WEBVTT - Esperanto: Tre Mojosa 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:09.240 Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.280 --> 0:00:13.680 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:16.319 Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is stuff you 0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:19.800 should know. I don't know how to say that. And Esperanto, 0:00:20.200 --> 0:00:21.919 now that I think about it, I really should have 0:00:21.960 --> 0:00:22.560 looked that up. 0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:24.680 I was wondering if you were gonna do that. 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:28.960 I can't believe I didn't. I feel kind of jerky, 0:00:29.240 --> 0:00:31.360 jerk woddy. I guess I don't know how to say that. 0:00:31.400 --> 0:00:32.599 And Esperano either. 0:00:34.040 --> 0:00:38.920 Well, jerkwad would be jerk wado, yeah, exactly, or something like. 0:00:38.920 --> 0:00:41.519 That, something similar to that. Yeah, it actually would make 0:00:41.560 --> 0:00:49.360 sense because Esperano is taking root words jerk wad and 0:00:49.400 --> 0:00:51.760 putting them together and then conjugating them in a very 0:00:51.840 --> 0:00:54.600 uniform way. We should probably tell everybody what we're talking 0:00:54.600 --> 0:00:57.360 about here, because we just kind of accidentally got into it. 0:00:57.920 --> 0:01:00.520 Yeah, it's a language, not. 0:01:00.480 --> 0:01:04.720 Just a language. It's a con lang, a constructed language, 0:01:04.920 --> 0:01:08.400 which is a language that you sit down and make up. 0:01:09.440 --> 0:01:11.920 Some people actually do this, and apparently it's addictive when 0:01:11.920 --> 0:01:16.440 you start, as opposed to, like I guess, a natural language, 0:01:16.480 --> 0:01:20.120 one that just kind of develops organically over time as 0:01:20.160 --> 0:01:22.520 a group of people start talking to one another. 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:26.760 Yeah, Esperanto itself means one who hopes, and that will 0:01:26.800 --> 0:01:28.880 all make sense once you hear the story, because it's 0:01:28.920 --> 0:01:32.760 a pretty wonderful story. Actually, I didn't know much about it. 0:01:32.800 --> 0:01:34.000 I just thought it was kind of one of these 0:01:34.160 --> 0:01:38.240 goofy fringe things, and it is a fringe thing. They're 0:01:38.280 --> 0:01:45.200 about a thousand people who are native, not just Esperanto speakers, 0:01:45.560 --> 0:01:49.760 but where their first language that they learned was Esperanto. 0:01:49.800 --> 0:01:52.960 They are native speakers. Dave Rus helped us with this, 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:59.360 and he dug up George Soros, billionaire. Oh, I don't know. 0:02:00.040 --> 0:02:01.840 People describe him in a lot of ways depending on 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:06.280 who you are, but as the most famous Esperanto speaker. 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:08.800 But I did poke around a little bit and found 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:16.119 that Tolstoy j R. R. Tolkien spoke Esperanto and lemaire, 0:02:17.160 --> 0:02:21.720 basically the father of modern cinema. And as this will 0:02:21.760 --> 0:02:25.080 become as a surprise when you see later on what happened, 0:02:25.080 --> 0:02:28.480 but Joseph Stalin apparently knew how to speak Esperanto. 0:02:28.760 --> 0:02:31.040 Huh, that is kind of a surprise. The thing I 0:02:31.040 --> 0:02:33.400 think that differentiates George soros so is he was a 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:37.200 native speaker, like that was his first language was Esperanto. 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:40.679 Yeah, but I looked over the list of just speakers, right, 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:43.160 notable speakers, and there are a lot of people in 0:02:43.200 --> 0:02:45.639 the list, but I just hadn't heard of many of them. 0:02:45.720 --> 0:02:47.880 Stilln' to big surprise, I'd like to add one more 0:02:47.919 --> 0:02:50.760 to that list of notable Esperanto speakers, our own ben 0:02:50.840 --> 0:02:52.760 bowling from stuff they don't want you to know. 