Many Esperanto speakers (especially in Europe) are content with the state of Esperanto as it is now. You can travel to almost any major city in the world and find someone who speaks Esperanto. You can listen to music in Esperanto… there’s even a 24 hour Internet radio station. You can already chat online with people all over the world. But, what would happen if Esperanto were more widely spread?

Playing board games at KoKoLoReS

As it is now, the largest Esperanto conferences happen because a bunch of Esperanto speakers want to hang out together. While there is nothing wrong with that, people usually have a reason to meet up, not just to speak the same language together. The two most brilliant Esperanto meetings I know are the KoKoLoReS and the Esperanto Wikimania. Why? Well, these are two meetings where people meet to do something specific: playing board games and improving Wikipedia, respectively. The Czech press was very present at the Esperanto Wikimania… possibly more because of Wikipedia than Esperanto. But really, doesn’t that make sense? It’s newsworthy that Esperanto speakers meet to work on Wikipedia. It’s not nearly as newsworthy that a bunch of people are meeting who speak the same language. I think we’ll know Esperanto has gone mainstream when we see the first Esperanto fashion show. Why yes, I was surprised when I saw that an Esperanto article existed for that in Wikipedia!

Currently, unless you’ve got a topic that generally interests Esperanto speakers, there’s no way you can expect any kind of turnout by running such a niche event. And there’s even less of a chance such an event could be a success outside of Europe. But, as the Esperanto community grows, these kinds of events should spring up more and more. Typically at non-Esperanto international conferences, people from the same nationality end up meeting with each other and speaking their native language, because it’s just easier for them. This, of course, takes away from the whole experience of an international conference in the first place! Why go to a foreign country if you’re just going to talk with your own countrymen anyway?

I’m already seeing this effect as the community craves New Years events. This year, there will be six Esperanto new years events: Jarfina FESTego (Château de Grésillon, France), Junulara Esperanto-Semajno (Gdansk, Poland), Internacia Festivalo (Xanten, Germany), Novjara Renkontiĝo (Bitburg, Germany), NOVA (Formiga, Brazil) and SANO-2 (Herzberg, Germany). Basically, more and more people wanted to take part in cozy New Year’s events, but it became difficult to find reasonable places to host so many people, so the events splintered off. For more details on how this happened, you can see last year’s article: Celebrate the New Year, in Esperanto style!

What do you see happening when more people speak Esperanto? In my next part, I will discuss greater commercial and political influence!