Chuck Smith (Esperantist)

Chuck Smith
Chuck Smith, founder of the Esperanto Wikipedia
Birth	24 June 1979, United States of America
Esperantist since	February 2001
Nationality	United States

Chuck Smith (born 24 June 1979) is an American Esperantist. Having learned Esperanto and joined the Esperanto movement in February 2001, Smith founded the Esperanto version of Wikipedia in November of that same year.

Smith's accomplishments have received wide acclaim. In her book ‘’Bridge of Words: Esperanto and the Dream of a Universal Language,’’ Esther Schor writes:

“Vikipedio, the brainchild of Chuck Smith, an American Esperantist living in Berlin, has a disproportionately large number of articles on the Internet…, and Esperantists created the Czech, Slovakian, Georgian and Swahili versions of Wikipedia.”

Smith was a board member of the American Esperanto youth organization — known as USEJ from its official name Usona Esperantista Junularo — and of the international youth non-profit organization E@I ("Education@Internet"). He also served as an official representative of the World Esperanto Association (in Esperanto, Universala Esperanto-Asocio, UEA) to the United Nations.

From July 2002 to January 2003, he travelled through 14 countries (Brazil, Argentina, Britain, France, Germany, Sweden, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Turkey, Austria, Luxembourg and the Netherlands), participating in many Esperanto-language meetings along the way. During this trip he detailed the history and progress of the Esperanto Wikipedia during a Czech conference on the application of the international language, Esperanto, in science and technology (Konferenco pri Aplikoj de Esperanto en Scienco kaj Tekniko, KAEST). This presentation prompted Miroslav Malovec to establish the Czech-language Wikipedia. From January 2003 to January 2004 he volunteered full-time at the Rotterdam central office of TEJO, the World Esperanto Youth Organization. From April 2004 to June 2004 he was a full-time employee of Esperanto Antaŭen, a group promoting Esperanto in Calgary, Canada.

As a board member for TEJO, he represented that group at the World Esperanto Association (UEA). In November 2006, he launched Eklaboru, a website to connect employers and job-seekers. In January 2007 he launched Amikumu, an interactive site to help Esperantists find new friends and upload photos. Neither site is active today. Smith now lives in Berlin as an iOS developer.

Smith began the project to bring Esperanto to the Duolingo language learning platform. He is a moderator for the team that developed the Esperanto-for-English-speakers course on Duolingo. That course has over 784,000 students, as of 27 March 2017. Smith also helps the two teams now developing similar Duolingo courses for Spanish and Portuguese courses to teach the international language; the Spanish course has 79,000 learners, and the Portuguese course is planned for launching by the end of 2017. In 2015, he was declared the Esperantist of the Year (2015) because of his work spreading Esperanto online, chiefly because of the aforementioned activities developing and launching Duolingo's Esperanto course for English speakers.

Esperantist of the Year

In 2015, he was declared the Esperantist of the Year (2015) because of his work spreading Esperanto online. Commenting on an article in Libera Folio titled “9.600 homoj eklernis Esperanton en du tagoj” (“9,600 people began learning Esperanto in two days,”), Dennis Keefe, himself a previous Esperantist of the Year honoree, declared that Smith, though not in the usual mould of such winners, richly deserved the award:

“To my knowledge, he did not have big subsidies from major philanthropic organizations such as the Esperantic Studies Foundation, and is not a part of the power nucleus of the traditional Universal Esperanto Association (UEA). He is one of the thousands of Esperanto speakers who work in their own ways outside of traditional frameworks. Although there are many good fields of endeavour — writing, music, education, libraries, congresses, local associations, editing, linguistic festivals, history of Esperanto, etc. — Chuck Smith and his teams, through concentrating on Internet strategy and marketing, have accomplished more than some others who have had the strong monetary assistance of various Esperanto associations, groups and organizations.

“With independent enterprise, Chuck Smith presided over the creation of useful services for the Esperanto movement — making the first bold steps to create the Esperanto Wikipedia and creating an Esperanto keyboard for mobile phones. At the macro and micro levels, striving systematically and with market analysis to attain meaningful goals, he is someone who really understands strategy and who can give very good advice to our “dinosaur” UEA: that progress requires team-building and cooperation.”

Citing Newton’s comment about standing on the shoulders of giants, Keefe wrote the Esperanto movement would do well to think about that, declaring that Smith’s inspiration of the team that created the first Esperanto Duolingo course will be central to the future growth of Esperanto.

External links

• Interview with Chuck Smith on Radio Polonia, 28 April 2002 (8 minutes 45 seconds)

See also

This article "Chuck Smith (Esperantist)" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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