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:56.480 I thought he spoke Esperanto, that tracks he did. 0:02:56.520 --> 0:02:58.600 I emailed them just to make sure that I wasn't 0:02:58.639 --> 0:03:01.520 just making something up in my head, and he said, yeah, 0:03:01.600 --> 0:03:03.919 he used to, you know, be into it, and he 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:05.400 just kind of fell out of it, and then he 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:08.560 emailed me like hours later, and it was like, damn it, Josh, 0:03:08.600 --> 0:03:12.080 now I'm back into Esperano. So he's back into it. 0:03:12.120 --> 0:03:16.519 Everybody, Well, learning Esperanto is about as ben bowling a 0:03:16.600 --> 0:03:18.600 thing as I can imagine. 0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:23.519 It is, because it's inclusive, it's intelligent, it's curious people, 0:03:24.000 --> 0:03:27.519 it's witty. It seems to be like one of the better, 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:34.760 most more nicer kind online communities that you'll come across 0:03:34.800 --> 0:03:35.600 from what I can. 0:03:35.800 --> 0:03:38.840 And it's fringe, and that's that's Ben for sure. 0:03:39.600 --> 0:03:42.280 Yeah, and again that's Ben Bolan from stuff they don't 0:03:42.280 --> 0:03:42.840 want you to know. 0:03:43.560 --> 0:03:47.080 That's right. So you said it was a constructed language. 0:03:48.560 --> 0:03:51.200 I guess we'll talk a little bit about why people 0:03:51.240 --> 0:03:53.120 would construct a language and a little bit of the 0:03:53.200 --> 0:03:55.960 history of these languages. There are a lot of reasons 0:03:55.960 --> 0:04:00.640 for doing that. Most of them are because they want 0:04:00.680 --> 0:04:04.240 to create a language that's easier to learn, that's simpler. 0:04:04.680 --> 0:04:07.120 A lot of times there might be religious reasons or 0:04:07.160 --> 0:04:11.800 philosophical reasons. Some people just do it for fun. A 0:04:11.840 --> 0:04:14.760 lot of them were designed to be a universal language. 0:04:14.760 --> 0:04:18.279 In Esperanto, Actually, Esperanto takes a lot of these boxes, 0:04:18.279 --> 0:04:20.520 as we'll see, but a lot of them are created 0:04:20.600 --> 0:04:23.560 for like, hey, wouldn't it be better if everybody could 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:25.040 speak a language? 0:04:25.200 --> 0:04:31.960 Yeah? What a universal language? A language where I guess 0:04:32.000 --> 0:04:34.440 the whole point of a universal language is there's definitely 0:04:34.440 --> 0:04:37.680 the point of Esperanto. The idea is that if you 0:04:37.720 --> 0:04:41.200 can speak a common language with anybody else on the planet, 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:46.000 that should conceivably do away with a lot of different 0:04:46.240 --> 0:04:51.040 conflicts that probably arise from disputes over language, from differences 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:53.680 in language from an inability to see one another's viewpoint 0:04:53.680 --> 0:04:58.400 because we're having trouble talking with one another. And that's 0:04:58.520 --> 0:05:01.760 kind of the basis of a lot of the constructed languages, 0:05:02.160 --> 0:05:04.880 that idea that if we can all speak a universal language, 0:05:04.880 --> 0:05:15.200 there'll be a global human family or world, which that 0:05:15.320 --> 0:05:18.760 does sound like you'd be up. George Soros's allly yeah. 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:22.120 I mean, if you just could create a language that 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:26.479 where all it was was don't shoot and how about 0:05:26.600 --> 0:05:29.080 a plate of cookies and a glass of milk? 0:05:29.680 --> 0:05:32.479 Oh yeah, how far we go, it'd be a much 0:05:32.520 --> 0:05:33.479 better world. 