 What's up guys, EvilDeer here. Today I want to talk about a Ticlatemo, a topic that can be quite sensitive. Recently there was an article posted in the Berda Folio, which is like the free paper, and the article was titled Esperanto, chu moratanta lingvo. Esperano, is it a dying language? Now this is obviously a clickbait title, but the topic of the article is basically stating that Esperano is not a dying language, the Esperano community is flourishing, it's just association numbers that are crashing and magazine signups and crashing, which is to be expected. Anyway, I went down, looked at the comments, and it doesn't matter what language you're in, comments are usually just toxic, but most of the comments were probably from very pessimistic Esperano speakers saying things like, well no, the associations are dying, where are all these magical internet-speaking Esperano speakers? I don't see them anywhere. Well, my comment to that is association numbers and magazine numbers are crashing around the world. In fact, if you look at the major newspapers, I'm not talking a little like local newspapers, I'm talking the biggest newspapers in the world, they are literally begging for money right now. They are all burning, because no one wants to pay for stuff anymore, and no one sees the point in the traditional structures when you can literally go online and get your information about something without a problem. Think about it, if you want Esperanto news or like a funny Esperano article, why pay some magazine to get that when you can come and just listen to me or the other myriad of Esperano speakers just tell you a funny story or something like that, like you literally get the same content, sometimes better, sometimes the same, but it's completely free, so there's no reason to pay. Now, this led into another article, an article I saw coming out of China saying that the Esperano community there is dying, and I read through it, and it was the same old stuff again, and then it started to speak about the fact that no one's learning Esperano because, you know, economic reasons, they're all going to go learn English and blah, blah, blah, and that leads into the next question that everyone always says, or the next thing that everyone always says, and that is, oh, well Esperano has no future because English has already established itself, it's the international language, Esperano is now just on his deathbed. Well, in fact, I see this as the complete opposite. Now, let me explain myself. This comes from several different points, okay? First, you have people saying English is already ruling, there's no point for it, then you've got the people saying, well, we've got automatic translators coming very soon, so we're going to have no point for Esperano, and all these people basically come to the same conclusion that Esperano is going to die, because we don't have the finance, we don't have the economic resources, and translators are on their way and not that far out. In fact, for me, it's completely the opposite. Think about it like this, all those millions of people in China who are learning English, are they learning it because they love the English language and culture? No, I've met so many Chinese people and they're learning English for economic reasons, okay? They're doing it so that they can get themselves a job. Now imagine when those magical translators get to the point where they can translate whatever you want on the fly with near 100% accuracy, why would you go economically learn English if you can just hold your phone and just talk and have a full conversation with another person? You're just not going to do it. So those economic learners of languages, of the giant languages, are going to basically start massively shrinking. And over a few generations, the majority people, the vast majority of people are just going to speak one language or whatever language they've learned. They might not even speak the language of their own country much anymore because they won't have a need, they'll just speak whatever language that they learned as a child, pull out their phone or whatever device they've got at that point and just talk into it. So there's going to be no need for learning languages for an economic reason. And this is where Esparano comes into it. No one ever learned Esparano for economic reasons. The vast majority of people learned Esparano, learned it for idealistic reasons or because they wanted to just see if they could learn language or because they thought it had a fascinating culture in history. So I have never met someone who's gone, oh yeah, I learned Esparano because you know it can get me a job here, here, here and here. It just never happened. So if translators come along and start massively replacing all this like need for learning languages, people are still going to learn Esparano. And in fact, that might be the thing that gives Esparano the real boot because people will be like, oh well, what language should I learn? Well, I don't have to learn English because I'm just talking to my phone. So what interests me? Maybe I'll learn French for cultural reasons. You know, I just kind of find it fascinating. Or maybe I just want to speak another language. I'll learn Esparano because, you know, that's one of the easiest. So I think at that point where translators take over and seriously replace the economic powerhouse languages, that's where we're going to see Esparano start taking off. Because those Chinese people aren't going to be learning English because they'll just talk into their phones. And those English speakers aren't going to be learning Chinese, even though not many of them do, because well, they'll just speak into their phones or they'll load a movie and a real-time translator like that will be a thing. Imagine that you just open a Chinese movie and it's just in English because real-time translation. I don't think we have to worry too much about the future of Esparano. In fact, I think Esparano has survived the points at which it could have been killed off. And those points were its early years. Now it is established, it's growing, and the internet is definitely propelling it forward. Like, I've met so many Esparano speakers since it started growing on the internet. Just recently there was a video from TLDR and that was talking about Esparano. That was like literally yesterday. And in it, they mentioned that learning popped up in like 2000 and then they saw Duolingo in 2010 and then you see that the timeline is actually starting to speed up. Things are starting to come out faster and faster because we're starting to hit that upwards curve now. The internet has been the biggest blessing for the Esparano community. When I first learned Esparano in 2009 or 10, for the first two years, there was literally never one new face in my local Esparano community. Then Duolingo came along and now I have seen so many new people, some stay, some go, but I am constantly meeting new people in Sydney who speak the language. And to varying degrees and some of them very high level and some of them become even active in the associations now. So I don't think you can look at Duolingo and go, where are all these learners? I don't see them. Or a full one. Most of them probably disappear but those who do remain, they spend a few years just floating around the internet doing things in Esparano and then some of them start to become more and more inactive. Like in our local community we have a few Esparano speakers who learn Esparano from Duolingo and now they literally run the local association. Like I don't even turn up anymore. Like I very rarely turn up. But they run it. They do everything in it. And those people learn from Duolingo. And I'm sure they are not unique. There's at least two of them. Two? Maybe three. There's three that I can think of off the top of my head. So the future for me for Esparano is very strong. Esparanto ne estas moda tanta lingvo. Keiji ne estas moda tanta lingvo. I think that Esparanto will be a language that will really flourish as time passes. Anyway, that's it. If you like this video, like it, share it around, sub to the channel. And by the way, if you like my work, I have a Patreon page because no one pays for anything anymore. So give me some support there. Link in the description.