Esperanto was designed to be simple to learn, and to unite the world.
It has a lot of competition from other artificial languages, but it still tops them all. What is Esperanto like? Will it take over the world, or become an endangered language?
Linguist Daniel Midgley looks into it on this episode of Talk the Talk.
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http://danielmidgley.com/talkthetalk/talk_classic.xmlI’ve never been an Esperantist, but ever since finding out about Esperanto at a young age, I’ve always kind of wondered about it. So this was a good chance to find out more. Will it ever take over the world? Or will it fizzle out? My prediction would be fizzle as lots of minority languages are losing ground, but at this stage in history it looks robust.
Many people emailed me about selfie becoming Oxford Dictionaries Online’s Word of the Year. I just think it’s cool that a) this is an Australian word, and b) we can trace it back so far.
And here’s my favourite selfie. Because cheeky.
Show notes
English has a new preposition because Internet.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/11/english-has-a-new-preposition-because-internet/281601/
Because noun.
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4068
Because race car.
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/because-race-car
Because Skyrim.
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/because-as-a-preposition?page=1
Esperanto: Simple, logical, and doomed
http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2013/09/esperanto-0?zid=319&ah=17af09b0281b01505c226b1e574f5cc1
The Ethnologue page for Esperanto
https://www.ethnologue.com/language/epo
A brief history of Esperanto
http://www.jeb.org.uk/node/125
A quick and dirty guide to Esperanto.
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Esperanto/Quick_and_dirty_guide
The rules of Esperanto
http://donh.best.vwh.net/Esperanto/rules.html
Esperanto on Wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto_grammar
How many people speak Esperanto?
http://www.esperanto.net/veb/faq-5.html
Google Translate does Esperanto.
http://translate.google.com.au/#en/eo/My%20dog%20has%20fleas.
Some good critiques of Esperanto
http://blogicarian.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/esperanto-international-auxiliary.html
http://interlanguages.net/Esp.html
And some responses
http://remush.be/rebuttal/index.html
Oomoto, the religion that hails Zamenhof as a god
http://www.oomoto.or.jp/English/enFaq/indexfaq.html
Esperanto is dead, and always was, and here’s why.
http://psuglobalforum.blogspot.com.au/2011/04/esperanto-is-dead.html
A man once tried to raise his son as a native speaker in Klingon.
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2012/08/a-man-once-tried-to-raise-his-son-as-a-native-speaker-in-klingon/
Selfie: Oxford’s word of the year
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-11-19/selfie-beats-twerk-as-word-of-the-year/5102154
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/11/19/selfie-australian-slang-term-named-international-word-year
Here’s the world’s earliest instance of ‘selfie’ so far. Hopey, if you’re out there, we need to talk!
http://www2b.abc.net.au/science/k2/stn/archives/archive32/newposts/169/topic169861.shtm
My favourite selfie
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1690803-girl-rushes-field-at-college-world-series-and-manages-greatest-selfie-in-sports
