Exactly, but quite understandable position when you think about it(*). See 7:46 for example, where the same position was held by the US. (*) not saying it's a good one from a moral point of view
Holy Shit! 1 week of Spanish, 1 week of French, highschool English, and native tagalog allowed me to understand what the native Esperanto speaker said.
"Native Esperanto speaker" had me chuckle. There is no such thing as "native Esperanto speaker". All claiming as such, used their national/regional languages as native ones and only adopted Esperanto.
@@amadeosendiulo2137 Let's start by agreeing that "kuk-um-o" is not a real word that anybody actually uses -- but that kukum/o actually is - and that it means cucumber. "Cakish" was meant as a joke. Jokes don't tend to do very well when people over-analyze them. I did hesitate over whether people would read "cakeish" as an adjective. I really meant "cake-adjacent thing" -- but I left it as "cakeish" because it's a little more punchy. But it's not clear to me why you corrected me to say that kuk/um/o would be an **action**. There are lots of -um-words ending in -o that are not actions: komunumo, laktumo, ĉarumo, kortumo, buŝumo, kalkanumo, kolumo, brulumo, mondumo... ktp.. If my joke wasn't funny, no need to laugh. And if it was funny before it surely isn't funny anymore.
I tried learning Esperanto on Duolingo months ago lmao!! Was so surprised to stumble across it on UA-cam lmao, before the 0:16 mark I already had a strong feeling this video's gonna talk about that language I had once learnt and I was desperately trying to remember what it was called LOL
There is great xkcd comics that describe this perfectly: "There is 14 competing standards" "This can't stand, we need create one universal standard that handle all user cases!" "There is 15 competing standards" :D
Yes indeed. On paper Esperanto sounds neat, but let's consider for example Americans. In practice they can just speak English 99% of the time, so Esperanto would be that thing that they briefly practiced in school and then forgot about. Most Americans won't speak Esperanto fluently even if it were officially adopted as the global second language. And that means that people from other countries now have a couple of bad options: - Learn Esperanto but not English, and then they can't fluently communicate with Americans - Learn English but not Esperanto, and then they can't communicate with let's say Swedes (who in our timeline speak pretty decent English) - Learn Esperanto AND English, but that's a whole new language to learn, and in practice most people won't take the time to become fluent in two non-native languages. So it seems convenient that some language that a large chunk of people already speak natively becomes de facto the world's second language (English). The only way I can see Esperanto working is if some Chinese or American dictator banned the actual native language and mandated the use of Esperanto.
Yeah that pretty much sums it up. There's no universal language because learning a new language is more effort than a lot of people are willing to put into it, and adding a new language doesn't change that at all - in fact, creating a new language only makes that problem worse because now you need everyone to learn that new language (if you took an existing language then some people would already know that language so it only needs to be adopted by the people that didn't already know it for it to become universal.. which is still difficult, but getting everyone to adopt a new language is even more difficult).
@von_nobody it's not that ! Um.. it's just..! Vgh! Hes so so.. soso reddit it's actually well.. bad optics to make any reference to him, like.. at all! I'm just trying to help...
"By succeeding in removing all impediments to communication and making everybody able to communicate with everybody else in the universe, with no misunderstandings, the Babel Fish has caused more, more bloody, and more destructive wars than anything in the history of the universe."
Mistakes!: 1:53 -as ending is present tense -is ending is past tense -os ending is future tense There are also some active and passive-verb endings -anta, -inta, -onta and -ata, -ita and -ota, used to make compound tenses (tenses in relation to other tenses). 2:08 You misspelled RAPIDE (rapidly, quickly)
Ayo, don't zoom in the middle of Siberia when talking about Białystok, which was part of Poland that was annexed by Russia and still is in Poland's borders nowadays 💀
@@nicolascampuzano5150Btw there are still villages in Siberia populated by Poles. My father-in-law comes from one of them. And his ancestors were not exiles; many Polish peasants voluntarily migrated to free lands in the east of the Empire. In a similar way, territories populated by Ukrainians arose in the Far East, the so-called Green Wedge.
@@lipamanka that’s correct! and it often faces the same criticism that Esperanto receives of being Eurocentric. Many argue that since esperanto so closely resembles Romance languages and others that use Latin characters puts countries in Asia and the Middle East at a distinct disadvantage. But the visually intuitive nature of sign languages can level the playing field as hundreds of songs can be recognized without any prior exposure to theses languages. That’s the advantage we build on as we construct this language
Very interesting video, although Esperanto actually had a boom in popularity after WW2 and membership peaked in Esperanto associations in the 1980s. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Communist bloc hurt the language more than the French veto in the League of Nations.
What's even more impressive is that Esperanto beat dozens of competitors who were all trying to be the 'world's second language'. What made Esperanto successful was that it was politically-opinionated; it was all about international brotherhood and peace in a time of growing nationalist tension (just before WWI). Zamenhof was also great at marketing and used chain-letters to promote it. That's how Esperanto got ~1 million speakers while no-one's heard of Volapuk, Novial, or Interlingue. In fact, we could even make a new one today with new advances in linguistics, more international source languages, an integrated sign language, etc. It doesn't have to be perfect, just easier to learn than English.
I prefered Volapuk to Esperanto, personally. Though I think Toki Pona would be a better international language. It is in the name. Simple Language. Easy enough to learn for actually anyone as the rules for pronunciation are quite easy for anyone due to the sound library being 9 relatively universal consonants, 5 vowels, and lacks many complexities that trip up language learners every day; not to mention the word list is tiny with a useful spread of concepts.
Ehhh I think I like the english status quo. It's the amalgam language that takes words from more and more cultures nowadays and I think of it as the major heritage of humanity. I find it prettier and beautiful than the deliberisms of any constructed languages.
"It doesn't have to be perfect, just easier to learn than English." That's not good enough. We can easily make keyboards that are better than Qwerty keyboards, but because people have already learned to use Qwerty and there's no critical reason to switch, the sub-optimal current situation will just continue on.
@@lightworker2956 Yeah, a new standard has to be very good to succeed and even then it'll still need a lot of forced adoption. Most people want to learn another language that will be useful to them, not learn a language that *might* be useful at some point.
True, but esperanto was never meant to be anyone's first language. It is supposed to be a language of travel, and trade, and all that. Like when you're in an airport and instead of ten different languages on the signs it'd just be the local language plus esperanto. That reminds me I gotta do my duolingo 😅
I was chosen as a kindergartener to participate in an "experimental class" in elementary school. In this class, each child was selected by a psychologist based on their mental capability. An optional subject I picked was called "enrichment" (direct translation) and involved anything and everything that could make us smarter or more curious about topics taught in mandatory subjects. One of the things taught in this subject were the basics of Esperanto. I have since forgotten all about my elementary school years and just kind of thought Esperanto was well-known around the globe. Turns out it isn't, which is a shame because, in my opinion, it's not that hard to squeeze it into the curriculum and would aid children in better understanding how languages work, since it's very simple. Thank you for enabling me to remember my childhood years.
Had a “wait a moment” moment. I hope it goes viral because of the algorithm and that’s it’s not only recommended to language geeks like me who already learned Esperanto and went to a conference. Keep up the good work - subscribed!
As someone who holds Esperanto very dear to my heart, this video was exceptionally good for such a small channel and I'll definitely show people this when they ask about that made-up language I'm so passionate about. Dankon!
i visited Bulgaria, and the B&B was run by an Esperanto speaker, who gave talks at the international fares, she had visited most European countries, freely even while the iron curtain was there, as an educator. i spent some time with her, looking at programs and photos, she had even passed through my local city. interestingly she spoke many European languages but not French
HOLY CRAP! This video is amazing, well done seriously this have taken bloody ages to make. I figured this was a channel with 2 milllion + subscribers not 11! Amazing work on a brilliant subject matter. This is definetly going to blow up even if the youtube algorithm is ignoring it as of yet. Keep doing this man, you are going to go far!
I tried learning Esperanto on Duolingo months ago lmao!! Was so surprised to stumble across it on UA-cam lmao, before the 0:16 mark I already had a strong feeling this video's gonna talk about that language I had once learnt and I was desperately trying to remember what it was called LOL
I'm an Esperantist who loves language history, and I've always wanted a video exactly like this to show people who want to know more. This language has allowed me to meet some incredible and interesting people including my best friend, and have great experiences with a unique and fun community. Thankyou for covering its fascinating history so well
The funny thing is, 10 years ago my country mandated English as a second language, but now it is being replaced with Mandarin. Funny how the world lingua franca change
The pop culture footprint is grand, but what's even better are the puns. "Saga" uses Esperanto for the alien languages, once including someone's ex-girlfriend showing up, holding a whip, going "Mi maltrafis vin tiom!" Which is literally "I missed you so much!" but uses the word for "miss" as in "hit or miss" so the sentence reads, with her holding the whip, "I didn't hit you often enough!" And the classic puns. "Why did the city planner visit the bakery for Halloween?" "He wanted to carve a pumpkin." (Kukurbo could be either "pumpkin" or "a city made of cake.")
