Shatner starred in Incubus and spoke Esperanto. Did he learn the language or memorize it phonetically? Has he said anything about the language? Did the role spark any general interest in learning it? I’ve wondered how Shatner would react to someone speaking Esperanto. Perhaps he’d reply back in the language?
Esperanto is pretty easy to pronounce for anyone speaking an Indo-European language as their first tongue (and, I’m told, not too difficult for others). I would think memorizing the lines phonetically would be quite doable.
As for Shatner’s acquaintance with Esperanto… can’t say.
I’m not sure how much learning or even memorization went on with that film. I have a copy of it on DVD and there are a number of scenes where it looks like the actors are reading from cue cards that are out of view.
I seem to remember a part in Shatner’s autobiography where he says that watching the movie a few months after filming, he didn’t understand anything of what was being said.
So if he ever actually learned it (which I doubt) he didn’t retain it
If he learned it phonetically, he would have needed an Esperanto speaker to read the lines while doing an impression of him, so he… couldget… that… Shatner… cadence justright.
BTW, this trailer of the film has the most literate youtube comments I’ve ever seen. The thread is still a misanthropic flamewar, of course, but well written.
He discussed it in Up Til Now. He never learned the language. He just memorized the script and showed up to work, same as any other job.
I recall on the early Daily Show, not with Jon Stewart, but with Craig Kilborn, they did a piece on the movie, and a few Esperanto speakers were on to say is pronunciation and diction were a little bit off, and they corrected a few of his lines. Maybe the episode is on Youtube, and you can hear what they had to say, and how they corrected him.