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Esperanto
Esperanto flag
Esperanto flag
Created byL.L. Zamenhof
Setting and usageInternational auxiliary language
Users(Native: approx. 1000;
Fluent speakers: est. 100,000 to 2 million cited 1887)
Purpose
Sourcesvocabulary from Romance and Germanic languages; phonology from Slavic languages
Official status
Regulated byAkademio de Esperanto
Language codes
ISO 639-1eo
ISO 639-2epo
ISO 639-3epo
Look up Esperanto in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Audio file "Esperanto.ogg" not found is the most widely spoken constructed international language. The name derives from Doktoro Esperanto, the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof first published the Unua Libro in 1887. Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy and flexible language as a universal second language to foster peace and international understanding.

Although no country has adopted the language officially, it has enjoyed continuous usage by a community estimated at between 100,000 and 2 million speakers and it is estimated that there are about a thousand native speakers. [1]

Today, Esperanto is employed in world travel, correspondence, cultural exchange, conventions, literature, language instruction, television (Internacia Televido) and radio broadcasting. Some state education systems offer elective courses in Esperanto; there is evidence that learning Esperanto is a useful preparation for later language learning (see Esperanto and education).

History

Main article: History of Esperanto
L.L. Zamenhof, creator of Esperanto

Esperanto was developed in the late 1870s and early 1880s by Polish opthalmologist Dr. Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof. After some ten years of development, which Zamenhof spent translating literature into the language as well as writing original prose and verse, the first Esperanto grammar was published in Warsaw in July 1887. The number of speakers grew rapidly over the next few decades, at first primarily in the Russian empire and Eastern Europe, then in Western Europe and the Americas, China, and Japan. In the early years speakers of Esperanto kept in contact primarily through correspondence and periodicals, but in 1905 the first world congress of Esperanto speakers was held in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. Since then world congresses have been held on five continents every year except during the two World Wars, and have been attended by up to 6000 people (typically 2000-3000).

Esperanto has no official status in any country, but is an elective part of the curriculum in several state systems. There were plans at the beginning of the 20th century to establish Neutral Moresnet as the world's first Esperanto state, and the short-lived artificial island micronation of Rose Island used Esperanto as its official language in 1968. In China, there was talk in some circles after the 1911 Xinhai Revolution about officially replacing Chinese with Esperanto as a means to dramatically bring the country into the twentieth century, though this policy proved untenable. In the summer of 1924, the American Radio Relay League adopted Esperanto as its official international auxiliary language, and hoped that the language would be used by radio amateurs in international communications, but actual use of the language for radio communications was negligible. Esperanto is the working language of several non-profit international organizations such as the Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, but most others are specifically Esperanto organizations. The largest of these, the World Esperanto Association, has an official consultative relationship with the United Nations and UNESCO. The Oomoto religion encourages the use of Esperanto among their followers. The Bahá'í Faith encourages the use of an auxiliary international language, and, while endorsing no specific language, sees Esperanto as having great potential in this role. The U.S. Army has published military phrasebooks in Esperanto [2], to be used in wargames by the enemy (i.e. non-U.S.) forces; this is ironic, considering the pacific intentions of the inventor Zamenhof.

Linguistic properties

Classification

As a constructed language, Esperanto is not genealogically related to any ethnic language. Esperanto can be described as "a language lexically predominantly romanic, morphologically intensively agglutinative and to a certain degree isolating in character" [3]. The phonology, grammar, vocabulary, and semantics are based on the western Indo-European languages. The phonemic inventory is essentially Slavic, as is much of the semantics, while the vocabulary derives primarily from the Romance languages, with a lesser contribution from Germanic. Pragmatics and other aspects of the language not specified by Zamenhof's original documents were influenced by the native languages of early speakers, primarily Russian, Polish, German, and French.

Typologically, Esperanto has prepositions and a pragmatic word order that by default is Subject Verb Object and Adjective Noun. New words are formed through extensive prefixing and suffixing.

