EvilDea (Richard Delamore): Esperanto

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of the actual fluency podcast. Today, I'm very excited to welcome on to the show, a guest who's probably best introduced by his alias and not his real name, which is a first for this show.

I have the special Evil Dea on, also known as Richard Delamore, and he's famous for his YouTube channel as far as as well as other things. And he's very active with the Esperanto community, having fun on the Esperanto TV channel. And other than that, you do about 117 other things, but welcome to the show.

Um, and I stumbled across an article about international languages. When I first saw the word Esperanto, I actually thought it was Spanish. I thought it was Espanyol. So, I kind of ignored it. But I later came back for some reason, and when I read the article about the history of Esperanto, it's created, the fact that it's got native speakers. That kind of like got me interested, because I was like, well, I always wanted to learn another language and I failed at multiple languages.

Um, and in this article it said it was the easiest language in the world to learn and I thought, you know, if I can't learn that language, then I should definitely give up. And that's kind of just how it all rolled ahead. You know, over time, I started doing lessons in it. It's online, everything was pretty much online. After three months, I had my first meetup. Um, kind of then got roped into the local associations, and then roped into Esperanto TV, and then I didn't get roped into my YouTube channel. That was something I willingly did. So, yeah, and I released a video every day now, so.

But every now and then, I'll get to my filming time, which is about 10:00 at night, because I usually spend the first few hours just messing around, looking up stuff in the community, trying to get like more ideas. Um, sometimes I'll have like a great idea, boom, straight into it, you know, it takes about an hour to make the video, edit it, upload it, and then head off to bed. But sometimes I'll literally sit there till 1:00 in the morning going, oh my God, I can't think of anything.

And uh, Esperanto has seen a bit of um, an an increase in popularity recently with the Duolingo course making it widely available and suddenly people from all over the world are hearing about it and hundreds of thousands of people, new learners have signed up. How much of a of a boost did you see when when that course came out?

Then I went to local groups and literally for three years, just the same people always at those groups. You know everyone in the Esperanto community. It's so small. And then I actually launched my channel I think like two months before Duolingo launched the Esperanto course. And I got people signed up, but then when Duolingo launched, my subscriptions just went straight up and I was like, whoa!

And suddenly I'm meeting all these new Esperantists. Um, there's there's at least five extra ones that I've just bumped into around Sydney. Um, people are just like suddenly knowing what it is now, which is it's just crazy the change. And now that um, they've just started working on the Spanish to Esperanto course, I can only imagine it's going to get more hectic.

And then it's sort of stagnated, sort of declined a little bit. But then you see this Duolingo and it's it's bringing in a whole new generation. And and I guess in a way that's what Esperanto needed a a fresh boost, because it had this kind of a stigma of being mostly old people, you know, so getting a lots of fresh blood in must be a good thing.

When with Duolingo, people just see this language and they go, oh, that looks interesting, they add it, they start learning it, then they're like, why is it so easy? Then they go look up the history of it and then it's already too late, they're hooked. They they they've found a language that they can actually learn. And the great thing is Duolingo has so many learners already, they just randomly add these courses and just Esperanto just spiked as a result of that.

And like you were saying, the um, congresses were dying down in numbers. Um, most people were just using it online. Um, and it's going to be really interesting to see the next congress, how that goes because I've heard of smaller congresses, because there's lots of them that happen. Um, I've heard of a few smaller ones where Duolingo learners have just started rocking up, um, which was totally unexpected. And having full conversations in Esperanto and people are just like, okay, something crazy's happening here.

And I just noticed I keep saying the word Esperanto, is that some kind of magic trick where it just it starts lodged in your brain and you just when you sleep, it's Esperanto. Esperanto. I don't know. I don't know about that, but um, yeah. But anyway, I honestly don't know where to take that one. There are lots of options.

But anyway, the the the idea that I that I wanted to get to is some people have no idea, honestly, what Esperanto is and and you know, what it does and what you can do with it. So just uh, you know, I know you've probably been asked this a million times, but what are some of the reasons that people should consider learning Esperanto?

Um, and Esperanto because of its ease, because for those who don't know, Esperanto is a created language. It's designed to be as easy to learn as possible, while also being precise enough to use in an international context. Um, because of its ease of learning, you feel that, hang on, maybe it's not me that's bad at languages, maybe I just didn't know how to learn languages previously.