1:43 no. It’s simple, but not as simple as possible. Just look at toki pona for an example of a simpler language. This doesn’t make Esperanto bad necessarily, it’s just not as simple as possible.
That's one of the downsides of it being so Eurocentric. Indo-European languages have overly complicated grammar, even the simpler ones like English. Tenses, declensions, and articles are all unnecessary, and probably wouldn't have been included if Asian languages had also been considered.
@@sweetsourorange walk -> walked It could be done with "walk yesterday" or something No need for unnecessary conjugation Esperanto has it even more than english It very rarely provides anything in longer conversation, because you also usually state the time The things that you've sent are one of the best English things, which is mostly the easiest grammar if we only include natural languages Even with some things that overcomplicate things, English has still one of the simplest grammar while also conveying a lot of useful meaning It doesn't provide useless information like "the gender of a knife" lol English is also very easy for trans and non binary people and useful in reducing gender inequalities, because unless you're in person, you often can't even guess a gender Really English made me discover that I'm trans lol, because it was the first time I was able to think differently about the gender If English haven't had that bad spelling, it would be 100% perfect fit for lingual franca and there would be no need to even discuss it French shouldn't be even considered to be able to claim that position. It's a very overcomplicated language and the only reason would be it influence You can speak English after very low amount of effort, of course it will be bad, but the point is that English is very easy to start for the majority of people, because its grammar is easy and that's what the most people struggle about, especially that grammar in a lot of languages grammar is just a tradition with a lot of irregular stuff which is irrelevant now
Just want to say that the idea of geopolitics just ending because people would speak one single language is beyond sillybilly and misses the point of why conflicts happen.
Language do not divide people: Argentina helped Brazil destroy Paraguay, Serbian and Croatian people, despite of not being the same language can understand each other and that didn't avoid a war. Belgium and France mostly speak the same language and this didn't avoided Napoleon of invading Belgium.
1:54 You have two of your tenses mixed up. _"Mi amas"_ is present tense, not past, and means "I love". _"Mi amis"_ is past tense, not present, and means "I loved". You got future tense right, though... _"Mi amos"._
Great use of visuals to keep the video interesting, without them being distracting! Also wow, the fact that we were one french vote away from something so potentially monumental is wild
That is far too simplistic. The situation was much more complicated than that. And the reason that Esperanto was ditched is that it was already getting to be a political bone of contention. Here's a PhD thesis where the topic is discussed far more thoroughly than in this video. Carolyn Biltoft, ‘Speaking the peace: Language, world politics and the League of Nations, 1918-1935’ (PhD thesis, Princeton University, 2010).
This editing is SO GOOD, with such view fews and subscribers, it almost makes me think this is like that experiement where Ludwig tried to prove that it was skill and not luck that made a channel popular by making a top quality video like this and posting it under a new, unassociated channel. Because there is no way a novice made this - it's way too well done.
I discovered Esperanto around the year 2000 and started studying it with books from my local public library. I was learning English and read a book which said that the Vatican radio broadcasts in Esperanto (this is true still today). And wow! In all these years, this is one of the best videos I've ever seen about the subject. This is what I've done with Esperanto: - Travelled and was hosted by Esperanto speakers in different countries; - I hosted Esperanto backpackers from different nationalities in my house and we practised other languages; - Been to Esperanto meetings in my town, watched cultural lectures with people from other countries, had some nice exchange with people; - Been to an international congress with hundreds of people from all continents; - We spent one week at a hotel with all those people, full immersion, music, cultural events, crazy parties, night clubs, restaurants... everything in Esperanto. - In the congress, I've seen all sorts of weird people: spiritualists, atheists, gays, vegans, Buddhists, old wise men that look like beggars, Linux users... Esperanto attracts such weirdos! One thing is sure: you won't get bored. - One night at 3 in the morning we were with a group of Esperantists on the beach "moon bathing"... all naked! If you want to have a sample of that atmosphere, watch the video "Kion vi plej ŝatas dum IJK?" Apart from that, if you want a language for your career, studies, for sitting down and wait speakers to walk by... Esperanto is obviously a no. However, you could learn it just as mental gymnastics, like people play chess, knit, spend hundreds of hours on social media and play video games... so why not Esperanto? You need to be some sort of adventurer, backpacker and have a certain degree of detachment to enjoy Esperanto to the fullest. At the congress, I bought this book "Ili vivis sur la tero" (They lived on Earth - eight years of migration around our planet). It's the amazing story of a couple who circled the planet speaking Esperanto and meeting Esperanto people. They say: When all your belongings for eight years fit in a backpack, you realize that the joy of life is not about what you have, but really about what you are. So you have to be a bit crazy and out of the box to study and enjoy Esperanto and its philosophy. ... MANY COMMENTS HERE ARE WRONG People here are giving all sorts of opinions as true facts even if they have never studied the subject. Contrary to what they say, Esperanto didn't work not because it's utopian, not because of its philosophy, structure, etc. It didn't work exactly because it lacks political and military power, maybe it didn't work because French power and ego stopped it, as explained in this video. But it has worked more than most people imagine, being among the top studied languages today. David Crystal (a top specialist on global languages) explains: “A language does not become a global language because of its intrinsic structural properties, or because of the size of its vocabulary, or because it has been a vehicle of a great literature in the past, or because it was once associated with a great culture or religion. (...) A language has traditionally become an international language for one chief reason: the power of its people - especially their political and military power.” But just think about it: for the first time in history, a language was spread in practically all countries and spoken by millions of people without any political, economical or military power to support it, just with the power of the individuals who speak it. That’s already impressive in itself.
What this video forgets to mention is that, even at its peak, Esperanto was only spoken by a very small minority of well-of intellectuals. There never was any real mass adoption. That's why it became so easy to vilify it as the secret language of free-masons trying to control you or whatever. Even if it was meant for everyone, it only ever belonged to a certain elite. Also, while I'm all for the idea of a common, unifying language, a new, artificial one, no matter how well made will always suffer from the lack of history that gives other languages their complexity and depth, especially when this one was explicitly made to be simple and easy to use. You can't have the same amount of subtlety and nuance in Esperanto as in any other language and, in turn, that limits you ability to think and communicate. It makes me think of when Randall Munroe made an encyclopedia (or Thing Explainer) using only the 1000 most common words in English. It's "simple" to read but also incredibly unwieldy and unhelpful when trying to discuss any mildly difficult topic. Personally, I'm fine with English taking over as the international language that it is today. I don't think it deserves it because it's superior or whatever, but it has been used for centuries by millions of people and as such, has some practical usage and history. Obviously, every other language has its value and deserves to be preserved, even Esperanto, but you cannot expect a made-up language which isn't rooted in an actual culture to ever take off. Even is that LoN vote had succeeded, at best Esperanto would have become that same thing as Latin to the Catholic Church. A dead language, unknown to the public and spoken only by an elite class as a way to gatekeep knowledge and influence from people without the correct education. Far from its original goal, it would only have increased resentment and tension between the people and its leaders. It would never have worked. My goal isn't to spread hate on Esperanto. It's a nice idea and I don't mind people learning it. But it tends to be romanticized by people who don't really stop to think about it and that annoys me.
A language has to be vertical not horizontal ie the master must be understood by the servant not merely between masters. In other words it is an elitist cant
Sounds like the usual linguist judging Esperanto without actually knowing it. Many actual Esperanto speakers don't feel limited by the language. (I'm using it in my daily life.) Of course, as a bgeinner you won't have the vocabulary to discuss topics you've never discussed before, but that's the same if you never discussed these topics in English (or German or whatever).
@@PauxloELiterarywise, can you really say esperanto compares with the wealth of english. We have at least fifteen different ways to say to duck, all with unique connotations in use. Our constant use of definite in its sarcastic meaning, so on. English represents what we humans have constructed over generations. It's not extremely cumbersome that it's unwieldy, and yet you can express a wide range of tones while saying what is ostensibly the same thing. To duck means something different from to cringe, or to bob down or so on.
@@Вихнажд That appears to have been part of the problem, it was doing OK until they tied it to an ideology that people thought might actually do something like that.
Goated video! It’s interesting, has engaging information and visuals, and is of high quality! Keep at it and you’ll be on par with other big history channels soon.
At around 2007 I somehow came across Esperanto on the internet. Started taking a few lessons and fell in love with its simplicity and effectiveness. I ended up taking an extension course in college and went to a congress in 2009 in Poland. It was memorable. But over time I completely forgot about it. English just ends up being the language of the "information era" boom and a huge chunk of pop culture, it just sucks you in once you're familiar with it. Esperanto, on the other hand, takes effort and dedication to keep alive, even though your can speak it fluently in a matter of months and is fun to learn.
