This essay was written by a 15 year young lady as a High School assigment.

"Esperanto:

An International Language for an International World"

"...I was taught that all men were brothers, and, meanwhile,
in the street, in the square, everything at every step made
me feel that people did not exist, only Russians, Poles,
Germans, Jews, etc. Since at that time it seemed to me
that grown-ups were all powerful, I kept telling myself that
when I grew up, I would certainly do away with this evil"
(Esperanto: The Idea...)

Artificial international languages have been composed since the Middle ages, when they were designed to "promote logical thought as much as facilitate universal communication" (Richardson 27). Instead of being based on an existing national language or group of languages, as many international languages are, these "philosophical languages," called a priori languages "symboliz[ed] alphabetically...their (i.e. Aristotle's) analysis of the universe" (Fry 4). That is, words became like formulae, and were therefore self-explanatory once the "system" was known. For example, "a" might mean a living animal; therefore, any word beginning with the letter "a" would stand for some kind of animal ("International Language").

Before the late nineteenth century, when Esperanto was invented, there were other proposals besides the a priori languages. In the seventeenth century, Bishop Comenius suggested using existing national languages for international communication: he proposed the use of English and French in the West and Russian in the East. Also, Descartes suggested the use of an artificial language (Hanil 16).

However, one of the first major attempts at an international language was Volapük, invented around 1880 by a German priest named Johan Martin Schleyer (S. Z.) and intended for the ordinary person. It was based on various European languages, but it had a complicated grammar, myriad verb forms, and difficult pronunciations. To make matters worse, it was constantly being revised and reformed, which led to confusion and ultimately contributed to the abandonment of Volapük (Richardson 28).

Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto, was inspired by Volapük. Indeed, he wrote that he "at first supposed his own childhood dream [of an international language] had been fulfilled" (Richardson 28) However, he realized that the difficulty of the language and constant changing made it too hard to learn, and therefore it wouldn't work. Esperanto was first introduced in 1887 when Zamenhof published, with the support of his wife, a forty page booklet entitled Fundamento de Esperanto which included grammar, vocabulary, and translations of three poems, a letter, and selections from the Bible. Zamenhof published his booklet under the pseudonym Doktoro Esperanto, "Doctor who hopes," from which the name of his language comes (29-30).

Since the emergence of Esperanto, it seems that English has become a kind of lingua franca, though only about 10% of people speak it -- twice as many people speak Chinese (The ABC's of Esperanto 3) Besides English presently being the language of air communication (Schmitt 1), Winston Churchill supported the use of a pidgin form of English, called Basic English, as an international language (Connor 9).

But why bother with going through all the trouble of organizing a common language for international use? One reason is that we need a way for the world to communicate for such things as business and diplomacy; the ordinary person would also benefit by not having a language problem wherever he went. Having an international language is a more viable way to communicate internationally than learning myriad other foreign languages, for a few reasons. One, there are thousands of languages and not enough time to learn them all. Also, even if you were to become a polyglot, whenever you run into a language you don't know, you are back to square one, unless the person you are trying to speak to knows one of the languages you do.

There are two major sources for a modern international language: national languages and artificial languages. Using modern national languages, "dead" national languages, and pidgin forms of national languages is the first: such tongues as Basque, English, French, and Chinese have been suggested (Hanil 17). An advantage of this option is that the language is already there, and it has already been used for centuries. However, there are three major problems with using national languages as common languages: many have myriad dialects, no "official" form, so a standard would have to be worked out; for the most part, they are not phonetic: the spellings would have to be changed, and some difficult pronunciations eliminated; thirdly, and in some places most importantly, a national language brings its national culture with it (Reed vii)

