Esperanto, the International Language | David Malone | TEDxChadwickSchool

A made up language - no, it's not from a TV show - it's a language that many people speak and was hoped by its creator to bring world peace. What does it sound like and why learn it? It's all in David's talk.
David loves languages. He speaks English and Spanish fluently, and is currently learning French. He first found Esperanto on the website Duolingo while improving his French. The more research he did the more interesting he found Esperanto. He believes in the benefits of learning Esperanto and other foreign languages and hopes to learn and speak as many languages as he can in the future.
The video clip shown during the talk is a short excerpt of “The One Show” first broadcasted on January 11, 2010 on BBC One, which holds the copyright thereto.
This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at ted.com/tedx

[@wannabepolymathofesoterica6812]

I remember how excited the Esperanto community was when we heard that EO was being added to Duolingo, because of the potential for new learners who might not have heard of EO otherwise. This guy discovered it on Duolingo and that led to him giving a TEDx talk on it and idk that just makes me happy

[@tomaskuli177]

OnesAndZeros Been working on it for the past two weeks, almost done.

[@wannabepolymathofesoterica6812]

nice!

[@aguynamednathan]

Sama por mi! 😃

[@TransmogriBenno]

There's one point which probably needs to be clarified in what was otherwise a pretty good introduction to the history of and ideas behind Esperanto. Esperanto does have a significant culture - there are over 25,000 books, not just a handful of novels. There are conventions and other events all around the world, all year round, Esperanto musicians, bloggers, youtubers, podcasts, and so on.

[@db1416]

that does not constitute culture.France isnt a culture just because they have media written in french.

[@lucasrba]

@@db1416 "Culture: the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively." Well, that seems to be culture for me

[@bruselo]

The sound could technically be better...

[@duosayso]

The sound was absolutely execrable!

[@furtivedolus2504]

To be fair, Esperanto was not intended to replace anything as the language spoken amongst countrymen. And languages that are learned formally as opposed to naturally do not really have the mutation problem.

[@ronaldonmg]

Mutation-problem? As far as I can tell there definitely are typically european expressions in English that don't make sense in UK or US. Esperanto won't change much because the structure keeps many words in place, and because many of its users are (too) conservative about it. Nobody wants another Ido-crisis

[@furtivedolus2504]

@@ronaldonmg Esperanto would quickly start to pile on new roots. Turning into something more like Ido. From there, it probably would become something more akin to Novial.

[@ronaldonmg]

@@furtivedolus2504 I'm not sure what you are referring to. Under what circumstances would we pile on new roots and what makes you think we would? Slang arises when we want to exclude outsiders. Esperanto is our way to include as many people as possible. Ido never got big because most of the reforms that take you from Esperanto to Ido accomplish nothing. Dropping the slavic influence only makes it more west-eurocentric.

[@furtivedolus2504]

@@ronaldonmg Slang would happen and become orthodox. Poetry would contribute to the language changing over time and so would the influence of outside languages. And in all likelihood, one set word order would be settled on rendering the accusative almost vestigial.

[@ronaldonmg]

@@furtivedolus2504 Slang did happen but mostly has not become mainstream. Poetry has introduced dozens of words (hida, turpa, lanta, dista, liva) but they are not widely used at all. We've been battling the allleged sexism since 1984... The problem (IMHO) is that too many people aren't willing to use words that aren't officialised, and the Akademio is not going to officialise them before they are widely used. Word-order getting fixed is a possibility, but it's more likely that "na" to indicate direct objects will gain some traction

[@tenienteramires4428]

Kaj la teksto en esperanto?

[@72Elco]

Interesa diskuto pri Esperanto - ¡Muy bien hecho!

[@fredmeyeriii7858]

The statement that Esperanto doesn't have much culture is completely wrong. There are many novels and many poems written in Esperanto.There are authors who write world class literature in Esperanto. There are many articles written in Esperanto. There are movement oriented magazines and news magazines in Esperanto. I have been using the language for more than 50 years. I read, write, or speak Esperanto every day. The internet has facilitated world wide communication in Esperanto.

[@jean-louisbelhote2822]

wright. Literature is more difficult than the everyday conversation.

[@EsperantoVarietyShow]

Good job, David!

