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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's

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Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you

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Speaker 2: should know. I don't know how to say that. And Esperanto,

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Speaker 2: now that I think about it, I really should have

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Speaker 2: looked that up.

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Speaker 1: I was wondering if you were gonna do that.

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Speaker 2: I can't believe I didn't. I feel kind of jerky,

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Speaker 2: jerk woddy. I guess I don't know how to say that.

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Speaker 2: And Esperano either.

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Speaker 1: Well, jerkwad would be jerk wado, yeah, exactly, or something like.

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Speaker 2: That, something similar to that. Yeah, it actually would make

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Speaker 2: sense because Esperano is taking root words jerk wad and

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Speaker 2: putting them together and then conjugating them in a very

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Speaker 2: uniform way. We should probably tell everybody what we're talking

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Speaker 2: about here, because we just kind of accidentally got into it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a language, not.

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Speaker 2: Just a language. It's a con lang, a constructed language,

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Speaker 2: which is a language that you sit down and make up.

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Speaker 2: Some people actually do this, and apparently it's addictive when

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Speaker 2: you start, as opposed to, like I guess, a natural language,

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Speaker 2: one that just kind of develops organically over time as

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Speaker 2: a group of people start talking to one another.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Esperanto itself means one who hopes, and that will

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Speaker 1: all make sense once you hear the story, because it's

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Speaker 1: a pretty wonderful story. Actually, I didn't know much about it.

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Speaker 1: I just thought it was kind of one of these

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Speaker 1: goofy fringe things, and it is a fringe thing. They're

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Speaker 1: about a thousand people who are native, not just Esperanto speakers,

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Speaker 1: but where their first language that they learned was Esperanto.

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Speaker 1: They are native speakers. Dave Rus helped us with this,

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Speaker 1: and he dug up George Soros, billionaire. Oh, I don't know.

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Speaker 1: People describe him in a lot of ways depending on

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Speaker 1: who you are, but as the most famous Esperanto speaker.

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Speaker 1: But I did poke around a little bit and found

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Speaker 1: that Tolstoy j R. R. Tolkien spoke Esperanto and lemaire,

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Speaker 1: basically the father of modern cinema. And as this will

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Speaker 1: become as a surprise when you see later on what happened,

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Speaker 1: but Joseph Stalin apparently knew how to speak Esperanto.

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Speaker 2: Huh, that is kind of a surprise. The thing I

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Speaker 2: think that differentiates George soros so is he was a

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Speaker 2: native speaker, like that was his first language was Esperanto.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, but I looked over the list of just speakers, right,

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Speaker 1: notable speakers, and there are a lot of people in

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Speaker 1: the list, but I just hadn't heard of many of them.

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Speaker 2: Stilln' to big surprise, I'd like to add one more

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Speaker 2: to that list of notable Esperanto speakers, our own ben

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Speaker 2: bowling from stuff they don't want you to know.

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Speaker 1: I thought he spoke Esperanto, that tracks he did.

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Speaker 2: I emailed them just to make sure that I wasn't

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Speaker 2: just making something up in my head, and he said, yeah,

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Speaker 2: he used to, you know, be into it, and he

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Speaker 2: just kind of fell out of it, and then he

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Speaker 2: emailed me like hours later, and it was like, damn it, Josh,

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Speaker 2: now I'm back into Esperano. So he's back into it.

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Speaker 1: Everybody, Well, learning Esperanto is about as ben bowling a

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Speaker 1: thing as I can imagine.

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Speaker 2: It is, because it's inclusive, it's intelligent, it's curious people,

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Speaker 2: it's witty. It seems to be like one of the better,

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Speaker 2: most more nicer kind online communities that you'll come across

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Speaker 2: from what I can.

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Speaker 1: And it's fringe, and that's that's Ben for sure.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and again that's Ben Bolan from stuff they don't

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Speaker 2: want you to know.

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Speaker 1: That's right. So you said it was a constructed language.

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Speaker 1: I guess we'll talk a little bit about why people

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Speaker 1: would construct a language and a little bit of the

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Speaker 1: history of these languages. There are a lot of reasons

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Speaker 1: for doing that. Most of them are because they want

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Speaker 1: to create a language that's easier to learn, that's simpler.

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Speaker 1: A lot of times there might be religious reasons or

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Speaker 1: philosophical reasons. Some people just do it for fun. A

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Speaker 1: lot of them were designed to be a universal language.

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Speaker 1: In Esperanto, Actually, Esperanto takes a lot of these boxes,

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Speaker 1: as we'll see, but a lot of them are created

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Speaker 1: for like, hey, wouldn't it be better if everybody could

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Speaker 1: speak a language?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? What a universal language? A language where I guess

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Speaker 2: the whole point of a universal language is there's definitely

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Speaker 2: the point of Esperanto. The idea is that if you

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Speaker 2: can speak a common language with anybody else on the planet,

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Speaker 2: that should conceivably do away with a lot of different

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Speaker 2: conflicts that probably arise from disputes over language, from differences

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Speaker 2: in language from an inability to see one another's viewpoint

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Speaker 2: because we're having trouble talking with one another. And that's

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Speaker 2: kind of the basis of a lot of the constructed languages,

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Speaker 2: that idea that if we can all speak a universal language,

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Speaker 2: there'll be a global human family or world, which that

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Speaker 2: does sound like you'd be up. George Soros's allly yeah.

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Speaker 1: I mean, if you just could create a language that

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Speaker 1: where all it was was don't shoot and how about

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Speaker 1: a plate of cookies and a glass of milk?

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, how far we go, it'd be a much

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Speaker 2: better world.

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Speaker 1: So admitted languages of you know, people have always sort

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Speaker 1: of been doing this here and there, but in the

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Speaker 1: nineteenth century it seems to have really hit its stride.

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Speaker 1: There were more than one hundred constructed languages that decade

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Speaker 1: that century alone, and Esperanto is far and away the

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Speaker 1: most popular today, although for a long long time it

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Speaker 1: was a language created by a German priest name Johann

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Speaker 1: Schlayer called vol Vollapuk.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, Vallapuk. Apparently God told.

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Speaker 1: Him to do it, sure mission from Gad.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, what else are you gonna do? You're gonna make

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Speaker 2: that language? And I'm sure he was like, are you

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Speaker 2: sure you want to call it vollapuk, And guy was like,

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Speaker 2: get busy, and he did, and it actually caught on

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Speaker 2: really well. There seems to have been kind of a

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Speaker 2: bug in the late nineteenth century, at least in the

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Speaker 2: West of invented languages, and vollapuke apparently the fit the bill,

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Speaker 2: and it spread you far and wide. I can't not

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Speaker 2: say it like that.

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Speaker 1: I'm sorry, that's fine.

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Speaker 2: They started having like international congresses or conferences of vallapuc.

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Speaker 2: President Grover Cleveland's wife Francis named their dog Vollapuke. Like

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Speaker 2: it was. It was a worldwide phenomenon. Even if you

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Speaker 2: didn't know it or had no interest in learning it,

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Speaker 2: you knew about it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's because that dog threw up all over the place. Though.

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Speaker 1: We had a cat nam Underfoot. Literally, my dad named

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Speaker 1: this cat underfoot.

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Speaker 2: That's a very good name.

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Speaker 1: And I'll give you two guesses why.

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Speaker 2: Because the cat had very long legs, okay, and no

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Speaker 2: feat to speak of. That's right, it was underfooted.

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Speaker 1: So that conference you were talking about for Vatapuke was

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Speaker 1: eighteen eighty nine, but a couple of years before that,

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Speaker 1: so it was, you know, cruising and doing pretty well,

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Speaker 1: but two years before that, Esperanto was created and really

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Speaker 1: took it over, you know, over the next like thirty

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Speaker 1: forty years or so.

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Speaker 2: I mean, imagine there being a trend today of like

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Speaker 2: a universal language is catching on, like on TikTok oh God,

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Speaker 2: like it would just take off. But it's such a

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Speaker 2: bizarre thing to think of, and this is what people

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Speaker 2: were into. And this was long before social media, so

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Speaker 2: it was hard for something to become a global phenomenon.

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Speaker 2: And yet not one but two universal languages took hold

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Speaker 2: in the eighteen eighties. Yeah, so Esperano apparently just totally

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Speaker 2: supplanted vollapuke. But there is a little footnote of it.

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Speaker 2: Apparently the Danes say what we would say, like, it's

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Speaker 2: all Greek to me, Like, I don't understand what you're saying.

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Speaker 2: The Danish expression is it's pure vollapuke.

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Speaker 1: That makes sense.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, it's great. I love that. I love learning Danish expressions.

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Speaker 1: I'm going to start saying that. I don't say it's

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Speaker 1: all Greek to me much anyway, but if that ever

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Speaker 1: comes up, I'm gonna say it's pure ballapuke.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and no offense for a Greek list. There's just

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Speaker 2: just something someone says here.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I wonder what Greek's think about that.

