On January 31st the University of California published an article on its website titled From Klingon to Dothraki: Understanding invented languages, about a course on conlangs being taught by Nick Kalivoda, a Ph.D. candidate in linguistics and alumnus of NASK. Much of the article is devoted to Kalivoda’s experiences with Esperanto:

[Esperanto] is the most widely spoken constructed language in the world. […] Kalivoda assures that once you start learning it, “you realize that it’s just as capable as any natural language of expressing whatever you want to say.”

Being an Esperanto speaker, or Esperantist, has come in handy for Kalivoda. When travelling in Iceland one summer he met two friendly travelers, one Italian, the other Slovak, neither of whom spoke much English. The three spoke Esperanto.

“I was able to show up in a foreign place and feel right at home.”