 What's up guys, Evil D here, your guide, and that sounds really weird in English, but we're just gonna go with that. Okay, today I'm going to give you guys a presentation on Esperanto. This is actually the presentation I'm gonna give during the language festival, and I just need your feedback. I just need you guys to tell me, is it good? Is it crap? Is it terabat? Is it worse than terabat? This is the most abysmal thing you've ever seen on the face of the planet, and you wish to die right now. Just give me your feedback. Now, it's gonna last about 20 minutes. The actual time frame I have is about 35 minutes, but I'm leaving a little bit of time for questions and also technical difficulties. So yeah, just give me your feedback. Let's begin. Hi guys, my name's Evil D here, and today I'm gonna give you a presentation on Esperanto. Now, for those of you who don't know, Esperanto is a creative language. It's a design language that's about 150 years old. Now, before I jump right into what Esperanto is, I just wanted to say one thing. Don't get it confused with one of those creative languages like Dothraki, or Klingon, or even Navi. It's not like one of those languages that wasn't created for a TV show or anything like that. And also, don't confuse it with languages like Tokipon or Lodjibon, which were also creative languages, but designed with more of a specific focus in mind. Esperanto is a, although it's a design language, it's an all-compassing language. It's massive, basically, in scale. Now, before I can really go into the language and the culture, I need to give you some of my history so you can understand where this is all coming from. So, I grew up in the Outback, pretty much where everyone just spoke a really bad version of English. There was no one who spoke any other languages apart from English, except for my grandmother. She actually spoke German and didn't speak English, so that was a bit weird. But I just assumed German was a really bad form of English, and she was just swearing at me and I couldn't understand it. So, basically, I grew up with no other languages around me. I had no idea that languages really even existed. I just knew English. That was it. There was nothing else, okay? But that all changed by the time I got to primary school. Now, in primary school, everyone was compelled by, I guess, the system, the government system, to learn Japanese, okay? And this really did not go well. I remember, basically, our classes consisted of us just looking at flashcards of Japanese characters and trying to imagine snakes and worms and people playing tennis in them. And also just going over flashcards about the different sounds and also words. But it was all... I remember at one point, I went up to my teacher and I said, How do you say, the, and up in Japanese? Because I want to write like a little short story. And she's like, no, you can't do that in Japanese. And I was like, but what do you mean? She's like, those words don't exist in Japanese. And I was like, but then how do they say the and up? And she didn't explain the concept. That languages are actually quite different. Anyway, by that stage, I'd moved into high school and I continued studying Japanese, although I didn't like it. Now, my reason for studying Japanese was more other, I guess, kind of. It was mainly about the fact that my entire class was female. And also that it was rumored at the end of the, I guess, the terms that we would go to Japan. And I love the look of Japanese women. Oh my God. No, no, I won't say that. That's terrible. So yeah, I continued studying Japanese. It was basically the same old stuff, just repetitive flashcards, having no clue what I was learning. Like individual words and no grammar. And basically I could walk away from that and learn, I could say a whole bunch of stuff in Japanese, but no actual sentences. Anyway, after high school, I joined the army about four years into the army. I decided it was again time to try and learn a foreign language. And I'd always wanted to learn a language since primary school because I remember watching all those spy movies where the spy would suddenly like swap between languages and I was like, man, he's so cultured. I want to be able to do that. Anyway, I decided that it was time to learn a language. I asked everyone around me what language I learned because I didn't know. And I guess because everyone was a generation older than me, they suggested French. And I tried out French. But the sounds of the language, the grammar of the language, how it like shrunk and expanded and all that type of stuff, it just didn't do it for me. So I kind of gave up. But then one day, while that work being highly productive, I stumbled across a Wikipedia article about international languages. Now, for those of you who don't know, an international language is generally a proposal language that's been designed in order to facilitate communication between the different countries that have different languages. And the first language I came across in the international category was interlingua. I remember reading through the article going, this sounds pretty cool. It's like a mixture of all the European languages. And then I went to like an interlingua website and it was there. Like there was nothing there. And I was like, yeah, I'm not going to learn this. And then after that was when I stumbled upon Esperanto. Now Esperanto was quite different. It