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Speaker 2: Actually don't know. I don't know if it's gotten back

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Speaker 2: to them yet.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, So should we talk a little bit about this

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Speaker 1: the creator of Esperanto? Who was I tried to find

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Speaker 1: out bad things about this guy, but he seems like

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Speaker 1: a pretty remarkable, humble, well intentioned fella.

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Speaker 2: And I also read that he was one of those

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Speaker 2: rare people and who would sleep just a couple hours

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Speaker 2: a night rather than sit around and stare at the wall.

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Speaker 2: He did interesting things. He was a polyglot, He learned

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Speaker 2: tons of different languages, He was well read, he was

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Speaker 2: an optometrist. He did all sorts of stuff. But along

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Speaker 2: the way, one of the things he did was create Esperanto.

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Speaker 2: And he had a pretty great, well not great, but

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Speaker 2: a pretty heavy backstory to it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. His name, we haven't said his name yet. He's

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Speaker 1: known as l el Zamenhoff or Soamenhoff, but his full

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Speaker 1: name was Ludwik Leitzer Soamenhoff. Born on December fifteenth, which

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Speaker 1: is National Samenhoff Day. Oh sure, yeah, in eighteen fifty nine,

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Speaker 1: born in bi Alishtock, Poland. He was Jewish as was

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Speaker 1: a lot of belishtock about seventy percent, also some Germans,

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Speaker 1: some Russians, obviously Poles, and growing up there was pretty

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Speaker 1: rough because there was a lot of ethnic violence going on.

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Speaker 1: There were Jews being attacked by Poles, there were Germans

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Speaker 1: being attacked by Russians. In eighteen eighty one, there was

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Speaker 1: a false, I guess, accusation that Jews were behind the

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Speaker 1: assassination of Alexander the Second of Russia, and that started

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Speaker 1: the Pograms, which were these organized massacres of Polish and

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Speaker 1: Russian Jewish communities.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, because Poland was annexed by Russia from eighteen oh

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Speaker 2: seven to nineteen twenty one, which is why they would

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Speaker 2: have cared that was their czar. And apparently it wasn't

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Speaker 2: the Jews at all or anybody who had anything to

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Speaker 2: do with Jewishness. It was anti Autocratics, a group of

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Speaker 2: called the nouradnya volya people's will, and they threw a

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Speaker 2: bomb and blew him up. And apparently his successor, his son,

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Speaker 2: Zari Alexander the third, was even worse. But from those

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Speaker 2: pograms that el Zamenhoff was alive to witness, and even

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Speaker 2: before that just the ethnic violence that I was endemic

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Speaker 2: to Biaalistock. That had a really big effect on him,

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Speaker 2: and that's where he developed this idea that humanity is

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Speaker 2: way more connected than we realized, that we have all

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Speaker 2: these false constructs that separate us, that don't have to

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Speaker 2: separate us, but do time and time again. Language is

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Speaker 2: one of them. He cited religion as one of them,

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Speaker 2: and he was very Jewish. He was a very religious

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Speaker 2: Jewish person, but he still recognized that religion creates conflict

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Speaker 2: sometimes it has historically, and he felt like you could

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Speaker 2: kind of you could keep the religion, you could keep

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Speaker 2: the different nations, you can keep the things that do

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Speaker 2: divide us, as long as they had something like a

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Speaker 2: universal language laying over the whole thing that could defuse

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Speaker 2: the conflicts that grow up from those things that divide us.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, which was and he was a kid. I mean,

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Speaker 1: this is remarkable stuff for a preteen and then teen

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Speaker 1: nature to sort of understand. So he's clearly a brilliant, empathetic,

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Speaker 1: passionate human being. I think, as the you know, family

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Speaker 1: story goes, at least he was ten years old and

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Speaker 1: he wrote a play called The Tower of Babel colon

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Speaker 1: the Beilishtock tragedy in five acts as a ten year old.

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Speaker 1: So just this idea of sort of stripping away these

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Speaker 1: divisions and realizing, like, hey, we're all human beings. That's

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Speaker 1: the one like at the root, that's what we are,

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Speaker 1: and we all literally have that in common, yet we

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Speaker 1: divide ourselves like. It's just a remarkable thing for a

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Speaker 1: kid and a lesson for everybody of all ages. Still.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, as he was raised, he learned Yiddish, which apparently

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Speaker 2: grew out of a German dialect that's written in Hebrew.

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Speaker 2: I didn't realize that, but it's the universal language of

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Speaker 2: the Ashkenazi Jews, the Jewish people in Central and Eastern Europe.

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Speaker 2: So he already understood what a universal language could do.

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Speaker 2: You could take a Jewish person from Poland and a

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Speaker 2: Jewish person from Czechoslovakia and put them in a room

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Speaker 2: and they could speak to one another through that second tongue, Yiddish.

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Speaker 2: So he set about kind of trying to modernize Yiddish,

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Speaker 2: maybe he can spread that, and then he stopped pretty

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Speaker 2: much in his tracks because he realized that what he

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Speaker 2: was trying to do was say, hey, everybody, let's all

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Speaker 2: learn the language of the people you consider criminals and spies.

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Speaker 2: It was like a really hard sell that he just

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Speaker 2: realized wasn't going to go anywhere. So he abandoned trying

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Speaker 2: to sell Yiddish or create a universal language out of

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Speaker 2: Yiddish and just set about creating one from scratch, which

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Speaker 2: is what Esperano came from.

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Speaker 1: What a setup it is.

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Speaker 2: It's going pretty well so far. We should release this

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Speaker 2: as this show.

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Speaker 1: Best setup ever. I'm gonna say it, even though it

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Speaker 1: annoy some people. Should we take a break.

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Speaker 2: I'm going to say it, even though it annoys everybody. Yes,

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Speaker 2: we should.

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Speaker 1: All right, we'll be right back, all right, so we're

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Speaker 1: back really quickly. That sort of made me before we

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Speaker 1: left and talked about people being annoyed by asking to

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Speaker 1: take a break. That came to mind because I jumped

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Speaker 1: on Reddit recently, on our subreddit and actually started an

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Speaker 1: account because there was so much just sort of bad information,

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Speaker 1: like Jerry doesn't even work with him anymore, and just

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Speaker 1: all these weird things that people sort of assume that

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Speaker 1: we're wrong. And I've since learned that that's and even

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Speaker 1: redditors kind of said, like that's kind of a thing.

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Speaker 1: People like surmise a lot. Yeah, so I'd signed up

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Speaker 1: for a few days and answered like geez a lot

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Speaker 1: of questions for like a full day and then got

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Speaker 1: right back off. But just wanted people to know if

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Speaker 1: they thought I was some phony, that that was really me.

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Speaker 1: And most people were awesome.

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Speaker 2: You had Jones stunt AMA, Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Sort of. You know what I don't like about AMAS though?

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Speaker 1: Is it this just that rapid fire sort of thing, right,

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Speaker 1: So this was like a slow burn AMA and it's

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Speaker 1: all still there, a lot of answered questions, like with

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Speaker 1: correct information, and like I said, almost everyone was really

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Speaker 1: really nice, but not everyone is.

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Speaker 2: But that's just the nature of online interactions the internets.

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Speaker 2: That's silly that they think Jerry doesn't work with us anymore.

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Speaker 1: She doesn't exist. Someone was really annoyed though, about like

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Speaker 1: every time they ask if it's time to take a break,

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Speaker 1: and I was like, we do that because we don't

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Speaker 1: script this out and I'm genuinely wondering if it's a

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Speaker 1: good time to take a break.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, what a weird thing to be upset about.

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Speaker 1: It's a conversation anyway, Thanks to everyone who participated, and

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Speaker 1: you can go there and check it out if you

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Speaker 1: want back to esperanto.

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Speaker 2: Yes, you want me to pick it up because we

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Speaker 2: don't script this stuff.

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Speaker 1: Why did you ask me that? That's so annoying?

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Speaker 2: So we said that that l. Zamenhoff had said, Okay,

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Speaker 2: I'm going to start from scratch. I'm going to create

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Speaker 2: a language that doesn't come from anywhere, that's not spoken

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Speaker 2: by anybody. I'm going to make this universal language from scratch.

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Speaker 2: And so his nineteenth birthday party, he had already done

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Speaker 2: enough that he handed out pocket dictionaries and grammar charts

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Speaker 2: to the guests.

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Speaker 1: Man of his birthday, which a swinging party. That's right

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Speaker 1: for a nineteen year old.

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Speaker 2: He called the new language lingo Internacia or no inter

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Speaker 2: Nazia because that sees its remember, yeah, yeah, And he

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Speaker 2: composed a little hymn, and I kind of taught myself

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Speaker 2: how to pronounce it, even though I'm going to completely

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Speaker 2: screw it up.

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Speaker 1: But may I you gotta sing it though?

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Speaker 2: No, yeah, no, you'd don't. You have to say it

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Speaker 2: solemnly like this, Mala mikite de las nazis, cado cado

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Speaker 2: yam tempesta la tote holmose in familia co une gare sodebe.

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Speaker 1: Nice work can I tell everyone what it means?

