Speaker 1: But when a language is part of like this world
Speaker 1: building of a story, people will apparently really want to
Speaker 1: participate and there's a fandom that wants to develop that culture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it makes me think about like Lord of the Rings,
Speaker 1: where the readers who are really into these elven languages.
Speaker 1: In fact, JR. Tolkien kind of did the language thing
Speaker 1: the opposite way. Tolkien writes, quote, the invention of languages
Speaker 1: is the foundation of my fictional writings. The stories were
Speaker 1: made to provide a world for the languages, rather than
Speaker 1: the reverse. And apparently Tolkien started creating languages when he
Speaker 1: was thirteen years old, and he believed that a language
Speaker 1: could not be complete without the history of the people
Speaker 1: who've spoken. I mean, this is just so interesting to
Speaker 1: read about. And the whole thing was basically a hobby
Speaker 1: for him, like something he did for personal enjoyment as
Speaker 1: a scholar and a linguist. And in fact, it wasn't
Speaker 1: just the languages he made up. He also liked to
Speaker 1: write poems and songs and dead languages like medieval Welch.
Speaker 1: This was just a way of keeping his mind sharp
Speaker 1: and obviously it worked. I love what a weirdo Tolkien is.
Speaker 1: I remember my friend Brian Gottisman wrote this article for
Speaker 1: as a mental floss about Tolkien, and there was a
Speaker 1: bit about how sometimes as a joke, Tolkien would chase
Speaker 1: his neighbors around dressed like an axe wielding Anglo Saxon warrior.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. And also sometimes at like a cash register
Speaker 1: at a store, he would hand a shop keep false
Speaker 1: teeth instead of a payment, like such a weird. Anyway,
Speaker 1: before we do an entire episode on Tolkito right now,
Speaker 1: why don't we switch leans into a fact off? All right, well,
Speaker 1: how about I kick this off? So for nearly forty years,
Speaker 1: Esperanto was the language of instruction at the International Academy
Speaker 1: of Sciences in San Marino. The idea of using Esperanto
Speaker 1: was basically to eliminate linguistic biases and keep the focus
Speaker 1: on the science instead. It's a perfect example of why
Speaker 1: esperanto is invented. That's really cool. Do you know that
Speaker 1: studying Esperanto can help you pick up other romance languages faster?
Speaker 1: So there are two studies from the nineteen fifties, one
Speaker 1: that observed the kids at Denton Grammar School and another
Speaker 1: from Sheffield University, and these took place around the same time,
Speaker 1: and they found that the average student who learned one
Speaker 1: year of Esperanto followed by three years of French. Spoke
Speaker 1: French much better and more fluently at the end of
Speaker 1: that course versus those who just took four years of French.
Speaker 1: I guess it kind of makes sense, like we were saying,
Speaker 1: how it's so easy to learn? But all right, Well,
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty one, the League of Nations, the precursor
Speaker 1: to the un almost accepted Esperanto as their working language.
Speaker 1: This is from the Library of Congress. It almost went through,
Speaker 1: but then the delegate from France vetoed it because he
Speaker 1: saw it as a threat to the French language and
Speaker 1: the position it held in the world. Doesn't it Just
Speaker 1: this feels like that's the right way this must have ended,
Speaker 1: And because all resolutions had to be unanimous, the proposal
Speaker 1: was ultimately scrapped. That's so sad. It feels like Esperanto
Speaker 1: almost had a shot. And then yeah, then the French.
Speaker 1: Here's a quick non Esperanto one. Have you ever heard
Speaker 1: of the fictional con land called Teo Knot I don't
Speaker 1: think I have. Yeah. So it was created by a
Speaker 1: sci fi author, Sarah Higley, also known as Sally Caves,
Speaker 1: and the language is one spoken by a race of
Speaker 1: winged cats who eventually become human but continue to worship
Speaker 1: cats as gods. Oh you know how I feel about cats.
Speaker 1: It's so cat to be cats also worship cats the
Speaker 1: whole thing. But anyway, all right, so this is really cool.
Speaker 1: Did you know that Enia sing some of her songs
Speaker 1: in a fictional language called Loxian. I guess she was
Speaker 1: recording a song in all of these languages, English, Gaelic, Latin,
Speaker 1: and none of them were quite doing it. For so
Speaker 1: her creative partner, Roma Ryan wrote the lyrics into Loxian,
Speaker 1: and Enya loved it. Well, you know what I always say,
Speaker 1: if anyone can bring the global community together, it is Enya.
Speaker 1: You do say that that's true. So here's a final
Speaker 1: one for me. I didn't realize that there had been
Speaker 1: any movies made in Esperanto, but there is at least
Speaker 1: one film, a black and white movie called Incubus starring
Speaker 1: none other than William Shatner. Nically, the film was lost
Speaker 1: for decades, but it was restored and then released in
Speaker 1: two thousand and one. And despite the fact that Esperanto
Speaker 1: is supposedly easy to speak and pronounce, according to many Esperantos,
Speaker 1: his pronunciation in the film is off, which is not
Speaker 1: unlike our pronunciation in this show. Yeah, I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: I'm guessing he did it better than us, But I
Speaker 1: don't know the fact that we talked about cling on
Speaker 1: in this episode and you somehow brought it all back
Speaker 1: to Shatner, I gotta say it makes me want to
Speaker 1: give you this week's trophy. So congrats, Mango, Thank you
Speaker 1: Will or, as the renowned thespian William Shatner often says,
Speaker 1: an esperanto, thank you Will Nice. That's it for today's
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius. If you like the show, please be
Speaker 1: sure to reach out to either of our moms who
Speaker 1: would love to hear about it, or let us know
Speaker 1: in the reviews. You know we love hearing from you.
Speaker 1: Part Time Genius is a production of Kalidus Go and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: This show is hosted by Will Pearson and Me mongas
Speaker 1: Chatikler and research by our goodpal Mary Philip Sandy. Today's
Speaker 1: episode was engineered and produced by the wonderful Dylan Fagan
Speaker 1: with support from Tyler Klang. The show is executive produced
Speaker 1: for iHeart by Katrina Norbel and Ali Perry, with social
Speaker 1: media support from Sasha Gay trustee Dara Potts and Viney Shore.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from Kaleidoscope and iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.