caught my attention pretty much straight away. One, at the time when they, like, I think this was back in the 80s or something, they predicted that there was about two million speakers. And now this is for a constructed language. And I thought, that's pretty cool. Two million speakers for a constructed language? Like that's bigger than some other languages because at this stage I'd become a little bit more cultured. I knew these things. But the real thing that got me was the native speakers. Esperanto was no longer just this proposal language. It actually had families that spoke the language. It was part of entire family lines. So that really got me. I thought if native speakers exist, the language must be complete in every single way. And then I read about the old purpose of Esperanto. And the purpose was to be a simple, easy to learn international language for pretty much everyone. Okay? So with that in mind, the creator, his name was Zamenhof. He proposed the language back in 1887. He basically said, okay, this is the most basic rules. These are the most basic words that we need. The sounds are all simplified. Everything was simplified. Everything just fit into nice little categories. He simplified the language as much as possible. And when I say simplified the language, he simplified languages into one language which became Esperanto. So let's just start with the phonology. Okay? So first up, the sounds of Esperanto. Every sound matches one letter within Esperanto. Okay? Now you're probably thinking, yeah, that's what English does. No. Unless you're a linguist, you don't know this. English generally has, I think it's like 22 or 24. I'm not sure. Vowels, okay? Even though we only have five written vowels. So for instance, the ah in car is different to the ah in apple. Okay? Ah, ah, ah, ah. There's two different a sounds. So technically that's two totally separate sounds. Yet in English, we write it with the same sound. And it's not just the a that's like that. It's all the vowels. And then also you've got pH, which is basically an F sound. It's across the board. It's confusing as hell. He also simplified the grammar of language, okay? So basically, before I learned Esperanto, I didn't even know what grammar was. But all nouns in Esperanto ended in an ah sound. All adjectives ended in an ah sound. All adverbs ended in an s sound. So he put all the words into categories, which simplified it. And actually when I learned Esperanto, I was forced to learn grammar. And then later on, I was able to apply that to English. And I'm actually really good at English grammar now. Just because I had to learn Esperanto grammar, which is so logical. I can superimpose that onto English. So yeah, he basically made everything as clear cut as possible. For instance, the tense in Esperanto. Everything in past tense is ah every verb in past tense ends with s. Present tense ends with us. Future tense ends with us. Now let's look at English, okay? With the word can. Can past tense is could. Present tense can. Future tense will be able to. What's going on there? It's like a totally different separate word and terms that are just all up together just for the future tense. But then past tense is could. It's a completely separate word. But that's also conditional. So it's actually got two meanings depending on the sentence. It's very messed up. There's no like one rule that applies across all English verbs. When in Esperanto you learn that one rule in five minutes, you're set. Okay? Now the etymology of Esperanto. So what he did, it's not really true etymology. But when he picked the words, he basically looked at the most common words in all the biggest European languages at the time. Or the most common ones that also he knew. So like Russian, English, French, German, Yiddish, Hebrew, Latin of course. I don't know if I mentioned French but French again. And a little bit of ancient Greek, tiny bit of Spanish. You know, he picked all the most biggest languages and then he looked for the words that were most common across all the languages. Like the word for dog in Esperanto is hundor. That sounds like hound in English and hund, which is dog in German. So you see how he picked the most common words. Now obviously Esperanto from the beginning was a political language. It was designed as a secondary language for everyone. Not everyone likes that idea. When Esperanto was first proposed, French was actually the default diplomatic language of international relations and the French governments at the time actually opposed Esperanto actively. Which is quite funny now because the French aren't the dominant language group anymore. So basically it got hit with lots and lots of different opponents who were trying to stop its rise as an international language. Esperanto was prosecuted by Hitler. Esperanto was prosecuted by Stalin. It's been prosecuted so many times when you think about it. Now you're probably thinking well that's all good and all but everyone speaks English now. We don't really need it anymore. Well although you're kind of correct, for instance, yes English is kind of the dominant language when you're talking economically. It's obviously not the international language. I remember reading and I'm going to check these stats later that 12% of the world speaks English natively and maybe up to 30% can speak either fluently or they can say hello. So there's a big portion of the world which