[@candicem7372]

Hey I agree wirh you the first language was just sounds but to communicate Universal we all need to speak what everyone knows

[@runntlan7177]

Another great project , keep it up!

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

Well David you got a lot of good points across and got a lot of the facts right - but not the pronunciation of Lojban. ;) Seriously, a good talk. Hope you enjoyed doing it and got some accolades from your school.

[@mr.aldave8308]

Can some one put Esperanto subtitles? or translate.

[@mikoajbadzielewski3396]

good point...

[@SaeedAhmad-ne3ub]

Wonderful talk on the topic what Esperanto is?

[@user-rw7mf4oo1h]

Apple should have esperanto keyboard, the international relationship in the world should use esperanto as official language.

[@LDN_MZK]

My apple computer is always on "Extended - ABC", which has all the diacritic and punctuation of Esperanto, even though it is not called "Esperanto", it works as such very well.

[@imienazwisko486]

Ni bezonas tekston en Esperanto :-(

[@ALVARITO2370]

Vi pravas, amico. Certe

[@neilnachum1]

Gratulon!

[@katapilaro1823]

Saluton kaj bonvenon ! Ŝajnas ke pli kaj pli homoj komprenas la grandegan konzepton pri tiu mirinda lingvo.

[@ilikefries7999]

Can somebody please provide subtitles ? The audio is not clear.

[@thecrazycoconuts1070]

When you graduate from an Irish primary school and only after finishing that school you find out that if you were in Great Britain and you were much younger you could have been tought Esperanto with more people, not just sitting on your bed using Duolingo whilst your parents continuously tell me that it's not worth learning it. :/ Welp, guess it's time to open up the time travelling machine and somehow make enough money to move to the UK...yeah, that's never gonna work out.

[@Adroyo]

What?

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

I've not heard of any UK schools doing Esperanto so I'm guessing it would only be one or two where there are Esperantist teachers... and probably even there if a lot of kids have the class their parents are still going to say it's not worth it. :) In short, I don't think you've missed anything.

[@sergiodesersank8993]

Mi fidas je la venko de Esperanto. La mondo necesas gxin.

[@mattia4971]

La prononco de la knabo estis tre malbona...

[@KizTheCat]

Mi ne volas por Esperanto esti la universala lingvo

[@ronaldonmg]

Almost nobody wants it to be the "universal" language in the sense that it be the dominant language all over the planet and have all 7000 other languages go extinct. It was meant to be the worlds shared second language. A language being "universal" in the sense that every human thought and feeling can be accurately expressed in it is not possible. We shouldn't call Esperanto "universal" at all IMHO

[@davidguerin6142]

Esperanto will not evolve as natural languages. It will, but differently. The grammar and the rules stay fixed, attention is paid on this . It is a bridge between languages, it is not meant to be used in daily life, so if esperantists finally have problems to communicate, they will naturally converge. The vocabulary may be different but Esperanto is rather resistant to borrowings because words can be derived, and that's what people do if, in a conversation, a word is not understood.

[@duosayso]

I think it could be used as an excellent hub language.

[@alanguages]

duosayso I also think Esperanto would be great as a stepping stone language. The amount of creativity and easier acquisition will speed up learning other languages. If people are not interested in it, then learn the language of most interest.

[@ronaldonmg]

@@alanguages reality supports your thinking. See wikipedia Propaedeutic_value_of_esperanto

[@alanguages]

@@ronaldonmg Even though true, if a person has no interest in a language like Esperanto and tries to learn, but still prefers not to, then they won't reach a proficient level, regardless how long they try. That is why I recommend learning what language is of interest first.

[@CaScannerNut1963]

Adiaŭ is pronounced ah-dee-ow. Need to work on that pronunciation. Otherwise, good speech.

[@noebailly496]

Li ankaŭ prononcis "j" anstataŭ "ĵ" dum sia esperanta legado.

[@yoavshati]

Lojban should be Lojxban in Esperanto, it isn't "Loyban"

[@KenikoB]

Actually, it should be loĵbano

[@oblongeyetater]

@@KenikoB "x" was used as a symbol for the accent mark since it is not easy to type on a typical keyboard.