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Speaker 2: Yes, but you have to sing it.

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Speaker 1: Okay, Let the hatred of the nations fall, fall, fall.

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Speaker 1: The time is already here. All humanity must unite in

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Speaker 1: one family.

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Speaker 2: Doesn't rhyme? Yeah, So when I'm ready to send him,

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Speaker 2: it didn't rhyme.

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Speaker 1: So he's cruising with this thing. He has this banging

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Speaker 1: nineteenth birthday party where he's given out this stuff to

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Speaker 1: his friends. I'm sure they're just like, who is this guy? Even?

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Speaker 1: This is amazing? And in eighteen eighty seven he self

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Speaker 1: published a pamphlet, a forty two page pamphlet called uh

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Speaker 1: are you gonna pronounce this stuff?

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Speaker 2: Unua libro?

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Speaker 1: Okay? I thought that was right. It means first book.

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Speaker 1: And as you'll see, if you notice some of these

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Speaker 1: words sound like other languages, it's because, like other constructed languages,

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Speaker 1: it's usually based on like the words are based on

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Speaker 1: some other words. So when you hear esperanto, like if

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Speaker 1: you go to watch a scene from the Esperanto William

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Speaker 1: Shatner movie that you can watch on YouTube, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: think from him, Well when was that sixty sixty six?

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Speaker 2: Everybody says, but Turner classic movies listed as sixty five,

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Speaker 2: which I find confusing, but everybody else is sixty.

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Speaker 1: Six a side with tcm always. But if you go

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Speaker 1: to and you hear or just you know, I looked

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Speaker 1: up on YouTube, just like Esperanto conversations, or if you

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Speaker 1: bump into Ben Bowlin somewhere in Atlanta, you'll you'll sit

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Speaker 1: there and you'll go, oh wow, that sounds a little

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Speaker 1: bit like Spanish some and maybe it might sound Italian,

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Speaker 1: which Spanish also sounds kind of Italian sometimes, and so

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Speaker 1: a lot of it might sound a little bit familiar,

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Speaker 1: like libro for book, like that makes sense, like the

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Speaker 1: word library. So just pointing out that when you hear

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Speaker 1: Esperanto words and you think it sounds familiar, it's not

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Speaker 1: by accident.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. The reason why, especially if you are a Westerner.

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Speaker 2: Three quarters of the root words he started out with,

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Speaker 2: nine hundred of them, as we'll see, are taken from

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Speaker 2: Romance languages. So it's yeah, if you're an English speaker,

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Speaker 2: it's very easy to pick up.

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Speaker 1: That's a much simpler way to say what it says.

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Speaker 2: So in the in the that first book, unua libro,

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Speaker 2: which I can I can understand what that means just

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Speaker 2: from the little primer, which I have to say, hats

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Speaker 2: off to Dave. He put together a primer for us

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Speaker 2: in this article that like, when you go back and

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Speaker 2: research it more widely, you're like, this is really difficult

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Speaker 2: to like kind of wrangle into one small little ball.

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Speaker 2: And he managed to do that really really well. So

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Speaker 2: way to go, Dave. But that first book, Unuwa Libro,

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Speaker 2: it had some sample translations. It said, here's here's how

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Speaker 2: you say this this stuff. Here's the grammar rules, here's

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Speaker 2: the dictionary, here's how you pronounce it. And he said

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Speaker 2: that his pen name. He wrote it as a pen name,

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Speaker 2: doctro esperanto or doctor hopeful is what it.

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Speaker 1: Loved it.

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Speaker 2: And he called again his language the lingvo inter Nazia,

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Speaker 2: and that's what he thought everybody was going to call it.

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Speaker 2: But instead everybody said, I like this doctor hopeful cat.

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Speaker 2: Let's just call his language.

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Speaker 1: Esperanto, yeah, which is sort of ironic because from the

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Speaker 1: beginning he was a very humble guy and didn't want

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Speaker 1: to be like he didn't name it, you know, Zamenhoffer

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Speaker 1: or whatever, like he didn't want it to be named

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Speaker 1: after him. He didn't want to own it. No, we

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Speaker 1: would call something like this open source today. He didn't

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Speaker 1: want it to be about him, So the fact that

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Speaker 1: he made up a name and that they named it

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Speaker 1: after him anyway is kind of funny. I get the

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Speaker 1: sense that it probably didn't bother him too much because

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Speaker 1: he seemed like a good guy.

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Speaker 2: Sure.

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Speaker 1: But his goal, and we'll talk about sort of the

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Speaker 1: other stuff that came along later, as far as his

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Speaker 1: sort of desire to attach other meaning to it, But

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Speaker 1: his sort of root goal at the beginning was I

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Speaker 1: want a language for the love of whoever you worship

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Speaker 1: that is easier to learn than everything else out there. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and I want it to be a language, like you mentioned,

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Speaker 1: sort of from the get go that can unite people

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Speaker 1: and promote peace, like two very sort of noble pursuits,

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Speaker 1: I think.

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Speaker 2: So, okay, let's talk about goal one. A language that's

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Speaker 2: for the love of whatever you worship, easier to learn

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Speaker 2: than most of the other languages out there. Right right,

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Speaker 2: Apparently you could learn Esperanto in something like about forty

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Speaker 2: hours of class time, one full week of learning. You'll

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Speaker 2: walk out of there on the end of the day

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Speaker 2: Friday being able to converse basically in Esperanto. Tell people

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Speaker 2: where you live, who you are, what you like, point

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Speaker 2: to class and identify them correctly.

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Speaker 1: That isn't don't shoot? How about to play a cookie

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Speaker 1: and some milk?

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Speaker 2: Exactly? They should teach that first, for sure. Apparently that's

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Speaker 2: I mean, you can just know without even knowing anything

395
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Speaker 2: about learning languages. That's really a short amount of time.

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Speaker 2: It takes about one hundred to two hundred hours to

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Speaker 2: learn French or German to the same degree. There's another

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Speaker 2: person who estimated that for English speakers it's five times

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Speaker 2: easier to learn Esperano than French or Spanish, ten times

400
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Speaker 2: easier than Russian, and twenty times easier than Chinese. And

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Speaker 2: again a large part of that is because the root

402
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Speaker 2: words are taken from Romance languages. So just recognizing generally

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Speaker 2: being able to make a guess in almost every case

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Speaker 2: were what that word means, that's a huge leg up,

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Speaker 2: and that's why it's so much easier in part. But

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Speaker 2: the other part is the grammar that he created is

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Speaker 2: so standard and with such regularity that that that's the

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Speaker 2: part that makes it that much easier to learn, especially

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Speaker 2: for Romance language speakers.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, the hard part about learning a language

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Speaker 1: is usually not memorizing root words and learning basic grammar.

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Speaker 1: It's the irregular verbs. It's all these exceptions to rules.

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Speaker 1: Fritch has more than two thousand irregular verbs. English is

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Speaker 1: notoriously tough to learn as a as a non native speaker.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, think about those, just about irregular verbs real quick, chuck.

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Speaker 2: For the English to be pretty basic stuff. It's conjugated

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Speaker 2: as b being, been, r am is was and were. Now,

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Speaker 2: if you were just approaching those words as a non

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Speaker 2: English speaker to begin with, you wouldn't think was had

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Speaker 2: anything to do with b or r has anything to

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Speaker 2: do with b. And that's that's what causes the confusion.

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Speaker 2: And not just English, but almost any language. Irregular verbs

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Speaker 2: and exceptions to the standard rules.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know we did, and we did a

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Speaker 1: whole episode on language acquisition, right.

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Speaker 2: I'm I'm pretty sure sure we did.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, because I'm just consistently knocked out that

428
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Speaker 1: babies into toddlers and so on just just pick up language.

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Speaker 1: It's really remarkable to me still to see that kind

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Speaker 1: of thing. But esperanto, and we're just going to go

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00:24:22,760 --> 00:24:24,960
Speaker 1: over some sort of the base rules here, and I

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Speaker 1: think you will find yourself like we did. Just saying,

433
00:24:27,640 --> 00:24:30,520
Speaker 1: oh my god, that's amazing and it makes so much sense.

434
00:24:31,280 --> 00:24:34,760
Speaker 1: There are sixteen grammatical rules, there are no irregular verbs,

435
00:24:35,040 --> 00:24:39,439
Speaker 1: there are no exceptions to rules, and these are just

436
00:24:39,480 --> 00:24:41,480
Speaker 1: this isn't everything, but these are just a few examples

437
00:24:41,480 --> 00:24:44,160
Speaker 1: of kind of like how much sense it makes. All

438
00:24:44,200 --> 00:24:46,120
Speaker 1: nouns are going to end with the letter oh. That's

439
00:24:46,119 --> 00:24:50,439
Speaker 1: why I said jerk wado at the beginning. Adjectives all

440
00:24:50,920 --> 00:24:54,359
Speaker 1: all of them end in the letter A. Adverbs all

441
00:24:55,359 --> 00:24:59,280
Speaker 1: end in the letter E. There are no genders. That's

442
00:24:59,440 --> 00:25:02,600
Speaker 1: another place where learning a foreign language can be confusing,

443
00:25:02,760 --> 00:25:05,480
Speaker 1: is you know, the different cases and genders and stuff

444
00:25:05,520 --> 00:25:08,359
Speaker 1: like that, and having to change things around. Not an esperanto,

445
00:25:08,480 --> 00:25:10,800
Speaker 1: my friend. And then this is sort of just a

446
00:25:10,840 --> 00:25:17,480
Speaker 1: fun one. La la is the only word for the right.