obviously does not speak English. Okay so a lot of people think that Esperanto is just a hobby and it's never got beyond that but it's actually been learned by serious people and being used in a lot of situations. Like here in Australia we have Kepp Eddly. Now he was a politician, supreme court judge. He was basically a very high level Australian politician who spoke Esperanto as you can see on the screen here. He was one of the first people to propose a bill to decriminalise abortion and homosexuality. And he was an Esperanto speaker, head of the Australian Esperanto Association, head of the World Esperanto Association at one point. Law Esperanto Association, plus a few other things. He was really into Esperanto and he did a lot of big things for Australian society overall. Now a lot of people stop and they go and Esperanto sounds really Eurocentric. You said earlier that it takes from all those European languages. What about Chinese and its variants and Hindi and its variants and Japanese and Korean? Well although Esperanto picks European words the grammar of Esperanto was heavily influenced by Japanese and then later Chinese in the early stages. So the grammar of Esperanto is actually more closely reflecting that of Chinese than it is of say English. So although the words they come from the European base the grammar is heavily influenced by Eastern languages. Another thing people say is well can you talk about everyday topics or can you only talk about Esperanto? Now Esperanto can pretty much talk about anything. It's like any language that exists in today's world. Any national language I should say. Obviously there's going to be points where cutting edge things aren't standardised in Esperanto but you can still speak about them. People may just use different words. And that's the same with any small minority language. You can pretty much speak about everything in Esperanto. There's no big hole within the language. There's nothing where you're going to go oh wow no one invented that word. It's just that there's certain concepts that haven't been standardised. Now I'm going to go through how I learnt Esperanto so I told you about that Wikipedia article. Later on I went to this website called Learnu. Now Learnu at the time was the biggest free language learning website in the world to learn a language and it actually taught Esperanto. It's probably been Eclipse now by Duolingo which is just massive. But Learnu was for a time massive. Probably the biggest language learning website in the world. Free. Now I went through some basic lessons there and after about 30 minutes of my first lesson I could speak more Esperanto than I could Japanese which I studied as I said for years in both primary and high school. And that was pretty much the point where I was caught by Esperanto. And what I did is I studied for about 30 minutes a day. Not that like I just do a little bit of a Learnu lesson here and then pretty much after that I just spent the rest of the night gaming and playing World of Warcraft. So I didn't really put too much focus on it. I just put a little bit here and there each day. Just 30 minutes I reckon. Not that much when you think about it. Not compared to if you want to learn another language which I've been trying. So yeah I did that for probably about two to three months and at that point I decided you know what it's time that I actually meet some Esperanto speakers because I feel I've learnt a large portion of this language funnily enough which when you think about after three months of learning a language and you're thinking that already that's quite impressive. But I went to my first Esperanto meet-up. Now this isn't a photo from my first Esperanto meet-up it's just a photo of a local meet-up. It's literally just over the road from here and this is just a bunch of Esperanto that decide to come together one day on a weekend. We just chat away, you know, share drinks, food not like share with each other. And just speak Esperanto about everyday topics, gaming, whatever, it doesn't matter. And I went to my first Esperanto meet-up and what I noticed after three months is that I could hold a complete conversation in Esperanto and I've heard of a lot of people nowadays who are learning through websites like Duolingo able to do that within two weeks and stuff like that. But I took about three months and I was able to hold a conversation, speak about things like even politics which was fricking shocking when you think about it in a language. Now a year later after using it going to these groups every now and then because I look pretty far away, I met the president of the Australian Esperanto Association and she actually said to me because at that time I had left the army and I was training as an actor why don't you come on board onto the board of directors and you can do the media component of the Australian Esperanto Association our guys actually stepping down and I thought I'll give it a try and that was probably at the point where my Esperanto went and jumped, like I got really good at speaking the language because at this point I actually had to start communicating with people outside of Australia I'd only been speaking with local Esperanto at that time and it's also at the point where I saw how big Esperanto really was for instance, the Universal Esperanto Association is based in Europe it has I think probably four or five thousand members it's quite