And it that that's one of the benefits, because you come out of it speaking a foreign language, which other people actually speak, because a lot of Esperanto speakers, you can use it in nearly every context. Um, but you also come out of it with this whole idea that, okay, so I can learn a language. And then you pretty much what happens with every Esperanto speaker that you get the language bug. I'm studying Chinese now, I'm studying um, Spanish. It's it's like a natural result, a natural um, just way of going forward.

And it's funny because I think that's why all these language companies are now picking up on Esperanto, because they're like, hey, Esperanto is already interesting to many languages. Let's let's go for them, that's why you'll see Esperanto, Duolingo, um, I Talkie and all these other companies that have just launched Esperanto courses or aspects for Esperanto. Um, so that's one thing.

The second thing is it has a very fascinating culture of its own. Now a lot of people will say, well, it's a created language, how can it have a culture? But I consider Esperanto like a um, it's kind of like a international mixed mash of random cultures all into one, with its own little flavor of internationalism thrown on top, top of things. So you get all these different things like um, there's like famous poet William Old, um, who was nominated for um, the Nobel Peace Prize of Literature. Um, there's many different um, there's so many different like works that have been written in Esperanto, there's films, bad films, good films, music, and there's you gain access to the entire world through it, but it also has its own flavor.

Like when you think about it, how many languages have been born out of an ideal, rather than a historical setting like a country or something like that. So it's completely different to any other language. And it's just yeah, it's just that, I'd say the culture of it is very unique. Um, there's also other aspects where Esperanto has embedded itself into other groups, like certain religions and stuff like that, and you just learn about all these things around the world.

So yeah, you've got the ease of use, you've got the culture behind it. Um, you've also got the fact that Esperanto is really like a language of, it sounds kind of lame or cliché, but it's a language of friendship because you willingly go out and learn this language and then in order to use it, you have to make friends. Um, and that's pretty much how it is.

And the great thing is every Esperanto speaker, thank God, trust one another. We haven't had any murders yet, luckily. Um, so we all trust one another, which means that you can stay with other Esperantists. Like um, this one time I went to Switzerland, I just really shot an email off to the local Swiss group going, hey, is there um, anywhere I can stay, because I'm too cheap to pay for accommodation. And they sent that out on their newsletter. Next thing I know, I'm being put up in this this Swiss house, we've got a top floor for ourselves. They're giving us like breakfast, lunch and dinner type of thing made. And it's just like, they treat us as if we're kids. They came in, you know, like their own personal kids. And it's that type of unique culture where everyone is, we're all in this together type of thing, which is very unique to Esperanto. Like if I just shot a random email off to someone in Britain and said, hey, can I crash at your place? I'm pretty sure he wouldn't respond in a good way. So yeah, there's there's many different reasons why you might want to learn it. Um, and those are the main ones for me.

And it's a bridge as well often. Like that's that's also a cool aspect I find that I was in Berlin for instance and there was a a Portuguese couple. And I didn't speak Portuguese and they spoke barely any English. We're talking a few words maybe. Uh, so if we didn't know Esperanto, we wouldn't be able to communicate, which is just it's just amazing to think that, you know, a little bit of work in this language made it possible for us to communicate in the first place.

Can you give any sort of advice or recommendations to people as to how they should go about learning it, maybe, you know, going through Duolingo, maybe after they finished it? What's the best next step to improve their Esperanto and keep, uh, keep it up?

Um, and there is so much Esperanto literature out there. So, get into reading it, get into listening to music, watching videos online. Um, I've noticed with a lot of Duolingo learners, they will um, they'll come to my channel for instance and I'll say, oh, um, I didn't understand what you were saying there, but like I've watched a few of your videos with the subtitles on, now I know what it what you're saying, I'm getting used to the language. So, you've got to you've got to actively use it. Listening, speaking, um, reading, just yeah, actively use it.

Um, there's also so many different books out there. There's um, various audio courses, so like I said, um, iTalkie's got their own little Esperanto component. Um, yeah, it's I haven't really got a favorite. Like, when I learned Esperanto, I was so haphazard. I'd do one thing and I'm easily distracted. So, I'll do one course and I'll do maybe two parts out of it and I'm like, ah, I'm moving on now and I'll do something else. Like, I I was the type of guy who'd sit there trying to write Wikipedia articles in Esperanto before I could actually speak or write the language, just because that's how I like to go. So, I say, do whatever feels best at the time, whatever you enjoy, try out many different things, because you'll be surprised what you enjoy doing.

And um, so what are the uh, I I I don't want to call it uh, blocks or anything, but what are the um, challenges do you think Esperanto needs to, well, I don't know if it needs to overcome actually, maybe that's a loaded question, but what what kind of positive developments would you like to see in Esperanto in the next five to 10 years?