447
00:25:17,480 --> 00:25:22,440
Speaker 2: Not la lay low ill, none of that stuff. L yeah,

448
00:25:22,480 --> 00:25:26,920
Speaker 2: none of that. It's all la the everything. And then

449
00:25:27,080 --> 00:25:31,879
Speaker 2: it's up to the conjugation of the verb that that

450
00:25:31,880 --> 00:25:35,240
Speaker 2: that changes that or the adverb or the adjective or whatever.

451
00:25:35,600 --> 00:25:38,000
Speaker 2: Because it's standard when you see like an o or

452
00:25:38,040 --> 00:25:40,160
Speaker 2: an a or an e, you can identify a word

453
00:25:40,160 --> 00:25:42,600
Speaker 2: in a sentence as a verb and adverb. And now

454
00:25:42,640 --> 00:25:46,119
Speaker 2: in that kind of thing. So the infinitive form of verbs.

455
00:25:46,160 --> 00:25:47,520
Speaker 2: And by the way, I had to look most of

456
00:25:47,560 --> 00:25:49,400
Speaker 2: this up, like I was, like, what's.

457
00:25:49,160 --> 00:25:50,880
Speaker 1: An adverb again English?

458
00:25:51,240 --> 00:25:56,119
Speaker 2: An verb is something like above clearly hourly it it.

459
00:25:56,119 --> 00:26:00,399
Speaker 2: It describes an adjective, a verb, or some other stuff.

460
00:26:01,119 --> 00:26:04,600
Speaker 2: An infinitive form is like to something to do, like

461
00:26:04,680 --> 00:26:08,040
Speaker 2: the basic form like to eat. It ends in an eye,

462
00:26:08,520 --> 00:26:16,600
Speaker 2: so it's mangy okay, okay, present tense like I eat,

463
00:26:16,760 --> 00:26:21,160
Speaker 2: that would be as mangas it ends in as yeah.

464
00:26:21,200 --> 00:26:23,160
Speaker 1: And we should point out that it doesn't matter who

465
00:26:23,200 --> 00:26:25,800
Speaker 1: is eating, if he is eating or I'm eating, or

466
00:26:25,840 --> 00:26:28,159
Speaker 1: she's eating or they're eating, it's all. It's all the

467
00:26:28,200 --> 00:26:29,040
Speaker 1: same exactly.

468
00:26:29,119 --> 00:26:34,200
Speaker 2: There's no irregular verbs. It's beautiful right in past tense

469
00:26:35,520 --> 00:26:38,640
Speaker 2: instead of something like sing sang song, where it should

470
00:26:38,640 --> 00:26:42,600
Speaker 2: all just be sing singed, singed. Uh, that's what he does.

471
00:26:42,760 --> 00:26:45,359
Speaker 2: I know it sounds weird, doesn't it. Well, sure, but

472
00:26:46,119 --> 00:26:48,440
Speaker 2: that's what he does. In this Everything in past tense

473
00:26:48,520 --> 00:26:53,760
Speaker 2: ends in ees, so manges, yeah, I ate, you ate,

474
00:26:54,359 --> 00:26:57,560
Speaker 2: they ate. It's all. It's all mangaz. And then with

475
00:26:57,680 --> 00:27:01,040
Speaker 2: future it's man Joe's. And then with command you just

476
00:27:01,080 --> 00:27:06,400
Speaker 2: add a you ooh manjou, and that's it. That's how

477
00:27:06,440 --> 00:27:09,880
Speaker 2: you conjugate verbs. There's no exceptions to that rule at all.

478
00:27:10,720 --> 00:27:15,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's pretty amazing. I guess it just

479
00:27:15,600 --> 00:27:18,160
Speaker 1: makes sense that because I kind of struggled with why

480
00:27:18,240 --> 00:27:22,680
Speaker 1: other languages are so irregular. But if it's organic in

481
00:27:22,720 --> 00:27:25,080
Speaker 1: its growth, then that's just bound to happen. I think

482
00:27:25,160 --> 00:27:25,479
Speaker 1: it is.

483
00:27:25,920 --> 00:27:29,000
Speaker 2: I looked up why, and it's actually fascinating. It's because

484
00:27:29,080 --> 00:27:34,359
Speaker 2: these languages often absorb other people from other language groups,

485
00:27:34,400 --> 00:27:37,960
Speaker 2: and they bring their words with them, and so languages

486
00:27:38,119 --> 00:27:42,720
Speaker 2: grow by adopting other words changing, and so rather than

487
00:27:42,880 --> 00:27:47,320
Speaker 2: completely altering, you know how something that usually ends an

488
00:27:47,560 --> 00:27:52,080
Speaker 2: ed like sing, instead of just totally altering how it

489
00:27:52,160 --> 00:27:54,560
Speaker 2: used to be, you just kind of change it to

490
00:27:54,640 --> 00:27:58,320
Speaker 2: the new form like sang or song. It's that's how

491
00:27:58,400 --> 00:28:00,840
Speaker 2: irregular verbs come up. Nobody's like, I really want to

492
00:28:00,880 --> 00:28:03,000
Speaker 2: screw people up in the future. I'm going to add this.

493
00:28:03,160 --> 00:28:06,120
Speaker 2: It just happens, you know, organically, So when you set

494
00:28:06,160 --> 00:28:11,600
Speaker 2: about creating a constructed language, you can purposely deliberately avoid

495
00:28:12,320 --> 00:28:15,280
Speaker 2: any irregular verbs and make it that much easier to learn.

496
00:28:15,880 --> 00:28:19,560
Speaker 2: My question that came up, Chuck, is how long, yes,

497
00:28:19,600 --> 00:28:22,800
Speaker 2: I set up, Chuck, how long does it take until

498
00:28:22,960 --> 00:28:28,000
Speaker 2: a language like Esperanto starts developing irregular verbs?

499
00:28:28,520 --> 00:28:31,720
Speaker 1: Well, I have a strong feeling and I'd love to

500
00:28:31,720 --> 00:28:35,440
Speaker 1: hear from some esperantists that they fight that tooth and

501
00:28:35,520 --> 00:28:38,280
Speaker 1: nail because that defeats the whole purpose and spirit of it.

502
00:28:38,360 --> 00:28:40,600
Speaker 2: Okay, hasn't happened yet, then, is that answer?

503
00:28:41,640 --> 00:28:45,400
Speaker 1: I mean, that would be my guess. Yeah, I'm on record.

504
00:28:45,440 --> 00:28:47,600
Speaker 2: Okay, I'd love to hear from them too.

505
00:28:47,600 --> 00:28:52,560
Speaker 1: There, but if you haven't noticed that Esperanto and this

506
00:28:52,600 --> 00:28:54,280
Speaker 1: is a word you might not know, but it's called

507
00:28:54,360 --> 00:28:58,720
Speaker 1: an agglutenative language, which is the words are formed from

508
00:28:58,800 --> 00:29:02,719
Speaker 1: combinations of short words basically which English has a lot

509
00:29:02,760 --> 00:29:04,440
Speaker 1: of those. All language has a lot of those, but

510
00:29:05,040 --> 00:29:06,480
Speaker 1: Esperanto has all those.

511
00:29:07,320 --> 00:29:10,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you've got your root word and then you

512
00:29:10,280 --> 00:29:14,800
Speaker 2: have affixes, prefixes and sufffixes and kind of like how

513
00:29:14,840 --> 00:29:17,720
Speaker 2: you conjugate it with the eye for to eat or

514
00:29:18,000 --> 00:29:22,680
Speaker 2: an as for you eat. That's that's it, that's the whole,

515
00:29:22,840 --> 00:29:26,760
Speaker 2: that's the whole grammar. Right. So the reason why he

516
00:29:26,840 --> 00:29:31,960
Speaker 2: did this again because not just like irregular verbs, but

517
00:29:32,200 --> 00:29:35,800
Speaker 2: weird words that all describe the same thing is another

518
00:29:35,840 --> 00:29:39,960
Speaker 2: thing that creeps into language organically. They've used the example

519
00:29:40,000 --> 00:29:42,560
Speaker 2: of tree. Right. You know what a tree is an

520
00:29:42,600 --> 00:29:45,200
Speaker 2: English it's one of those plants that's got the wood

521
00:29:45,240 --> 00:29:47,200
Speaker 2: in the bark and the leaves, and they're tall and everything.

522
00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:48,320
Speaker 2: Everybody loves to hug them.

523
00:29:48,400 --> 00:29:48,560
Speaker 1: Right.