Phonology

See also: Esperanto phonology

Esperanto has 5 vowels and 23 consonants, of which two are semivowels. It does not have tone. Stress is always on the penultimate vowel, unless a final vowel o is elided (which in practice occurs most in poetry). For example, familio (family) is [fa.mi.ˈli.o], but famili’ is [fa.mi.ˈli].

Consonants

Bilabial Labio-
dental 		Alveolar Post-
alveolar 		Palatal Velar Glottal
Plosive p b   t d     k g  
Nasal   m     n        
Tap       ɾ        
Fricative   f v s z ʃ ʒ   x   h  
Affricate     ʦ   ʧ ʤ      
Lateral approximant       l        
Approximant           j    

The sound /r/ is usually rolled, but may be tapped ([ɾ] in the IPA). The /v/ has a normative pronunciation like an English v, but is sometimes somewhere between a v and a w (IPA [ʋ]), depending on the language background of the speaker. A semivowel [u̯] normally occurs only in diphthongs after the vowels /a/ and /e/. Common (if debated) assimilation includes the pronunciation of /nk/ as [ŋk], as in English sink, and /kz/ as [gz], like the x in English example.

A large number of possible consonant clusters can occur, up to three in initial position and four in medial position (for example, in instrui, to teach). Final clusters are uncommon except in foreign names, poetic elision of final o, and a very few basic words such as cent (hundred) and post (after).

Vowels

Esperanto has the five vowels of Spanish and Swahili. No distinctions of length are made and there are no nasalized vowels.

Front Back
Close i u
Mid e o
Open a

There are six falling diphthongs: uj, oj, ej, aj, aŭ, eŭ (/ui̯, oi̯, ei̯, ai̯, au̯, eu̯/).

With only five vowels, a good deal of variation is tolerated. For instance, /e/ commonly ranges from [e] (French é) to [ɛ] (French è). The details often depend on the speaker's native language. A glottal stop may occur between adjacent vowels in some people's speech, especially when the two vowels are the same, as in heroo (hero) and praavo (great-grandfather).

Grammar

Further information: Esperanto grammar

Esperanto words are derived by stringing together prefixes, roots, and suffixes. This is very regular, so that people can create new words as they speak and be understood. Compound words are formed with modifier-first, head-final order, i.e. the same way as in English birdsong vs. songbird.

The different parts of speech are marked by their own suffixes: all nouns end in -o, all adjectives in -a, adverbs in -e, and verbs end in one of six tense and mood suffixes, such as present tense -as.

Plural nouns end in -oj (pronounced "oy"), whereas direct objects end in -on. Plural direct objects end in -ojn (pronounced to rhyme with "coin"). Adjectives agree with their nouns; their endings are plural -aj (pronounced "eye"), direct-object -an, and plural direct-object -ajn (pronounced to rhyme with "fine").

NounSubjectObject
Singular-o-on
Plural-oj-ojn
AdjectiveSubjectObject
Singular-a-an
Plural-aj-ajn

The six verb inflections are three tenses and three moods. They are present tense -as, future tense -os, past tense -is, infinitive mood -i, conditional mood -us, and jussive mood -u. Verbs are not marked for person or number. For instance: kanti - to sing; mi kantas - I sing; mi kantis - I sang; mi kantos - I will sing.

Verbal TenseSuffix
Present-as (kantas)
Past-is (kantis)
Future-os (kantos)
Verbal MoodSuffix
Infinitive-i (kanti)
Jussive-u (kantu)
Conditional-us (kantus)

Word order is comparatively free: adjectives may precede or follow nouns, and subjects, verbs and objects (marked by the suffix -n) can occur in any order. However, the article la (the) and the demonstratives almost always come before the noun, and a preposition must come before it. Similarly, the negative ne (not) and conjunctions such as kaj (both, and) and ke (that) must precede the phrase or clause they introduce. In copular (A = B) clauses, word order is just as important as it is in English clauses like people are dogs vs. dogs are people.