And the reason being is because people come in with a perception. They go, okay, Esperanto is a artificial created language. It can be changed or it's not a real language, it hasn't got a historical backing, it hasn't got a country. So it's just the perception of the language that needs to change. Um, and I think that's just a matter of time and people just getting used to the language. At the moment, the you'll you'll see it even in um, the Duolingo discussion groups, people will be like, why do you want to learn this language? But no one will ever ask you, why do you want to learn Welsh? You know what I mean? Like and the reason they ask that question, they goes, well, you can't make money doing this or you can't do this in Esperanto, you can't do this in Esperanto. But if you just swap out Esperanto and you put in any other word, or any other language, they won't ask that question. It's because of the perception, the the whole idea that it's a created language, it's somehow different.

Um, going mainstream is such a hard thing to say because you can imagine, let's just say some famous actor, for instance, suddenly decides that he likes Esperanto, starts using it, starts talking about it and whatever. You could imagine then that a whole heap of little kids are going to run out and start learning it just to imitate him. So it could happen overnight, it might never happen.

Um, you might have, for instance, uh, Esperanto is officially supported in China by the government that they pay for it type of thing. Um, they pay local groups to do radio and all that type of stuff. So imagine if several other countries just randomly decided for whatever reason that they wanted to use Esperanto, that could then create mainstream in that country, but not necessarily in the rest of the world.

Um, you've got other things where like in, uh, I believe it's Hungary, where um, just randomly, I know that in in order to get into university, you need to speak a secondary language. Um, and at the time, obviously you had English, German, all these languages you could choose from and they just managed to sneak in there and get Esperanto as an accepted language. And then suddenly all these people will go out and learn Esperanto, and that in a sense kind of made it as a more of a mainstream type of language just by them sneaking in there and doing their dodgy type of thing. Um, so yeah, there's so many different ways it could go. I have no idea. All I know is that it's massively growing at the moment.

Um, what was the other thing I was thinking of? Uh, something, oh yeah, the um, the the TV and the, uh, you know, wouldn't it be awesome if there was like a huge production of a film in Esperanto? I mean, I know you're you're into filmmaking and uh, and that stuff. Wouldn't that be cool? Like a huge multi-million dollar production and only in Esperanto.

Um, and in all honesty, Um, I I love film, I've worked in film for years now, um, here locally as an actor. Um, but I chose the YouTube path because of its it's cheap, it's easy to do. You don't need a big production team. As you can imagine, in most spots, a lot of Esperantists, they have their small group or some just don't even have a group, while in others they've got a bigger group. But it's very hard to organize a large-scale film production. Um, and that's why I would steer clear of it. Um, I organized the the setup for Esperanto TV and it's it's a lot of work to organize that many people to come together to make a film. But things like YouTube, even in the English world, are massive. Um, and you get massive followings of just a guy who sits in front of a camera and just, you know, complains about something. Now, see something like that, that's something that individuals can do. And the Esperanto movement is still, although it's quite big, it's still very individual. So there's no like big production houses or anything like that.

So that's also, I guess, a way that Esperanto could grow huge is is just if schools decided to say, we want our students to be more multilingual. We want our students to be better in French, be better in German. And let us teach them Esperanto for a year before they start learning their French or German or well, I mean, it could be Chinese, Russian, depending on where you are in the world. Um, what do you think about these uh, for education purposes?

Um, Esperanto's the same. Like when I learned Esperanto, like I said, I'd studied Japanese and French, but the thing is, schools here, they don't actually I don't know if this is other countries, but in Australia, they teach you the words and stuff like that. I had no concept of grammar, which is where Esperanto was a massive help. When I started seeing, you know, these these um, words that end in an -o sound, and then you find out that's a noun. And then you see how they all sit in a sentence and you're like, oh, okay, so that's how it works. And then you see all these words that are going to -a sound or -a sound at the end of it, and they're all sitting before the nouns or after the nouns, but they're all describing the noun. And then you can see all the grammar and you start seeing verbs, and then you start seeing transitive, intransitive, accusative cases, pronouns, all this type of stuff, and these are concepts I never knew before.

