History of Esperanto

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The constructed international auxiliary language Esperanto was developed in the 1870s and 80s by L. L. Zamenhof, and first published in 1887. The number of speakers has grown gradually over time, although it has not had much support from governments and international bodies, and has sometimes been outlawed or otherwise suppressed.

Contents

Development of the language before publication

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Zamenhof would later say that he had dreamed of a world language since he was a child. At first he considered a revival of Latin, but after learning it in school he decided it was too complicated to be a common means of international communication. When he learned English, he realized that verb conjugations were unnecessary, and that grammatical systems could be much simpler than he had expected. He still had the problem of memorizing a large vocabulary, until he noticed two signs labelled ŝvejcarskaja (porter's lodge — "place of the porter") and konditorskaja (confectioner's shop — "place of sweets"). He then realized that a judicious use of affixes could greatly decrease the number of root words needed for communication. He chose to take his word stock from Romance and Germanic, the languages that were most widely taught in schools around the world and would therefore be recognizable to the largest number of people.

Zamenhof taught an early version of the language to his high-school classmates. Then, for several years, he worked on translations and poetry to refine his creation. In 1895 he wrote, "I worked for six years perfecting and testing the language, even though it had seemed to me in 1878 that it was already completely ready." When he was ready to publish, the Czarist censors would not allow it. Stymied, he spent his time in translating works such as the Bible and Shakespeare. This enforced delay led to continued improvement. In July 1887 he published his Unua Libro (First Book), a basic introduction to the language. This was essentially the language spoken today.

Esperanto history from publication until the first world congress

At first the movement grew most in the Russian empire and eastern Europe, but soon spread to western Europe and beyond: to Canada in 1901; to Algeria, Chile, Japan, Mexico, and Peru in 1903; to Tunisia in 1904; and to Australia, the United States, Guinea, Indochina, New Zealand, Tonkin, and Uruguay in 1905.

In the early years, Esperanto speakers were mostly in contact only through correspondence and through magazines, such as La Esperantisto, published from 1889 to 1895. By 1905 there were already 27 magazines being published (Auld 1988).

In 1894 Zamenhof had put a series of proposed reforms to a vote by the readers of the main Esperanto magazine. These included eliminating the accented letters and the accusative case, changing the plural to an italianesque -i, and replacing the table of correlatives with more latinate words. The reforms were overwhelmingly rejected, but were a basis for most subsequent reforms (such as Ido) and criticisms of the language.

A small international conference was held in 1904, leading to the first world congress in August 1905 in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. There were 688 Esperanto speakers present from 20 nationalities. At this congress, Zamenhof officially resigned his leadership of the Esperanto movement, as he did not want personal prejudice against himself (or anti-Semitism) to hinder the progress of the language. He proposed a declaration on founding principles of the Esperanto movement, which the attendees of the congress endorsed.

Esperanto history since the first congress

World congresses have been held every year since 1905, except during the two World Wars.

The autonomous territory of Neutral Moresnet, between Belgium and Germany, had a sizeable proportion of Esperanto-speakers among its small and multiethnic population. There was a proposal to make Esperanto its official language.

In the early 1920s, there was a proposal for the League of Nations to accept Esperanto as their working language. Ten delegates accepted the proposal with only one voice against, the French delegate, Gabriel Hanotaux. Hanotaux did not like how the French language was losing its position as the international language and saw Esperanto as a threat. However, two years later the League recommended that its member states include Esperanto in their educational curricula. Many people see the 1920s as the heyday of the Esperanto movement.

Starting in the 1930s, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin murdered many Esperanto speakers because of their anti-nationalistic tendencies. Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that it was created as a universal language to unite the Jewish diaspora. Stalin called it "the language of spies". While Esperanto itself was not enough cause for execution, its use was extended among Jews or trade unionists and encouraged contacts with foreigners.

Fascist Italy, on the other hand, made some efforts of promoting tourism in Italy through Esperanto leaflets.

The Cold War, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, put a damper on the Esperanto movement as well, as there were fears on both sides that Esperanto could be used for enemy propaganda. However, the language experienced something of a renaissance in the 1970s and spread to new parts of the world, such as its veritable explosion in popularity in Iran in 1975. By 1991 there were enough African Esperantists to warrant a pan-African congress. The language continues to spread, although it is not officially recognized by any country, and is part of the state educational curriculum of only a few.

Evolution of the language

The Declaration of Boulogne [1] of 1905 limited changes to Esperanto. That declaration stated, among other things, that the basis of the language should remain the Fundamento de Esperanto ("Foundation of Esperanto", a group of early works by Zamenhof), which is to be binding forever: nobody has the right to make changes to it. The declaration also permits new concepts to be expressed as the speaker sees fit, but it recommends doing so in accordance with the original style.

Many Esperantists believe this declaration stabilizing the language is a major reason why the Esperanto speaker community grew beyond the levels attained by other constructed languages and has developed a flourishing culture. Other constructed languages, such as Ido, have been hindered from developing a stable speaking community by continual tinkering. Also, many developers of constructed languages have been possessive of their brain-children and have worked to prevent others from contributing to the language. One such ultimately disastrous case was Schleyer's Volapük. In contrast, Zamenhof declared that "Esperanto belongs to the Esperantists", and moved to the background once the language was published, allowing others to share in the early development of the language.