Vocabulary

Further information: Esperanto vocabulary
See the lists of Esperanto words and Esperanto words from Universala Vortaro at Wiktionary, the free dictionary and Wikipedia's sibling project.

The core vocabulary of Esperanto was defined by Lingvo internacia, published by Zamenhof in 1887. It comprised 900 roots, which could be expanded into the tens of thousands of words with prefixes, suffixes, and compounding. In 1894, Zamenhof published the first Esperanto dictionary, Universala Vortaro, with a larger set of roots. However, the rules of the language allowed speakers to borrow new roots as needed, recommending only that they look for the most international forms, and then derive related meanings from these.

Since then, many words have been borrowed, primarily but not solely from the western European languages. Not all proposed borrowings catch on, but many do, especially technical and scientific terms. Terms for everyday use, on the other hand, are more likely to be derived from existing roots—for example komputilo (a computer) from komputi (to compute) plus the suffix -ilo (tool)—or to be covered by extending the meanings of existing words (for example muso (a mouse), now also means a computer input device, as in English). There are frequent debates among Esperanto speakers about whether a particular borrowing is justified or whether the need can be met by deriving from or extending the meaning of existing words.

In addition to the root words and the rules for combining them, a learner of Esperanto must learn some idiomatic compounds that are not entirely straightforward. For example, eldoni, literally "to give out", is used for "to publish" (a calque of words in several European languages with the same derivation), and vortaro, literally "a collection of words", means "a glossary" or "a dictionary". Such forms are modeled after usage in the ethnic European languages, and speakers of other languages may find them illogical. Fossilized derivations inherited from Esperanto's source languages may be similarly obscure, such as the opaque connection the root word centralo "power station" has with centro "center". Compounds with -um- are overtly arbitrary, and must be learned individually, as -um- has no defined meaning. It turns dekstren "to the right" into dekstrumen "clockwise", and komuna "common/shared" into komunumo "community", for example.

Nevertheless, there are not nearly as many truly idiomatic or slang words in Esperanto as in ethnic languages, as these tend to make international communication difficult, working against Esperanto's main goal.

In modern times, conscious attempts have been made by Esperantists to eliminate sexism in the language. One example of this is Riism, which is one among several propositions to modify the language in a non-sexist manner.

Writing system

Further information: Esperanto orthography

Esperanto is written with a modified version of the Latin alphabet, including six letters with diacritics: ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ and ŭ (that is, c, g, h, j, s circumflex, and u breve). The alphabet does not include the letters q, w, x, y except in unassimilated foreign names.

The 28-letter alphabet is:

a b c ĉ d e f g ĝ h ĥ i j ĵ k l m n o p r s ŝ t u ŭ v z

All letters are pronounced approximately as their lower-case equivalents in the IPA, with the exception of c and the accented letters:

Letter Pronunciation
c [ʦ]
ĉ [ʧ]
ĝ [ʤ]
ĥ [x]
ĵ [ʒ]
ŝ [ʃ]
ŭ
(as aŭ, eŭ) 		[u̯]

Two ASCII-compatible writing conventions are in use. These substitute digraphs for the accented letters. The original "h-convention" (ch, gh, hh, jh, sh, u) is based on English 'ch' and 'sh', while a more recent "x-convention" (cx, gx, hx, jx, sx, ux) is useful for alphabetic word sorting on a computer (cx comes correctly after cu, sx after sv, etc.) as well as for simple conversion back into the standard orthography. See Esperanta klavaro ([1]), keyboard layout, Latin-3 and Unicode.

Esperanto has been a 'clear' language for Morse code communication since the 1920s, and codes exist for all accented Esperanto characters.

