Has anyone here ever heard of the language Esperanto?

[Stop_the_War]

It was a language created in 1887 by L.L. Zamenhof, a Polish eye-doctor who spoke many languages. He lived up in Bialystok, Poland and he lived in an environment where there were many different language groups that were in constant conflict with each other, Russians, Germans, Jewish Yiddish speakers, Polish, and so on. He decided that a way to bring more peace into the world was an international second language for all.

http://esperanto.net

to see what esperanto looks like, here's a news site in Esperanto:
http://gxangalo.com

[flamingyouth]

1. Yeah, I've heard of it.

[Lautremont]

2. Not only have I heard of it,

I own a copy of the only feature film ever made in Esperanto, the 1966 horror film Incubus, starring a pre-Trek William Shatner.

Cinematic gold.

[LSparkle]

11. I've seen that movie!

Really interesting to hear Esperanto spoken by Captain Kirk.

[Hissyspit]

3. Sure. I've even heard people speak it. World language...

will probably morph into its own version of Esperanto eventually anyway.

[karlrschneider]

4. It was a subject of much discussion around 40 years ago...didn't catch on

though...

[havocmom]

7. yeah, my mom had high hopes for it

Think she was sad it wasn't the cure all for international trouble. She really believed most people were good and just needed to be able to communicate, learn and stop being afraid of others.

Her heart was in the right place. She used to pester our schools about why it wasn't offered as a language elective.

[Dookus]

5. yeah

it's pretty famous. Not popular, but famous. Artificial languages just don't seem to catch on.

[LiberalEsto]

6. My dad spoke it

It was supposed to become the World Language so everyone could understand one another

[The_Casual_Observer]

8. Folks like Joe Pine used to argue about it on TV in the early

sixties, does it sound like when people pretend to speak in tongues?

[SpiralHawk]

9. Ne smorgoff wibdang biv iturbo

wizwaz Esperato, u no ?

[Stop_the_War]

10. That's not Esperanto! LOL

[LSparkle]

12. Esperanto was more a combination of Spanish/French

with maybe a little Italian (at least as far as I could tell from listening/reading it).

[cire4]

15. Not exactly because then it would be just another romance language

It's actually a combination of the romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian), the Germanic languages (German, English), and the Slavic languages (Polish, Czech, and little Russian).

By taking bits and pieces from every Indo-European language group, it made it easier across the board for speakers of those languages to learn. Consequently, it is much much easier for an English speaker to learn Esperanto than it is for an English speaker to learn Spanish/French and vice-versa.

[Speck Tater]

13. I learned Esperanto in 1957.

Pretty much useless in the US.

[pnorman]

14. It never caught on, and will almost certainly never catch on.

But I recall reading about a good use for it. There were two reseachers (or professionals of some sort) who were from two different countries (Holland and Bulgaria was my recollection). They wanted to communicate with other on a fairly complex matter, but apparently shared no common language that both felt fully confident in. Each studied the basics of Esperanto, apparently a relatively trivial matter, and then "communicated" back and forth. It was probably on an "open book" basis at each end. Computer solutions of that would no doubt be far easier and more accurate in Esperanto than with a "living" language.

The fact that Esperanto has little popular usage was no doubt a PLUS. That would have pretty well guarantee that meanings wouldn't transmogrify. Say "freedom" and similar words in both Freep and DU venues, and you'll get the idea.

pnorman

[LinuxInsurgent]

16. the Linux of Language?

Just had to add that analogy in...being a Linux Insurgent and all :)