Interesting solution. He grew up in a place where multiple languages were spoken and they saw themselves as enemies because of the language barrier. His solution: Another language
You overlook the fact that Esperanto is orders of magnitude easier to learn than most (or all) other languages and it's more culturally neutral, even if not completely neutral given that root words often come from Romance, Germanic or Slavic languages. So it's not just one more language. It's a bridge language. Despite being simple, it can be very expressive and speakers can be creative in their way of speaking and choosing or building words. It's simple for several reasons: * regular grammar: regular plural, regular verbs, regular ways of building words, ... * agglutinative, so when you learn one root word, you can build many other words. In fact, you can build many words that would not even have equivalents in English. It takes a fraction of time to learn a rich vocabulary as a result compared to other languages. * spelling is regular and phonetic * many resources available to learn it: plenty of methods, books, online courses, newspapers, translated software...
@@dominikoeoThis sacrifices the uniqueness and inherent expressiveness in languages like english. Yes we have like ten words for everything, and they have varying roots. But they mean their own specific thing and the writing is more deliberate, their lack of connection to one another adds to the distinctness of each word's identity. That quality of english is what makes it among the valuable languages for literature, you can say to duck, bow, lower your head, crouch, cringe, so on.
To be fair, he wanted a COMMON language so everyone could understand everyone else. When Italy was founded in 1861, one of the many dialects spoken in the different regions was chosen to be the official lingua franca and was named "Italiano". Everyone was then told to learn it so that they could do business with each other and conduct politics. Lots of Italians speak Italian as a second language, not mother tongue.
Problem with Esperanto is it doesn't just favor romance languages, it incredibly heavily leans to them. Every time I hear Esperanto, as a romance language speaker, I still think it is Spanish. I tried to learn it and I found it to be quite annoying with its simple grammar too. It is highly functional but lacks so much personality and emotion. It is simple but that simplicity sacrifices so much nuance.
Long time Esperantist here, Esperanto is still a living language tbh, people coin neologisms to deal with new technology and slang terms do exist amongst Esperantists
I've heard it said of Esperanto that its biggest weakness in attracting new speakers is the lack of a travel brochure: very often when someone takes up a foreign language there is a fascination with connecting with another culture and a destination for travel, especially when that culture and place belonged to their ancestors. Beyond that, there is the possibility of a language for international commerce, and that is undoubtedly English these days. The down-side of that is English is a hard language to learn as a second language: the spelling and pronunciation aren't standardized, and there are more words than any other language. the bright side is the grammar is simplified, especially where grammatic gender is concerned.
Pasporta Servo! The travel brochure would be for anywhere in the world with speakers. It's a way into various cultures while knowing vaguely that you have fundamental values in common with whoever's hosting you based on the fact that you both chose to learn Esperanto.
People learn Esperanto because they're interested in more than one culture. They learn it because want to speak on equal terms with people from all over the world. They learn it because they like the culture that the global Esperanto community has developed over the last century, its music, its poetry, its literature and the friendships it enables.
@@ccaagg for those who don't know: Pasporta Servo pretty much is couchsurfing for people who speak Esperanto, and has existed for decades before couchsurfing
891 subscribers? AM I READING THAT RIGHT? THIS IS AMAZING! Your work is so well made, I'm surprised you haven't gotten above 100k views in 5days. I'll certainly be watching more of you!
I don't think English will remain the most spoken language, maybe Its momentum will carry it but the US as It's primary promoter have taken some very big missteps recently and It's unlikely they will ever regain either the prestige nor the economic dominance it once had, with China already well overtaking the US and the US doubling down on Its mistakes.
Doubtful. French fell by the wayside because of America's prominence on the world stage and the large number of countries that spoke English thanks to colonialism. Many times more have English as their official language than French (I think it's something like 1/3 of all countries).. Importantly there is just no replacement to English. People point to languages like Mandarin with a very high number of speakers, but those speakers are almost exclusively in China, which is anathema to an International language. English is here to stay for the foreseeable future.
If from now to 2100 US population grows from 330 millions to 400, while China's trajectory is to go from 1400 to 700-800 as projected, I wouldn't so easily bet on China replacing the US.
I don't think China becoming the dominant global superpower (which's a possibility, but far from certain) will necessarily result in English losing its status as a lingua franca. Latin didn't lose its status as the lingua franca of Western Europe until many centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
I don’t think the US is the main promoter anymore Sure it is the global hegemony but many have already adopted English all across the world In the internet there are more non native English speakers than native speakers Knowing such a language is very beneficial to you
wow, last time i was this new to a basically new channel, Esperanto was still new this video is amazing though, nothing has inspired me to learn it more than this, i thought its history was mostly just that, but theres a lot here that demonstrates it has a chance. i do still think it doesn't really match up to its mission though, as an international language for the whole planet to speak, it was made at a time where only Europe mattered in the world, and its starkly reflective of it. Asia, Africa, anywhere else will have more difficulty learning it than Europe and its colonies, some sounds so difficult that accents could be harder to understand than even English ones. but it probably deserves its second chance, it was already so close the first time, just perhaps alongside others. my pick of Viossa is not likely to be adopted, heck the issues with it as an IAL are far worse, but i like it for its broad approach. hopefully other runners can learn a bit from it
So glad you enjoyed it! Con langs are fascinating things, but Esperanto definitely had its flaws. Who knows if anything will challenge English in the next 100 years, it happened to French! 👀
This idea that communication leads to peace is pretty naive. When you understand what the other mob are actually saying, you realise what they are plotting, and you have to destroy them first before they destroy you. Britain and Japan had zero communication for centuries, and no conflict between them. But lots of conflict with the Frogs, though thousands of British people understood French, and there were Frogs who understood English.
The end of WW2 was like 80 years ago, and even then that was a conflict with the Vichy regime. The last war with France where it wasn't because France was Nazi was over 200 years ago. Why are you unironically calling French people frogs.
No one said it would guarantee world peace, but it’s undeniable that on average you feel more connected with people that speak your language than don’t. Also your argument makes no sense, your equating the idea of two countries sharing a couple speakers to a theoretical united world language. Like no shit Josh the polyglot peasant can’t stop the Hundred Years’ War
I'm surprised he used "me and you" instead of "you and I" because he was otherwise pleasant to listen to. Mind you, I will often say "me and my mate are going..." so I can't complain. I'm from East London though so I've an excuse!
Dankon pro tion filmon. Mi lernis paroli la lingvo kiam mi estis junulo, ĉar la ideo ŝatas al mi kaj reta ludo entenis tekstoj en Esperanto. Sed mia Esperanto estas rustiĝata nun.
I speak both, and they're completely different. You could call it "funny English" and it would be just as accurate. But I guess they sound superficially similar to a lot of people who don't speak Spanish nor Esperanto, not just you.
@@rjScubaSki It sounds more Spanish because it clearly is. Native Spanish speakers don't get it but it clearly has similar phonemes and strong Spanish influence on the vocabulary.
@@rjScubaSki It superficially resembles Spanish more than English. If you are an English speaker, I understand that Esperanto and Spanish can sound kinda similar to you. Esperanto has a lot more consonant clusters, some combinations don't occur in Spanish in the same positions, and it has the ĝ/ĵ/ŝ/ĉ and h/ĥ distinctions. But they both have a 5 vowel system and a lot of words accented on the penultimate syllable. That's a lot of languages tho. That's on the phonetics, and it's superficial. On vocabulary, they share a lot of words, but only indirectly. Esperanto took almost nothing from Spanish, but most of its words come from French and Latin, which are related. Its grammar is completely different. Agglutinative language, no grammatical gender, two grammatical cases, the use of prepositions and cases resemble closer Slavic languages, the word endings are very different from those in Spanish, it has a much freer word order, and several other things. Again, how you hear it is subjective. But calling it "funny English" is (okay, almost) as accurate as calling it "funny Spanish". Not very objective at all.
The problem I have with Esperanto, though I speak it, is that phonology and Eurocentric vocab. It's just a little too difficult for people that don't speak Indo-European languages.
This is a good point and one I did try to fit into the video but it didn’t quite make the cut. I guess the reality is any language based on pre-consisting linguistic structures will favour the grammatical/alphabetical standards of one area or another. Maybe a universal sign language would be one way to avoid *some* of these issues. 🤔
Most languages evolve organically over time through cultural and social processes. Esperanto was intentionally created by a small group of people with a specific goal in mind.
@@amadeosendiulo2137 but it wasnt only the holocaust or did i miss a sentence. What word would be more fitting for people that strategically look for something to exterminate it?
In his letters Tolkien talks about it in a mocking tone. He had no respect for the language itself, only that people were making languages. He was appointed as an advisor without being asked if he wanted to.
If it wasn't for that French veto and later Adolf Hitler, might we all be speaking Esperanto today? It seems like the language really had a chance before it was hit with this double whammy of bad luck. It really is the closest we've ever come to having an invented language unite the world.
I don’t know… l’m not convinced that forcing the entire population of this planet to reject the language they are actually speaking and that is the expression of thousands of years of history, culture, self identity and so on is a good idea. And where is the proof that speaking the same language means peace and understanding? I’m thinking to the conflicts between catholics and protestants in Ireland, just to name one example that same language means nothing…
That's not how it was ever meant to work. It was meant to be everyone's * second * language. That's why it's called an international * auxiliary * language. A second language is already semi-mandatory in most school systems. The success of an international auxiliary language (IAL) would simply require an agreement among a sufficient number of nations to emphasize the IAL in secondary language education. It would also be adopted by nations as a common middle language for translating between languages (thus greatly simplifying simultaneous communication between several languages at once, an often challenging task faced by the UN). In no way at all would the IAL be intended to replace anyone's native language.