Useful phrases

Here are some useful Esperanto phrases, with IPA transcriptions:

  • Hello: Saluton /sa.ˈlu.ton/
  • What is your name?:
Kiel vi nomiĝas? /ˈki.el vi no.ˈmi.ʤas/
  • My name is ... :
Mi nomiĝas ... /mi no.ˈmi.ʤas .../
  • How much?: Kiom? /ˈki.om/
  • Here you are: Jen /jen/
  • Do you speak Esperanto?: Ĉu vi parolas Esperanton? /ˈʧu vi pa.ˈro.las es.pe.ˈran.ton/
  • I don't understand you: Mi ne komprenas vin [mi ˈne kom.ˈpre.nas vin/
  • I like this one:
Mi ŝatas tiun ĉi /mi ˈʃat.as ˈti.un ˈʧi/
Ĉi tiu plaĉas al mi /ʧi ˈti.u ˈpla.ʧas al ˈmi/
  • Thank you: Dankon /ˈdan.kon/
  • You're welcome: Ne dankinde /ˈne dan.ˈkin.de/
  • Please: Bonvolu /bon.ˈvo.lu/
  • Here's to your health: Je via sano /je ˈvi.a ˈsa.no/
  • Bless you!/Gesundheit!: Sanon! /ˈsa.non/
  • Okay: Bone /ˈbo.ne/
  • It is a nice day: Estas bela tago /ˈes.tas ˈbe.la ˈta.go/
  • I love you: Mi amas vin /mi ˈam.as vin/
  • Goodbye:
Ĝis (la) revido /ˈʤis (la) re.ˈvid.o/
Ĝis (la)! /ˈʤis (la)/
  • Peace: Pacon [ˈpa.tson/

The Esperanto speaker community

Geography and demography

Esperanto speakers are more numerous in Europe and East Asia than in the Americas, Africa, and Oceania, and more numerous in urban than in rural areas [4]. Esperanto is particularly prevalent in the northern and eastern countries of Europe; in China, Korea, Japan, and Iran within Asia; in Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico in the Americas; and in Togo and Madagascar in Africa.

An estimate of the number of Esperanto speakers was made by Sidney S. Culbert, a retired psychology professor of the University of Washington and a longtime Esperantist, who tracked down and tested Esperanto speakers in sample areas of dozens of countries over a period of twenty years. Culbert concluded that between one and two million people speak Esperanto at Foreign Service Level 3, "professionally proficient" (able to communicate moderately complex ideas without hesitation, and to follow speeches, radio broadcasts, etc.) (Wolff 1996). Culbert's estimate was not made for Esperanto alone, but formed part of his listing of estimates for all languages of over 1 million speakers, published annually in the World Almanac and Book of Facts. Culbert's most detailed account of his methodology is found in a 1989 letter to David Wolff. Since Culbert never published detailed intermediate results for particular countries and regions, it is difficult to independently gauge the accuracy of his results.

In the Almanac, his estimates for numbers of language speakers were rounded to the nearest million, thus the number for Esperanto speakers is shown as 2 million. This latter figure appears in Ethnologue. Assuming that this figure is accurate, that means that about 0.03% of the world's population speaks the language. This falls short of Zamenhof's goal of a universal language, but it represents a level of popularity unmatched by any other constructed language. Ethnologue also states that there are 200 to 2000 native Esperanto speakers (denaskuloj), who have learned the language from birth from their Esperanto-speaking parents (this happens when Esperanto is the family language in an international family or sometimes in a family of devoted Esperantists).

Marcus Sikosek has challenged this figure of 1.6 million as exaggerated. Sikosek estimated that even if Esperanto speakers were evenly distributed, assuming one million Esperanto speakers worldwide would lead one to expect about 180 in the city of Cologne. Sikosek finds only 30 fluent speakers in that city, and similarly smaller than expected figures in several other places thought to have a larger-than-average concentration of Esperanto speakers. He also notes that there are a total of about 20,000 members of the various Esperanto organizations (other estimates are higher). Though there are undoubtedly many Esperanto speakers who are not members of any Esperanto organization, he thinks it unlikely that there are fifty times more speakers than organization members [4]. Others think such a ratio between members of the organized Esperanto movement and speakers of the language is not unlikely.

