Esperanto Language Blog

Nils - 3rd gen native Esperanto speaker

Some people don’t believe that native Esperanto speakers exist. Would you then believe that I’ve found a third generation native Esperanto speaker?! Nils Martin Klünder’s great-grandfather learned Esperanto, taught it natively to his kids, who taught it natively to his kids, who taught it natively to Nils… awesome! It seems that it’s now becoming a tradition in this blog to interview another native Esperanto speaker every year. Last year, I interviewed an Esperanto DJ: DJ Leo Sakaguchi. The year before was second generation native speaker Rolf Fantom. Anyway, without further ado, let’s see what Nils has to say! (He answered my questions in Esperanto, so you will find my translation in italics under his answers.)

How did you come to be a third generation native Esperanto speaker?

Mi naskiĝis tielmaniere. Miaj gepatroj instruis ĝin denaske al mi, kaj mia patro estis ankaŭ denaska. Parte certe ankaŭ estis kialo ke miaj gepatroj renkontiĝis per Esperanto, ekzemple mia patrino estis Polino.

I was born that way. My parents taught me it growing up, and my father was also a native speaker. This was certainly also partly since my parents met through Esperanto, for example my mother was Polish.

Nils's great-grandfather

How did your great-grandfather first learn Esperanto and why? When was that?

Laŭ mia scio, li lernis la lingvon en 1908 por pli bone scii kaj klarigi kial ĝi malbonas. Evidentiĝis, ke ĝi fakte plaĉegis al li.

As far as I know, he learned the language in 1908 to better know and explain why it’s bad. Later, he realized that he actually really liked it.

How has speaking Esperanto with your family from birth had an effect on you? Have you felt it more as a hindrance or something that improved your understanding of languages in general or something else entirely?

Nu, kompreneble mankas al mi komparo al ne-denaske-esperanta vivo. Tamen ĝi absolute ne ĝenis, kaj ofte estis agrabla kiel „sekreta“ lingvo. Malfacilas priskribi tion, sed ĝi estis parto de la familio kaj ielmaniere sentis „agrable“.

Well, I can’t compare that to what my life would’ve been like as a non-native Esperanto speaker, of course. However, it wasn’t annoying at all, and often it was nice to have a “secret” language. It’s difficult to describe, but it was part of the family and somehow always felt “nice.”

I often hear of native speakers not joining the worldwide community. What convinced you to become active in the movement?

Certe ne estis idealismo. Kiel multaj denaskaj Esperantistoj, mi ne kaptis la idealismon pri Esperanto kiel internacia lingvo. Estas normala afero por mi. Mi estas aktivulo ĉar mi alkutimiĝis al la renkontiĝoj, havas amikojn tie kiujn mi ŝatas revidi, kaj simple ŝatas organizi aferojn. Mi havas emon envolviĝi en renkontiĝoj, tiel ne nur estas pri Esperanto.

It’s certainly not idealism. Like many native Esperanto speakers, I didn’t catch the idealism about Esperanto as an international language. It’s a normal thing for me. I’m active, because I got used to the meetings, I have friends there who I’d like to see again, and just like to organize stuff. I like to get involved in organizing events, so it’s not just about Esperanto.

How do you use Esperanto in your daily life?

Momente nur malofte, ĉar mi intertempe loĝas sole. Kompreneble mi havas amikojn, kun kiuj mi nur povas mesaĝi esperantlingve kaj ankaŭ faras tion. Tamen en mia ĉiutaga vivo Esperanto ne aperas, krom pro mia ofta preparado por projektoj por venontaj Esperanto-renkontiĝoj.

At the moment just rarely, because I live alone now. Of course, I have friends I can only write in Esperanto and so I do that. However, in my everyday life, Esperanto doesn’t make an appearance, except due to my frequent project preparations for upcoming Esperanto meetings.

Do you think you’ll continue the tradition and raise your kids in Esperanto? Why or why not?

Por mi tio ne estas tradicio. Mi ne fiere festas la Klünder-klanon se mi parolas Esperanton. Tamen estas tre verŝajne, ke mi faros tion – simple ĉar estas „normala“ por mi kaj malfacilos eviti ke miaj infanoj lernas Esperanton.

For me, that’s not a tradition. I don’t proudly celebrate the Klünder clan if I speak Esperanto. However, it’s very likely that I’ll do that – just because it’s “normal” for me and it will be difficult to keep my kids from learning Esperanto.