It was meant to be a trade language used to communicate with people from elsewhere. Erasing language was never the goal. Look at the world right now - English is the de facto trade language. Anyone whose business involves talking to people across the world will know English and expect representatives they're talking to to also speak English, even if both people aren't from an English-speaking country. English hasn't supplanted people's native languages, and neither would have Esperanto.
@@ccaagg If anything, English has actually supplanted people's native languages and been a tool of colonial oppression much more than Esperanto. This isn't theoretical, North America and Australia, as well as the Celtic Nations like Ireland and Scotland and Pacific nations like Hawaii and Aotearoa have their native language and indigenous culture endangered if not extinct because of the forced colonial imposition of English. And while the situation isn't as drastic for former British colonies in Africa and Asia, English still has a huge unfair advantage as it's often the only official language due to colonial legacy, and as such, indigenous languages are used less in formal contexts and their non prestigious status is endangering their culture if not survival. For example, in most African countries, Africans are forced to have their school curriculum in the language of their former oppressors, as schools and textbooks in African languages rarely exist. That's the only reason there even are multiple "English speaking countries" to begin with. (Unlike for example the Soviet Union where their language policy definitely wasn't perfect but a diverse range of languages were still used in government, education, the workplace, mass media and entertainment). This is what brutal British colonialism did, as well as British settler colonies like the US continue to do to this day. Meanwhile, if Esperanto were to be adopted, this would've been unlikely, as it would've been explicitly only designed as a second language.
@@gamermapper Oh no, absolutely, I just see colonial oppression and the erasure of language as the cause behind English becoming the lingua franca rather than the other way round. English hasn't supplanted languages as a result of being used as an auxiliary language, but as a result of colonial oppression and English being the primary language native to the heart of the imperial core (England historically and the US presently; looks like you already know that colonialism never ended, just changed form) and therefore having a more prestigious status. It's that coerced adoption of English that _makes_ it the most useful auxiliary language, since so many people already speak it as a result of that.
Can't help but think that because it was so heavily repressed by the axis forces in WW2, we should be learning to speak it now. There is clearly something about the idea that the most hateful ideologies find dangerous, and that can only be a good thing.
That's a new thing... We have a lingua-franca now... back then... if you were doing Science, the language to learn was German, and for diplomacy, it was French. Post-WW2, English beat everything else to a pulp.
Lingua Franca literally means French, not English. The aim of Esperanto was to switch the world to a language that would not change with the change of dominant economy, and that would focus on quality/hindrances more suited to a second language than a first one. This is something important to understand : languages naturally evolve into messy pile of meaningless crap. All this crap can be interesting as it is part of one's identity making life more rich and vibrant, but is just dead weigh for inter communication with people that don't share your mother tongue. So by carefully choosing a 2nd languages for 2 different purposes, one for your inner social group, the other for worldwide communication, you get the best of both world
@@stighemmernot officially And it’s not only the Americans that speak it you know The language is so global that you can connect to almost everyone on the net
It's sad that Lithuania and it's city Kaunas didn't even get a mention, even though it was such a big contributor to the Esperanto language! To those who don't know - Zamenhof's wife Klara Zamenhof is from the Lithuania's city Kaunas! In the city, thanks to Klara's dad Aleksandras Zilbernikas financial support, the textbooks of Esperanto were released in German, Polish and French languages!
"Almost" is doing a LOT of work here... even IF the League of Nations adopted the measure, it had no enforcement mechanism, and a lot of countries were gonna refuse to adopt it. Not to mention all the countries that weren't even in the League. And of course, even if they use it for diplomacy, most countries are gonna stick to their native languages for internal use and education. The general public is not just gonna all start learning a new language en masse.
Very funny that the French were so against their language being replaced in diplomacy, because by now it has mostly been replaced with English.
How the tables turn 👀
Also they themselves replaced Catalan, Basque, Breton, Occitan, Corsican or Kanak with their own Lingua Franca.
great
Exactly, but quite understandable position when you think about it(*). See 7:46 for example, where the same position was held by the US.
(*) not saying it's a good one from a moral point of view
That French veto was a classic case of unwittingly shooting oneself in the foot.
That this video doesn't have subtitles in Esperanto is such a missed opportunity...
Interesting video though
youtube's autotranslated subtitles can be set to esperanto since esperanto is on google translate
proof that the language is crap.
you can automate subtitles to English --> Espranto
@@rizkyadiyanto7922 Should we all speak indonesian?
@@benuwuowo oh yes, absolutely.
Holy Shit! 1 week of Spanish, 1 week of French, highschool English, and native tagalog allowed me to understand what the native Esperanto speaker said.
I love The Philippines!
Yes, that’s the beauty of Esperanto.
"Native Esperanto speaker" had me chuckle. There is no such thing as "native Esperanto speaker". All claiming as such, used their national/regional languages as native ones and only adopted Esperanto.
@@dzejrid yes, there are: people born to Esperanto speaking parents whose family language is Esperanto.
@@ArneBab and they all live in Esperantostan, right?
I discovered Esperanto by translating «Cucumber» into different random languages
🥒 🥒 🥒
"kukumo" -- which by coincidence can also mean "cakeish".
@@EsperantoVarietyShow I'd say that "kukumo", if it was actually used, would mean "an action involving or related to a cake".
@@amadeosendiulo2137 Let's start by agreeing that "kuk-um-o" is not a real word that anybody actually uses -- but that kukum/o actually is - and that it means cucumber.
"Cakish" was meant as a joke. Jokes don't tend to do very well when people over-analyze them.
I did hesitate over whether people would read "cakeish" as an adjective. I really meant "cake-adjacent thing" -- but I left it as "cakeish" because it's a little more punchy.
But it's not clear to me why you corrected me to say that kuk/um/o would be an **action**. There are lots of -um-words ending in -o that are not actions: komunumo, laktumo, ĉarumo, kortumo, buŝumo, kalkanumo, kolumo, brulumo, mondumo... ktp..
If my joke wasn't funny, no need to laugh. And if it was funny before it surely isn't funny anymore.
I tried learning Esperanto on Duolingo months ago lmao!! Was so surprised to stumble across it on UA-cam lmao, before the 0:16 mark I already had a strong feeling this video's gonna talk about that language I had once learnt and I was desperately trying to remember what it was called LOL
There is great xkcd comics that describe this perfectly:
"There is 14 competing standards"
"This can't stand, we need create one universal standard that handle all user cases!"
"There is 15 competing standards"
:D
Yes indeed. On paper Esperanto sounds neat, but let's consider for example Americans. In practice they can just speak English 99% of the time, so Esperanto would be that thing that they briefly practiced in school and then forgot about. Most Americans won't speak Esperanto fluently even if it were officially adopted as the global second language.
And that means that people from other countries now have a couple of bad options:
- Learn Esperanto but not English, and then they can't fluently communicate with Americans
- Learn English but not Esperanto, and then they can't communicate with let's say Swedes (who in our timeline speak pretty decent English)
- Learn Esperanto AND English, but that's a whole new language to learn, and in practice most people won't take the time to become fluent in two non-native languages.
So it seems convenient that some language that a large chunk of people already speak natively becomes de facto the world's second language (English).
The only way I can see Esperanto working is if some Chinese or American dictator banned the actual native language and mandated the use of Esperanto.
Yeah that pretty much sums it up. There's no universal language because learning a new language is more effort than a lot of people are willing to put into it, and adding a new language doesn't change that at all - in fact, creating a new language only makes that problem worse because now you need everyone to learn that new language (if you took an existing language then some people would already know that language so it only needs to be adopted by the people that didn't already know it for it to become universal.. which is still difficult, but getting everyone to adopt a new language is even more difficult).
Umm... xkcd is captain reddit himself... you know this right..?
@@songbirdsandsandwiches8217 Yes, and? Did I refer to his political hot takes?
@von_nobody it's not that ! Um.. it's just..! Vgh! Hes so so.. soso reddit it's actually well.. bad optics to make any reference to him, like.. at all! I'm just trying to help...
"By succeeding in removing all impediments to communication and making everybody able to communicate with everybody else in the universe, with no misunderstandings, the Babel Fish has caused more, more bloody, and more destructive wars than anything in the history of the universe."
Ironically maybe 1 in 1,000 will get that quote.
@@dannygjk I doubt hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy is that obscure, my guess is ~1 in 200
Tbf that's a joke tho lol
@@dinhero21 That book was written before a lot of internet people were born.
@@dannygjk I think you'll find that the quote actually comes from the original radio series.
Mistakes!:
1:53 -as ending is present tense
-is ending is past tense
-os ending is future tense
There are also some active and passive-verb endings -anta, -inta, -onta and -ata, -ita and -ota, used to make compound tenses (tenses in relation to other tenses).