Pidgin languages, sometimes called a posteriori languages ("International Language"), are simplified forms of national languages: they have as few words as possible. Pidgin, or basic, languages are argued to be both more and less difficult for foreigners to learn because of the small number of words they have. Basic English, endorsed by Winston Churchill around the time of World War Two, is made up of only 850 words and was composed "as a stimulant to international trade and as a sedative to international temper" (Kongreso in Anglujo 26). Jacques Barzun, who learned English as a second language, wrote an essay about Basic English in 1943 about the problem with it, and thus reflecting of the problems of pidgin languages in general:

Lacking such elemental words as 'know,' 'selfish,' and 'without,' it demands a skill in circumlocution which makes it a delightful challenge to the master of English, but a torment, I should think, to the literate in other languages... To obtain Basic we reduce the abstract to concrete... But to rebuild a language for general use out of these parts is a greater task than appears at first sight. I find no evidence that it is possible to write Basic and say what you mean without first knowing English thoroughly... In short, whenever we go beyond small talk we speak in thoughts and not mere words....And [it] is inconsistent... [to] tell [ ]... us that Basic is much simpler... (5)

To use and understand pidgin languages effectively, an intimate knowledge of the meanings and uses of each of the few words that are used is necessary. This defeats the purpose of the language -- to make it possible to say complex things in English without really knowing the language -- because if you want to say anything involved, not only do you have to know what you are trying to say in regular English, but you have to figure out how to say it in simplified terms, often difficult for those who speak English as a first language. Therefore, pidgin languages, though a good idea, probably would not work for common international use, especially since the regular difficulties associated with national languages also apply.

There are several reasons that an artificial international language would be a good choice for the position. First, artificial languages have no homeland, and they are not borne out of experiences, as are national languages; therefore, they do not bring a national culture with them; instead, they bring a common international culture with them. Another major reason is that the grammar, spelling, pronunciation, and syntax could be made entirely regular, and therefore easier to learn than those parts in a national language. To make it just as easy for people from all language backgrounds to learn, different elements common to all or most languages would be combined, and difficult pronunciations could be eliminated (Reed ix). Some of the more prominent artificial languages today are Esperanto, Interlingua, and Loglan.

Despite apparent pluses to an artificial international language, there are some minuses. A major problem is that they can tend to have strong biases towards one language family or another. Also, an artificial language may not be able to express our feelings and thoughts as well as a national language. National languages developed from the need to express those very thoughts and feelings, changing over time; an international language would not be able to change, and therefore may become obsolete. The ideal tenacity of an international language itself is questionable: language by its very nature changes, so a completely regular language is unlikely: it could easily break up into dialects. H. G. Wells wrote in an essay in 1943 that:

Every language man has ever used is an ever-changing torrent with nothing whatever to keep it clear and clean. "Time, like an everflowing stream, bears all its sons away," but language has no ability to rid itself of its illegitimate and corrupt offspring (4)

He is saying that language changes over time without exception, but instead of the old words being pushed out by the new ones, the language just grows and grows -- without end; as an international language is no exception to this pattern, it would eventually grow just as difficult to learn as a national language.

Speculation could even bring us beyond spoken language. H. G. Wells suggested in the same essay quoted above, that an international language would not include words at all, saying:

Speech, indeed, is so specialized and localized that it seems highly probable that the universal means of communication in the future may involve a very scanty use of the written and spoken word... There is scarcely a fact spoken language can express which cannot be conveyed a thousand times as rapidly and completely through the eye... Speech is used to conceal our thoughts much more frequently than it is used to express them... So it is quite possible that the happy and united world which may be ahead of us will never have a universal speech, and any one of us revisiting the earth in a century or so may find a world of complex toleration and understanding with as many, if not more, spoken languages than there are now (4).

Wells is suggesting that the former quest for a universal spoken language is really the wrong path to go down: we are able to express ourselves more thoroughly and more quickly through pictures than sounds. Wells points out that we use words to conceal and deceive, but he fails to mention that pictures can be used in the same way: it is not speech that we use to hide our thoughts and feelings, but language.

