Paging Dr. Esperanto, and what not to say in Ireland’s parliament

December 15 is the most important day in the calendar for people who speak Esperanto. It is Zamenhof Day, named after the man who dreamed up the idea of a language that the entire planet would one day speak. L.L. Zamenhof (that’s him in center of the photo, the one staring at the camera) was [...]

Esperanto, Klingon, Blissymbolics and 900 others: why we invent languages

This week, a converation with Arika Okrent, author of In the Land of Invented Languages: Esperanto Rock Stars, Klingon Poets, Loglan Lovers and the Mad Dreamers Who Tried to Build a Perfect Language.
Okrent has a linguistics background: she has a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. But her interest far exceeds the merely  scientific. She  [...]