Ĉu vi parolas Esperanton?

By Oliver Kim

Want to add a language to your multilingual family but aren’t sure which one? How about Esperanto? It is easy to learn and you will be able to find pen pals around the world!

This article will introduce you to the language of Esperanto, its history and development. Then jump right in and learn your first lessons!

Do you speak Esperanto?

Esperanto is the most widely used international auxilliary language. It is a planned language whose grammatical rules and vocabulary were developed over several years by a Polish eye-doctor in the 1870‘s and 1880‘s. Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof (1859-1917) firmly believed that many of the world‘s problems were rooted in the fact that the different people could not communicate with each other due to language barriers. He himself grew up in a multilingual environment: Three main languages were spoken in his home town Białystok, Poland: Polish, Russian and Yiddish. According to his biographers, Zamenhof himself was able to speak these languages and additionally was fluent in German. He also studied French, Latin, Greek, Hebrew and English.

Zamenhof was dismayed by the friction between the ethnic groups, and thought to have found the root of this problem in the lack of a common language. He set out, already during his school years, to design a language; one that is neutral and does not favor native speakers over individuals that learn it later in their life. Zamenhof did not intend his language to replace any national languages; it should rather be learned as a common second language. The political, ideological and cultural neutrality of Esperanto should give all speakers an equal opportunity. After all, a native speaker will in many cases have a linguistic advantage over people who started to learn a language later on in life. After 10 years of development and intensive testing (he translated many works of world Literature into his new language) he published the 16 grammatical rules and 800 vocabulary roots in 1887. His Unua Libro was published using his pseudonym “Dr. Esperanto“, literally meaning “the one who hopes“.

Throughout history, Esperanto has its ups and downs. Before the two World Wars, Esperanto gained quickly in popularity, with the first Esperanto congress in 1905 in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. At this first Esperanto „World Congress“, nearly 700 perople participated. This was probably the first time that many people actively used the language in converstaion on a large scale. This congress may therefore have served as a “proof-of-concept“ that Esperanto is not only suitable for written, but also for spoken communication.

The popularity of the Language was also because for many people at the time, Esperanto was one of the only few methods to gain some further education and international contact with pen pals. One should not forget that English then was not as widely spoken as it is today, and that English, with its irregular pronounciation and richness of idioms, was difficult to learn correctly without having the possibility of submersing oneself in an English-speaking environment. Esperanto study groups could, on the other hand, easily be organized on a local level. Due to its regularized grammar and logical word-formation system, it was possible to benchmark the „correctness“ of a sentence by analyzing its grammatical structure. At least in written communication, even advanced beginners could soon formulate sufficiently complex sentences and not reveal that they were just studying the language for only several weeks. Sit down with a dictionary, have your grammar ready and start to design your sentence!

Esperanto had to take a great blow during the Second World War. Both Hitler and Stalin opposed the “internacia lingvo“, for different reasons. Hitler saw in Esperanto a tool for Jewish world domination (Zamenhow was Jewish), with the consequence that countless Esperantists and the Zamenhof family itself did not survive the Holocaust, as they perished in concentration camps. Stalin, in turn, questioned the international contacts and anti-nationalistic tendencies of many Esperantists. He, too, murdered countless people on these grounds. It is interesting to note that another communist dictator, Marshall Tito, head of Yugoslavia, was himself a speaker of the language and actually promoted it.

After the war, many Esperanto groups were re-established, and since 1947 there has been an annual World Congress with about 2000 participants each time. While it is difficult to assess the number of speakers world-wide, estimates range from 100,000 to 1-2 million speakers with about 1000 native speakers. Nowadays, Esperanto is used for a wide range of activities such as travel, conventions and cultural exchanges. Esperantists can become a member of an international hospitality service, “Pasporta Servo.“ Provided that you yourself speak the Esperanto, other members of this service provide you with lodging for free.

Some groups have promoted Esperanto to be used as a language for the European Parliament. The EU annually spends enormous sums for translating documents from one language into another. It was suggested to use Esperanto as an intermediary language, into and out of which documents could be translated. Esperanto’s free word order would allow for a direct translation of the documents of a variety of languages. Others, however, are concerned that this would make Esperanto a “European“ language, also on formal grounds, and that this would compromise the neutrality of the language.

While it is impossible to give a complete overview over the grammar in a few lines, a few notable criteria should nevertheless be addressed. Esperanto is not related to any ethnic language, but incooperates aspects of many ethnic languages. The vocabulary is based on western Indo-European languages (mostly Romanesque), the pronounciation has Slavic elements. The pronounciation is highly regular. Each character has a clearly definied pronunciation that does not change. One of the characteristics of Esperanto is its highly regularized and exception-free grammar, and its productive word-creation system. With a fairly small number of word roots, and a collection of prefexis and suffixes, it is possible to create a wide range of vocabulary. This aspect should minimize the memorization of a large quantity of vocabulary.

Here is an example:

I like to compare Esperanto to the Asian board game Go and Chess. The rules are simple for both of these games, but the number of combinations that are possible are nearly unlimited. There is a common misconception among critics, who assume that simple rules automatically mean that the language is “primitive“ and that it is not possible to communicate complex ideas. On the contrary: the regularized grammar allows for a more unambiguous expression of complex ideas.