Charles Baudin argues the exact opposite in an essay on international language. He gives examples of many current international languages that are not spoken -- music, algebra, gestures -- saying that they were good in their own respects, but unsuitable for conveying our ideas properly (147-150) .

Because adopting an artificial universal spoken language is the best idea in many people's minds, many questions concerning the definition and nature of language have arisen. The first major question is if artificial languages are truly languages because they were made up; that answer lies in the definition of language. To those whom a language is what develops naturally through the experience of living on earth, artificial language is a sad attempt at a true language. To those whom language is any means of communication that is used by humans for the purpose of communication, they are legitimate languages; it is a "living" language (Schubert) . This is illustrated by such living, but artificial, languages as Hindustani and Levant ("International Language").

In addition to the debate on whether artificial languages are really languages, there are also doubts as to whether they are capable of expressing the wide range of human emotion for which national languages developed. Connie Elbe, a linguist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill said that "It's somewhat artificial. And artificial languages don't serve the great range of purposes a natural language does" (DePriest). However, Ivy Reed responds to this argument by saying:

A horse is "natural," an automobile is "artificial." For purposes of present day travel under present-day conditions, no one seriously questions the superiority of an "artificial" automobile (x).

Reed is saying that just because something was invented by humans doesn't mean that it is inferior to what came to be without our planning: we should utilize everything that we have to its extent.

One of the major -- indeed, perhaps the most successful: an estimated one to eight million people speak it worldwide (Reed 72) -- artificial international language is Esperanto, which was invented in the late 1800's for the purpose of being an international language and remains virtually unchanged today. Zamenhof designed his language to be an auxiliary language: he intended everyone to learn it as a second language, keeping their respective national tongues. Esperanto was invented by Dr. Zamenhof (quoted at the beginning of this paper), who has various first names attributed him due to confusion from different languages trying to say them (Shenker 113). Zamenhof was a Polish, Jewish optician who grew up in a village called Bialystok and was fluent in ten languages. He was distressed by the discord he saw in the streets: he saw distrust and violence between the different national groups--Poles, Russians, Estonians, Latvians, and Germans -- that lived in his area, and he attributed it to a lack of understanding due to the many different languages spoken there (Lee). Inspired to resolve the conflict in his village, Zamenhof set out " ...to create a language so simple and logical that anyone could learn it, and so neutral in its political and cultural connotations that it could be used as everyone's second language" (Fallows 14).

Zamenhof worked to use components common to most language and to avoid the uncommon -- in a way, it can be argued that Zamenhof did not invent anything; he only rearranged what was already there (International Language). The vocabulary comes mostly from the Indo-European languages, especially the Romance languages, so it is familiar to most western Europeans. Its grammar was inspired by English and it's use of affixes, inspired by shop signs, is similar to eastern languages: there are parts of Esperanto from all over the world. There are less than 2000 roots in Esperanto to which those affixes are attached to form as many as fifty words from each root.

He at once understood how important it was to make use of this power, which, in the natural languages, plays only a small and incomplete role. So he began to compare words and to search out the constant and defined relationship between them. He cast out of his vocabularies a vast series of words, substituting for each huge mass a single suffix, which had always a certain fixed relationship to a root-word ("International Language").

That use of affixes is a subject of debate: some say that they are over-used, and new words should be imported (Fallows 18). Nonetheless, Zamenhof worked hard, day and night, to prepare his language.

