and now for somethng completely different... Esperanto and the cruising lifestyle

Way back in the 19th century a guy by the name of L. L. Zamenhof sat down and worked out the framework of a new language which became Esperanto...

Now what the hell does an artificial language have to do with boats and suchlike? Well the short answer is ... More than you might think!

One of the problems that had L. L. Zamenhof sitting at his desk drawing up the rules for a new language was that in Poland and the neighborhood they had a whole bunch of languages. Lots of people in those days hated other people simply because they said "apple" differently than the folks over in the next village. Throw in the fact that speaking someone else's language puts you at a disadvantage or their speaking yours puts them at a disadvantage... Well, the fact of the matter is that there really is a case for a universal language.

In the cruising fleet you see a lot of clumping by flag... French boats hang together, so do German boats, and so on... It's not that various folk don't like each other but simply that a lot of folks are insecure about their language skills.

Of course, you can simply expect everyone to speak what you do, but "other folk" have a nasty habit of expecting YOU to speak their language... Something of a conundrum! Some think that yelling loudly works and that once a certain decibel level is reached effective translation is achieved! I'm always a little embarrassed going into a government office or store on a French Island (for instance) when folks from my country use the "just increase the volume" method of trying to speak to a guy who does not speak English... Or worse, when they say things in English assuming that because he is not English that he won't understand when they trash talk his island/country/politics/wife/etc. You'd be surprised how well folks everywhere understand a phrase like "EAT MY SHORTS!"

Language is a very political element. Always has been and always will be...

We of the English language camp are really at a serious disadvantage and living in Paris for fourteen years showed me time and time again, learning even the basics of a language of a country you visit is not just polite, but pays off in any number of ways.

On the other hand, the cruising community is actually a very small group that could quite easily adopt a language like Esperanto and if it did it would go a long way to bring the community together. Not even that hard a thing as Esperanto is a very easy language to learn not having any of the foibles or problematic elements of other established languages as it was designed from the get-go to be easy to learn.

Of course, this flies in the face of the established "Everyone else should learn MY language/dialect and accent" mindset that a lot of folk have... but then so do a lot of other ideas of merit! Sometimes its a good thing to fly in the face of the same old, same old...

Speaking of which, the normal non-cruising world does not think that you can have a decent lifestyle on a cruising boat and that renewable technology like solar panels, wind generators and suchlike actually work. Yet the cruising community has been showing that it is not just possible, but works very well in fact... Boat folk being way ahead of the curve on the whole Green advances and suchlike, gives me hope that just maybe they might be way ahead on other fronts given half a chance...

If any of this makes any sense... Esperanto in Ten Minutes or less (Yes it really is that easy!) On the other hand we could always go with Klingon!