The grammatical description in the earliest books was somewhat vague, so a consensus on usage (influenced by Zamenhof's answers to some questions) developed over time within boundaries set by the initial outline (Auld 1988). Even before the Declaration of Boulogne, the language was fairly stable; only a few significant grammatical changes were made in the earliest years after publication, such as changing "how much" from kion to kiom to avoid confusion with the accusative form of kio "what". This gave Esperanto a stability of structure and grammar similar to that which natural languages enjoy by virtue of their native speakers and established bodies of literature. Thus one could learn Esperanto without having it move from underfoot. Changes could and did occur in the language, but only by acquiring widespread popular support; there was no central authority making arbitrary changes, as happened with Volapük and some other languages.

Modern Esperanto usage may in fact depart from that originally described in the Fundamento, though the differences are largely semantic (involving changed meaning of words) rather than grammatical or phonological. The translation given for "I like this one", in the sample phrases in the main Esperanto article, offers a significant example. According to the Fundamento, Mi ŝatas ĉi tiun would in fact have meant "I esteem this one". The traditional usage is Tiu ĉi plaĉas al mi (literally, "this one is pleasing to me"), which reflects the phrasing most European languages (French celui-ci me plaît, Spanish éste me gusta, Russian это мне нравится [eto mnye nravitsya], German Das gefällt mir, Italian mi piace). However, the original Ĉi tiu plaĉas al mi is commonly used as well.

Other changes include a reduction of the number of inherently masculine words, and an increase in the East Asian-like use of adjectival verbs. Originally all members of a profession, such as dentisto "a dentist", all people defined by a characteristic, such as junulo "a youth", and all verbal participles used for humans, such as kuranto "a runner", were masculine unless specifically made feminine with the suffix -ino; currently only some twenty words, mostly kinship terms, remain masculine. More recently, stative verbs have been increasingly used instead of copula-plus-adjective phrasing, following some poetic usage, so that one now frequently hears li sanas for li estas sana "he is well".

More minor changes have affected the names of some countries named after ethnicities, whose endings have changed from -ujo to -io, and women's names ending in -a (e.g. Maria), whereas purists once insisted on using the noun ending -o (e.g. Mario or Mariino).

Esperantists have also formed many words to express concepts which arose since the publication of the Fundamento, and these have generally conformed to the existing style of the language. For example, early proposals for the word "computer" included komputero and komputoro, but the word in current use is komputilo (from the root of the verb komputi "to compute" plus the suffix -ilo used for tools and instruments). Eŭro is another example: even though the currency is spelled euro in official legal documents in all the European Union's languages which use a Latin script, in Esperanto eŭro was chosen to better fit the phonotactics of the language.

Not all new coinages meet ready acceptance, however. For example, the neologism ĉipa "cheap" has appeared as an alternative to the more verbose malmultekosta, "inexpensive", but remains in minority usage.

Dialects, Reform Projects and Derived Languages

Esperanto never fragmented into regional dialects through natural language use, largely because it's the language of daily communication for only a small minority of its speakers. Slang and jargon have developed to some extent, but such features interfere with universal communication — the whole point of Esperanto — and so have generally been avoided.

However, in the early twentieth century numerous reform projects were proposed. Almost all of these "esperantido"s were stillborn, but the very first, Ido ("Offspring"), had significant success for several years. Ido was proposed by the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language in Paris in October 1907. Its main reforms were in bringing the alphabet, semantics, and some grammatical features into closer alignment with the Romance languages, as well as removal of adjectival agreement and the accusative case except when necessary. At first a number of leading Esperantists put their support behind the Ido project, but the movement descended into fragmentation and decline first with the accidental death of one of its main proponents and later as people proposed further changes, and the number of current speakers is estimated at between 250 and 5000. However, Ido has proven to be a rich source of Esperanto vocabulary.

Some more focused reform projects, affecting only a particular feature of the language, have gained a few adherents. One of these is "riism", which modifies the language to incorporate non-sexist language and gender-neutral pronouns. However, most of these projects are specific to individual nationalities (riism from English speakers, for example), and the only changes that have gained acceptance in the Esperanto community have been the minor and gradual bottom-up reforms discussed in the last section.

Esperanto is credited with being either the foundation or the inspiration for several later competing language projects, such as the Romance-based Occidental and Interlingua, but these always lagged far behind Esperanto, and even Ido, in their popularity. Only Interlingua, with approximately as many speakers as Ido, has more than a handful of speakers today.

See also Esperantido

References

  • Auld, William. La Fenomeno Esperanto. Rotterdam: UEA, 1988.
  • Lins, Ulrich. La Danĝera Lingvo. Gerlingen, Germany: Bleicher Eldonejo, 1988. (Also available in Polish [2])
  • Privat, Edmond. The Life of Zamenhof. Bailieboro, Ontario: Esperanto Press, 1980.
  • Zamenhof, L. L. Letero al N. Borovko. 1895.[3]


Timeline of Esperanto

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