One thing that Zamenhof knew was important was absolute simplicity and regularity. For this reason he gave his language only sixteen grammar rules that are never broken, and it is completely phonetic. The rules are: there is only one definite article, "la", and no indefinite article; all nouns end in "o," and the plural is formed by adding a "j"; all adjectives end in "a", with comparatives formed by using pli before, superlatives with plej; numbers are not grammar-coded like nouns and adjectives; an "a" is added to the end of a personal pronoun to make possessive pronouns; verbs are the same for all persons and numbers, and the endings show the tense; all adverbs end in "e," and comparisons are the some as for adjectives; all prepositions govern the nominative; every letter only has one sound, so each word is pronounced just as it is spelled; the accent is always on the second-to-last syllable; to make compound words, simply join two words together, the most important one last; do not use double negatives; to show direction toward, use a direct object, formed by adding an "n" to the end of a word; all prepositions have a definite meaning, je is used if there is not one; adopted foreign words don't change except in spelling and ending; and the final "o" of a noun or "a" of "la" may be replaced with an apostrophe. Roots can be either nouns, adjectives, verbs, and adverbs depending on the final letter, and they can be changed from one part to the other by changing that final letter. There are twenty eight letters in the Esperanto alphabet; it is the same as the English alphabet except without q, w, x, and y, and it has six additional letters: c, g, h, j, s, and u, with a mark on top (The ABC's of Esperanto 6-7).

In addition to being totally regular, phonetic, and stable, Zamenhof also saw a need for complete neutrality of the language, so that all people are on equal footing when they speak to each other. These three ideals are summed up in Zamenhof's preface to Fundamento de Esperanto. He wrote four major statements in the foreword: that Fundamento de Esperanto is a guide for the language; that no person or organization can change Esperanto, even himself; that no grammar changes can ever occur; and "He emphasized that a language for international use must.. remain absolutely stable..." (Reed xv). Also, "Zamenhof was determined to put as much distance as possible between the work and its creator... In place of a copyright notice, he published a statement forever relinquishing all rights to the language" (Richardson 30). Zamenhof wanted his language to belong to the entire world, not him, not his country.

Since its creation in 1887, Esperantists have tried--with good success--to promote their language to all people. Through many meetings, surveys, and conferences, various plans have been composed to integrate Esperanto into our cultures. Before World War Two, when the movement was just beginning, there was rapid and large progress. This period can be divided into six major periods ("International Language"). After the war, in the 1940's and 1950's, the Esperanto movement was at its peak (Schmitt 1).

The first of the pre-World War Two periods was between 1887 and 1898. During this time there was slow progress in the movement, and Esperanto was kept alive largely by groups of Slaves and Scandinavians. A major Esperanto magazine called La Esperantisto, "The Esperantist," later named Lingvo Internacia, "International Language," was published during this period, ("International Language").

During the period between 1898 and 1905 there was rapid progress in the Esperanto movement. France held numerous meetings and promoted the teaching of Esperanto in schools, and in 1901 a delegation for the adoption of an international language was organized ("International Language").

The next period, between 1905 and 1914, was a time of rapid growth world-wide for Esperanto. The American Esperantist Association was founded in 1905, and the following year Amerika Esperantisto, "American Esperantist" magazine began publication (Richardson 38). In 1908, the Universala Esperanto-Asocio, an international Esperanto organization, was founded; the UEA pledges strict neutrality in politics and religion and promotes brotherhood and equality (Richardson 45). Also, the first annual Esperanto convention was held in 1905 in Boulonge-sur-Mer, France at which a formal statement called the Boulogne Declaration was adopted. This statement declared six major things: Esperanto is politically neutral; all people are free to use it; no person or group can lay claim to it; no changes can be made to its basic structure; changes and additions to the vocabulary can only take place naturally, through use; and basic changes can be made only if necessary and only when Esperanto is adopted by major governments (Richardson 33). These statements are echoes of what Zamenhof wrote in his preface to Fundamento de Esperanto. At that first congress an academy was selected to advise and interpret Esperanto, but not to make changes to it; this academy remains today ("International Language"). The kongresoj, conventions, are still held annually today; they are cultural events, with theater, lectures, music, literary contests, sight-seeing trips, get-togethers (Richardson 46). Also during this period, Esperanto was mainly a written language, with over one hundred periodicals being printed in the language.

