Kind of a hard question to word, but is there anything in your life you have recommended to other people but no one’s ever gotten into?
I love podcasts and have friends who still thank me for getting them into this one or that one. But I’ve never gotten anyone to listen to My Brother, My Brother and Me. I don’t know if the name is unappealing or the concept but people seem to bounce off immediately.
So what can’t you get people into and why should we check it out?
Esperanto. A made up language that is really easy to learn and spoken to some degree by about 2 million people all over the world. I got into it when I heard that if you speak it you can stay with Esperanto speakers that just want to practice with strangers, for free. I traveled all over the world for free and met so many awesome people.
When I try to get anyone to learn it, they just won’t. They hear about that criticism of the language or another, or plain get bored. You can just start the Esperanto course on Duolingo for free, but nobody I know goes through, despite the benefits.
The moment I got interested in Esperanto, I wanted better so I jumped down a rabbit hole of ever more obscure languages until I realized what I had gotten into and stopped.
Also, and this probably applied to others, if I’m language learning, there’s two other languages I really 'should* be learning, but am not, so that makes me feel guilty.
I kinda understand the appeal but there are just too many other languages that have a real practical use for when I’m traveling and want to speak to regular people instead of a secret society.
Fun fact, William Shatner of Star Trek fame once starred in a movie filmed entirely in Esperanto.
Angoroj! Fun fact: I have the DVD! And it’s hilariously bad.
How do you locate other Esperanto speakers?
Esperanto has a special call that attracts other Esperanto users.
It also has a mating call, but that only attracts birds.
i find it cool in the sense of how it’s a portrayal of all languages being somewhat synthetic. how other conlangs have tried to play with language features is how i landed on Jan Misali’s YT channel (here’s his Esperanto episode).
esperanto per-se i haven’t learnt because… maybe because I wouldn’t have anyone to practice with, and the point of languages is communication? idk.
Duolingo maybe be a good start for the theory, how did you start getting practice? and more importantly, what’s this about rent-free Esperanto hostels? 👀👀