524
00:29:49,120 --> 00:29:54,160
Speaker 2: Uh, tree makes sense. But rather than young tree, we

525
00:29:54,200 --> 00:29:57,880
Speaker 2: have the word sapling, which combines proto Indo European and

526
00:29:57,920 --> 00:30:01,880
Speaker 2: proto Germanic words in English. Cute word though, sapling it

527
00:30:01,960 --> 00:30:04,080
Speaker 2: is because it means young tree. It's the young version

528
00:30:04,120 --> 00:30:06,080
Speaker 2: of a tree. It's very cute. A bunch of trees

529
00:30:07,240 --> 00:30:09,920
Speaker 2: is called a forest. That's old French from Latin. And

530
00:30:09,960 --> 00:30:12,320
Speaker 2: then a botanical garden that has a bunch of trees

531
00:30:12,400 --> 00:30:15,480
Speaker 2: is arboretum. That's just straight up Latin. All of those

532
00:30:15,520 --> 00:30:18,960
Speaker 2: are English words sapling, forest, arboretum, and none of them

533
00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:23,120
Speaker 2: sound like tree. So by creating roots that just describe

534
00:30:23,160 --> 00:30:26,960
Speaker 2: one thing and then adjusting what they mean by adding

535
00:30:26,960 --> 00:30:29,480
Speaker 2: a prefix or a suffix, but keeping that root word,

536
00:30:29,720 --> 00:30:31,640
Speaker 2: he got around that kind of conundrum.

537
00:30:32,400 --> 00:30:37,400
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, for instance, tree and esperanto is arbo. That

538
00:30:37,480 --> 00:30:40,240
Speaker 1: young tree, which is a sapling for us is an arbito.

539
00:30:40,480 --> 00:30:43,880
Speaker 1: And as we'll see, ido is sort of the suffix

540
00:30:43,920 --> 00:30:47,080
Speaker 1: for any kind of baby version of something which is taken,

541
00:30:47,400 --> 00:30:51,440
Speaker 1: and a Spanish does that, like there were two Chucks

542
00:30:51,600 --> 00:30:54,040
Speaker 1: at my job at a Mexican restaurant, and I was

543
00:30:54,240 --> 00:30:57,680
Speaker 1: chuck Eto cute because I was younger than the original chi.

544
00:30:57,840 --> 00:31:00,120
Speaker 2: Wasn't that a taco bell menu item in the nineties?

545
00:31:01,120 --> 00:31:09,680
Speaker 1: Probably so two chuqitos in and another chuquito, three chuquitos.

546
00:31:10,280 --> 00:31:14,120
Speaker 1: A young tree instead of a sapling is an arbido.

547
00:31:15,680 --> 00:31:18,680
Speaker 1: A lot of trees instead of a forest is an arborrow.

548
00:31:19,240 --> 00:31:22,280
Speaker 1: And then that botanical garden instead of an arboretum is

549
00:31:22,400 --> 00:31:25,560
Speaker 1: an arboretto. And you might think, well, that sounds a

550
00:31:25,560 --> 00:31:28,000
Speaker 1: lot like our arboretum. Well it does, but it also

551
00:31:28,080 --> 00:31:31,440
Speaker 1: sounds like arbo, arbido and a barrow exactly right.

552
00:31:31,480 --> 00:31:33,000
Speaker 2: So you see any of those words and you know

553
00:31:33,040 --> 00:31:35,600
Speaker 2: it's talking about a tree. And then when you learn

554
00:31:35,880 --> 00:31:39,080
Speaker 2: edo means a younger version of it, or r means

555
00:31:39,120 --> 00:31:42,440
Speaker 2: the the like a group of whatever you're talking about,

556
00:31:42,720 --> 00:31:45,400
Speaker 2: you just learned a ton of grammar just right off

557
00:31:45,440 --> 00:31:47,479
Speaker 2: the back. And then also note that all those in

558
00:31:47,480 --> 00:31:50,840
Speaker 2: an oh because they're all nouns. And again all nouns

559
00:31:50,880 --> 00:31:52,520
Speaker 2: and in oh in Esperanto.

560
00:31:53,680 --> 00:31:56,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we mentioned edo id o as a suffix

561
00:31:56,840 --> 00:31:59,560
Speaker 1: meaning like the small version of something or a baby something.

562
00:32:00,200 --> 00:32:00,360
Speaker 2: Uh.

563
00:32:00,400 --> 00:32:03,280
Speaker 1: And we also mentioned that there wasn't gender. That there

564
00:32:03,440 --> 00:32:07,640
Speaker 1: is but uh not in terms of like you know,

565
00:32:07,840 --> 00:32:11,680
Speaker 1: how you will conjugate a sentence. Uh, it's just a suffix.

566
00:32:11,720 --> 00:32:15,000
Speaker 1: It's i n o is a female version of something.

567
00:32:15,960 --> 00:32:18,440
Speaker 1: You also have a r O, which is a group

568
00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:21,400
Speaker 1: like vorto v o r t o is a word,

569
00:32:21,840 --> 00:32:25,880
Speaker 1: vortarro is dictionary. Uh, it just makes a lot of sense.

570
00:32:25,920 --> 00:32:29,239
Speaker 1: E j o and uh, the ja's a pronounced as

571
00:32:29,240 --> 00:32:32,600
Speaker 1: a y. Isn't that right? Uh? E j oh is

572
00:32:32,640 --> 00:32:37,080
Speaker 1: a place for something? So k u I r I.

573
00:32:37,120 --> 00:32:38,000
Speaker 1: How would you pronounce that?

574
00:32:38,040 --> 00:32:44,520
Speaker 2: Cooerio cooler? Oh, corey cool? Why do you ask me

575
00:32:44,560 --> 00:32:45,200
Speaker 2: to pronounce this?

576
00:32:45,800 --> 00:32:46,000
Speaker 1: Well?

577
00:32:46,000 --> 00:32:47,440
Speaker 2: Because I got it.

578
00:32:47,520 --> 00:32:53,000
Speaker 1: A couery is to cook, and then what's kitchen? Cooer

579
00:32:53,080 --> 00:32:57,040
Speaker 1: ao right, So you add the e j o So, uh,

580
00:32:57,080 --> 00:32:58,840
Speaker 1: that is the place where you would cook.

581
00:32:59,440 --> 00:33:02,600
Speaker 2: That makes sense. Right. That's not to say that Esperando

582
00:33:02,680 --> 00:33:05,040
Speaker 2: doesn't have words that you just have to memorize, because

583
00:33:05,040 --> 00:33:09,120
Speaker 2: it doesn't quite work. Because, for example, there's a couple

584
00:33:09,200 --> 00:33:11,480
Speaker 2: of places where you'll find a lot of books, like

585
00:33:11,520 --> 00:33:15,280
Speaker 2: a library or a bookstore. Right, So a library, you'd

586
00:33:15,280 --> 00:33:18,400
Speaker 2: think would be called the librereo or place of books,

587
00:33:18,400 --> 00:33:22,480
Speaker 2: but actually it's called a biblioteco. A libreo is the bookstore.

588
00:33:23,080 --> 00:33:27,280
Speaker 2: So it sounds like just kind of nitpicking. But if

589
00:33:27,320 --> 00:33:29,440
Speaker 2: you ever arranged to meet your friend at the libreo

590
00:33:29,560 --> 00:33:31,880
Speaker 2: and they don't they think that that's the bookstore, you're

591
00:33:31,920 --> 00:33:33,640
Speaker 2: going to be sitting there waiting in the library for

592
00:33:33,720 --> 00:33:34,440
Speaker 2: them a long time.

593
00:33:36,120 --> 00:33:38,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, and in fact, you know adding and I find

594
00:33:38,400 --> 00:33:41,680
Speaker 1: this like part of the spirit of Esperanto is super cool,

595
00:33:41,680 --> 00:33:45,600
Speaker 1: and that they encourage you to create words as long

596
00:33:45,640 --> 00:33:49,520
Speaker 1: as they follow the rules and make sense. So to

597
00:33:51,040 --> 00:33:55,120
Speaker 1: attack these effixes and suffixes under root words and Dave

598
00:33:55,200 --> 00:33:57,880
Speaker 1: uws this, this is so great. Gosh, this just makes

599
00:33:57,920 --> 00:34:00,960
Speaker 1: me crazy, how great it is. Hospital. The word hospital

600
00:34:01,120 --> 00:34:07,720
Speaker 1: in Esperanto is mal sanu lejo, right, yes, does that

601
00:34:07,760 --> 00:34:11,440
Speaker 1: make sense? So m al and Esperanto is opposite of

602
00:34:12,640 --> 00:34:16,920
Speaker 1: the s, a n is healthy, The ul means people.

603
00:34:17,480 --> 00:34:20,440
Speaker 1: The e jo, remember, as we said, means the place

604
00:34:20,640 --> 00:34:25,080
Speaker 1: where something is. And so a hospital directly translated is

605
00:34:25,440 --> 00:34:29,440
Speaker 1: not healthy people place, which could be a lot of

606
00:34:29,440 --> 00:34:30,600
Speaker 1: places here in the West.

