198: Esperanto Explained: Chuck Smith’s Vision of Global Communication

Chuck Smith is the co-founder of the Polyglot Gathering, contributor of Duolingo’s Esperanto course and founder of the Esperanto Wikipedia, among other Esperanto and polyglot projects.  He had the idea for a GPS device to find fellow Esperanto speakers while travelling through Brazil in 2002 but needed to wait 15 years for the technology to catch up, so he could pursue this dream.  Now he looks forward to meeting the challenges ahead to help people everywhere connect to make the world a better place.  

TODAY'S CONVERSATION WITH CHUCK

• What is Esperanto, where did it come from, and why is Esperanto important?
• Why do people use Esperanto? 
• Does Esperanto have any politics attached to it? Is it a nation-state type of language? 
• What would a new community in a country look like if Esperanto were the main language, instead of many different languages being spoken? 
• Listen in to find out where the Universal Congress of Esperanto will take place this year, what country and when? You might want to attend!
• Find out how many people speak Esperanto worldwide and how long it took them to grasp the new language.
• If you are a monoglot speaker, and this is the first language you will learn outside of your native language, find out how difficult it will be to learn Esperanto.
• What are the stumbling blocks of why Esperanto does not have 20 million or 200 million speakers?
• #1 system recommended by Chuck Smith to learn Esperanto, hands down.
• I talk with Chuck about his app ‘Amikumu,’ what it does and how we can all learn about other Esperanto speakers when we travel to new countries or a different city. 
• Chuck and I discuss how someone would really learn the language of Esperanto, what you need to know and do to be fluent and how long that would take.
• You would be amazed at the number of hours required to pick up a new language, depending on what your native language is and what you want to learn in a new language. It’s not as bad as most people think.
• Best advice, tips and tricks if you want to learn the language of Esperanto!

 

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HOW TO CONTACT CHUCK SMITH

Amikumu.com [email protected]  

CONCLUSION

Honestly, if you want to learn a second language and you’re struggling with Spanish, French or German, then Esperanto is a great language to start with. The time allotted to become fluent is considerably shorter than any other language, and the benefits of learning Esperanto are really worth the effort.   

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