Multan dankon for your answers! If you have any questions for Nils, feel free to leave them in the comments below.

Ĝusta Klavaro for iPhone

Last night, I was enjoying watching Apple’s Keynote about their exciting, upcoming products, including the new design and features in their upcoming iOS 7 operating system (the operating system that powers the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch). On the language side, it will even come with Dutch, Italian and Korean dictionaries as well as a Chinese-English bilingual dictionary.

I applaud Apple for continuing to add more language support to iOS. However, I receive and send a lot of emails in Esperanto. In addition to this, I often comment and post in social networks too. Unfortunately, this is not possible natively on my iPhone or iPad. However, I was happy one day to discover the app Ĝusta Klavaro.

Now, when I need to type something in Esperanto, I just run Ĝusta Klavaro and then cut and paste the text to where I need it. Despite the fact that I’d rather have a real Esperanto keyboard on my iPhone, ĜK provides the best solution I could imagine, since it’s not yet possible to type Esperanto characters on any standard iOS keyboard. Within the app, you are provided with an empty text field and below the usual touchscreen keyboard with an additional line of letters: ĈĜĤĴŜŬ ĉĝĥĵŝŭ.

iPad with physical keyboard

The app also disables autocorrect as you type, since Esperanto words aren’t in any default iOS dictionary. Another nice touch is that when you connect a Bluetooth keyboard, it is smart enough to recognize this and just add the special Esperanto keys to the bottom of the screen as you can see by the picture on the right.

I’m really hoping that Apple will add Esperanto keyboard support in iOS 7. I’d just like to see the characters ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ and ŭ on the touchscreen keyboard when holding down a letter as it already works for other characters like ö, ż, ū, etc. Since Esperanto speakers speak a wide variety of languages, it would be most useful to have such support on every system keyboard.

There is quite a lot of demand for this within the Esperanto community, since the app has been downloaded over 4,500 times. In any case, I really hope to see Esperanto input support on the next version of iOS! Just curious, how do you type Esperanto characters on your system?

I always find it curious when people say that Esperanto isn’t interesting, because it’s artificial. The most prominent time I encountered this objection was during a visit of the European parliament building in Strasbourg (France), where many interpreter booths are set up to translate between the various EU languages. On the side, the tour guide asked me what organization I represented. I replied that I was with the World Esperanto Youth Organization. At this point, she looked at me in disgust and asked, “What? That artificial language?!”

Now, I don’t blame her; many people think this way. People can’t conceive that it’s possible to speak freely in such a language. At the time, I didn’t have a very good answer for her. Later it struck me. How artificial is speaking into a microphone and having someone in a special chamber translate your speech into another language, which then plays back on headphones to your listeners? Is this more artificial than speaking a planned language?

I remember my first experience speaking a “neutral” foreign language with someone who didn’t speak English. I was staying at a youth hostel in a shared 6-person room in Orlando and was surprised to find someone in my bed. So, I said, “Excuse me, you’re in my bed.” to which he replied something I couldn’t understand. So, I tried out my high school Spanish: “Estás en mi cama.” (You’re in my bed.) He immediately understood and moved to another bed. The next morning, I learned that he’s Brazilian, so his native language is Portuguese. I found it strange that this whole time we’re speaking in a language with all these exceptions, which require extra mental effort to conjugate verbs, etc, when we could be speaking an easier language, which was more logical. It’s amazing to note that I had these thoughts years before I heard about Esperanto!

The more I travel, the more this situation comes up. As a Russian woman recently asked me, “What’s the most spoken language in the world?” to which she answered, “Bad English.” And it’s true. People all over the world struggle speaking with each other in English, which has all kinds of crazy exceptions, which make it harder to focus on the content, rather than whether they should be saying “drank” or “drunk.”

The funny thing is that most people don’t realize what they really want. If you asked someone in the late 1800s, how they’d like to get around better, they’d say they wanted a faster horse! However, when I bought a car, no one objected to my purchase by saying, “What? That artificial horse?!” Now people in most parts of the world would consider you crazy if you bought a “natural” horse to get around town.

People see language as being one of the defining qualities that makes us human. But really, languages are tools for communication. Claude Piron touches on this well in his article: Psychological Reactions to Esperanto. In any case, I’m just as happy to speak an “artificial” language as I am to live in an artificial cave (apartment), fly in an artificial bird (airplane), or look at an artificial window (TV)… so in these cases, “artificial” could also mean “improved.” And after all that, I must say that I still feel pretty human!