2:08 You misspelled RAPIDE (rapidly, quickly)
No one speaks it though
@@gillianomotoso328 they're still mistakes though
thank you for the information
@@gillianomotoso328 There are still some people left speaking it (and even new people learning it).
@@PauxloE yeah, misaimed humor, my bad
Ayo, don't zoom in the middle of Siberia when talking about Białystok, which was part of Poland that was annexed by Russia and still is in Poland's borders nowadays 💀
you say that, bu but right after establishing that this starts in 1887, he shows a map of what is clearly interwar europe!
I thought he was talking about some Biełgostok 😂😂😂
in Siveria there is a village named Bialystok. This village were named by Belarusan and Polish catholics exiled in SIberia
@@nicolascampuzano5150Btw there are still villages in Siberia populated by Poles. My father-in-law comes from one of them. And his ancestors were not exiles; many Polish peasants voluntarily migrated to free lands in the east of the Empire. In a similar way, territories populated by Ukrainians arose in the Far East, the so-called Green Wedge.
@Corvax77 There are also villages and towns with Russian/Germans
finally, a video about esperanto that dives into the history sufficiently
I think it’s such a fascinating topic (evidently), a shame more people don’t know about its history!
no way is that jan Lipamanka from ma pona
@jan_Kitalon I HAVEN'T BEEN ON MA PONA IN LIKE HALF A YEAR
toki! sina pilin seme?
@@joseloera5849 MI SONA ALA A
Thanks France...
It’s always the fr*nch
🤷♂️
I don't want to lose my beautiful indigenous language to this sanitized, soulless fabrication anyway.
@@qrsx66 honhon baguette
Thanks to Gabriel Hanotaux, he was the culprit.
Dankon al Gabriel Hanotaux.
Imagine if there was a universal sign language based on Esperanto.
You could be onto something!
@Dis-ambi working on it!
there is international sign already
@@lipamanka that’s correct! and it often faces the same criticism that Esperanto receives of being Eurocentric. Many argue that since esperanto so closely resembles Romance languages and others that use Latin characters puts countries in Asia and the Middle East at a distinct disadvantage.
But the visually intuitive nature of sign languages can level the playing field as hundreds of songs can be recognized without any prior exposure to theses languages.
That’s the advantage we build on as we construct this language
not how sign languages work
Very interesting video, although Esperanto actually had a boom in popularity after WW2 and membership peaked in Esperanto associations in the 1980s. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Communist bloc hurt the language more than the French veto in the League of Nations.
so esperanto was affiliated with communists afterall
What's even more impressive is that Esperanto beat dozens of competitors who were all trying to be the 'world's second language'.
What made Esperanto successful was that it was politically-opinionated; it was all about international brotherhood and peace in a time of growing nationalist tension (just before WWI). Zamenhof was also great at marketing and used chain-letters to promote it. That's how Esperanto got ~1 million speakers while no-one's heard of Volapuk, Novial, or Interlingue.
In fact, we could even make a new one today with new advances in linguistics, more international source languages, an integrated sign language, etc. It doesn't have to be perfect, just easier to learn than English.
I prefered Volapuk to Esperanto, personally.
Though I think Toki Pona would be a better international language. It is in the name. Simple Language. Easy enough to learn for actually anyone as the rules for pronunciation are quite easy for anyone due to the sound library being 9 relatively universal consonants, 5 vowels, and lacks many complexities that trip up language learners every day; not to mention the word list is tiny with a useful spread of concepts.
Nequi ha audit pri Interlingue? :P
Ehhh I think I like the english status quo. It's the amalgam language that takes words from more and more cultures nowadays and I think of it as the major heritage of humanity. I find it prettier and beautiful than the deliberisms of any constructed languages.
"It doesn't have to be perfect, just easier to learn than English."
That's not good enough. We can easily make keyboards that are better than Qwerty keyboards, but because people have already learned to use Qwerty and there's no critical reason to switch, the sub-optimal current situation will just continue on.
@@lightworker2956 Yeah, a new standard has to be very good to succeed and even then it'll still need a lot of forced adoption. Most people want to learn another language that will be useful to them, not learn a language that *might* be useful at some point.
Didn't realize this is the FIRST video on this channel? This is super high quality!
Oh cool, neither did I
“We have too many languages, but fret not, I have a solution. Let’s make another language”
Toki Pona
Sounds like how JavaScript frameworks are being born.
reminds me of that xkcd comic
True, but esperanto was never meant to be anyone's first language. It is supposed to be a language of travel, and trade, and all that. Like when you're in an airport and instead of ten different languages on the signs it'd just be the local language plus esperanto.
That reminds me I gotta do my duolingo 😅
@@lambertmeertens2877 google thinks you said Laptop Ax
Such high production quality! You’re going places good sir.
Thank you 🫡 more to come
@Dis-ambi can i add you on discord or something and ask a few questions? your channel will blow up in no time
I was chosen as a kindergartener to participate in an "experimental class" in elementary school. In this class, each child was selected by a psychologist based on their mental capability. An optional subject I picked was called "enrichment" (direct translation) and involved anything and everything that could make us smarter or more curious about topics taught in mandatory subjects. One of the things taught in this subject were the basics of Esperanto. I have since forgotten all about my elementary school years and just kind of thought Esperanto was well-known around the globe. Turns out it isn't, which is a shame because, in my opinion, it's not that hard to squeeze it into the curriculum and would aid children in better understanding how languages work, since it's very simple. Thank you for enabling me to remember my childhood years.
Cool story! Are you a genius yet?
THIS GUY HAS ONLY 143 SUBSCRIBERS WHAT
First video on the channel. Every great channel has a beginning...
huh wdym-WHAT?
@@Ocro555 someone verified replied to my comment. this is denial.
Had a “wait a moment” moment.
I hope it goes viral because of the algorithm and that’s it’s not only recommended to language geeks like me who already learned Esperanto and went to a conference.
Keep up the good work - subscribed!
Already quadruple, 1day later
Well done on putting the work into a proper, new channel. I suppose you already know it's going places quickly :)
Thank you. That's the plan!
As someone who holds Esperanto very dear to my heart, this video was exceptionally good for such a small channel and I'll definitely show people this when they ask about that made-up language I'm so passionate about.
Dankon!
i visited Bulgaria, and the B&B was run by an Esperanto speaker, who gave talks at the international fares, she had visited most European countries, freely even while the iron curtain was there, as an educator. i spent some time with her, looking at programs and photos, she had even passed through my local city. interestingly she spoke many European languages but not French
HOLY CRAP! This video is amazing, well done seriously this have taken bloody ages to make. I figured this was a channel with 2 milllion + subscribers not 11! Amazing work on a brilliant subject matter. This is definetly going to blow up even if the youtube algorithm is ignoring it as of yet. Keep doing this man, you are going to go far!
Thank you very much! First of many hopefully 🤞
Now a channel with 252 subs.
Can't believe this only has 158 views, it's amazing! I'm subscibed!
Starting from the bottom! Glad you enjoyed 🤝
it blew up
I tried learning Esperanto on Duolingo months ago lmao!! Was so surprised to stumble across it on UA-cam lmao, before the 0:16 mark I already had a strong feeling this video's gonna talk about that language I had once learnt and I was desperately trying to remember what it was called LOL
It's pretty popular
Bot
1:54 It's flipped:
AS is present
IS is past
Holy I thought this had way more views when I was watching this, I hope it goes viral it’s well made, teaches some history and inspires!!
Cheers 😁
I'm an Esperantist who loves language history, and I've always wanted a video exactly like this to show people who want to know more. This language has allowed me to meet some incredible and interesting people including my best friend, and have great experiences with a unique and fun community. Thankyou for covering its fascinating history so well
the quality on this is crazy, best of luck on your youtube journey!
Thank you 😎
i see ive discovered a brand new channel, i can absolutely see you taking off so i wish you luck
Thank you!
The funny thing is, 10 years ago my country mandated English as a second language, but now it is being replaced with Mandarin. Funny how the world lingua franca change
Which country is this?
Scary fact: there is Fr*nce
The pop culture footprint is grand, but what's even better are the puns. "Saga" uses Esperanto for the alien languages, once including someone's ex-girlfriend showing up, holding a whip, going "Mi maltrafis vin tiom!" Which is literally "I missed you so much!" but uses the word for "miss" as in "hit or miss" so the sentence reads, with her holding the whip, "I didn't hit you often enough!"
And the classic puns. "Why did the city planner visit the bakery for Halloween?" "He wanted to carve a pumpkin." (Kukurbo could be either "pumpkin" or "a city made of cake.")
dude this is your first video? holy shit! fantastic work my friend. very interesting and very professionally made
WHATT! HOW DO YOU ONLY HAVE 16 SUBS. Just know you’re amazing.
Thank you 🙏
Love the video glad it got recommended! Keep it up
1:43 no. It’s simple, but not as simple as possible. Just look at toki pona for an example of a simpler language. This doesn’t make Esperanto bad necessarily, it’s just not as simple as possible.