0:05:34.520 --> 0:05:37.520 So admitted languages of you know, people have always sort 0:05:37.560 --> 0:05:39.840 of been doing this here and there, but in the 0:05:40.000 --> 0:05:43.919 nineteenth century it seems to have really hit its stride. 0:05:43.920 --> 0:05:49.240 There were more than one hundred constructed languages that decade 0:05:49.279 --> 0:05:53.120 that century alone, and Esperanto is far and away the 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:56.920 most popular today, although for a long long time it 0:05:56.960 --> 0:05:59.760 was a language created by a German priest name Johann 0:06:00.279 --> 0:06:04.159 Schlayer called vol Vollapuk. 0:06:04.160 --> 0:06:07.279 Yeah, Vallapuk. Apparently God told. 0:06:07.200 --> 0:06:09.920 Him to do it, sure mission from Gad. 0:06:09.720 --> 0:06:11.680 Yeah, what else are you gonna do? You're gonna make 0:06:11.720 --> 0:06:14.000 that language? And I'm sure he was like, are you 0:06:14.040 --> 0:06:16.880 sure you want to call it vollapuk, And guy was like, 0:06:16.960 --> 0:06:19.919 get busy, and he did, and it actually caught on 0:06:20.080 --> 0:06:21.920 really well. There seems to have been kind of a 0:06:21.920 --> 0:06:24.599 bug in the late nineteenth century, at least in the 0:06:24.640 --> 0:06:31.040 West of invented languages, and vollapuke apparently the fit the bill, 0:06:31.080 --> 0:06:33.440 and it spread you far and wide. I can't not 0:06:33.600 --> 0:06:34.159 say it like that. 0:06:34.240 --> 0:06:35.840 I'm sorry, that's fine. 0:06:36.240 --> 0:06:41.640 They started having like international congresses or conferences of vallapuc. 0:06:42.760 --> 0:06:46.960 President Grover Cleveland's wife Francis named their dog Vollapuke. Like 0:06:47.040 --> 0:06:50.120 it was. It was a worldwide phenomenon. Even if you 0:06:50.160 --> 0:06:52.840 didn't know it or had no interest in learning it, 0:06:52.960 --> 0:06:54.200 you knew about it. 0:06:54.640 --> 0:06:57.120 Yeah, that's because that dog threw up all over the place. Though. 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:02.839 We had a cat nam Underfoot. Literally, my dad named 0:07:02.839 --> 0:07:04.080 this cat underfoot. 0:07:04.200 --> 0:07:05.120 That's a very good name. 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:07.000 And I'll give you two guesses why. 0:07:09.000 --> 0:07:14.080 Because the cat had very long legs, okay, and no 0:07:14.200 --> 0:07:17.600 feat to speak of. That's right, it was underfooted. 0:07:18.800 --> 0:07:21.400 So that conference you were talking about for Vatapuke was 0:07:21.440 --> 0:07:23.920 eighteen eighty nine, but a couple of years before that, 0:07:24.160 --> 0:07:26.320 so it was, you know, cruising and doing pretty well, 0:07:26.640 --> 0:07:31.760 but two years before that, Esperanto was created and really 0:07:31.880 --> 0:07:34.640 took it over, you know, over the next like thirty 0:07:34.800 --> 0:07:35.600 forty years or so. 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:38.800 I mean, imagine there being a trend today of like 0:07:38.840 --> 0:07:42.880 a universal language is catching on, like on TikTok oh God, 0:07:43.160 --> 0:07:45.000 like it would just take off. But it's such a 0:07:45.040 --> 0:07:47.280 bizarre thing to think of, and this is what people 0:07:47.320 --> 0:07:49.800 were into. And this was long before social media, so 0:07:49.880 --> 0:07:53.360 it was hard for something to become a global phenomenon. 0:07:53.360 --> 0:07:58.040 And yet not one but two universal languages took hold 0:07:58.080 --> 0:08:02.360 in the eighteen eighties. Yeah, so Esperano apparently just totally 0:08:02.400 --> 0:08:07.080 supplanted vollapuke. But there is a little footnote of it. 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:12.440 Apparently the Danes say what we would say, like, it's 0:08:12.440 --> 0:08:14.680 all Greek to me, Like, I don't understand what you're saying. 0:08:15.360 --> 0:08:18.000 The Danish expression is it's pure vollapuke. 0:08:18.920 --> 0:08:19.560 That makes sense. 0:08:20.200 --> 0:08:24.160 Yeah, it's great. I love that. I love learning Danish expressions. 