My kids are native Esperanto speakers. Ever since Mira was born, I have spoken Esperanto with her. I even took her to Germany for Renkontiĝo de Esperantisto-Familioj when she was three years old.
Mira can absolutely understand other adults who speak Esperanto although she doesn’t speak much in Esperanto. And this, by the way, is absolutely normal for native speakers of minority languages. Mabel, who was born three years later, hasn’t been exposed to as much Esperanto. I haven’t read a whole stack of Esperanto kids books to her. She hasn’t gone to any big European gatherings. Consequently, Mabel doesn’t understand as much as Esperanto.
At present, Mira doesn’t say much and Mabel doesn’t understand much. And this has got me questioning the whole point of teaching my kids this obscure language. There seems to be no point.
In the Esperanto community, native speakers are called denaskuloj. There are only a few thousand in the whole world. In Canada, there are very few denaskuloj. To the best of my knowledge, there is only one of other native speaker in Canada close to the same age as Mira. He lives a ten hour drive away. It is hard to pop over for a play date and chat in Esperanto. Canada is really big; Esperanto speakers are really rare.
Why am I teaching this crazy language to my kids? I am teaching them Esperanto so that they grow up bilingual, so that they know what it feels like to be in the linguistic minority, so that they they have the standpoint of speaking a constructed language. Oh, and lastly, I am teaching them so that I can take them to Esperanto events.
In Canada, it would make a lot more sense to raise the kids speaking French. If I had been more organized and forward-thinking, I could have raised them as native French speakers. I would have needed to prepare and study French but that didn’t even occur to me when Mira was born. I was fluent in English and Esperanto, I wanted Mira to be bilingual, and so I taught her Esperanto.
A couple years later, I went deep in to French for EMF 2025. Recently, I have started reading to Mira in French and she enjoys it. Hopefully, in the long run, exposure to Esperanto will help the girls learn French or whatever language they want to speak.
Published: Oct 20, 2026 @ 19:17.
Last Modified: Oct 20, 2026 @ 20:13.
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#Esperanto #parenting #language learningBacklinks
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