Brian Kwong and other polyglots

Greetings from Budapest! This weekend I attended the Polyglot Conference here. There were people in attendance from all over the world, giving lectures on such varied topics as Learning endangered languages through music to How conflict management works in bilingual situations. There were also an introduction to Esperanto by Eva Fitzelová and the non-profit organization E@I by Zsófia Pataki.

As those who speak Esperanto know, many of its speakers also speak many other languages. We even have an inside joke that “Esperanto speakers are people who need Esperanto the least!” Back to the conference, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that thirteen(!) of the hundred participants speak Esperanto. These include some big names from the polyglot community such as Richard Simcott of Speaking Fluently and Judith Meyer of LearnLangs, Benny Lewis of Fluent in Three Months.

Zsófia Pataki speaks about E@I

Benny has even written Just 2 weeks learning Esperanto can get you months ahead in your target language, which I’d recommend sending to those critical of Esperanto’s usefulness. His basic argument is that, counterintuitively, by spending two weeks learning Esperanto, you can get miles ahead in the language you want, because it teaches you how to learn a language very quickly. I also learned of a Budapest language school, which starts each beginner course with a quick overview of Esperanto grammar to accelerate each student’s progress in their language of choice.

Besides that, Susanna Zaraysky is currently working on a documentary of how foreign language knowledge has saved peoples’ lives. She is focusing on the Ladino language (a 500-year-old dialect of Spanish) and tells a story of a Jew from Sarajevo who escaped from a Nazi train and managed to talk with and Italian colonel with Ladino with the colonel replying in Italian. We also learned of how George Soros escaped from Hungary by attending an Esperanto conference abroad. If you know of others whose language skills have saved their life, Susanna would like to hear from you!

Anthony Lauder of Fluent Czech explained the differences between how newbies try to learn languages and how polyglots learn them. He also explained how to learn 9 languages as you can see from the picture below! Basically, newbies work too hard on vocabulary instead of moving on to real native materials in their target language as quickly as possible. They want to look up every unfamiliar word in a dictionary rather than trying to guess them and move on, later comparing guesses based on their context.

Anthony Lauder's steps to polyglottery

If you’ve already been studying Esperanto for a little while, I’d highly recommend moving on to reading a real book like Fajron Sentas Mi Interne or Karlo… but you could also listen to podcasts like Verda Radio. If you’re a bit further along, I’d recommend starting to read Esperanto literature or even the 24 hour Internet radio station Muzaiko. To reach fluency faster, he also recommended the quick read How to Improve Your Foreign Language Immediately.

In any case, if you ever get a chance to attend a Polyglot Conference, definitely jump on the opportunity! It’s such an amazing and open community, and an excellent chance to practice all those languages you never get around to speaking. Even if you only speak two languages, I’m sure you’ll find plenty of interesting people and talks there. The next Polyglot Conferences are planned to be held in October 2014 in Montreal and New York City, so I hope to see you there!

Picture of Zsófia Pataki taken by Eva Fitzelová, used with permission. Picture of Andrew Lauder taken by Alex Rawlings, used with permission.

Update: Benny Lewis and Alex Rawlings just published their own interesting blog posts, so check them out to experience the conference from other angles!

I had no idea where Esperanto would take me when I started learning it in February 2001. At the time, in a small city in Pennsylvania, I thought, “I’ll do the first lesson of this free online course. If it’s lame, I’ll have lost an hour of my life. If it’s interesting, it could open up a completely new world.”

Later that year, I discovered Wikipedia in its very early stages and started the Esperanto version, which played a major role in the growth of the multi-lingual Wikipedia… for example, helping to start the Czech Wikipedia. For more details about this, you can read my blog post here: Finding the Esperanto Wikipedia (Part 1 of 4).

So, even before learning Esperanto, I was already planning to take a 1-month backpacking trip through Europe, but I found this free hospitality network called Pasporta Servo and I met Amanda Higley Schmidt who had travelled through Europe for 16 months and I thought, if she could travel alone backpacking through Europe, I definitely could too, which encouraged me to follow this dream!

On my trip, I was staying at the apartment of two board members of the World Esperanto Youth Organization, who asked if I would like to be the organization’s next volunteer in Rotterdam for a year. I took them up on that opportunity and after six months of backpacking in Brazil and Europe, I ended up working, speaking in Esperanto for a year, since it was the only language the staff had in common.

