[Music] what language were the people singing in on the record you just heard an excerpt from and why do i think you might be interested in learning that language they were singing in esperanto what is esperanto well it's a language but rather different from other languages you may have studied in that it's a planned language a constructed language intended for international use to provide a means of communication between speakers of different mother tongues there are three reasons why i think one would be justified in investigating esperanto and indeed learning it one is based on idealism one on practical advantage and one on linguistic interest [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] oh when people ask me what i'm working on and i mention esperanto either they have no idea and they say what is that or they say oh wasn't that that communist thing from the 20s or uh you know there's there's a few different answers like that the people who have heard of it had i've heard something sort of idealistic and utopian that never went anywhere and died out esperanto is not a language that carries much prestige with it sadly in fact rather frequently if i announce to the world that i speak esperanto people start looking at me funny but um i think certainly behind esperanto is a notion of the fundamental goodness of [Music] humanity [Music] [Music] esperanto [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign so where did esperanto come from it starts with a guy called zamenhof who lived in poland was actually born in 1859 was a very humble idealistic character he lived in bialystok which was the polish area under russian control when he was born with a mix of people's nations languages there were the jews who spoke yiddish there were russians germans and poles all living together and all hating each other the jews and the other people were living in very very bad conditions they were killing themselves each other there were pogroms and so on so these people wanted to to make a better world without killing of people and peace and so on [Music] zamenhof believed that the tension among the various ethnicities came about as a result of a lack of understanding that's where the idea of creating a language was born so just as the ashkenazi jews among whom he grew up could speak with one another in in yiddish so the whole world might speak with one another through esperanto [Music] zamenhof was not a sophisticated linguist and he used sort of intuition in putting a language together many of the roots in esperanto have a sort of latin base to them but he also has some germanic roots even a few greek words and english as well [Music] so when he finally finished his language and was ready to send it out into the world he bound it up in little booklets and the book was called lingva international and it was signed doktoro esperanto he didn't put his own name to it he signed it dr one who hopes from asperas the verb to hope and that name got attached to the language lingua internationa is kind of international language doesn't inspire a lot of fervor but esperanto that that fits much more with the ideal behind language when esperanto and the ideas of chaminov came it was the time of great hopes science will save the world so with all this movement the people had this idea that the new brave world was coming [Music] this was the age where it wasn't so unusual to believe that a social engineering experiment could work this was the beginning of communism this was the beginning of all kinds of grand social engineering experiments and esperanto fit into this perfectly [Music] [Music] they created an esperanto flag an esperanto anthem they had a system of consoles local representatives across the world who would help esperantists moving around the world what zamenhof did was not really create a language he wasn't interested in the language as a language he created a community and a history in effect from scratch and this was brilliant and it worked [Music] [Music] here in this kind of congresses you get something which is unique in the world you get people from different and very hostile countries talking together as normal people here you can see people from arab countries to with people from the states and see people from china talking with people from iran people from iran talking with people from israel so of course they understand that people are the same all over the world most of the people here are very full of this enthusiasm and they really believe that they can help to change the world with esperanto and do something for i don't know for humankind maybe for [Music] everybody [Music] [Music] [Music] uh [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] this is the problem with social engineering is you have to convince large numbers of people to participate in it and to get the numbers necessary to overhaul the way life is done you have to use brute force this is the tragedy of the century that to make these grand experiments work there had to be a stalin or a pole pot or a mao to enforce these changes from above [Music] stalin persecuted esperantists primarily because they were people who believed in internationalism so in the great purges of 36 37 38 many esperantists were either exterminated or sent off to die in siberia so the russian movement was decimated just as the german esperanto movement was decimated by the nazis [Music] hitler called it a language of jews zamenhof himself had died in 1917 way before this but all of his children perished in the holocaust and essentially the zamahr family was annihilated [Music] after the war esperanto started to look a lot more naive than it had looked before it was a horrible thing to face if you're an idealistic person who believed that the world could change for the better to see it go so wrong like that but they didn't want to let go of the ideals of esperanto the parodies esperanto [Music] [Music] if you have this ideal that this language will bring peace to the world we'll bring people together people are going to say to you english is the international language how could you possibly think that esperanto has a chance when there's english but you just have to believe that there's a chance and keep doing what you're doing so yes one who hopes fits pretty well i had this interviewer and he asked about um asked about about how you say certain things in esperanto and one of the things that he said was um how do you say kook in esperanto i knew exactly where this was going and so needless to say refuse to tell him how to say kook in esperanto but the point i often make is that there are lots of famous people who've been associated with esperanto in various ways george soros has an association with esperanto that goes all the way back to his childhood his father was a speaker of esperanto j.r.r tolkien president dictator whatever you call him of yugoslavia tito and the brazilian soccer player pele not sure i can think of any good other examples but they're all over the place these people there's a following feature movie with william shatner in the starring role called incubus and it's it's a really terrible movie um but even worse than that the esperanto is really terrible the pronunciation is very bad [Music] [Music] me [Music] when there was the fall of the berlin wall there was also the fall of the interest in ideologies by european young people they told yes communism is not the solution it's clear other forms of ideology maybe also are not a solution religion is not a solution so what is interesting is to live your life and okay everybody think for think for yourself yourself but so that is something with which esperanto cannot go together because esperanto is an active movement to change the world [Music] [Music] square to the camera [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] oh [Music] on this island off the coast of the netherlands called teschel there's this esperanto monument that's still there it was built in 1935 and there was a pretty large percentage of esperanto speakers for a small place like this a thousand esperanto speakers out of a population of 8 000 or something everyone who speaks esperanto has this flag with the green star the star of hope green is the color of hope in years and years on the birthday of the queen's birthday that flock was haste in that step once a year does it still happen no no nothing there are yeah only the monument remembers us to esperanto and nobody speaks it out for story the english language has won what did you say as world language was english now the language and not esperanto and the years before the war everyone believed that esperanto would be the world language [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] most people think about esperanto as a failure because it had this idea it was be a language for the world and clearly it isn't for the world and if you're gonna learn a second language you're gonna learn english but in my view it's a it's a phenomenal incredible success because my field what i'm looking at is invented languages and there have been thousands of them people have been inventing languages for hundreds of years sitting down crafting their little rule systems inventing their vocabulary and have you heard of any other invented language besides esperanto the fact that anyone speaks it at all is a huge success but the fact that there's thousands of speakers and even native speakers is it's it's pretty incredible the whole point about belief is that it's believing in something that hasn't yet happened that's what belief is it's in much the same way as i hate to make this analogy because people will now declare that i'm a religious maniac but it's very much like the notion of faith the whole point of faith is that you believe in things that are not altogether rationally explainable and so it is with esperanto i really think that we would be much better off if we made if we made use of this of this language but i'm not convinced that it's going to happen 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