That's one of the downsides of it being so Eurocentric. Indo-European languages have overly complicated grammar, even the simpler ones like English. Tenses, declensions, and articles are all unnecessary, and probably wouldn't have been included if Asian languages had also been considered.
mi olin e nimi kulupu ni
You can just have one version of verb and don't change it depending of the time lol
That makes it harder that a lot of languages
@@itsmenatikawe can
I walk
I walk already
I will walk
I walk tomorrow
I walk yesterday
Easy ❤
@@sweetsourorange walk -> walked
It could be done with "walk yesterday" or something
No need for unnecessary conjugation
Esperanto has it even more than english
It very rarely provides anything in longer conversation, because you also usually state the time
The things that you've sent are one of the best English things, which is mostly the easiest grammar if we only include natural languages
Even with some things that overcomplicate things, English has still one of the simplest grammar while also conveying a lot of useful meaning
It doesn't provide useless information like "the gender of a knife" lol
English is also very easy for trans and non binary people and useful in reducing gender inequalities, because unless you're in person, you often can't even guess a gender
Really English made me discover that I'm trans lol, because it was the first time I was able to think differently about the gender
If English haven't had that bad spelling, it would be 100% perfect fit for lingual franca and there would be no need to even discuss it
French shouldn't be even considered to be able to claim that position. It's a very overcomplicated language and the only reason would be it influence
You can speak English after very low amount of effort, of course it will be bad, but the point is that English is very easy to start for the majority of people, because its grammar is easy and that's what the most people struggle about, especially that grammar in a lot of languages grammar is just a tradition with a lot of irregular stuff which is irrelevant now
the tower of babel was not something to aspire to
Just want to say that the idea of geopolitics just ending because people would speak one single language is beyond sillybilly and misses the point of why conflicts happen.
Oh and also, today most of the 1st world knows basic English as a shared communication language, and yet conflicts have not seized
If all men saw each other as closely related brothers and spoke the same language, we would surely get along as well as they do in the Balkans.
Language do not divide people: Argentina helped Brazil destroy Paraguay, Serbian and Croatian people, despite of not being the same language can understand each other and that didn't avoid a war. Belgium and France mostly speak the same language and this didn't avoided Napoleon of invading Belgium.
At least, they don't politically. Socially, yes.
1:54 You have two of your tenses mixed up. _"Mi amas"_ is present tense, not past, and means "I love". _"Mi amis"_ is past tense, not present, and means "I loved". You got future tense right, though... _"Mi amos"._
Very good quality video, despite the low subscribe count. Keep up the good work!
Great use of visuals to keep the video interesting, without them being distracting! Also wow, the fact that we were one french vote away from something so potentially monumental is wild
Crazy isn’t it - a real sliding doors moment
That is far too simplistic. The situation was much more complicated than that. And the reason that Esperanto was ditched is that it was already getting to be a political bone of contention. Here's a PhD thesis where the topic is discussed far more thoroughly than in this video.
Carolyn Biltoft, ‘Speaking the peace: Language, world politics and the League of Nations, 1918-1935’ (PhD thesis, Princeton University, 2010).
Yeah, the French fought off Esperanto but then got skewered by English, lol!
This editing is SO GOOD, with such view fews and subscribers, it almost makes me think this is like that experiement where Ludwig tried to prove that it was skill and not luck that made a channel popular by making a top quality video like this and posting it under a new, unassociated channel. Because there is no way a novice made this - it's way too well done.
I discovered Esperanto around the year 2000 and started studying it with books from my local public library. I was learning English and read a book which said that the Vatican radio broadcasts in Esperanto (this is true still today). And wow! In all these years, this is one of the best videos I've ever seen about the subject.
This is what I've done with Esperanto:
- Travelled and was hosted by Esperanto speakers in different countries;
- I hosted Esperanto backpackers from different nationalities in my house and we practised other languages;
- Been to Esperanto meetings in my town, watched cultural lectures with people from other countries, had some nice exchange with people;
- Been to an international congress with hundreds of people from all continents;
- We spent one week at a hotel with all those people, full immersion, music, cultural events, crazy parties, night clubs, restaurants... everything in Esperanto.
- In the congress, I've seen all sorts of weird people: spiritualists, atheists, gays, vegans, Buddhists, old wise men that look like beggars, Linux users... Esperanto attracts such weirdos! One thing is sure: you won't get bored.
- One night at 3 in the morning we were with a group of Esperantists on the beach "moon bathing"... all naked!
If you want to have a sample of that atmosphere, watch the video "Kion vi plej ŝatas dum IJK?"
Apart from that, if you want a language for your career, studies, for sitting down and wait speakers to walk by... Esperanto is obviously a no. However, you could learn it just as mental gymnastics, like people play chess, knit, spend hundreds of hours on social media and play video games... so why not Esperanto? You need to be some sort of adventurer, backpacker and have a certain degree of detachment to enjoy Esperanto to the fullest.
At the congress, I bought this book "Ili vivis sur la tero" (They lived on Earth - eight years of migration around our planet). It's the amazing story of a couple who circled the planet speaking Esperanto and meeting Esperanto people. They say: When all your belongings for eight years fit in a backpack, you realize that the joy of life is not about what you have, but really about what you are.
So you have to be a bit crazy and out of the box to study and enjoy Esperanto and its philosophy.
...
MANY COMMENTS HERE ARE WRONG
People here are giving all sorts of opinions as true facts even if they have never studied the subject. Contrary to what they say, Esperanto didn't work not because it's utopian, not because of its philosophy, structure, etc. It didn't work exactly because it lacks political and military power, maybe it didn't work because French power and ego stopped it, as explained in this video. But it has worked more than most people imagine, being among the top studied languages today.
David Crystal (a top specialist on global languages) explains:
“A language does not become a global language because of its intrinsic structural properties, or because of the size of its vocabulary, or because it has been a vehicle of a great literature in the past, or because it was once associated with a great culture or religion. (...) A language has traditionally become an international language for one chief reason: the power of its people - especially their political and military power.”
But just think about it: for the first time in history, a language was spread in practically all countries and spoken by millions of people without any political, economical or military power to support it, just with the power of the individuals who speak it. That’s already impressive in itself.
TL;DR it is a language for hedonists
Thanks for making me like it even less!
finally, a small and refreshing creator, keep it up, you will rule the algorithm
What this video forgets to mention is that, even at its peak, Esperanto was only spoken by a very small minority of well-of intellectuals. There never was any real mass adoption. That's why it became so easy to vilify it as the secret language of free-masons trying to control you or whatever. Even if it was meant for everyone, it only ever belonged to a certain elite.
Also, while I'm all for the idea of a common, unifying language, a new, artificial one, no matter how well made will always suffer from the lack of history that gives other languages their complexity and depth, especially when this one was explicitly made to be simple and easy to use. You can't have the same amount of subtlety and nuance in Esperanto as in any other language and, in turn, that limits you ability to think and communicate. It makes me think of when Randall Munroe made an encyclopedia (or Thing Explainer) using only the 1000 most common words in English. It's "simple" to read but also incredibly unwieldy and unhelpful when trying to discuss any mildly difficult topic.
Personally, I'm fine with English taking over as the international language that it is today. I don't think it deserves it because it's superior or whatever, but it has been used for centuries by millions of people and as such, has some practical usage and history. Obviously, every other language has its value and deserves to be preserved, even Esperanto, but you cannot expect a made-up language which isn't rooted in an actual culture to ever take off.
Even is that LoN vote had succeeded, at best Esperanto would have become that same thing as Latin to the Catholic Church. A dead language, unknown to the public and spoken only by an elite class as a way to gatekeep knowledge and influence from people without the correct education. Far from its original goal, it would only have increased resentment and tension between the people and its leaders. It would never have worked.
My goal isn't to spread hate on Esperanto. It's a nice idea and I don't mind people learning it. But it tends to be romanticized by people who don't really stop to think about it and that annoys me.
Give me enough troops and an entire nation will speak Esperanto in a couple of years. And if there really are ENOUGH troops, then the whole world.
A language has to be vertical not horizontal ie the master must be understood by the servant not merely between masters. In other words it is an elitist cant
Sounds like the usual linguist judging Esperanto without actually knowing it. Many actual Esperanto speakers don't feel limited by the language. (I'm using it in my daily life.) Of course, as a bgeinner you won't have the vocabulary to discuss topics you've never discussed before, but that's the same if you never discussed these topics in English (or German or whatever).
@@PauxloELiterarywise, can you really say esperanto compares with the wealth of english. We have at least fifteen different ways to say to duck, all with unique connotations in use. Our constant use of definite in its sarcastic meaning, so on. English represents what we humans have constructed over generations. It's not extremely cumbersome that it's unwieldy, and yet you can express a wide range of tones while saying what is ostensibly the same thing. To duck means something different from to cringe, or to bob down or so on.
@@Вихнажд That appears to have been part of the problem, it was doing OK until they tied it to an ideology that people thought might actually do something like that.
