Let’s start our topic of the week in honor of record-breaking Jeopardy champ Amy Schneider!
"This powerful tool for world peace and understanding was invented in 1887 by a Polish ophthalmologist. It’s been used by millions, but is mostly known as a curiosity."
If you answered “What is Esperanto?" (or, better yet, "Kio estas Esperanto?") then you are absolutely right!
Ludwik Lejzer (L. L.) Zamenhof created Esperanto as a tongue that everybody might easily acquire, in addition to whatever other language they spoke, so we could all communicate as one global community.
Zamenhof tried to make Esperanto as linguistically and politically neutral as possible. Free of nationalism, it would be structured so that all inhabitants of the world could acquire it with equal ease. Perhaps parents would speak it to their children on certain days of the week, schools might teach Esperanto as a mandatory course—and the world would be united as never before.
BTW, this video is from Paul at Langfocus, which is an amazing channel if you enjoy languages.
Well, it didn't work out that way.
Esperanto is not quite linguistically neutral. Its alphabet and roots come largely from Latin, which gives it a European bias. (TBH, Korean Hangul would have been a better model, but more on that in a future essay.)
Also, some of its noun and verb forms can be sexist—” doktoro" and “doktorino" for male and female doctor, for example.
But most of all? People just weren’t interested.
Although Esperanto has always had its advocates, there was already a language—English—that was the language you needed to know if you wanted to succeed in the world.
Unlike Esperanto, English went international precisely because it was tied to countries and nationalism. From the British Empire to the United States—still the leading economic power in the world—English was spoken because, well, dammit, that’s what your colonizers and customers spoke.
But what about the culture and irregularities and all the weirdnesses of English?
So what?
If you want to do business on the global scale, eventually someone in your company is going to have to learn English. Deal with it.
And deal with it we have. In so many areas. In so many ways.
If you play the piano, sooner or later you’re likely to get frustrated with Sergei Rachmaninoff. Why? Because his music is impossible to play—not too difficult, but physically impossible.
Why? Because Rachmaninoff had these giant umbrella hands that could reach a 13th. That is over an octave and a half! Take out a 12” ruler. Touch one end with your thumb.
Now, touch the other end with your pinky.
Can’t do it? Sergei could!
And he wrote music that assumed that you could, too! Yay, Sergei!
And thus, many pianists have hated that man.
But there IS a solution.
Look at a piano—who thought of that layout? The origin is uncertain, but there is evidence that rudimentary keyboards/levers first appeared as devices to strike church bells of different pitches—in essence, creating the carillon.
And those weird shorter keys? One theory is that since monks sang largely in diatonic (I’m guessing C major for happy prayers and A minor for sad ones), the black keys weren’t initially needed. However, once the other notes of the chromatic scale showed up—well, you had to stick them in somewhere…
Not surprisingly, having your keyboard designed by medieval bell-ringing monks did not result in the optimum product for contemporary pianists.
And yet, to this day, pianists smoke-and-mirror their way around Rachmaninoff, endure weird hand positions, and stumble over weird key signatures with too many sharps or flats.
There MUST be a better way!
Enter Paul von Jankó, a Hungarian pianist and engineer. In 1882 von Jankó freed the piano from church bells or Gregorians with his Jankó keyboard.
Rather than a single row from low to high, Jankó keyboards are arranged in a grid. The layout is supposed to make transposition easier, as well as better match the natural profile of human fingers.
Here’s the Jankó keyboard in action. Notice how relaxed the player’s fingers seem to be.
And no umbrella hands required! I’d go into this more, except—
I have no clue how to play the thing.
Sure, I can probably figure it out, but piano repertoire is muscle memory, as well… If I need to relearn everything…and if my teacher doesn’t use the Jankó, either...
And that’s the problem. Just as with Zamenhof and Esperanto, von Jankó and his keyboard didn’t have a chance.
Okay, you might say. That’s all fine with language and music. But surely the folks in business and engineering would value efficiency above everything else?
Well, does your calculator (or your calculator app) have an “=” key?
What if I told you that an “equals” key is not only unnecessary, but inefficient?
Arithmetic notation has been around on some form or another since the days of reed pens and papyrus. How we enter values into most calculators comes from the same traditions that mathematicians have used since, well, arithmetic.
But it does not have to be this way. In the 1950s and 60s, two separate groups developed Reverse Polish notation to make better use of what the computer does well—hold and manipulate information in memory.
Also, Reverse Polish notation is more intuitive—tackling equations as you solve them, as opposed to how you write them down—requiring fewer keystrokes and totally eliminating those awful parentheses keys.
If you notice me becoming a little passionate here, it’s because I’ve used RPN calculators since high school. I learned to use them for my chemistry classes and never looked back. In fact, I have an RPN app for my phone.
And you should use RPN, too.
And so, I think I understand the fervor of Esperanto speakers, the Jankó keyboard users (and those of you with Dvorak overlays on your QWERTY keyboards).
We believe it’s better. We know it’s better. Regular calculators actually make me sad because I want to bring RPN to everyone.
But you’d all just think I’m crazy.
Humans possess the unique ability to pass information from one generation to the next. Usually, that’s a good thing—that's how we have languages and keyboards and calculators in the first place.
But this process also spawns arbitrary patterns and customs that seem to make no sense, reinforcing outmoded behaviors that fly in the face of logic.
To replace these customs would mean changing not only behaviors but histories and institutions, and that is not so easy to do.
However, that does not mean we can’t enjoy these innovations in our own lives. We might not have changed the world. But we can still be all the better for it.
Esperanto speakers still have their meetings and organizations. They even have their own holidays Esperanto-Tago (Esperanto Day) is July 26, and December 15 is Zamenhofa Tago (Zamenhof’s Birthday).
New instruments are being made using the Jankó system, like this Harpejji, an instrument that would be impossible with a standard keyboard layout.
As for RPN? As calculators stopped being used, Reverse Polish notation devices nearly disappeared. However, RPN has found a new home in stack-based computer processors, once again bringing efficiency and elegance to the computing world.
And I have my RPN calculator app on my phone. I can show you how to use it any time!
--
Next Week--PoW!!!: Cryptocurrency, Mjolnir, Proof of Work, Why It Sucks to be Son Goku
Cover by: By Morn the Gorn - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9804221