massive it's an international organisation that actively takes part in UNESCO from time to time UN and also other big international it represents most Esperanto speakers not all of them obviously five thousand people isn't the entire Esperanto community it's only a small portion but it's the biggest organisation and it's got affiliates pretty much in every country of the world and when I was in the Australian Esperanto Association I finally saw how big it all was now at this point I've only been speaking political Esperanto isn't just political for instance, Amato it's a new age religion but it's quite large it was born around the same time as Esperanto was and finally enough the second spiritual guide of Amato not of Esperanto, of Amato actually said that Esperanto is a language of Heaven so now you've got this religion in Japan where people will nearly everyone in the religion will at least know about Esperanto and learn a bit of it just because of its religious teachings which is quite fascinating in Brazil which also has a very large Esperanto portion to it a lot of books are written in Esperanto it promotes Esperanto a lot 900% sure why, I'll check that later also we've got the Baha'i Faith which promotes an auxiliary language a secondary language for everyone now they're tossing up between Esperanto and English but there's a massive Esperanto backing within that religion in fact the ex-president of the Australian Esperanto Association is a Baha'i so it's not just political there's people that learn it for spiritual reasons there's people like me that learn it just due to their ease there's so many groups in the Esperanto community it's not just one pyramid basically it's just everywhere now this is a photo I think from either Thailand or Vietnam or China, I'm not 100% sure and I just wanted to show you this because this is a photo of a small local Esperanto meetup in Asia when I went to China I realised how important Esperanto was actually in Asia the Chinese government actively promotes Esperanto they fund it you don't get that in western countries and the reason they do that is because the Chinese government likes the idea of an easy secondary language not the entire government or whatever but there is a backing, official backing for Esperanto like for instance Chinese international radio which is Chinatadio International in Esperanto broadcast in Esperanto publishes in Esperanto does interviews in Esperanto I went there to their headquarters in Beijing and they basically got a whole floor of this building dedicated to Esperanto massive conference rooms and everything so it's a full on professional language there people can study at a university and everything it's quite different to here where we get no official backing from the Australian government in any sense whatsoever but in China it's a career path so another thing when I got into the language and when I got further into it and I could find the speak and I've done everything I mentioned I actually was one of the people who launched Esperanto TV which was the first international Esperanto TV station and that basically just broadcast in Esperanto 24-7 I'm actually a co-producer now I did found it but I'm stepping back but Esperanto television is it's massive okay we get 30,000 hits a month from people all over the world who come to watch it and that gives you an idea of the language the spora language it's all over the world there's no home base for Esperanto it's just everywhere there's Esperanto in every country and now I want to give you a little bit of insight into my travels again so when I went to Milan and Rome and all that before I even got to Milan because I went for Europe on a one month trip and as soon as I landed they showed me around they showed me all around Milan I had a personal Esperanto tour guide who actually spoke six languages taking me around showing me all the best spots in Milan all free of charge just because I'm an Esperanto speaker so you can see how the Esperanto community is it's very tight-knit we always help each other out when we can that's kind of like a cultural component which is different to English when I went to Switzerland I stayed with me and my wife we stayed with an old Esperanto couple nicest couple in the world we stayed in this house that must be a couple of hundred years old so traditional they gave us the whole top floor of the house they said here's the keys here's the internet password everything up here is yours for the next week do whatever you want and that was it we came downstairs we provided guides and maps of the area where we should go, what we should do that gives you again an idea of how tight-knit the community is Esperanto is a very international but it's supportive of one another when I went to Munich this was a really interesting point in my trip I stayed with an Esperanto speaking family Esperanto wasn't just a language that they learnt they didn't learn it like I did it was actually a language sorry it was a part of their family the actual generations the mother of the family was actually the great-granddaughter of the guy who founded the biggest Esperanto newspaper or Esperanto magazine and it was really interesting because the entire household just spoke Esperanto and I remember I was sitting there and I had a four year old kid run up to me who wasn't actually part of the family someone else who was staying with them because there