First Things

I was still in high school when I first got the idea of making up a langauge. The moment when it became something of a genuine hobby was when my Spanish class was asked to read an article about Esperanto from a Spanish version of Reader's Digest or something similar.

Our lunch period was scheduled for a break in the middle of Spanish class. This gave us some time to talk about things with our Spanish teacher, Mr Rauch. He was a fine teacher and was willing to talk about all sorts of things that were not too far off into the deep-end of teenage nonsense.

I think there were two of us who spoke with him about Esperanto before class started again after the break. I don't think any of us was terribly interested in Esperanto, itself. But the idea of creating a language sounded interesting. I think it was Mr Rauch who suggested that one of us students could make up a language if we really wanted to. That was the kind of challenge I always liked.