[@noebailly496]

Ĉu vere Zamenhof skribis la "unuan libron" kiam li estis deknaŭ jara? Ŝajnas malĝuste de mi.

[@LDN_MZK]

Vi pravas! Zamenhof estis 27-jara kiam li verkis "Unua Libro" (Unuan Libron, haha la esperanta gramatiko, mi amas ĝin)

[@Ken.-]

It won't change regionally like he suggests because it's not used as a first language anywhere. You probably speak the same language as the people around you. It's also never going to become a world second language because Earth is too big for there to be a practically to that. How often do you travel to other countries to use a rarely used language you learned years ago and forgot most of? It's more likely that in 20 - 40 years we will have automatic translation improved well enough that any international language will become completely useless.

[@YeeLeeHaw]

That's an Appeal to Futility fallacy, the reason it's not more popular is because most people aren't even aware of its existence. And Esperanto is going to be more fitting for computers since it's a very simple and logical language.

[@ronaldonmg]

Only people who never seriously learned a second language can believe that automatic translation will ever be good enough.

[@paulapaulina4664]

Using software won't give you the cognitive advantages that second language does, furthermore using translation - no matter how good - will never be as fluent and enjoyable as conversing with someone in a language you share. Even with a babel fish in your ear an international auxiliary language would still have tremendous utility. From my own experience I'd agree with the estimate that Esperanto is about 4 times easier than languages such as Spanish or German for an English speaker.

[@tumitaa_konsole]

I think it's still possible that we will eventually have several variants of Esperanto, since all of us have different tastes on social networking services. Like, Reddit variant or Facebook variant, depending on which we visit more often. I don't know if Earth being too big or too crowded necessarily means defeat of world-wide language per se. We know that a language can dominate the globe (at least partially), ever since English became a lingua franca. Machine translations are much better than how it used to be, and honestly, I might agree how auxiliary languages may not be needed anymore.

[@tumitaa_konsole]

@@ronaldonmg Only people who never seriously thought about what machine translations are for can believe that they are useless, if you mean "un-useless" by "good enough".

[@ronaldonmg]

This guy needs to work on his pronunciation of Esperanto

[@lunanuneseo]

He ruined the whole thing from the moment he started to read the text in Esperanto about the cultural significance of dragons in China. Terrible pronunciation! It was horrific to the point I almost bled from my ears, not to mention he didn't get his facts straight about different topics on Esperanto. Some of them have been already mentioned in other comments. This was really disappointing to watch.

[@jamesc7277]

Esperanto is a wonderful idea. However, as the world has moved along, English, however poorly adapted to the rôle, is the de facto world language, becoming more so with every passing day. (Not a ‘nationalist’ brag, simply an observation of fact.)

[@seanoriain8294]

About 1890 the most popular car in the world was the Model T Ford. It no longer is. Times change, and the fact that English is the de facto world language now does not guarantee that it will remain so.

[@lashachakhunashvili1399]

Esperanto belongs in a musem. The entire idea of the necessity of an artificial language being adopted for global communication is based on false premise and is utterly absurd. No need to invent bicycles anew.

[@Adroyo]

Wrong

[@ronaldonmg]

What do you mean "anew". Esperanto has been around since 1887. What false premisse?

[@jean-louisbelhote2822]

Esperanto is alive. Try to find a group on individuals on Fb, Instagram... Pasporta servo enables individuals to travel free to family. You must contact people before the travel, that is the point.

[@RJCMaxification]

you belong in a museum

[@wolframhuttermann7519]

I was asking God what his plans were with Esperanto. This language is supposed to be a tool to promote the Gospel worldwide. Jesus wants to help Esperantists to understand it even in this language more and more. Is this not fantastic?

[@weberplancknashcurie3747]

Do you personally speak with God?

[@tomaskuli177]

Wolfram Hüttermann Oh please not another language to shove your god down other peoples throats. Spare the rest of us.

[@Ken.-]

Did god bring up how he destroyed the tower of babel? Maybe you dialed the wrong number.

[@db1416]

@@Ken.- do they allow phones in insane asylums?

[@MatthewMcVeagh]

Yes absolutely fantastic! Hallucinatory, delusional, dreamlike, mirage-like, pick your adjective.

[@janobruno7486]

Gratulon!