0:08:24.680 --> 0:08:26.480 I'm going to start saying that. I don't say it's 0:08:26.480 --> 0:08:29.120 all Greek to me much anyway, but if that ever 0:08:29.160 --> 0:08:31.320 comes up, I'm gonna say it's pure ballapuke. 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:33.640 Yeah, and no offense for a Greek list. There's just 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:35.080 just something someone says here. 0:08:35.760 --> 0:08:37.560 Yeah, I wonder what Greek's think about that. 0:08:37.600 --> 0:08:40.040 Actually don't know. I don't know if it's gotten back 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:41.040 to them yet. 0:08:41.800 --> 0:08:44.320 Yeah, So should we talk a little bit about this 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:47.960 the creator of Esperanto? Who was I tried to find 0:08:48.000 --> 0:08:49.679 out bad things about this guy, but he seems like 0:08:49.720 --> 0:08:53.120 a pretty remarkable, humble, well intentioned fella. 0:08:53.640 --> 0:08:55.360 And I also read that he was one of those 0:08:55.840 --> 0:08:59.040 rare people and who would sleep just a couple hours 0:08:59.080 --> 0:09:03.080 a night rather than sit around and stare at the wall. 0:09:03.120 --> 0:09:05.920 He did interesting things. He was a polyglot, He learned 0:09:05.920 --> 0:09:08.760 tons of different languages, He was well read, he was 0:09:08.800 --> 0:09:11.679 an optometrist. He did all sorts of stuff. But along 0:09:11.720 --> 0:09:16.679 the way, one of the things he did was create Esperanto. 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:19.960 And he had a pretty great, well not great, but 0:09:20.000 --> 0:09:22.000 a pretty heavy backstory to it. 0:09:22.679 --> 0:09:25.720 Yeah. His name, we haven't said his name yet. He's 0:09:25.720 --> 0:09:30.880 known as l el Zamenhoff or Soamenhoff, but his full 0:09:30.920 --> 0:09:36.600 name was Ludwik Leitzer Soamenhoff. Born on December fifteenth, which 0:09:36.640 --> 0:09:42.920 is National Samenhoff Day. Oh sure, yeah, in eighteen fifty nine, 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:46.960 born in bi Alishtock, Poland. He was Jewish as was 0:09:47.160 --> 0:09:51.360 a lot of belishtock about seventy percent, also some Germans, 0:09:51.360 --> 0:09:55.240 some Russians, obviously Poles, and growing up there was pretty 0:09:55.320 --> 0:09:58.000 rough because there was a lot of ethnic violence going on. 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:01.560 There were Jews being attacked by Poles, there were Germans 0:10:01.600 --> 0:10:06.040 being attacked by Russians. In eighteen eighty one, there was 0:10:07.000 --> 0:10:11.800 a false, I guess, accusation that Jews were behind the 0:10:11.840 --> 0:10:16.319 assassination of Alexander the Second of Russia, and that started 0:10:16.520 --> 0:10:21.760 the Pograms, which were these organized massacres of Polish and 0:10:21.800 --> 0:10:23.040 Russian Jewish communities. 0:10:23.200 --> 0:10:28.200 Yeah, because Poland was annexed by Russia from eighteen oh 0:10:28.200 --> 0:10:30.280 seven to nineteen twenty one, which is why they would 0:10:30.280 --> 0:10:34.520 have cared that was their czar. And apparently it wasn't 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:37.000 the Jews at all or anybody who had anything to 0:10:37.040 --> 0:10:40.640 do with Jewishness. It was anti Autocratics, a group of 0:10:41.240 --> 0:10:45.480 called the nouradnya volya people's will, and they threw a 0:10:45.520 --> 0:10:48.600 bomb and blew him up. And apparently his successor, his son, 0:10:48.760 --> 0:10:52.320 Zari Alexander the third, was even worse. But from those 0:10:52.440 --> 0:10:58.040 pograms that el Zamenhoff was alive to witness, and even 0:10:58.120 --> 0:11:00.679 before that just the ethnic violence that I was endemic 0:11:00.720 --> 0:11:04.480 to Biaalistock. That had a really big effect on him, 0:11:04.520 --> 0:11:09.320 and that's where he developed this idea that humanity is 0:11:09.400 --> 0:11:11.440 way more connected than we realized, that we have all 0:11:11.480 --> 0:11:15.200 these false constructs that separate us, that don't have to 