It was during this period that a group of French Esperantists broke off their own sect, calling their language Ido, "offspring" (Richardson 33). Their changes were to make Esperanto more like French (E. E.); one thing that was added was different words for opposites (formed by adding the prefix "mal" in Esperanto), for instance, "malpli" (literally not more, meaning less) is translated into Ido by "min" (K. S.). When asked about Ido, E. E., an Esperantist, said "I would prefer that people would speak about the nice parts of the [Esperanto] language, and not about the problems about the language, or about the problems of the movement. Ido represents both kinds of problems, and a huge problem." Ido is not widely spread today, in part because it was constantly changed, like Volapük. Other versions of Esperanto include Europal and Esperantida (International Language). E. E. offers an explanation for these "offsprings" of Esperanto:

Most people, in starting to learn Esperanto, find it fascinating, for the regularity, almost mathematical, of the language. But then, they start to make 'suggestions' how to improve Esperanto. In reality, any other language has many more things that could use improvement. For that reason they want to improve Esperanto. And improve means only to make Esperanto closer to their own language.

Zamenhof foresaw that changes in Esperanto would not be good for it; they would only confuse people, and then his language would not become alive, as it is today.

World War One was bittersweet for Esperanto. The international conventions paused until 1920, the number of Esperanto periodicals fell, and many Esperantist groups broke up (International Language). However, Esperanto was key to bringing messages across the fronts (Richardson 34).

After the Great War, a new life was breathed into the Esperanto movement: groups reformed, magazines resumed publication, and the international conventions were held again (International Language). Also, many radio programs were aired in Esperanto -- something that continues today. In 1922 a favorable and objective survey, "Esperanto as in International Auxiliary Language," was compiled by the League of Nations, which promoted a proposal to teach Esperanto to all children, but it was defeated -- ironically -- by the French on the grounds that French was already an international language. Another step towards the acceptance of Esperanto by the world -- albeit not very big -- was that the Universal Telegraph Union accepted Esperanto as a "clear language, not a code" in 1925 (Richardson 35). During this period, a periodical called Literatura Mondo, "Literary World," began publication. It was chiefly through this magazine that Esperanto literature was "...transformed from a primitive imitation of the national literature to a truly creative art form" (Richardson 61). This "art form" is shown today by the numerous periodicals and books -- both translations and originals -- in Esperanto.

The decade before the second World War, Esperanto lost favor in many people's eyes. Joseph Stalin called it the "language of spies" (Lee ); In Mien Kampf, Hitler dubbed it part of the Jews' plan to rule the world, and he put Esperantists in concentration camps (Richardson 38). During this time, English was on the rise towards the status of lingua franca, and Basic English was a popular choice for an international language, endorsed by Winston Churchill (Barzun 5). Stalin's and Hitler's dislike of Esperanto plus Churchill's support of Basic English slowed the Esperanto movement.

However, in 1938 a meeting was held in London to "popularize their synthetic lingo" (Kongreso in Anglujo 26). There were two main purposes to the meeting -- to pressure London to offer night school courses in Esperanto and to pressure the French government to encourage the use of Esperanto -- both of which were successful (26).

The peak of the Esperanto movement was in the 1940's and 1950's, when it was the second language in almost ninety countries (Schmitt 1). At this time, hundreds of periodicals and thousands of literary works were published in Esperanto. However, Esperanto and Esperantists were targets of McCarthyism because it was thought that they had contacts behind the iron curtain; this "gutted and demoralized" the Esperanto movement in the U. S. even though there was a push to use Esperanto as an anti-Communist instrument (Richardson 40).

Esperanto was designed for international communication, but it does have many other uses. Because it takes so little time to learn and is related to so many different languages, especially the European ones commonly taught in schools, it is a useful "bridge language" in foreign language study. Also, Esperanto can aide in grammar study because there are never any exceptions to its rules (Reed xii).

