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this capsule is probably going to be bilingual, unless I start to develop so much content in each language that it only makese sense to separate them. so what is that other language in this blog?
the language is Esperanto, and after becoming a fluent speaker of the language and having met part of the community and gotten acquainted with the community in general, I find it extremely interesting that it has a lot in common with, for example, the Linux community, or Linux communities if that is more appropriate. it also has similarities with the 'small internet' community, or tilde communities. basically, it's a small community connected by an activity that is rather uncommon, though no less interesting than any other pastime that you might imagine. most speakers of Esperanto are rather free thinkers, and don't necessarily follow the common flow. I won't get into the speakers because after all, I won't accurately cover all types, but the language itself started off as a project that was published in 1887 and was released to the wild freely and without any license or claims of owndership much like an open source project. initially this was for practical reasons of anonymity, but after the initial period of anonymity passed, there "project" was still for the people by the people. since then there has been a lot of Esperanto spoken and written, there have been many multi-generaltional Esperanto speaking families, many Esperanto speaking babies, many more individuals that have bumped into it and become part of the speaking community, and due to this 134+ year history it has gone way past that initial "project" stage and developed into something that now has its own form and style, while keeping its LEGO-like skeletal system that makes it consistent yet flexible, and systematically lernable. so far there is no such thing as Esperanto so old that is not understandable today, athough you can feel the difference in style between writings from the end of the 1800s early 1900s and today. an interesting side note is that the language, like many open source projects, did fork in 1907 and so now there is a "dialect" of Esperanto, if you will, although it's not used nearly as much.
there are somewhat simplistic claims about Esperanto that it is the world's easiest language. I won't say that I agree with making this statement without any qualifications. difficult always depends on the learner's native language and its relation to a given target language. for me the claims turned out to be true, although I am a native speaker of Spanish, and was raised bilingual, so I had plenty of vocabulary to draw from when learning the language.
the idea is that having a second (or third, fourth, etc) language that requires less time than most any other language to reach the same comparable level would be a benefit to anyone that might have a need to speak with another who does not share a common language. it's important to remember that this idea is from 1887, a time when the thought of designing a language for common use was not unheard of, and when there was no single hyper-widespread language like we have today with English, especially on the internet. so is there no point to it now? well, now it's out there as a thing that exists. it's still simpler than most languages, and it still provides access to the existing community of speakers, and literature, however small it might be in comparison to other national languages. much like Linux isn't going to just disappear regardless of the success of iOS and Windows, Esperanto isn't likely to just stop existing. today, English allows access to larget markets and huge amounts of information, so there is great incentive for choosing that for someone who only has the ability to choose one additional language, but multilinguism is likely to still be a thing for a large percentage of the world's population, and some of those will undoubtedly be interested in Esperanto.
I've only been a speaker for the last 6 years and I'm not a historian so I can't speak to its entire history and trends. my crystal ball isn't working either so that's not going to help. but like many other activities, it has found a home on the internet. learning materials abound online, and speakers have an increased ability to communicate with other speakers and coordinate for conferences, travel, and meetups. personally speaking, it's already a part of my skill set and interests, so I will continue to use it as long as it is useful and rewarding, which it has been and continues to be.
feel free to reach out to me at fabian@ctrl-c.club.
Freakonomics: What would be the best universal language? (Earth 2.0 series)
Esperanto is not dead: Can the universal language make a comeback?
Esperanto Association of Britain
World Esperanto Youth Organization (Tutmonda Esperantista Junulara Organizo, TEJO)