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:18.240 separate us, but do time and time again. Language is 0:11:18.280 --> 0:11:20.319 one of them. He cited religion as one of them, 0:11:20.360 --> 0:11:23.400 and he was very Jewish. He was a very religious 0:11:23.440 --> 0:11:27.880 Jewish person, but he still recognized that religion creates conflict 0:11:28.120 --> 0:11:33.320 sometimes it has historically, and he felt like you could 0:11:33.480 --> 0:11:37.240 kind of you could keep the religion, you could keep 0:11:37.280 --> 0:11:39.920 the different nations, you can keep the things that do 0:11:40.040 --> 0:11:43.480 divide us, as long as they had something like a 0:11:43.600 --> 0:11:48.600 universal language laying over the whole thing that could defuse 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:51.760 the conflicts that grow up from those things that divide us. 0:11:52.120 --> 0:11:54.480 Yeah, which was and he was a kid. I mean, 0:11:54.480 --> 0:11:59.960 this is remarkable stuff for a preteen and then teen 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:04.880 nature to sort of understand. So he's clearly a brilliant, empathetic, 0:12:05.000 --> 0:12:09.120 passionate human being. I think, as the you know, family 0:12:09.160 --> 0:12:11.320 story goes, at least he was ten years old and 0:12:11.400 --> 0:12:15.559 he wrote a play called The Tower of Babel colon 0:12:16.360 --> 0:12:20.760 the Beilishtock tragedy in five acts as a ten year old. 0:12:20.840 --> 0:12:25.360 So just this idea of sort of stripping away these 0:12:25.440 --> 0:12:30.080 divisions and realizing, like, hey, we're all human beings. That's 0:12:30.200 --> 0:12:33.160 the one like at the root, that's what we are, 0:12:33.200 --> 0:12:35.880 and we all literally have that in common, yet we 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:38.839 divide ourselves like. It's just a remarkable thing for a 0:12:38.920 --> 0:12:42.280 kid and a lesson for everybody of all ages. Still. 0:12:42.440 --> 0:12:47.479 Yeah, as he was raised, he learned Yiddish, which apparently 0:12:47.520 --> 0:12:50.600 grew out of a German dialect that's written in Hebrew. 0:12:50.600 --> 0:12:54.480 I didn't realize that, but it's the universal language of 0:12:54.520 --> 0:12:58.320 the Ashkenazi Jews, the Jewish people in Central and Eastern Europe. 0:12:58.960 --> 0:13:03.000 So he already understood what a universal language could do. 0:13:03.440 --> 0:13:05.520 You could take a Jewish person from Poland and a 0:13:05.600 --> 0:13:09.240 Jewish person from Czechoslovakia and put them in a room 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:13.400 and they could speak to one another through that second tongue, Yiddish. 0:13:13.720 --> 0:13:17.520 So he set about kind of trying to modernize Yiddish, 0:13:17.720 --> 0:13:20.520 maybe he can spread that, and then he stopped pretty 0:13:20.600 --> 0:13:23.680 much in his tracks because he realized that what he 0:13:23.840 --> 0:13:27.240 was trying to do was say, hey, everybody, let's all 0:13:27.320 --> 0:13:30.720 learn the language of the people you consider criminals and spies. 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:34.000 It was like a really hard sell that he just 0:13:34.120 --> 0:13:38.439 realized wasn't going to go anywhere. So he abandoned trying 0:13:38.480 --> 0:13:41.000 to sell Yiddish or create a universal language out of 0:13:41.080 --> 0:13:44.760 Yiddish and just set about creating one from scratch, which 0:13:44.800 --> 0:13:46.480 is what Esperano came from. 0:13:48.120 --> 0:13:49.439 What a setup it is. 0:13:49.679 --> 0:13:52.280 It's going pretty well so far. We should release this 0:13:52.360 --> 0:13:53.280 as this show. 0:13:54.880 --> 0:13:57.400 Best setup ever. I'm gonna say it, even though it 0:13:57.440 --> 0:13:59.640 annoy some people. Should we take a break. 0:14:00.520 --> 0:14:04.040 I'm going to say it, even though it annoys everybody. Yes, 0:14:04.720 --> 0:14:05.200 we should. 