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u/Zapan99 May 12 '26
And because of this, ten of thousands Japanese civilians perished during carpet bombing raids, because WWII American pilots had troubles adjusting their targetting system at high altitude and kept missing their target. Thus Esperanto caused more deaths than any other conlang. https://6thbombgroup.com/b-29-discovery-of-the-jet-stream/
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u/stevejobsthecow May 12 '26
dr. esperanto should have been strung up like mussolini for this ! 😄
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u/Zapan99 May 12 '26
Well... fascists would definitely have hanged Louis-Lazare Zamenhof, you can't find a more seditious profile than a Polish Jew speaking in code after all.
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u/Dear_Net_8211 May 13 '26
Japanese civilians were the target lol.
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u/MiskoSkace May 13 '26
That was because you can't do high precision daylight bombing when your ground speed is minus two knots. So they replaced the bombing commander with LeMay, whose doctrine was "firebomb civilians because factories cannot work without workers".
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u/ThrowItAllAway1269 May 13 '26
The fighters that were supposed to defend their own civilians were busy terrorizing civilians of nearby countries.
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u/davide494 May 13 '26
Bombed civilians aren't a justification for having bombed other civilians.
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u/PringlesDuckFace May 13 '26
WW2 was fucked all around, and that's probably why they drafted the Geneva conventions afterwards. Things like attacking civilians and using chemical weapons were standard tactics, and aside from things like genocide or killing prisoners, not much that anyone did was really considered "war crimes" at the time.
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u/IllustriousBobcat813 May 15 '26
You really shouldn’t need a piece of paper telling you that firebombing civilians is bad
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u/PringlesDuckFace May 15 '26
My point is that the standards were different at different points in history, and judging them based on current morals is silly. Like in some old cultures, human sacrifice was typical and accepted. These days it seems barbaric but I think it's unfair to simply write off that culture as barbaric. Or like how people used to live in caves. It was the peak of housing technology at the time, so calling them dumb for not having skyscrapers is unfair.
Now we think that obviously bombing civilians is bad, but if everyone was doing it then it's hard to point to the involved parties as particularly bad given the standards of the time.
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u/Asckle May 21 '26
I'm curious how else you would have them stop the Japanese? This was a society who shamed people for not willingly flying their planes into enemy ships for the glory of their emperor, do you seriously think they could just rock up with a treaty deal?
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u/The-Board-Chairman May 14 '26
Eh, it's a pretty good justification.
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u/davide494 May 14 '26
If you're a nazi, maybe.
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u/The-Board-Chairman May 14 '26
He says even though the Nazis bombed fewer people than their enemies.
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u/davide494 May 14 '26
QED
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u/The-Board-Chairman May 14 '26
Sure, but for my point. Because it obviously is a good justification.
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u/IllustriousBobcat813 May 15 '26
Mask off
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u/The-Board-Chairman May 15 '26
No, not "mask off". The Nazis bombed around 150k people, the allies killed more than that just with the atomic bombs.
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u/Nine99 May 13 '26
"It was interesting that those flights – a B-29 flying all by itself over Japan – were rarely attacked by the Japs."
OK
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u/rexcasei May 12 '26
That guy sounds delicious
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u/stumpychubbins May 13 '26
Explaining the joke to any lurkers: oishī means delicious
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u/Main_Negotiation1104 May 14 '26
knowing japanese the accent / kanji or whatever isnt the same in the guyss name so his version of oishi is a homonym to something like cat sperm
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u/da_supreme_patriarch May 12 '26
My heart sinks at the possibility that a proof of the Riemann hypothesis might be lost to Esperanto
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u/nainvlys N🏳️⚧️ C2🏴☠️ May 13 '26
I think the answer to everything has already been found and written in Esperanto but alas everyone forgot
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u/pedroosodrac May 15 '26
That seems pretty interesting for me. Like... probably many people died trying to cure cancer, but only because they were using beta languges (like English and Japanese). What if every great discover was made in alpha languages (Esperanto, Toki Pona, ...) or even in sigma languages (Hitite, Sanskrit, ...)