Goated video! It’s interesting, has engaging information and visuals, and is of high quality! Keep at it and you’ll be on par with other big history channels soon.
The quality is insane
Thank you 😁
Yes, I really liked how the tenses were presented with the sound effect... sad they confused the tenses though...
At around 2007 I somehow came across Esperanto on the internet. Started taking a few lessons and fell in love with its simplicity and effectiveness. I ended up taking an extension course in college and went to a congress in 2009 in Poland. It was memorable. But over time I completely forgot about it. English just ends up being the language of the "information era" boom and a huge chunk of pop culture, it just sucks you in once you're familiar with it. Esperanto, on the other hand, takes effort and dedication to keep alive, even though your can speak it fluently in a matter of months and is fun to learn.
This is such a high quality video. Your channel is surely gonna grow well! Great video
Thank you!
Holy fuck. As a professional motion graphics artist myself, this video's quality blew my mind. Instant sub! 🔥
Europeans: If we all speak the same language, we will stop killing each other!
Arabs:
the editing is really good
Interesting solution. He grew up in a place where multiple languages were spoken and they saw themselves as enemies because of the language barrier. His solution: Another language
it's like the Standards comic from xkcd
yeah, shutting up would have been the right solution!
You overlook the fact that Esperanto is orders of magnitude easier to learn than most (or all) other languages and it's more culturally neutral, even if not completely neutral given that root words often come from Romance, Germanic or Slavic languages. So it's not just one more language. It's a bridge language.
Despite being simple, it can be very expressive and speakers can be creative in their way of speaking and choosing or building words.
It's simple for several reasons:
* regular grammar: regular plural, regular verbs, regular ways of building words, ...
* agglutinative, so when you learn one root word, you can build many other words. In fact, you can build many words that would not even have equivalents in English. It takes a fraction of time to learn a rich vocabulary as a result compared to other languages.
* spelling is regular and phonetic
* many resources available to learn it: plenty of methods, books, online courses, newspapers, translated software...
@@dominikoeoThis sacrifices the uniqueness and inherent expressiveness in languages like english. Yes we have like ten words for everything, and they have varying roots. But they mean their own specific thing and the writing is more deliberate, their lack of connection to one another adds to the distinctness of each word's identity. That quality of english is what makes it among the valuable languages for literature, you can say to duck, bow, lower your head, crouch, cringe, so on.
To be fair, he wanted a COMMON language so everyone could understand everyone else. When Italy was founded in 1861, one of the many dialects spoken in the different regions was chosen to be the official lingua franca and was named "Italiano". Everyone was then told to learn it so that they could do business with each other and conduct politics. Lots of Italians speak Italian as a second language, not mother tongue.
keep posting youre going to go very far
Holy moly, I didn’t realize this top notch quality video is from a small channel. More people need to see this
Thank you, more to come 🤞
Wow a boom start for a channel, your editing is awesome too. (Domaĝe ke la francoj ekzistas)
Problem with Esperanto is it doesn't just favor romance languages, it incredibly heavily leans to them. Every time I hear Esperanto, as a romance language speaker, I still think it is Spanish. I tried to learn it and I found it to be quite annoying with its simple grammar too. It is highly functional but lacks so much personality and emotion. It is simple but that simplicity sacrifices so much nuance.
Excellent video.
Currently learning Japanese myself. And Esperanto seems so neat and simple that I may decide to learn it just for fun at some point.
Long time Esperantist here, Esperanto is still a living language tbh, people coin neologisms to deal with new technology and slang terms do exist amongst Esperantists
What?! This video is so professional and good that I didn't even believe my eyes seeing your subscriber count! You deserve more, man.
the proper name for a "made-up" language is called a conlang. conlang is short for constructed language
you can make a conlang yourself if you want
*All* languages are "made-up." It's just a question of how many people were involved.
@@jambec144 true
Also the con-man uses conlang
The video as a whole is fantastic, but I really noticed how the editing is especially superb!
I've heard it said of Esperanto that its biggest weakness in attracting new speakers is the lack of a travel brochure: very often when someone takes up a foreign language there is a fascination with connecting with another culture and a destination for travel, especially when that culture and place belonged to their ancestors.
Beyond that, there is the possibility of a language for international commerce, and that is undoubtedly English these days. The down-side of that is English is a hard language to learn as a second language: the spelling and pronunciation aren't standardized, and there are more words than any other language. the bright side is the grammar is simplified, especially where grammatic gender is concerned.
Pasporta Servo! The travel brochure would be for anywhere in the world with speakers. It's a way into various cultures while knowing vaguely that you have fundamental values in common with whoever's hosting you based on the fact that you both chose to learn Esperanto.
People learn Esperanto because they're interested in more than one culture. They learn it because want to speak on equal terms with people from all over the world. They learn it because they like the culture that the global Esperanto community has developed over the last century, its music, its poetry, its literature and the friendships it enables.
@@ccaagg for those who don't know: Pasporta Servo pretty much is couchsurfing for people who speak Esperanto, and has existed for decades before couchsurfing
891 subscribers? AM I READING THAT RIGHT? THIS IS AMAZING! Your work is so well made, I'm surprised you haven't gotten above 100k views in 5days. I'll certainly be watching more of you!
I was watching this till I realized this video only had 45 views holyyy
Working our way up 📈
This is an insanely informative and professional video. I'm going to sub
Join the club 😎
I don't think English will remain the most spoken language, maybe Its momentum will carry it but the US as It's primary promoter have taken some very big missteps recently and It's unlikely they will ever regain either the prestige nor the economic dominance it once had, with China already well overtaking the US and the US doubling down on Its mistakes.
Agreed. Will be interesting to see what the future holds for English and if it will hold its grip!
Doubtful. French fell by the wayside because of America's prominence on the world stage and the large number of countries that spoke English thanks to colonialism. Many times more have English as their official language than French (I think it's something like 1/3 of all countries).. Importantly there is just no replacement to English. People point to languages like Mandarin with a very high number of speakers, but those speakers are almost exclusively in China, which is anathema to an International language.
English is here to stay for the foreseeable future.
If from now to 2100 US population grows from 330 millions to 400, while China's trajectory is to go from 1400 to 700-800 as projected, I wouldn't so easily bet on China replacing the US.
I don't think China becoming the dominant global superpower (which's a possibility, but far from certain) will necessarily result in English losing its status as a lingua franca. Latin didn't lose its status as the lingua franca of Western Europe until many centuries after the fall of the Western Roman Empire.
I don’t think the US is the main promoter anymore
Sure it is the global hegemony but many have already adopted English all across the world
In the internet there are more non native English speakers than native speakers
Knowing such a language is very beneficial to you
Most underrated channel on yt damn this is so high quality
subscribed for sure! Nice to be in the first hundreds of millions to come
Thank you! We shall see 👀
The fact that Esperanto is on Duolingo is actually a massive motivator to make me want to learn the language...
wow, last time i was this new to a basically new channel, Esperanto was still new
this video is amazing though, nothing has inspired me to learn it more than this, i thought its history was mostly just that, but theres a lot here that demonstrates it has a chance. i do still think it doesn't really match up to its mission though, as an international language for the whole planet to speak, it was made at a time where only Europe mattered in the world, and its starkly reflective of it. Asia, Africa, anywhere else will have more difficulty learning it than Europe and its colonies, some sounds so difficult that accents could be harder to understand than even English ones.
but it probably deserves its second chance, it was already so close the first time, just perhaps alongside others. my pick of Viossa is not likely to be adopted, heck the issues with it as an IAL are far worse, but i like it for its broad approach. hopefully other runners can learn a bit from it
So glad you enjoyed it! Con langs are fascinating things, but Esperanto definitely had its flaws.
Who knows if anything will challenge English in the next 100 years, it happened to French! 👀
Super interesting! I had no idea that this was a thing.
This idea that communication leads to peace is pretty naive. When you understand what the other mob are actually saying, you realise what they are plotting, and you have to destroy them first before they destroy you.
Britain and Japan had zero communication for centuries, and no conflict between them. But lots of conflict with the Frogs, though thousands of British people understood French, and there were Frogs who understood English.
The end of WW2 was like 80 years ago, and even then that was a conflict with the Vichy regime. The last war with France where it wasn't because France was Nazi was over 200 years ago. Why are you unironically calling French people frogs.
No one said it would guarantee world peace, but it’s undeniable that on average you feel more connected with people that speak your language than don’t. Also your argument makes no sense, your equating the idea of two countries sharing a couple speakers to a theoretical united world language. Like no shit Josh the polyglot peasant can’t stop the Hundred Years’ War
And lots of conflicts with the Poissons
This is your first video?? So good!
"it is the English that me and you speak that has taken over the world."
True enough. No one gives a damn about grammar any more.
But you understood what he meant….