0:14:05.679 --> 0:14:29.080 All right, we'll be right back, all right, so we're 0:14:29.080 --> 0:14:31.920 back really quickly. That sort of made me before we 0:14:32.000 --> 0:14:34.280 left and talked about people being annoyed by asking to 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:38.160 take a break. That came to mind because I jumped 0:14:38.160 --> 0:14:41.040 on Reddit recently, on our subreddit and actually started an 0:14:41.040 --> 0:14:44.640 account because there was so much just sort of bad information, 0:14:45.080 --> 0:14:48.360 like Jerry doesn't even work with him anymore, and just 0:14:48.400 --> 0:14:50.800 all these weird things that people sort of assume that 0:14:50.840 --> 0:14:54.600 we're wrong. And I've since learned that that's and even 0:14:54.680 --> 0:14:56.720 redditors kind of said, like that's kind of a thing. 0:14:56.760 --> 0:14:59.840 People like surmise a lot. Yeah, so I'd signed up 0:14:59.840 --> 0:15:02.880 for a few days and answered like geez a lot 0:15:02.920 --> 0:15:06.120 of questions for like a full day and then got 0:15:06.200 --> 0:15:08.440 right back off. But just wanted people to know if 0:15:08.480 --> 0:15:11.080 they thought I was some phony, that that was really me. 0:15:12.040 --> 0:15:13.480 And most people were awesome. 0:15:13.600 --> 0:15:15.800 You had Jones stunt AMA, Yeah. 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:17.600 Sort of. You know what I don't like about AMAS though? 0:15:17.680 --> 0:15:20.240 Is it this just that rapid fire sort of thing, right, 0:15:20.360 --> 0:15:23.360 So this was like a slow burn AMA and it's 0:15:23.400 --> 0:15:25.640 all still there, a lot of answered questions, like with 0:15:25.720 --> 0:15:28.880 correct information, and like I said, almost everyone was really 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:31.920 really nice, but not everyone is. 0:15:31.960 --> 0:15:35.320 But that's just the nature of online interactions the internets. 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:38.680 That's silly that they think Jerry doesn't work with us anymore. 0:15:38.720 --> 0:15:42.920 She doesn't exist. Someone was really annoyed though, about like 0:15:43.480 --> 0:15:45.640 every time they ask if it's time to take a break, 0:15:46.200 --> 0:15:48.320 and I was like, we do that because we don't 0:15:48.360 --> 0:15:50.640 script this out and I'm genuinely wondering if it's a 0:15:50.640 --> 0:15:51.680 good time to take a break. 0:15:51.800 --> 0:15:53.800 Yeah, what a weird thing to be upset about. 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:58.000 It's a conversation anyway, Thanks to everyone who participated, and 0:15:58.360 --> 0:15:59.680 you can go there and check it out if you 0:15:59.680 --> 0:16:03.479 want back to esperanto. 0:16:04.200 --> 0:16:06.560 Yes, you want me to pick it up because we 0:16:06.600 --> 0:16:07.760 don't script this stuff. 0:16:09.000 --> 0:16:10.720 Why did you ask me that? That's so annoying? 0:16:11.520 --> 0:16:16.200 So we said that that l. Zamenhoff had said, Okay, 0:16:16.240 --> 0:16:18.920 I'm going to start from scratch. I'm going to create 0:16:18.960 --> 0:16:21.480 a language that doesn't come from anywhere, that's not spoken 0:16:21.520 --> 0:16:25.200 by anybody. I'm going to make this universal language from scratch. 0:16:25.560 --> 0:16:28.880 And so his nineteenth birthday party, he had already done 0:16:29.000 --> 0:16:32.480 enough that he handed out pocket dictionaries and grammar charts 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:33.320 to the guests. 0:16:33.600 --> 0:16:37.320 Man of his birthday, which a swinging party. That's right 0:16:37.760 --> 0:16:38.800 for a nineteen year old. 0:16:38.920 --> 0:16:42.720 He called the new language lingo Internacia or no inter 0:16:42.880 --> 0:16:47.400 Nazia because that sees its remember, yeah, yeah, And he 0:16:47.440 --> 0:16:51.600 composed a little hymn, and I kind of taught myself 0:16:51.720 --> 0:16:54.480 how to pronounce it, even though I'm going to completely 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:55.160 screw it up. 0:16:55.160 --> 0:16:56.960 But may I you gotta sing it though? 