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I am looking at the history of the Esperanto Language

I wonder what are the big events (old or recent) that helped to spread or just get people know that the language exists

Starting the list

  • Launch of the Esperanto Duolingo course
  • Launch of the Esperanto Wikipedia ...

Could you add some events to this list ?

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    In the English speaking world Arika Okrent's recent book In the Land of Invented Languages may have moved the needle a bit. Going back a bit further there​ was Umberto Eco's The Search for a Perfect Language may have also helped, but neither of these had really large-scale effects, in my opinion.
    – Todd
    Commented Mar 24, 2017 at 20:15
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    There is also the book THE ESPERANTO MOVEMENT. Here's the Amazon ordering portal for it: amazon.com/Esperanto-Movement-Contributions-Sociology-Language/…
    – Mike Jones
    Commented Mar 31, 2017 at 13:43

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I have a saying that I coined for moments such as this. That saying is:

  • Esperanto wasn't born yesterday™

Esperanto hasn't been sitting on a dusty shelf for 130 years. It's been in constant daily use this whole time. Sure, there are many wonderful things happening for Esperanto online, but they are tiny dots compared to the living history of this language.

Esperanto comes up a lot in my daily routine and occasionally people will say "Oh, isn't that in the movie by Shatner?" or "isn't that in Red Dwarf?" or "Didn't that die in the 70's?"...

... nobody has yet to respond to me "Hey, isn't that used in Wikipedia?" or "isn't that a course on Duolingo?"

There are entire books written on this subject. Bridge Of Words springs to mind as a recently written book, written in English, and available at most public libraries. You may want to start there.

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    And I like to say "Esperanto keeps outliving its obituary writers."
    – Mike Jones
    Commented Mar 31, 2017 at 13:40

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