was two families in one house and spoke full in Esperanto to me another thing is when I left that township I actually went to this other town that was not township I went to this other town called I think it's Hartzberg am Hartz I cannot pronounce it for the life of me it's a German name and I stayed there for just over a day and this town is known as the Esperanto town and it was quite interesting because Esperanto it's actually supported by the local council and everything there so there's Esperanto restaurants there's Esperanto hotels there's Esperanto signage it's really quite interesting to see an entire town that has some link to Esperanto now obviously not everyone speaks Esperanto now I'm actually falling behind here so this here is my personal YouTube channel I am actually a YouTuber in Esperanto as you can see I don't have that many followers only like 1,100 plus but I produce videos in Esperanto every day and it's basically like a virtual meeting area for me and my followers so as I said Esperanto is a diaspora language it's all over the world we don't have a home base the internet is our home base although there is actual physical meetups around the world most of us meet online so that's something I work on now Esperanto cops a lot of crap from people and one of the things that people who know a little bit about languages like Esperanto say is it's got the accusative case now for those of you who don't know the accusative case is basically this grammical case which dictates what is the object of a transitive verb and people go oh well English doesn't have that why does Esperanto have it that actually makes it harder I just want to get a myth out of the way right now although Esperanto is an easy to learn language it's not the easiest language in the world it's probably the easiest most precise language in the world if you really wanted to find the easiest language in the world it would be grunts literally but it's not very precise now is it so that's why Esperanto has some things that English doesn't but then it has things that sorry English has got things that Esperanto doesn't now as I said before a lot of the words came from European languages and a lot of people then ask well what about modern words this is 150 years old what about things like computer well Esperanto is like any language it evolves naturally the words come into the language either they evolve eternally or they're taken from other languages and they just no one actually controls the evolution of Esperanto it just evolves on its own just like any natural language and one last thing I'll probably speak about is reforms a lot of people think when they learn like a little bit of Esperanto is I don't like that let's reform the language because it's a creative language we can do that no you can't it's 150 years old as I said and it's got 2 million plus speakers now so how are you going to tell 2 million plus people to do a certain thing within a language it's not going to happen you can't reform Esperanto just as you can't reform English the language is naturally evolving it changes based on the needs of the speaker base if the speaker base sees a major need for something it will slowly change in that direction just like English just like French or German or any other language now I'm going to finish up my thing here before I take questions I just want to say one thing if you have any interest in learning about this language and its culture there's a new course out Esperanto on Duolingo it's completely free launched about a month or so ago I'm not 100% sure but it's now got 105,000 learners that just shows you how fast this language is also growing to give you an idea Ukrainian launched at the same time on this platform and it's only got 30,000 learners so Esperanto is actually outpacing a national language in growth rate on this online learning tool which is also interesting because Esperanto is a lot easier so you can see that it has a lot more going for it and it's going to grow and it's going to get bigger anyway I'm just going to take questions now so if anyone's got any questions throw them at me and that is where I would finish off my speech and I'd ask the audience for questions so basically I know I made a few mistakes in there because I'm still practicing this I'm going to go over it a few more times today, tomorrow and probably Saturday night before I actually give the presentation but I wanted to give you guys a rough idea of what I'm going to talk about tell me what you like, tell me what you don't be honest, attack me, stab me, do what you need to do anyway if you've liked this video give a like, share it around with your friends, subscribe to my channel if you haven't already and I'll see you in the next video and if you're not there I will find you and I will hurt you ok guys before I just cut this off I just want to say that this channel is supported by you guys I've actually got a patreon page where you can donate a little bit of money every month to help this channel grow now I've already got three main sponsors so far those are Sarah SC Shane Power and JZ Knuckles sorry I'm laughing about that one because she just had a big whinge of me about how I was pronouncing it earlier but apparently it's JZ so anyway if you want to help me out just head over to the patreon page give me a couple of dollars a month and that will help me grow this channel so thanks a lot guys