So, I was playing around with something called Mondo Search, which basically integrates into your web site, or intranet, yada yada to provide search functionality, as well as things like behavior tracking, etc. It, like everything else, has pluses and minuses, but they aren't relative to this discussion. This article isn't about Mondo, or search.
The reason I mention Mondo is I was working through the configuration files to get a better understanding of how some of the settings work under the hood and noticed in language support, it would support Esperanto. Being a geek who grew up when the dream of true AI was thought to hold merit within our lifetimes, I, of course, knew what Esperanto was. Or so I thought.
Esperanto was big in the AI world for a time, because it is a man made language (I guess technically speaking they all are). It was specifically designed as a combination of many other languages, with with as few rules as possible, and specific ways to convert words from noun to verb to adjective etc. In Esperanto, there are no exceptions to the rules (or so they claim, though I seem to recall there being one). This is where my knowledge switched to being semi accurate to pure fabrication.
I went around laughing about how funny and cool it was that Mondo supported a made up geek language created for AI back in the day. Of course, I was getting nothing but blank stares, since 'normal' people wouldn't know what Esperanto was, in my opinion and it seemed to hold up. I took blathely recalled the history of Esperanto as a failed language to allow machines to converse with their users, citing its failure as a realization that the user wasn't going to bother learning a new language just to talk to their PC.
Anyone who actually knows what Esperanto is, is most likely laughing by now.
I had decided to blog on this, but considering how often I am apt to place my foot on my taste buds, I decided to do alittle research first. I was surprised by the results.
It seems Esperanto was created in the 1800s as a possible solution for communications between countries. The world was getting smaller, you know, and countries with such diverse languages were having trouble communicating. There was a movement to push Esperanto as the 'official' international language anywhere possible, but it seems that it had as little success in the real world as it did in my fantasy world.
Supposedly, one small country actually made it the official international language, though that country no longer exists (or maybe it was an island or something, I don't recall). Surprisingly, however, there does seem to be a larger than expected base of people around the world that use it and write things to each other. Kind of like stamp collecting or something I guess. The AI world just latched onto this language as a logical solution to machines that couldn't handle the craziness of a language that has more exceptions than rules.
So, yeah, I was going to post all these cool facts about the truth of Esperanto, but I find that I like my fantasy of it better than reality, so if you want the truth, go read about it.