While I was there, I got accepted to a 3-week intensive French course held by the Council of Europe in Strasbourg and later through an Esperanto contact helped me take part for free in a one-week intensive French course (normally costing 2700€) in the Netherlands, this time by one of the top French instructors in Europe.

When my volunteer time was up, I worked for the Calgary Esperanto Center in Canada for a few months. A while later, I was travelling to Frankfurt for the first Wikipedia conference and after I got home, I found a job offer to work as a wiki researcher in Heilbronn. Then I moved from New York City to Germany, mostly because of my reputation as the Esperanto Wikipedia Founder.

Chillin' at the Esperanto Go Club in Tokyo

Toward the end of my work there, the Tokyo Esperanto Club asked me if I would like to come visit, all expenses paid, for ten days and give a lecture about the Esperanto Wikipedia. Would I? Oh yes! To this day, that was one of the best trips of my life. I also lectured at a few universities there, which professors translated into Japanese for the local students.

After I returned, my contract at the university ran out, and I got a job working at a social network in Berlin, due to meeting an investor in the company at an Esperanto New Years conference. Since then I’ve moved on to iPhone development, and now also work on the side as the Esperanto blogger for Transparent Language.

As I write this from my home in Berlin, I remember the countries I’ve visited because of Esperanto: Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Japan, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and Ukraine. After staying in Taipei for a conference, I ended up staying with an Azerbaijani Esperanto speaker in the small city of Pingtung. The thing is, while these experiences sound incredible to people who don’t speak Esperanto, they are quite normal, but still awesome, for those who speak it well and use it to travel.

How has Esperanto changed your life? Feel free to comment below, read others’ experiences on Quora and add your experiences there.

Esperanto exam in Russia

Did you know that you can take an Esperanto exam to prove that you can read and write at a certain level? On June 8, people will be taking Esperanto exams around the world, which are legally recognized by the Hungarian state. Hungary makes sense, because 5,000 people receive diplomas there every year to prove their Esperanto abilities.

There are times when it is useful to be able to prove your skills, such as when applying for an international project or an Esperanto-speaking job. Fortunately, the exams have been painstakingly created under the same conditions and standards used by other great language institutions such as Goethe and Alliance Française.

Ready for the challenge in Tijuana, Mexico

Previously, there were many different language level systems between countries, which made it difficult to compare language test results internationally. Then, in 1991, a conference on “Transparency and Coherence in Language Learning in Europe: Objectives, Evaluation, Certification” was held in Switzerland to discuss this and similar issues. There the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages was founded, establishing six standard language levels now accepted worldwide:

A Basic User

A1 Breakthrough or beginner

A2 Waystage or elementary

B Independent User

B1 Threshold or intermediate

B2 Vantage or upper intermediate

C Proficient User

C1 Effective Operational Proficiency or advanced

C2 Mastery or Proficiency

Esperanto exams can be taken in the following levels: B1, B2 and C1. Once you decide on your language level to be tested, you need to find a testing location. You can find the complete list of testing locations online, which will hopefully have a location near you. Such exams could also potentially be useful if you want to create an independent study for Esperanto at your university and need to prove your proficiency at the end of your studies. If you pass the exam, you’ll receive a diploma certifying your achievement written in Esperanto, English, French and German.

Completing the exam in Tokyo

If there is no testing location near you and you would like to organize the exam, act quickly, since there is now less than a month left until the exam day. To run an exam, you will need an organizer and an assistant (preferably non-Esperanto-speaking) who can help with local preparations. It is highly recommended that the organizer does not participate in the exam themselves to ensure the integrity of the exam session. Also, there needs to be at least five people ready to take the exam in your city, so the exam can take place. If you would like more details about organizing a session, you can find out more on edukado.net (free edukado account needed).

In any case, it is critical for Esperanto speakers to take these exams to show that there is a demand for them, so they will continue to be offered in the future. If you are serious about Esperanto, this diploma can prove that this is more than just your hobby, so you can be sure to be taken seriously, such as when you represent Esperanto at international organizations or projects. Even if you personally don’t need the diploma, these exams have also helped others hear about Esperanto, thus resulting in interviews on Russia and Serbia television.

Whether you can participate or not, I think we all can agree that these official exams are good to help Esperanto be treated like other foreign languages. Having this opportunity can only encourage Esperanto’s use in academia and commerce. If you are taking the exam, then I wish you the best of luck, and if in Berlin, we can pass it together there.

If you haven’t yet registered and would like to join us, please fill out the form for your city on the KER-exam registration page!