I’m a language fan. I adore chatting to people from different countries and learning a little bit about life “back home”. I also like doing this without thinking that the other person is disadvantaged by having to speak in my language, derive by process of elimination and context the meanings of unknown words that I throw around casually, and not be able to express themselves in as much detail as they might like and I might expect. Power imbalances are good in competitive fields; they’re not in friendship.

Well, I found a solution. At first glance, it looks possibly silly. I learned a language that was purposefully created to be a common second language. I, Pedro, Marco, Minaxi, Rani, and Claudette would still have our national languages as chief, but when in each other’s company, we’d speak a neutral one, rather than have to work out which one(s) to use from our common menu of English, Spanish, Italian, Gujarati, Punjabi, and French.

So simple. I can understand people being cynical, since I question how easy it is to say what you want, how you want in any of the other constructed languages that I’ve perused over the last few years. Take it from me, though: I know not only that Esperanto works, but that it also opens doors to new people. I write ‘know’ because I’ve experienced it.

So, the first thing to note is that I’m a fluent speaker of a constructed language. At the time of writing, I’m the president of the youth wing of the Esperanto Association of Britain. (We seem to be a little liberal with our definition of ‘youth’ )

I won’t speak too much here about what Esperanto is. I’ve written in more detail about the subject before, and I ideally would like this page to be just a quick ‘glance ‘n’ click’ affair.