0:16:58.080 --> 0:17:01.400 No, yeah, no, you'd don't. You have to say it 0:17:01.440 --> 0:17:07.680 solemnly like this, Mala mikite de las nazis, cado cado 0:17:08.040 --> 0:17:15.879 yam tempesta la tote holmose in familia co une gare sodebe. 0:17:16.359 --> 0:17:18.320 Nice work can I tell everyone what it means? 0:17:18.560 --> 0:17:19.639 Yes, but you have to sing it. 0:17:20.280 --> 0:17:25.359 Okay, Let the hatred of the nations fall, fall, fall. 0:17:25.840 --> 0:17:31.159 The time is already here. All humanity must unite in 0:17:31.600 --> 0:17:32.879 one family. 0:17:33.440 --> 0:17:36.600 Doesn't rhyme? Yeah, So when I'm ready to send him, 0:17:36.600 --> 0:17:37.320 it didn't rhyme. 0:17:39.119 --> 0:17:43.479 So he's cruising with this thing. He has this banging 0:17:43.600 --> 0:17:47.639 nineteenth birthday party where he's given out this stuff to 0:17:47.760 --> 0:17:51.080 his friends. I'm sure they're just like, who is this guy? Even? 0:17:51.160 --> 0:17:55.000 This is amazing? And in eighteen eighty seven he self 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:58.439 published a pamphlet, a forty two page pamphlet called uh 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:00.160 are you gonna pronounce this stuff? 0:18:01.000 --> 0:18:01.919 Unua libro? 0:18:02.720 --> 0:18:04.800 Okay? I thought that was right. It means first book. 0:18:05.640 --> 0:18:07.120 And as you'll see, if you notice some of these 0:18:07.119 --> 0:18:12.600 words sound like other languages, it's because, like other constructed languages, 0:18:12.640 --> 0:18:15.959 it's usually based on like the words are based on 0:18:16.000 --> 0:18:19.359 some other words. So when you hear esperanto, like if 0:18:19.400 --> 0:18:22.639 you go to watch a scene from the Esperanto William 0:18:22.640 --> 0:18:25.480 Shatner movie that you can watch on YouTube, yeah, I 0:18:25.560 --> 0:18:28.920 think from him, Well when was that sixty sixty six? 0:18:29.000 --> 0:18:32.120 Everybody says, but Turner classic movies listed as sixty five, 0:18:32.160 --> 0:18:35.200 which I find confusing, but everybody else is sixty. 0:18:34.880 --> 0:18:38.320 Six a side with tcm always. But if you go 0:18:38.359 --> 0:18:40.080 to and you hear or just you know, I looked 0:18:40.119 --> 0:18:43.199 up on YouTube, just like Esperanto conversations, or if you 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:47.840 bump into Ben Bowlin somewhere in Atlanta, you'll you'll sit 0:18:47.880 --> 0:18:49.840 there and you'll go, oh wow, that sounds a little 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:54.440 bit like Spanish some and maybe it might sound Italian, 0:18:54.480 --> 0:18:57.439 which Spanish also sounds kind of Italian sometimes, and so 0:18:57.720 --> 0:18:59.720 a lot of it might sound a little bit familiar, 0:18:59.840 --> 0:19:04.960 like libro for book, like that makes sense, like the 0:19:04.960 --> 0:19:08.000 word library. So just pointing out that when you hear 0:19:08.320 --> 0:19:10.560 Esperanto words and you think it sounds familiar, it's not 0:19:10.640 --> 0:19:11.159 by accident. 0:19:11.280 --> 0:19:14.520 Yeah. The reason why, especially if you are a Westerner. 0:19:15.320 --> 0:19:17.680 Three quarters of the root words he started out with, 0:19:17.800 --> 0:19:20.800 nine hundred of them, as we'll see, are taken from 0:19:20.880 --> 0:19:23.880 Romance languages. So it's yeah, if you're an English speaker, 0:19:23.880 --> 0:19:25.480 it's very easy to pick up. 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:28.600 That's a much simpler way to say what it says. 0:19:28.680 --> 0:19:33.040 So in the in the that first book, unua libro, 0:19:33.680 --> 0:19:36.199 which I can I can understand what that means just 0:19:36.240 --> 0:19:39.320 from the little primer, which I have to say, hats 0:19:39.320 --> 0:19:42.399 off to Dave. He put together a primer for us 0:19:42.440 --> 0:19:45.399 in this article that like, when you go back and 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:49.480 research it more widely, you're like, this is really difficult 0:19:49.560 --> 0:19:53.000 to like kind of wrangle into one small little ball. 0:19:53.440 --> 