Hello there!

Language is a profound and enduring part of our human existence. The idea of making major changes to language feels almost taboo.

However, taboo hasn't stood in the way every time.

Turkish

Mustafa Atatürk, Turkey's 1st president, made huge progressive reforms in 1928 to modernise the country. As part of his reforms, the Turkish language itself was changed to use a new Latin-based alphabet, replacing the existing Arabic-based Ottoman script. Many Arabic and Persian loanwords were also replaced with original words.

It was a big success.

In modern-day Turkey everybody uses the new system. Many consider it to have played a big role in Turkey's transformation into the country it is today.

Vietnamese

For most of its history, Vietnamese was written using classical Chinese. In the 17th century, Portuguese missionaries created a new script called Chữ Quốc Ngữ. 250 years later, in 1910, the then French rulers enforced this new writing system.

Everybody in Vietnam today uses the new system. From books and menus, to storefronts and labels on clothes, there's little trace of the old system.

As a new learner, I'm pretty happy about this one.

Hebrew

Hebrew was used for centuries as a liturgical and literary language without being spoken.

In the late 19th century, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda led an effort to revive Hebrew as a spoken language. New grammar and words were created for things that didn't exist back in Jewish antiquity.

In 2024 Hebrew is spoken by around 10 million people.

New languages

Esperanto went even further.

Back in 1887, starting from some European-centric choices, Zamenhof created a new language from scratch. The goal? Make it easy to learn. The reason? If more people shared second language equally, perhaps they'd live in peace longer.

He named the language Esperanto, which means "one who hopes". The name is a nod to this ideal.

Ideals aside, I found Esperanto after visiting an event in Wales in 2018. There were over 100 people using it to converse, share ideas and even talk about things like Bitcoin.

It was then I realised Esperanto, even though a "constructed language", was indeed a complete and expressive language. I instantly wanted to be part of it. Fast forward 6 years and I have more Esperanto-speaking friends than English.

Esperanto has its own grammar. Everything in the language was intentionally designed around the goal of making it consistent and easy to learn. The usual complexities we run into natural languages mostly don't exist.

With around 60,000 fluent speakers (including some native speakers) and many more learners, it's a good example of how even language itself can be significantly improved.

Zamenhof dared to take something very human and rethink it from the ground up. And he succeeded.

Respect.

For anyone curious about Esperanto, I made a video all about the language, and I wrote a free beginner course, too.

Fin

Language isn't merely a random, naturally evolving system. We get involved. We change things. We create entirely new ones.

A small number of people have been responsible for some huge changes to how we read, write and speak.

Language continues to evolve as our own free use of it adapts and changes. That's pretty lit, if you ask me. At the same time, I love the idea that we could do so much more to redesign language.

And why should language escape the will of human improvement?

But then, maybe we'd just end up with what the Germans call Verschlimmbesserung – an attempt to make something better that makes it much worse.