607
00:34:30,640 --> 00:34:33,839
Speaker 2: But so it's kind of like Esperantos like to put

608
00:34:33,880 --> 00:34:36,960
Speaker 2: words together like you do in a scrabble game. And

609
00:34:37,080 --> 00:34:39,040
Speaker 2: the reason that it's encouraged is because out of the

610
00:34:39,239 --> 00:34:43,560
Speaker 2: gate Zamenhoff, like like you said, made this open source

611
00:34:44,160 --> 00:34:47,279
Speaker 2: and said, here, take this and just do what you

612
00:34:47,320 --> 00:34:50,200
Speaker 2: will with it and make it grow. And that's how

613
00:34:50,400 --> 00:34:52,920
Speaker 2: that's why esperano is still around. And one of the

614
00:34:52,960 --> 00:34:57,680
Speaker 2: reasons it's the planted vollapuke puk because the guy who

615
00:34:57,719 --> 00:35:01,279
Speaker 2: created valla puke, he he was very controlling, kept a

616
00:35:01,320 --> 00:35:05,279
Speaker 2: controlling like grip on it, and so that made it

617
00:35:05,280 --> 00:35:07,080
Speaker 2: like a dying language right out of the gate, because

618
00:35:07,080 --> 00:35:09,440
Speaker 2: you you have to let language grow and become organic

619
00:35:09,520 --> 00:35:12,200
Speaker 2: on its own. Apparently he was like, Nope, God told

620
00:35:12,200 --> 00:35:14,160
Speaker 2: me to do this, so I really need to keep

621
00:35:14,160 --> 00:35:15,160
Speaker 2: a sharp eye on it.

622
00:35:15,840 --> 00:35:18,479
Speaker 1: So I think we should also talk about the word

623
00:35:18,520 --> 00:35:21,120
Speaker 1: for jet lag because it's also just super fun. Yeah,

624
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:23,160
Speaker 1: and we could do this all day long, but just

625
00:35:23,200 --> 00:35:28,040
Speaker 1: these two examples are really great. Horror zo noso horzonozo

626
00:35:29,280 --> 00:35:32,800
Speaker 1: h o r z in o zo exactly how it sounds,

627
00:35:33,520 --> 00:35:37,279
Speaker 1: that is, h O r's time zone is z O

628
00:35:37,440 --> 00:35:41,920
Speaker 1: N and then illness is ozo. So the Esperanto translation

629
00:35:42,120 --> 00:35:43,240
Speaker 1: is time zone illness.

630
00:35:43,320 --> 00:35:44,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

631
00:35:45,719 --> 00:35:47,279
Speaker 1: I love that, and that sounds it's a lot of

632
00:35:47,280 --> 00:35:52,960
Speaker 1: This sounds like how it would be transcribed or subtitled

633
00:35:53,040 --> 00:35:56,200
Speaker 1: in like China or something from English.

634
00:35:56,239 --> 00:35:58,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, I came across something. Did you see

635
00:35:58,719 --> 00:36:01,800
Speaker 2: what I sent you about English translated into English is

636
00:36:01,880 --> 00:36:02,719
Speaker 2: kind of hilarious.

637
00:36:03,560 --> 00:36:04,640
Speaker 1: Oh no, oh you didn't.

638
00:36:04,719 --> 00:36:07,440
Speaker 2: I found a I don't remember what paper it was,

639
00:36:07,480 --> 00:36:11,880
Speaker 2: but as an example, they translated I do not understand

640
00:36:11,960 --> 00:36:15,719
Speaker 2: into several languages, and one of them was English. And

641
00:36:15,760 --> 00:36:19,400
Speaker 2: if you literally translate I do not understand into English,

642
00:36:19,840 --> 00:36:23,680
Speaker 2: it's I may not understand. I think about it like

643
00:36:23,719 --> 00:36:26,399
Speaker 2: that's exactly what that means, But it's not at all

644
00:36:26,440 --> 00:36:29,120
Speaker 2: what you think of. Like I do not understand sounds right,

645
00:36:29,200 --> 00:36:32,440
Speaker 2: even though what you're saying literally is I may not understand,

646
00:36:33,840 --> 00:36:37,280
Speaker 2: because do means make I literally.

647
00:36:38,920 --> 00:36:39,960
Speaker 1: I do not understand.

648
00:36:40,080 --> 00:36:42,480
Speaker 2: I just I had to mention that. It just cracked

649
00:36:42,520 --> 00:36:42,759
Speaker 2: me up.

650
00:36:43,680 --> 00:36:47,080
Speaker 1: No, that's really funny. All right, So let's take our

651
00:36:47,120 --> 00:36:50,080
Speaker 1: second break. I'm not even asking this time, and we'll

652
00:36:50,080 --> 00:36:53,759
Speaker 1: come back and talk about where Esperanto went from there

653
00:36:53,880 --> 00:36:54,360
Speaker 1: right after this.

654
00:37:16,600 --> 00:37:22,280
Speaker 2: So, Chuck, we talked a lot about how how doctor

655
00:37:22,600 --> 00:37:27,360
Speaker 2: Esperanto Zamenhoff the reasons why he created Esperanto, and that

656
00:37:27,480 --> 00:37:30,120
Speaker 2: was goal number two was to to create like a

657
00:37:30,200 --> 00:37:33,600
Speaker 2: language that united the world, right, easy to learn, united

658
00:37:33,600 --> 00:37:37,719
Speaker 2: the world. And he originally based it on something he

659
00:37:37,800 --> 00:37:41,520
Speaker 2: called Hillalism, after hillel the Elder, a Jewish stage from

660
00:37:41,520 --> 00:37:46,600
Speaker 2: the first century BCE, and Hillelle's teachings can basically be

661
00:37:46,600 --> 00:37:49,399
Speaker 2: summed up as the golden rule, like treat others as

662
00:37:49,560 --> 00:37:53,359
Speaker 2: you'd like them to treat you. He changed that name

663
00:37:53,480 --> 00:37:59,319
Speaker 2: very quickly to homara nismo, which means basically humanitarianism, but

664
00:37:59,400 --> 00:38:01,239
Speaker 2: the whole idea was the same. He called it the

665
00:38:01,360 --> 00:38:06,120
Speaker 2: internal ideo the internal idea of Esperanto, which is that

666
00:38:06,840 --> 00:38:11,040
Speaker 2: it can remove those language barriers, those culture burials, barriers

667
00:38:11,080 --> 00:38:15,080
Speaker 2: between people and to by doing so, you make people

668
00:38:15,160 --> 00:38:17,400
Speaker 2: recognize that we're all humans.

669
00:38:18,000 --> 00:38:21,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he I think realized at some point again

670
00:38:21,760 --> 00:38:28,359
Speaker 1: that sort of attaching an ism to something maybe might

671
00:38:29,040 --> 00:38:31,399
Speaker 1: keep people from wanting to learn it. And I think

672
00:38:31,440 --> 00:38:34,640
Speaker 1: they were also Esperantis. Dave said that a lot of

673
00:38:34,719 --> 00:38:37,680
Speaker 1: them were French intellectuals that were like, no, no, no,

674
00:38:38,080 --> 00:38:41,120
Speaker 1: we don't need to attach this to an ism. So

675
00:38:41,440 --> 00:38:43,960
Speaker 1: it officially wasn't attached to an ism. But I do

676
00:38:44,000 --> 00:38:46,520
Speaker 1: think the spirit of all that is a big part

677
00:38:46,520 --> 00:38:49,640
Speaker 1: of Esperanto still. Yeah, some people who want to learn

678
00:38:49,640 --> 00:38:51,520
Speaker 1: it even though it's not an official like ethic.

679
00:38:51,680 --> 00:38:53,959
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I mean, just right off the bat,

680
00:38:54,239 --> 00:38:58,400
Speaker 2: they had the first international or Universal Congress of Esperano

681
00:38:58,640 --> 00:39:04,000
Speaker 2: in nineteen oh fives, and in that conference a schism

682
00:39:04,200 --> 00:39:07,440
Speaker 2: created or was created in like a whole other language,

683
00:39:07,480 --> 00:39:10,439
Speaker 2: like a version of Esperanto called Edo that was even

684
00:39:10,560 --> 00:39:15,000
Speaker 2: easier to learn, was introduced, and that group just went

685
00:39:15,000 --> 00:39:17,120
Speaker 2: off and did their own thing, which kind of hamstrung

686
00:39:17,520 --> 00:39:20,640
Speaker 2: Esperanto as it was really starting to take off. But

687
00:39:21,000 --> 00:39:23,239
Speaker 2: Edo you don't hear about any longer. You still hear

688
00:39:23,280 --> 00:39:28,719
Speaker 2: about Esperanto. I'm not one hundred percent sure why. Maybe

689
00:39:28,800 --> 00:39:30,880
Speaker 2: it is because it had an ethic or a moral

690
00:39:31,120 --> 00:39:34,840
Speaker 2: to it in addition to being easy to learn. That's like,

691
00:39:34,960 --> 00:39:40,799
Speaker 2: that's my guess. But Zamenhoff died in nineteen seventeen, and

692
00:39:41,080 --> 00:39:44,400
Speaker 2: what Sad Dave points out, he lived long enough to

693
00:39:44,520 --> 00:39:48,360
Speaker 2: see World War One, which I didn't read anything he

694
00:39:48,400 --> 00:39:50,399
Speaker 2: wrote about it directly, but he would have been really

695
00:39:50,440 --> 00:39:53,560
Speaker 2: bummed by that, because that is not that's what he

696
00:39:53,719 --> 00:39:55,640
Speaker 2: was creating Esperanto to avoid.