But because Esperanto is visually simple, as well as like spoken, it's simple, um, you can see how grammar physically fits together. And then when you move on to another language, like I started studying um, Spanish and I noticed that all the endings are swapping out, straight away, I noticed the different endings swapping out, I'm like, what's what's the go there? And then I go look it up and it's because, you know, based on who's speaking type of thing. And I'm like, oh, that makes sense. It's just a, you know, it's almost like a case marker but on the verb type of thing. But if I hadn't studied Esperanto beforehand, that would have blown my my mind out of, you know, type of thing because suddenly it's changing because of gender and all this type of stuff and it just doesn't make sense, but because I've studied Esperanto, I'm able to see how these parts fit together.

Another thing is, this is only a truth for European-based languages, but once Esperanto has a very big Latin-based um, etymology, like, where the words come from. When you when I started saying Spanish or even looking at French again, or any of these languages, even when I played with German a little bit, you're seeing all these words and you're like, ah, so yeah, that's like Esperanto. Okay, it looks slightly different, but now I know what it means. So it simplifies the whole process again.

And if you if you live in Europe and you speak, let's say English and any other language pretty much, you will see lots and lots of Esperanto words. The problem I guess is when you're learning Esperanto, you're not quite sure which one it is. So when you see an English word and you have to type in the Esperanto, like, is this the French, the German, the English, the Russian, uh, where do I go from here? But Yeah.

Um, but where's the channel going? Okay, um, So, yeah, when I first started this, it was more just like something to do on the side, you know, to practice myself a little bit, to w- a little bit, and because I launched it just before Duolingo, it was like the main channel and now it's growing, obviously. Um, and I see it as growing, potentially it could get really big in the future.

Um, I'm full-time working at it now, I do a video every day. I love doing it. It's my my passion in a sense, um, apart from Esperanto. So, every day I want to work on it, there's something I want to do. And funnily enough, I hadn't thought about today's topic, but um, there's always something I want to do and it's growing so fast at the moment. I can't see it not going somewhere in the future.

And just a while back, I launched my Patreon page and I didn't expect much from that, and then suddenly I got so much support, um, from some of my um, loyal followers. And I actually see it as something, you know, five years from now where I might even possibly be able to do it full-time. So that would be like the ultimate scenario, me doing it as something that, you know, every day. Like, I couldn't ask for more. Um, and just with the growth of Duolingo, with the new courses that are coming up, and just that all compounding, it's the possibilities are endless at the moment.

Um, so I'm all over the shop. Some days for like a few weeks, I'll do vlogs, then I might do gaming, then I might do, you know, instruction videos. Then I might just randomly eat chilies. I can do whatever I want and people keep watching. So that's good for me. Um, so really direction-wise, I have no idea. I think vlogging's going to be a really big part of this channel just because it's something I enjoy doing. I'm hoping in the future that I'll be able to get out more vlogs with other people. Um, especially with the new Duolingo Esperantists when they start popping up more here in Sydney. I want to meet up with them, do some vlogs together type of thing. Um, so yeah, like uh, that's probably the main way it's going to go. I'll still do gaming every now and then and just random challenge videos.

Um, most people assume uh, because I run a channel in Esperanto, I must have done a lot of Esperanto traveling. But realistically, I'll probably, if you put it all together, I've done maybe a week's worth of Esperanto traveling in the entire time that I've spoken Esperanto. So, I'm actually looking forward to going to a big congress and really using a big group. It's always been me with like individual other Esperantists. So, yeah, I want to hit up the Universal Esperanto Congress. Maybe if I'm not too old, the um, youth Esperanto Congress, the international one. Um, but I'm getting pretty old now. I'm starting to go bald. Um, so yeah, I don't know. I'm I'm trying to hit up everything I can in the future, but it really depends on finances, time, you know, Australia is in the middle of nowhere down here, it's so expensive to go anywhere.

Well, I mean, you're the format is nice and and digestible, you know, you can just watch a few minutes, it's not a 30-minute rant on, I don't know, some kind of stuff. I guess that happens too, actually, coming to think of it, but uh, mostly your videos aren't aren't like super long and, uh, like that. But um, so I guess, I guess that's that's why. People just watch it on their phone in the bus or something.

Uh, just want to thank thank you, uh, Evil Dea, aka Richard Delamore for coming on to the show and and and sharing your passion, you know, and and that also goes for your video creation and everything you do for the the community. I myself not really a fan of labels, wouldn't exactly call me an Esperantist, but I do speak it and I do enjoy the sort of the community and and and the idealism. I like the hope. Like the the the the essential part of Esperanto, you know, the the word Esperanto meaning hope, to me that's that's that's that's probably the best part of it. So thank you so much for coming on and I hope to meet you in person somewhere around the world one day.