World languages are complicated
and annoying.
It's alienating right? A language barrier can be a greater
divide than any physical border. If you grow up without the ability to
communicate with people, you think of them as different.
And this can lead to...
Problems.
One man decided to create a language that everybody could get behind,
he would create a language without the headaches of a country.
Esperanto!
Treaties, rivalries ,borders, history, religion, politics, flags, anthems.
No thank you.
Actually...
L.L Zamenhof was a man who loved language.
Speaking Russian, German, French, Polish, Hebrew, Latin and Greek.
He wrote a five-act classical tragedy in Russian when was ten.
A Jew from Bialystok, Poland. Then Russia.
He was surrounded by a mixture of languages and isolated communities...
He envisaged a world where everybody spoke two languages, their native tongue and Esperanto.
It would be an easy to learn universal second language. Completely neutral with no
country, politics or pride associated with it. It could be the language of
governmen,t science, commerce, international understanding and peace.
Anyone from any country would be able to communicate with anyone from any other
and once we all understood everybody human empathy would do the rest.
[dramatic sigh]
Zamenhof's dream may seem woefully optimistic today, but this was 1880
globalisation was still a speck on the horizon. He was working as an optometrist
in Warsaw giving free eye care to the poor. He spent his evenings however
creating a language...
The alphabet has one letter per sound so word pronunciation should always be consistent.
Words are built using a basic root word, prefixes and suffixes.
With the ending of the word indicating the class; noun, adjective, infinitive,
adverbs, object, plural, past, future, conditional, command.
So you can take a root word say, 'san' meaning health-related. Add the noun class and you have 'sano'
meaning health. Add the adjective class and you have 'sana' meaning healthy. Add the prefix
'mal' meaning opposite and you have 'malsana', ill or sick. Squeeze in the
suffix 'ul' to indicate person and you get 'malsanulo', a sick person or patient.
Add another suffix 'ej' meaning place and you have 'malsanulejo', a place for not
healthy person... Or a hospital. By learning just 3000 root words you can create
another 20,000. The amount of words known by most native English
speakers. Conversely if you learn a new word say, 'vendisto', a sales person you can
work backwards to 'vendejo', a shop and 'vend', to sell. There's only one definite
article. The accent always falls on the can penultimate syllable in a word and all
the grammar and word formations follow strict but easy rules. If you're unsure
of a word in Esperanto your guess is likely correct.
Most studies report that Esperanto is somewhere between five to fifteen times quicker to
learn than most European languages. Plus if you already speak one you've got a
nice head start, as most Esperanto root words have romance or Germanic origins.
In 1887 Zamenhof launched his international language under the
pseudonym Dr. Esperanto or Dr. hopeful. He began publishing a periodical called
'The Esperantisto' where speakers could find each other and read his translations of
Charles Dickens. In 1895 an article called 'Judgmental or Faith' caused
The Esperantisto to be banned in Russia home to the majority of its readers the
The Esperanto fanboy Leo Tolstoy personally intervened to get the ban
lifted. The language continued to spread though and Zamenhof now had friends
and influence. In 1905 the first Universal Congress of Esperanto took
place in France. Zamenhof took to the stage to speak publicly about his
Esperanto philosophy.
[applause]
After the conference Esperanto exploded across Europe, and was almost adopted as the
official language of the League of Nations. Being vetoed by only one country.
But Zenhof had turned his attention to his next project 'homaranism',
literally 'humanitivism'. He was a keen political Zionist in his youth and
this acted as the seed for his plans but they were to change over time to not
just include the Hebrew religion, but all and any religions or people. He believed
in uniting the world into a place where a country's language, religion, and people, would
always remain separate from national interests and the state. But this was
1914 and he foresaw the borders of Europe would be redrawn after the war. He
contacted every country to ensure in the peace conferences that were to
inevitably follow. They instated the law...
But a nationalism unlike anything the world
had ever seen was erupting around him. He felt the importance of his cause greater
than ever, yet his influence was at its lowest, as Europe was gripped at once again
by anti-semitism...
But him being Jewish made Esperanto political and he
battled to try and distance himself from the movement because of it. Hitler would
go on to accuse Esperanto in Mein Kampf as being part of the Jewish conspiracy
and in 1940 and Nazi report stated...
Esperanto speakers of any background were subjected to and killed in
concentration camps throughout Europe. And due to their advocacy of
international communication, Esperantists would also be killed in Stalin's purges.
Despite the Nazis best efforts prisoners were still able to teach each other
Esperanto, the guards believing it was Italian. Esperanto was able to survive
and continue to spread after the Second World War
when humanity looks hopefully towards peace. Today Esperanto has an estimated
two million speakers worldwide. It's the 32nd language with the most
Wikipedia articles, more than Greek. And it is gradually seeped into popular culture...
-Skinner: Can the Esperanto society be far behind
I mean... [speaking Esperanto]
-Rimmer: Ident details 'SSS Esperanto'
ocean seeding ship.
-Narrator: Some films have even been made in Esperanto...
Yes, that is William Shatner.
Esperanto was included on the Voyager 1 message and even has an island named
after it. It wasn't the first or last artificial language but it is the
biggest. So why did it fail? This is a complex in nuanced discussion but it had
to be summed up in one word... English. America's economic dominance after World
War Two, the rise of Hollywood and imperialism, meant Esperanto never really
had a chance in government, media, or "trade." But even if the universal language
of the future isn't Esperanto it still has an important place in education.
Remember the hours in school you spent learning the recorder, that wasn't so you
could become the world's greatest recordist. It was because we don't teach
music to children with a complicated instrument, we start them with a recorder
to demonstrate how music works even if they never play again. It acts as the
foundation to piano, guitar and the French horn. Similarly Esperanto
demonstrates how language works even if they never speak it again it acts as the
foundation to Spanish, Russian and French. You wouldn't teach someone the organ if
they didn't know the difference between notes and chords so why do we try to
learn Spanish without knowing our infinitives from our participials. The
educational value of Esperanto has been widely investigated, albeit with a heavy
European bias. But if a child spends two years learning
Esperanto and then three years learning a foreign language they will have a
higher competency in that foreign language than a child who studied it
for five straight years. If we're going to teach foreign languages in school we
should do it early and do it properly. If you'd like to learn Esperanto, lernu.net
is an excellent place to start. Yes Zamenhof would be disappointed by Esperanto's
progress today. But Dr. Hopeful would be devastated by
the barriers and hostilities that remain between us. He died of a heart attack as
Europe and humanity fell to pieces during the first world war and
thankfully didn't live to see Esperantists and his own children
systematically slaughtered during the second. It's sad that a man who so
willingly dedicated his life to humanity should have his work destroyed by it.
If Nobel prizes were awarded for effort, Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof deserved one.
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