0:19:55.520 And he managed to do that really really well. So 0:19:55.600 --> 0:19:59.479 way to go, Dave. But that first book, Unuwa Libro, 0:20:00.080 --> 0:20:03.119 it had some sample translations. It said, here's here's how 0:20:03.440 --> 0:20:06.600 you say this this stuff. Here's the grammar rules, here's 0:20:06.600 --> 0:20:10.119 the dictionary, here's how you pronounce it. And he said 0:20:10.119 --> 0:20:12.800 that his pen name. He wrote it as a pen name, 0:20:12.880 --> 0:20:16.800 doctro esperanto or doctor hopeful is what it. 0:20:16.960 --> 0:20:17.280 Loved it. 0:20:18.240 --> 0:20:22.320 And he called again his language the lingvo inter Nazia, 0:20:23.280 --> 0:20:26.639 and that's what he thought everybody was going to call it. 0:20:26.720 --> 0:20:30.080 But instead everybody said, I like this doctor hopeful cat. 0:20:30.160 --> 0:20:31.680 Let's just call his language. 0:20:31.400 --> 0:20:36.040 Esperanto, yeah, which is sort of ironic because from the 0:20:36.080 --> 0:20:38.360 beginning he was a very humble guy and didn't want 0:20:38.440 --> 0:20:42.080 to be like he didn't name it, you know, Zamenhoffer 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:44.800 or whatever, like he didn't want it to be named 0:20:44.840 --> 0:20:47.199 after him. He didn't want to own it. No, we 0:20:47.240 --> 0:20:49.760 would call something like this open source today. He didn't 0:20:49.800 --> 0:20:51.879 want it to be about him, So the fact that 0:20:51.920 --> 0:20:53.520 he made up a name and that they named it 0:20:53.560 --> 0:20:56.480 after him anyway is kind of funny. I get the 0:20:56.520 --> 0:20:58.160 sense that it probably didn't bother him too much because 0:20:58.160 --> 0:20:59.040 he seemed like a good guy. 0:20:59.200 --> 0:20:59.480 Sure. 0:20:59.800 --> 0:21:03.560 But his goal, and we'll talk about sort of the 0:21:04.040 --> 0:21:05.960 other stuff that came along later, as far as his 0:21:06.080 --> 0:21:10.000 sort of desire to attach other meaning to it, But 0:21:10.359 --> 0:21:12.960 his sort of root goal at the beginning was I 0:21:13.040 --> 0:21:17.080 want a language for the love of whoever you worship 0:21:17.240 --> 0:21:20.720 that is easier to learn than everything else out there. Yeah, 0:21:20.760 --> 0:21:23.080 and I want it to be a language, like you mentioned, 0:21:23.080 --> 0:21:25.560 sort of from the get go that can unite people 0:21:25.680 --> 0:21:29.040 and promote peace, like two very sort of noble pursuits, 0:21:29.040 --> 0:21:29.400 I think. 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:32.840 So, okay, let's talk about goal one. A language that's 0:21:32.880 --> 0:21:36.040 for the love of whatever you worship, easier to learn 0:21:36.080 --> 0:21:38.960 than most of the other languages out there. Right right, 0:21:39.880 --> 0:21:44.719 Apparently you could learn Esperanto in something like about forty 0:21:44.840 --> 0:21:50.439 hours of class time, one full week of learning. You'll 0:21:50.560 --> 0:21:52.520 walk out of there on the end of the day 0:21:52.600 --> 0:21:56.600 Friday being able to converse basically in Esperanto. Tell people 0:21:56.600 --> 0:21:59.640 where you live, who you are, what you like, point 0:21:59.680 --> 0:22:02.200 to class and identify them correctly. 0:22:02.840 --> 0:22:05.399 That isn't don't shoot? How about to play a cookie 0:22:05.400 --> 0:22:05.840 and some milk? 0:22:05.840 --> 0:22:09.920 Exactly? They should teach that first, for sure. Apparently that's 0:22:10.040 --> 0:22:12.560 I mean, you can just know without even knowing anything 0:22:12.560 --> 0:22:15.879 about learning languages. That's really a short amount of time. 0:22:16.760 --> 0:22:18.840 It takes about one hundred to two hundred hours to 0:22:18.920 --> 0:22:22.600 learn French or German to the same degree. There's another 0:22:22.680 --> 0:22:26.560 person who estimated that for English speakers it's five times 0:22:26.560 --> 0:22:30.320 easier to learn Esperano than French or Spanish, ten times 0:22:30.359 --> 0:22:33.159 easier than Russian, and twenty times easier than Chinese. And 0:22:33.200 --> 0:22:35.960