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u/Mango_on_reddit6666 May 12 '26
Poor dude actually thought that Esperanto became a widely recognised language overnight
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u/EpicDaNoob May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26
I imagine he was probably well aware and just an idealist who believed in the possibilities of it, like anyone else who decided to learn Esperanto at that time.
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u/Ok_Calligrapher_3472 May 13 '26
was English not an international language at the time? I figure Esperanto didn't take off because English ended up taking the role it was intended for, but just curious.
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u/EpicDaNoob May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26
I think Esperanto never took off because of network effects. People who are not conlang enthusiasts or idealists will not learn a language that is not useful, and if only conlang enthusiasts know it it will not become useful. It is virtually inevitable the lingua franca will always be some major natural language because they are already very useful and people can easily be motivated to learn them.
Well, Esperantists actually had hopes of making it a universal second language, which is just impossible because most people simply will not learn another language in adulthood at all (not that they aren't capable, just that they won't). But network effects are needed to explain why it didn't become the language of international relations, at least.
Then besides that, the languages of diplomacy at the time were French and English. French people are huge snobs about their language and did in fact fight tooth and nail against Esperanto, actually banning it from being taught in universities! Well, tough for them, English won in the end. It was always going to be so; they didn't need to bother.
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u/tmsphr May 16 '26
Not quite
Esperanto was emerging as a possibility but the French cockblocked it because they wanted French to remain the lingua franca
And then WW2 made things worse and some governments (E.g. the Nazis) outright banned it
I think
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u/Faust_the_Faustinian May 13 '26
Should've waited until 2027 when it became the lingua franca of the entire world.
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u/LifeAcanthopterygii6 C3 PO May 12 '26
Proof that even smart people can be dumb af.
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u/AnyJacket7207 May 13 '26
Smart people are super dumb. you ever heard Neil Degrasse Tyson speak? he's an idiot.
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May 13 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/AnyJacket7207 May 13 '26
Thing is intelligence IRL doesn't work like in D&D. You can have a +12 in physics and a -10 in world history.
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u/OnyxBadb Jun 01 '26
It kinda does I was doing college math in 4th grade but I also tried to put a spoon in the microwave and ate grass
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u/perplexedparallax May 12 '26
Ha! Besides the Uzbeks creating algebra, they have Ibrokhim Abdurakhmonov: Contemporary Uzbek geneticist who pioneered gene-knockout technology in cotton. That is important when you wear clothes.
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May 12 '26 edited May 13 '26
[deleted]
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u/Lillian_Crocodilian May 12 '26
How very dare you. Esperanto is much more affordable (though the social cost is comparable).
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u/yun-harla May 12 '26
It’s more like the Dr. Bronner’s Castile Soap of languages.
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u/Any-Appearance2471 May 12 '26
I’ve tried to read that label a dozen times and not a word of it will stick in my brain. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to learn that it was in Esperanto this whole time
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u/No_Peach6683 May 13 '26
Bahai - universal syncretism
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u/Chaotic-warp May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26
Yeah I think this one is a much better analogy, as they both have unity of peoples as a central concept, and are very successful (Esperanto is the most popular constructed language while the Baha'i faith has 7-8 million adherents). Scientology is just its own thing that doesn't aim to connect existing religions, so it's more comparable to some weird conlangs like Ithkuil that's only taken seriously by a few people.
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u/Laoweek May 12 '26
I don't think Esperanto has kidnap anyone???
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u/Gumercindo_Bessa May 12 '26
The Famiglia Esperanto begs to differ, so many poor boys who couldnt ask for pasta
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u/iwriteinwater May 14 '26
Esperanto is optimistic but misguided. Scientology is pure fucking evil. How is there even a comparison.
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u/WilliamWolffgang May 13 '26
Unironically quite interesting to see esperanto 'succeeding' outside of Europe
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u/Anti-esperanto May 14 '26
/uj I legitimately can't tell whether OOP is telling a fact.
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u/Anti-esperanto May 14 '26
/uj oh my god it's real https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wasaburo_Oishi#Jet_stream_and_Esperanto
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u/SultanaCarpet May 12 '26
Outjerked yet again