697
00:39:56,960 --> 00:40:00,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, during his life he was now dominated fourteen

698
00:40:01,040 --> 00:40:05,120
Speaker 1: times fourteen never won, unfortunately for the Nobel Peace Prize,

699
00:40:05,640 --> 00:40:08,200
Speaker 1: and post World War One, when the League of Nations

700
00:40:08,320 --> 00:40:11,359
Speaker 1: was created, to know, to stop something like that from

701
00:40:11,400 --> 00:40:15,319
Speaker 1: happening again didn't work. In that very first meeting, there

702
00:40:15,360 --> 00:40:19,520
Speaker 1: was a proposal to teach Esperanto in schools to member countries,

703
00:40:19,960 --> 00:40:23,440
Speaker 1: which was pretty remarkable. It didn't happen because the French

704
00:40:23,480 --> 00:40:27,440
Speaker 1: delegation vetoed that and they said French is already the

705
00:40:27,520 --> 00:40:32,000
Speaker 1: universal language, which is so haughty, but that's they literally

706
00:40:32,080 --> 00:40:34,080
Speaker 1: kept Esperanto like who knows where it would be now

707
00:40:34,080 --> 00:40:35,160
Speaker 1: if they hadn't to stop.

708
00:40:34,880 --> 00:40:37,760
Speaker 2: That same thing with the US at the United Nations

709
00:40:37,760 --> 00:40:40,920
Speaker 2: in the forties after the UN was founded, somebody said, hey,

710
00:40:41,000 --> 00:40:44,000
Speaker 2: we should all learn Esperanto, and the US said, no,

711
00:40:44,160 --> 00:40:47,200
Speaker 2: English is already a universal language. And that actually shows

712
00:40:47,239 --> 00:40:50,920
Speaker 2: how language can like enhance the standing of the countries

713
00:40:50,960 --> 00:40:53,920
Speaker 2: that speak that language that the rest of the world

714
00:40:53,960 --> 00:40:58,320
Speaker 2: sees is basically a universal language and why Esperanto didn't

715
00:40:58,320 --> 00:41:00,360
Speaker 2: do that because it didn't come from any country, didn't

716
00:41:00,360 --> 00:41:02,520
Speaker 2: come from any ethnic group or any region. It was

717
00:41:02,840 --> 00:41:07,360
Speaker 2: a from scratch universal grammar that wouldn't enhance one nation

718
00:41:07,520 --> 00:41:08,280
Speaker 2: over others.

719
00:41:09,160 --> 00:41:14,120
Speaker 1: Yeah, not everyone loved it. If you think, like who

720
00:41:14,320 --> 00:41:18,680
Speaker 1: maybe wouldn't like it? Who wouldn't like this language created

721
00:41:19,400 --> 00:41:24,120
Speaker 1: from a Jewish man Hitler, you would be correct. It's

722
00:41:24,120 --> 00:41:27,279
Speaker 1: written about n mind comp he said. Hitler said that

723
00:41:27,320 --> 00:41:29,839
Speaker 1: it was a secret Jewish language he used to plot

724
00:41:29,840 --> 00:41:32,120
Speaker 1: against Germany. And I don't know if anyone ever went

725
00:41:32,200 --> 00:41:36,600
Speaker 1: over to him, probably not and said, DeFi you can

726
00:41:36,640 --> 00:41:38,880
Speaker 1: actually it's not secret at all. You can learn it

727
00:41:38,880 --> 00:41:46,720
Speaker 1: in fearsick hours conversationally. So I don't know. Hitler being Hitler,

728
00:41:47,239 --> 00:41:49,840
Speaker 1: there were and of course you know, I'm sort of

729
00:41:50,000 --> 00:41:51,920
Speaker 1: joking about that, but it was no joke at all,

730
00:41:51,960 --> 00:41:58,160
Speaker 1: because Hitler and others would round up Esperanto speakers and

731
00:41:58,320 --> 00:42:01,719
Speaker 1: jail them or kill them. And in fact Hitler took

732
00:42:02,320 --> 00:42:05,760
Speaker 1: his family, his surviving family, that is, to the Warsaw

733
00:42:05,760 --> 00:42:10,719
Speaker 1: Ghetto and all three of Zamenhoff's children were killed by Nazis. Yeah,

734
00:42:10,880 --> 00:42:11,600
Speaker 1: it's brutal.

735
00:42:11,719 --> 00:42:13,879
Speaker 2: Stalin did the same thing, which I guess is why

736
00:42:14,000 --> 00:42:19,600
Speaker 2: it seems at first surprising that he learned Esperanto, but

737
00:42:19,719 --> 00:42:21,640
Speaker 2: he called it the language of the spies, so I

738
00:42:21,640 --> 00:42:22,319
Speaker 2: guess he was just.

739
00:42:22,280 --> 00:42:23,680
Speaker 1: That's probably why I learned exactly.

740
00:42:23,840 --> 00:42:27,200
Speaker 2: But even if you were a loyal Communist Party member,

741
00:42:28,640 --> 00:42:32,240
Speaker 2: you would be killed for knowing Esperanto, which is funny

742
00:42:32,280 --> 00:42:36,160
Speaker 2: because it was frequently accused of being a secret Communist

743
00:42:36,200 --> 00:42:39,239
Speaker 2: plot itself, so right, that kind of goes to show

744
00:42:39,280 --> 00:42:42,040
Speaker 2: you just how nationless Esperanto actually was.

745
00:42:42,920 --> 00:42:46,960
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, if you get online today, if you're interested

746
00:42:46,960 --> 00:42:49,479
Speaker 1: in this and you want to know, like, who's how's

747
00:42:49,520 --> 00:42:53,040
Speaker 1: it going today with Esperanto? Who's speaking it? Are people

748
00:42:53,080 --> 00:42:56,480
Speaker 1: into it? Yeah? People are into it. There is. It's

749
00:42:56,480 --> 00:42:59,200
Speaker 1: not a huge community, but it's a very passionate community

750
00:42:59,520 --> 00:43:01,800
Speaker 1: of people all over the world. People like Ben Bowlin,

751
00:43:02,840 --> 00:43:06,239
Speaker 1: they find each other online. It's very easy to do that.

752
00:43:06,320 --> 00:43:06,480
Speaker 2: Now.

753
00:43:06,600 --> 00:43:09,879
Speaker 1: Obviously before the Internet, they would they would have local

754
00:43:09,960 --> 00:43:12,400
Speaker 1: clubs and stuff like that. They would have pen pals

755
00:43:12,880 --> 00:43:15,080
Speaker 1: kind of the way that people would spread any message.

756
00:43:15,120 --> 00:43:18,839
Speaker 1: Pre Internet, they were doing that in Esperanto. And there

757
00:43:18,880 --> 00:43:22,160
Speaker 1: are you know, there are conferences. I think there's one

758
00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:28,120
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty four Universala Congresso is in Tanzania this year,

759
00:43:28,200 --> 00:43:31,280
Speaker 1: which is pretty cool, and it sounds just like they

760
00:43:31,360 --> 00:43:34,480
Speaker 1: get together, they speak Esperanto. They work hard to keep

761
00:43:34,480 --> 00:43:38,279
Speaker 1: this language and this idea alive, which is a very Again,

762
00:43:38,640 --> 00:43:40,040
Speaker 1: I think it's still a noble pursuit.

763
00:43:40,080 --> 00:43:45,040
Speaker 2: And Esperanto has its own teaching app, learn new with

764
00:43:45,120 --> 00:43:49,879
Speaker 2: an exclavation point at learnu dot net. You can also

765
00:43:50,040 --> 00:43:53,120
Speaker 2: pick it up on Duo Linguo and Babble. But I've

766
00:43:53,120 --> 00:43:55,239
Speaker 2: looked on Duo Linguo. They have three hundred and eighty

767
00:43:55,280 --> 00:43:59,319
Speaker 2: one thousand people signed up to learn Esperanto, which is

768
00:43:59,360 --> 00:44:03,000
Speaker 2: more than cling on, more than Navajo, and more than Yiddish.

769
00:44:03,040 --> 00:44:05,959
Speaker 2: It's toward the bottom, but it's still not the last one.

770
00:44:06,239 --> 00:44:08,640
Speaker 2: Three hundred and eighty thousand people world wide is nothing

771
00:44:08,680 --> 00:44:09,399
Speaker 2: to sneeze at.