Advantages of Learning Esperanto

What are some advantages or benefits of learning Esperanto? Well, what are the advantages or benefits of learning any language? I think that the reasons can be mostly found on a personal level and I assume that the motivation to learn something new are probably as manyfold as there are learners. For me, personally, one motivating factor was, besides the elegance and beauty of the language, that I wanted to learn a language, one that I could use and apply after a minimum of study effort. In addition,

• Studies have been conducted that indicate that the learning Esperanto facilitates the learning of other foreign languages
  (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaedeutic_value_of_Esperanto) In many European countries Latin is taught in middle and high-schools for the same reason. Esperanto‘s exception-free grammar and the logical structure of the language gives the students a basis for the structured acquitition of other languages. For these reasons Esperanto is already taught in several schools as an elective course.
• Esperanto is a language that is motivating to learn and gives the learners a feeling of success. It‘s regularized grammar allows the person to soon apply the language. It is therefore fun to learn and use.
• A wide range of original and translated literature and poetry is available, also freely over the internet and via publishers.
• Esperantists are internationally networked, allowing cross-cultural contacts through international conventions and a hosting service.

Criticisms of Esperanto

Certainly one of the most voiced criticisms of Esperanto is that it has not lived up to its promises of becoming the world‘s lingua franca and that it is is, compared to other etnho-languages, not spoken by the majority of the world‘s population. With its several hundred thousand up to maybe 1-2 million speakers world-wide, it is comparable to a minority language, with the difference that the speakers are distributed all over the world. People should rather learn, so it is said, a „real“ language; one that gives people access to a larger number of speakers. What those critics do not realize is that esperanto is a “real“ language, one that has been in active use and one that has evolved for 120 years. For many Esperantists the absolute number of speakers is not a primary issue of importance. What is the point of learning and knowing a language with several hundred millions of speakers if the person is not willing to actually use and employ the language by seeking contact with other speakers? Many Esperantists validly claim that they have used Esperanto more often than a national language that they have learned during their school years.

In my view, the fact that Esperanto is not as widely spoken as other national languages is probably one factor why many members of the Esperanto community seek active contact with other speakers, and thus create a context where they can use the language. It is more an issue of attitude than the number of speakers. Especially the Internet has greatly promoted the spread of this language. The community is highly active, and online-courses, forums, chats and mailing lists facilitate the learning and spread of the language and promote intercultural understanding.

Another common criticism of Esperanto is that it “does not have any culture“, as its vocabulary base and grammatical rules were designed and are thus not linked to any particular country. As a matter of fact, many Esperantists view this independence from a particular ethnical, political and national background as an asset and not as a disadvantage. A person attempting to translate the English sentence „This test was a piece of cake“ into another language will certainly not communicate the intended meaning. As an “international language“ it should not be a promoter or a carrier of a particular national culture. Rather, it should facilitate the communication between people of different cultures. The comparable lack of idiomatic expressions in Esperanto is seen as an advantage.

On the other hand, it is interesting to see that Esperanto did, indeed, experience a cultural development in its own way since its creation. Not only was the number of word roots greatly increased and rules of good style and language use developed. The evolution of its culture was not limited to such linguistic aspects. Over the years, Esperanto literature, poetry and music flourished, and radio broadcasts gave the community a strong identity. And of course, there is also the Esperanto Hymn, by L. L. Zamenhof,which should give the reader an impression of the language (see box on next page, translation is from Wikipedia).

If you want to know more about Esperanto, I would like to refer you to the following web sites:

• www.esperanto.net (Comprehensive link collection and information)
• esperanto-usa.org (Esperanto League of North America)
• www.lernu.net (online learning course)
• en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esperanto (Wikipedia entry)

A Quick Overview of Esperanto Grammar:

• Esperanto has a liberal word order: these are all correct ways of saying „I love you“: Mi (I) amas (love, present tense) vin (you). Vin mi amas. Amas mi vin. Amas vin mi. Mi vin amas. Vin amas mi
  
  
• Regularized pronounciation: One letter always is spoken the same way, the pronounciation is not influenced by other letters of the word or by the meaning of the word. Here is a counter-example from English: „He lead the group“/„Can you lead the group?“ Even capitalization determines pronounciation in English: „I apply for a job.“ - „I read the book of Job“ (a biblical figure, pronounced joub, and how do you pronounce the word „read“? Is it in present or in past tense?) This is not the case in Esperanto, where words are always pronounced the same.
  
• Many word roots are internationally known: Zamenhof has deliberately selected widely used word-roots: universitato (university), komputilo (computer), libro (book), kato (cat)
  
• Productive word-formation system: New words can be created with the use of affixes. This minimizes the memorization of vocabulary:
  Lerni: to learn
  Lern-ant-o: the learner, or one who is learning. -ant- is the present participle. The ending -o indicates that the word is a noun. To make it plural we add –j : lernantoj = the learners.
  Lern-as: (he/she) learns. -as is the present tense verb ending.
  Lern-ej-o: the school. -ej- indicates a location or place. The -o indicates that the word is a noun.
  
  
• The grammar is kept to a minimum: There are 16 grammatical rules. All nouns end in -o, adjectives in -a, adverbs in -e, the infinitive in -i. Present tense is formed by ending -as, past tense -is, future -os. To sing: kanti, sang (past): kantis, will sing: kantos, sings (present): kantas.
  
• In Esperanto, idioms are kept to a minimum: In a national language an expression may be grammatically correct, but still wrong, because „you just don‘t say it this way“.

Oliver Kim is an Esperantist and Teacher at an International School in Austria.

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