I'm surprised he used "me and you" instead of "you and I" because he was otherwise pleasant to listen to. Mind you, I will often say "me and my mate are going..." so I can't complain. I'm from East London though so I've an excuse!
this video has inspired me to learn Esperanto
As a hobby I'm sure it's a nice pursuit
Capitalists should have been proponents of Esperanto. I can imagine it all:
One currency
One language
One global market
You might be onto something with that
No. Two(?) million speakers, scattered across the globe, is not an easy market to cater to
Dankon pro tion filmon. Mi lernis paroli la lingvo kiam mi estis junulo, ĉar la ideo ŝatas al mi kaj reta ludo entenis tekstoj en Esperanto. Sed mia Esperanto estas rustiĝata nun.
To assume that conflicts will end if people will understand each other is uterly stupid.
Alas so bit like the same religion won't stop wars
As an Esperantist, this is by far the most accurate and informative explainer video I've ever seen on Esperanto.
I call it funny spanish
I speak both, and they're completely different. You could call it "funny English" and it would be just as accurate. But I guess they sound superficially similar to a lot of people who don't speak Spanish nor Esperanto, not just you.
I do speak both English and Spanish, it still sounds more Spanish to me somehow.
@@rjScubaSki It sounds more Spanish because it clearly is. Native Spanish speakers don't get it but it clearly has similar phonemes and strong Spanish influence on the vocabulary.
@@rjScubaSki It superficially resembles Spanish more than English. If you are an English speaker, I understand that Esperanto and Spanish can sound kinda similar to you.
Esperanto has a lot more consonant clusters, some combinations don't occur in Spanish in the same positions, and it has the ĝ/ĵ/ŝ/ĉ and h/ĥ distinctions.
But they both have a 5 vowel system and a lot of words accented on the penultimate syllable. That's a lot of languages tho.
That's on the phonetics, and it's superficial.
On vocabulary, they share a lot of words, but only indirectly. Esperanto took almost nothing from Spanish, but most of its words come from French and Latin, which are related.
Its grammar is completely different. Agglutinative language, no grammatical gender, two grammatical cases, the use of prepositions and cases resemble closer Slavic languages, the word endings are very different from those in Spanish, it has a much freer word order, and several other things.
Again, how you hear it is subjective. But calling it "funny English" is (okay, almost) as accurate as calling it "funny Spanish". Not very objective at all.
@@frechjo it’s still basically funny Spanish though
This production quality is so good, how the hell do you only have 424 subs?
The problem I have with Esperanto, though I speak it, is that phonology and Eurocentric vocab. It's just a little too difficult for people that don't speak Indo-European languages.
This is a good point and one I did try to fit into the video but it didn’t quite make the cut.
I guess the reality is any language based on pre-consisting linguistic structures will favour the grammatical/alphabetical standards of one area or another.
Maybe a universal sign language would be one way to avoid *some* of these issues. 🤔
if Zamenhof was Chinese, Esperanto would be a tonal language
He had good intentions, but failed to consider speakers of none-european languages@jan_Kitalon
It was very popular in Japan. At one point in the video the narrator talks about Europe while the picture shows a Japanese group.
It is an issue with its design, sadly
you deserve more subscribers, amazingly crafted content - your 709th subscriber
Isn't every language made up?
Exactly the entire concept of communication is made up
Most languages evolve organically over time through cultural and social processes. Esperanto was intentionally created by a small group of people with a specific goal in mind.
@@tolocino No. It wasn´t created by a small group of people. As far as we know it was just one modest guy.
If you could buy stocks of youtube channels, i would be investing my life savings into this one
Stonks! 📈
this CANNOT be your first video... so high quality!
Lets make a new language to stop the hatred
Gets hated and hunted
Did you really called the holocaust 'hunting'?
Playing a 'most-dangerous game' there...
@@amadeosendiulo2137 but it wasnt only the holocaust or did i miss a sentence.
What word would be more fitting for people that strategically look for something to exterminate it?
In his letters Tolkien talks about it in a mocking tone. He had no respect for the language itself, only that people were making languages. He was appointed as an advisor without being asked if he wanted to.
If it wasn't for that French veto and later Adolf Hitler, might we all be speaking Esperanto today? It seems like the language really had a chance before it was hit with this double whammy of bad luck. It really is the closest we've ever come to having an invented language unite the world.
Waot this guy has 818 subs only? Keep grinding man
I don’t know… l’m not convinced that forcing the entire population of this planet to reject the language they are actually speaking and that is the expression of thousands of years of history, culture, self identity and so on is a good idea. And where is the proof that speaking the same language means peace and understanding? I’m thinking to the conflicts between catholics and protestants in Ireland, just to name one example that same language means nothing…
That's not how it was ever meant to work. It was meant to be everyone's * second * language. That's why it's called an international * auxiliary * language. A second language is already semi-mandatory in most school systems. The success of an international auxiliary language (IAL) would simply require an agreement among a sufficient number of nations to emphasize the IAL in secondary language education. It would also be adopted by nations as a common middle language for translating between languages (thus greatly simplifying simultaneous communication between several languages at once, an often challenging task faced by the UN). In no way at all would the IAL be intended to replace anyone's native language.
Thats not what the plan was, it was intended to at very least by the second language for Europe and its Colonies
It was meant to be a trade language used to communicate with people from elsewhere. Erasing language was never the goal. Look at the world right now - English is the de facto trade language. Anyone whose business involves talking to people across the world will know English and expect representatives they're talking to to also speak English, even if both people aren't from an English-speaking country. English hasn't supplanted people's native languages, and neither would have Esperanto.
@@ccaagg If anything, English has actually supplanted people's native languages and been a tool of colonial oppression much more than Esperanto.
This isn't theoretical, North America and Australia, as well as the Celtic Nations like Ireland and Scotland and Pacific nations like Hawaii and Aotearoa have their native language and indigenous culture endangered if not extinct because of the forced colonial imposition of English.
And while the situation isn't as drastic for former British colonies in Africa and Asia, English still has a huge unfair advantage as it's often the only official language due to colonial legacy, and as such, indigenous languages are used less in formal contexts and their non prestigious status is endangering their culture if not survival. For example, in most African countries, Africans are forced to have their school curriculum in the language of their former oppressors, as schools and textbooks in African languages rarely exist.
That's the only reason there even are multiple "English speaking countries" to begin with.
(Unlike for example the Soviet Union where their language policy definitely wasn't perfect but a diverse range of languages were still used in government, education, the workplace, mass media and entertainment).
This is what brutal British colonialism did, as well as British settler colonies like the US continue to do to this day.
Meanwhile, if Esperanto were to be adopted, this would've been unlikely, as it would've been explicitly only designed as a second language.
@@gamermapper Oh no, absolutely, I just see colonial oppression and the erasure of language as the cause behind English becoming the lingua franca rather than the other way round.
English hasn't supplanted languages as a result of being used as an auxiliary language, but as a result of colonial oppression and English being the primary language native to the heart of the imperial core (England historically and the US presently; looks like you already know that colonialism never ended, just changed form) and therefore having a more prestigious status. It's that coerced adoption of English that _makes_ it the most useful auxiliary language, since so many people already speak it as a result of that.
This is one heck of a good video for a first upload.
Can't help but think that because it was so heavily repressed by the axis forces in WW2, we should be learning to speak it now. There is clearly something about the idea that the most hateful ideologies find dangerous, and that can only be a good thing.
Will it stop wars
We already got English
There is no need for esperanto
How do you only have 870 subs??
You deserve way more
So they wanted to create a Lingua Franca.
Funnily we already have that. It's called English.
That's a new thing... We have a lingua-franca now... back then... if you were doing Science, the language to learn was German, and for diplomacy, it was French. Post-WW2, English beat everything else to a pulp.
The problem with English is that it is the language of the USA, and many people don't like the USA.
Lingua Franca literally means French, not English.
The aim of Esperanto was to switch the world to a language that would not change with the change of dominant economy, and that would focus on quality/hindrances more suited to a second language than a first one.
This is something important to understand : languages naturally evolve into messy pile of meaningless crap. All this crap can be interesting as it is part of one's identity making life more rich and vibrant, but is just dead weigh for inter communication with people that don't share your mother tongue.
So by carefully choosing a 2nd languages for 2 different purposes, one for your inner social group, the other for worldwide communication, you get the best of both world
@@stighemmernot officially
And it’s not only the Americans that speak it you know
The language is so global that you can connect to almost everyone on the net
It's sad that Lithuania and it's city Kaunas didn't even get a mention, even though it was such a big contributor to the Esperanto language! To those who don't know - Zamenhof's wife Klara Zamenhof is from the Lithuania's city Kaunas! In the city, thanks to Klara's dad Aleksandras Zilbernikas financial support, the textbooks of Esperanto were released in German, Polish and French languages!
AL LA FINA VENKO
NENIAM KROKODILU ✊✊
"Almost" is doing a LOT of work here... even IF the League of Nations adopted the measure, it had no enforcement mechanism, and a lot of countries were gonna refuse to adopt it. Not to mention all the countries that weren't even in the League. And of course, even if they use it for diplomacy, most countries are gonna stick to their native languages for internal use and education. The general public is not just gonna all start learning a new language en masse.