772
00:44:10,160 --> 00:44:11,520
Speaker 1: Heck no, it's more than klingon.

773
00:44:11,600 --> 00:44:14,799
Speaker 2: There's also a couple of podcasts Radio Esperanto. Radio, by

774
00:44:14,800 --> 00:44:17,640
Speaker 2: the way, is the same word in English and Esperanto. Oh,

775
00:44:17,960 --> 00:44:23,719
Speaker 2: I already ended within an US persone American in person. Okay,

776
00:44:23,760 --> 00:44:26,640
Speaker 2: but you have to probably kind of know already a

777
00:44:26,640 --> 00:44:27,920
Speaker 2: little bit of Esperanto.

778
00:44:28,920 --> 00:44:30,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, I meant to check that out. I'm going to

779
00:44:30,719 --> 00:44:32,360
Speaker 1: listen to one of those and just see if I

780
00:44:32,360 --> 00:44:33,840
Speaker 1: can understand anything like.

781
00:44:33,840 --> 00:44:35,880
Speaker 2: Oh, they said radio again, I know what that means.

782
00:44:36,160 --> 00:44:38,839
Speaker 2: One other thing before we leave. Do you have anything else?

783
00:44:39,640 --> 00:44:41,080
Speaker 1: Yeah? I got it? One and so two things.

784
00:44:41,280 --> 00:44:43,800
Speaker 2: Okay, Well you go first, Okay.

785
00:44:43,840 --> 00:44:47,000
Speaker 1: Nineteen oh five we mentioned that year earlier. What year

786
00:44:47,080 --> 00:44:48,279
Speaker 1: was that? Was that? The first year of.

787
00:44:48,239 --> 00:44:50,560
Speaker 2: The first Congress, the Universal Congress.

788
00:44:50,200 --> 00:44:52,040
Speaker 1: The first Congress. Well that makes sense then, because that

789
00:44:52,120 --> 00:44:55,560
Speaker 1: was the year that the Esperanto flag was debuted. It

790
00:44:55,640 --> 00:44:59,480
Speaker 1: is called the Verda stello or the green Star, and

791
00:44:59,520 --> 00:45:02,080
Speaker 1: it's it. It's nice. It's a green rectangle. It's got

792
00:45:02,120 --> 00:45:05,560
Speaker 1: a little white square in the upper left corner and

793
00:45:05,640 --> 00:45:10,400
Speaker 1: a green star inside that white square. And apparently that

794
00:45:10,440 --> 00:45:13,760
Speaker 1: was a big part of the branding the color green. LLL.

795
00:45:14,440 --> 00:45:17,319
Speaker 1: Early On wanted it to all sort of look the

796
00:45:17,320 --> 00:45:20,160
Speaker 1: same and feel the same. So his pamphlets and books

797
00:45:20,160 --> 00:45:22,000
Speaker 1: and everything was in green. And I think green's just

798
00:45:22,040 --> 00:45:24,279
Speaker 1: a big esper or I'm sorry, verdo is a big

799
00:45:24,560 --> 00:45:25,960
Speaker 1: Esperanto color. Yeah, Verda.

800
00:45:26,120 --> 00:45:30,600
Speaker 2: That's that's branding, one oh one, branding, one on one. Okay,

801
00:45:30,640 --> 00:45:32,600
Speaker 2: Well I'll say mine, then you can finish with years.

802
00:45:32,680 --> 00:45:34,719
Speaker 2: I just wanted to talk about Incubus real quick, that

803
00:45:34,840 --> 00:45:37,360
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty five sixty six Shatner.

804
00:45:37,000 --> 00:45:38,759
Speaker 1: Movie I watched a little bit.

805
00:45:38,800 --> 00:45:40,640
Speaker 2: I did too, and it is really hard to follow.

806
00:45:40,680 --> 00:45:43,120
Speaker 2: And when you're listening to them speak, you're like, oh,

807
00:45:43,200 --> 00:45:46,480
Speaker 2: this is okay. It's esperanto. If you speak Esperanto, it

808
00:45:46,560 --> 00:45:49,200
Speaker 2: drives you up the wall because apparently no one in

809
00:45:49,239 --> 00:45:52,520
Speaker 2: the film knew Esperanto. I learned their dialogue in two

810
00:45:52,600 --> 00:45:55,920
Speaker 2: weeks and there was no one who knew Esperanto on

811
00:45:56,000 --> 00:45:59,320
Speaker 2: the set to coach them. So it's just a moment

812
00:45:59,440 --> 00:46:03,840
Speaker 2: after moment of bad Esperanto pronunciation. And I saw in

813
00:46:04,160 --> 00:46:07,080
Speaker 2: Quartz there was an article that quoted like a film

814
00:46:07,120 --> 00:46:11,200
Speaker 2: reviewer from the age who said that Incubus is like

815
00:46:11,280 --> 00:46:13,880
Speaker 2: a foreign film from a country that never existed.

816
00:46:14,880 --> 00:46:15,560
Speaker 1: What a great dissa.

817
00:46:15,600 --> 00:46:19,359
Speaker 2: I thought so too. We're checking out five minutes of it.

818
00:46:20,080 --> 00:46:23,439
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, that's it. That's it.

819
00:46:23,800 --> 00:46:27,360
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, if you want to know more about Esperanto, everybody,

820
00:46:27,480 --> 00:46:30,480
Speaker 2: go check it out. You do worse than starting No,

821
00:46:30,600 --> 00:46:32,759
Speaker 2: actually you couldn't do worse than starting with Incubus, but

822
00:46:32,840 --> 00:46:37,040
Speaker 2: start there anyway. And since I said Incubus, it's time

823
00:46:37,080 --> 00:46:37,919
Speaker 2: for listener mail.

824
00:46:40,480 --> 00:46:45,319
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this eight quite right. Hey, guys, listen

825
00:46:45,360 --> 00:46:46,920
Speaker 1: to the latest episode. I got a kick out of

826
00:46:46,960 --> 00:46:48,799
Speaker 1: Josh saying that people who requit and this is on

827
00:46:48,920 --> 00:46:51,880
Speaker 1: dry cleaning, who request a double crease in their pants

828
00:46:52,000 --> 00:46:52,960
Speaker 1: ain't quite right.

829
00:46:53,040 --> 00:46:53,799
Speaker 2: I stand by there.

830
00:46:54,520 --> 00:46:57,279
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a Southern itsm I guess. I used

831
00:46:57,320 --> 00:46:59,839
Speaker 1: to live in Miami. Now I'm back in Maryland, where

832
00:46:59,840 --> 00:47:04,120
Speaker 1: I've along go Hagar's town flying box cars. And I

833
00:47:04,160 --> 00:47:08,240
Speaker 1: worked as a housekeeper for the opulently wealthy one woman

834
00:47:08,680 --> 00:47:11,239
Speaker 1: I could name drop, but I won't requested from her

835
00:47:11,239 --> 00:47:15,960
Speaker 1: housekeepers that her bed sheets be ironed, no joke. She

836
00:47:16,040 --> 00:47:19,560
Speaker 1: wanted her flat and fitted king sized bed sheets laundered

837
00:47:19,600 --> 00:47:24,760
Speaker 1: and ironed every day. Wow, here's the kicker. This woman

838
00:47:24,800 --> 00:47:29,000
Speaker 1: almost became my mother in law. But I digress. Definitely

839
00:47:29,280 --> 00:47:32,280
Speaker 1: not quite right. Love the show, guys. It's my news source,

840
00:47:32,360 --> 00:47:36,280
Speaker 1: my companion, my teacher, and has given an otherwise awkward

841
00:47:36,400 --> 00:47:38,960
Speaker 1: me plenty of knowledge to be able to connect with

842
00:47:39,000 --> 00:47:42,160
Speaker 1: someone on almost any topic. And that was a lovely

843
00:47:42,200 --> 00:47:44,640
Speaker 1: email from the wonderful Ashlan Powers.

844
00:47:44,719 --> 00:47:46,960
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Ashlan, that was great. I would divide

845
00:47:47,000 --> 00:47:49,239
Speaker 2: you against using us as your news source though, but

846
00:47:49,360 --> 00:47:51,120
Speaker 2: other than that, thank you very much.

847
00:47:51,800 --> 00:47:52,200
Speaker 1: Agreed.

848
00:47:52,480 --> 00:47:54,640
Speaker 2: If you want to be like Ashlin and tell us

849
00:47:54,680 --> 00:47:57,440
Speaker 2: a great little anecdote leaving out the names to protect

850
00:47:57,440 --> 00:48:01,240
Speaker 2: the not necessarily innocent, but you know, just out of tact,

851
00:48:01,760 --> 00:48:03,960
Speaker 2: you can do so via email send it off to

852
00:48:04,040 --> 00:48:10,200
Speaker 2: stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.

853
00:48:10,320 --> 00:48:13,200
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For

854
00:48:13,320 --> 00:48:17,480
Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

855
00:48:17,600 --> 00:48:19,440
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.