Using Esperanto in translation could cut down on costs, time, and inaccuracy. Less translators would be needed because you would only need one for each language you wanted to translate into: if every document were translated into Esperanto from its original language, there would only need to be one translator for each language, since they all would know Esperanto. Especially helpful this would be when one or more lesser-known languages were involved. There are four main reasons that Esperanto would be a better choice for this middle-man language than a national language: native speakers would be translating from their own languages, as opposed to from a foreign language; it is rich in rhymes; it has great flexibility and can hold the style of the original work (Auld). Esperanto's flexibility was demonstrated in 1921 in an experiment by the Paris Chamber of Commerce: "...two Esperantists translate[d] delicate texts of French into Esperanto, then...two others turn[ed] them back into French; the final texts were almost identical with the originals" (Kongreso in Anglujo 26). This test also showed how well Esperanto "...lends itself to precise shades of meaning" (Kongreso in Anglujo 26) because of the exactness of the end documents.

Esperanto is often associated with idealism. Albeit Esperanto was born with the hope that it would end--or at least help--the distrust and violence between peoples of different tongues, this "world peace" vision is shared by many Esperantists today. "Back of [Esperanto] is the belief that a Babel-babbling world must always be at war, that a universal language would bring worldwide understanding and peace" (Esperantan Kunvenon... 29). Through the ability to communicate, many believe that trust between people will be strengthened. However, this view is challenged by civil wars (Pei 15). Many linguists say that Esperanto will not work because of its Utopian view. In contrast to this view, S. Z., an Esperantist, claims that it is the Idealism of Esperanto that allows it to continue:

Another reason for the survival of Esperanto was its so-called internal idealistic belief that all people, including ordinary people all over the world, should be able to communicate with each other easily....This idealistic vision proved to be very powerful in attracting hundreds of thousands of people who learned the language and even more who supported it.

In reply to the idea of Esperantists as idealists, one said "A lot of people have this impression of [Esperanto] speakers as crazy, naive idealists. We're people with a desire to learn other cultures" (Satir).

Today, the need for an artificial international language like Esperanto is being questioned because it seems that English is becoming more and more of a lingua franca. However, as stated before, English is not as widely spread as Americans tend to think it is. "The real problem... is that Americans tend to think the rest of the world already speaks English -- or should. Americans... see Esperanto as an eccentric solution in search of a problem" (Stein). One reason is that Americans have this view is that they are isolated linguistically: "In Europe if you go 500 miles you'll run into at least one or two different languages. You can go 1,000, even 2,000 miles in any direction and not have a language problem in the United States" ("Esperantists claim..."). In fact, the reason that Esperanto has been so popular and English rejected in such countries as China (Esperantists claim...) is because English "... is our language, the embodiment of our culture, the manifestation of our power. Other nations see it, rightly or wrongly, as threatening to their language, well-being, and way of life" (Richardson 15). Esperanto, or any other such truly neutral language, is a way for people to communicate internationally without the cultural implications that accompany a national language.

"What the fuss is all about is a people' soul, it's very identity. For a language is not just a code where one word-symbol will do as well as another. A language is also a complex of associations of remembered experiences; each word recalls a rich tapestry of impressions that are intensely personal and so infinitely precious" (Richardson 2).

Every national language records its people's history by epitomizing their experiences with sound. The purpose of an international language is not to make the world forget the thousands of years that make up each language; rather, it is to share and celebrate that record by giving people a chance to communicate equally with anyone in the world. To give this access to all people, the language must be truly simple and international: Esperanto is both of these. However, we must be careful lest we become over-enthusiastic and try to stretch an international language beyond its means, for an international language is the same as its national counterparts. Its purpose is communication, not the peacemaking that Zamenhof envisioned for his language, though that may be one outcome of it. For the time being, however, a language such as Esperanto that people of all walks of life can share -- whether it brings world peace or not -- is a step that is important to take because of the cosmopolitan world that we live in: we cannot interact with people from other languages and cultures if we do not understand them, and therefore cannot learn from them.

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Esperanto Flag

Posted: May 21st, 1999