The Finnish linguist Jouko Lindstedt, an expert on native-born Esperanto speakers, presented the following scheme [5] to show the overall proportions of language capabilities within the Esperanto community:

  • 1,000 have Esperanto as their native language
  • 10,000 speak it fluently
  • 100,000 can use it actively
  • 1,000,000 understand a large amount passively
  • 10,000,000 have studied it to some extent at some time.

In the absence of Dr. Culbert's detailed sampling data, or any other census data, it is impossible to state the number of speakers with certainty. Few observers, probably, would challenge the following statement from the website of the World Esperanto Association:

Numbers of textbooks sold and membership of local societies put the number of people with some knowledge of the language in the hundreds of thousands and possibly millions. [2]

Culture

Main articles: Esperanto culture, Esperanto literature, Esperanto film, and Esperanto music

Esperanto is often used to access an international culture, including a large corpus of original as well as translated literature. There are over 25,000 Esperanto books (originals and translations) as well as over a hundred regularly distributed Esperanto magazines. Many Esperanto speakers use the language for free travel throughout the world using the Pasporta Servo. Others like the idea of having pen pals in many countries around the world using services like the Esperanto Pen Pal Service. Every year, 1500-3000 Esperanto speakers meet for the World Congress of Esperanto (Universala Kongreso de Esperanto).

Historically most of the music published in Esperanto has been in various folk traditions; in recent decades more rock and other modern genres has appeared.

To some extent there are also shared traditions, like the Zamenhof Day, and shared behaviour patterns, like avoiding the usage of one's national language at Esperanto meetings unless there is good reason for its use.

Two full-length feature films have been produced with dialogue entirely in Esperanto, namely Angoroj in 1964 and Incubus starring William Shatner in 1965. Other amateur productions have been made, such as a dramatisation of the novel Gerda Malaperis (Gerda Has Disappeared).

Esperanto is frequently criticized for "having no culture". Proponents observe that Esperanto is culturally neutral by design, as it was intended to be a facilitator between cultures, not to be the carrier of any one culture. (See Esperanto as an international language.)

Goals of the Esperanto movement

Zamenhof's intention was to create an easy-to-learn language to foster international understanding. It was to serve as an international auxiliary language, that is, as a universal second language, not to replace ethnic languages. This goal was widely shared among Esperanto speakers in the early decades of the movement. Later, Esperanto speakers began to see the language and the culture that had grown up around it as ends in themselves, even if Esperanto is never adopted by the United Nations or other international organizations.

Those Esperanto speakers who want to see Esperanto adopted officially or on a large scale worldwide are commonly called finvenkistoj, from fina venko, meaning "final victory". Those who focus on the intrinsic value of the language are commonly called raŭmistoj, from Rauma, Finland, where a declaration on the near-term unlikelihood of the "fina venko" and the value of Esperanto culture was made at the International Youth Congress in 1980. These categories are, however, not mutually exclusive. (See Finvenkismo)

The Prague Manifesto (1996) presents the views of the mainstream of the Esperanto movement and of its main organisation, the World Esperanto Association (UEA).

Esperanto and education

Relatively few schools teach Esperanto officially outside of China, Hungary, and Bulgaria; the majority of Esperanto speakers continue to learn the language through self-directed study or correspondence courses. Several Esperanto paper correspondence courses were early on adapted to e-mail and taught by corps of volunteer instructors. In more recent years, teaching websites like lernu! have become popular. Various educators have estimated that Esperanto can be learned in anywhere from one quarter to one twentieth the amount of time required for other languages.[3] Some argue, however, that this is only true for native speakers of Western European languages.[4]

Claude Piron, a psychologist formerly at the University of Geneva and Chinese-English-Russian-Spanish translator for the United Nations, argued that it is easier to think clearly in Esperanto than in many ethnic languages (see Sapir-Whorf hypothesis for an explanation on this theory). "Esperanto relies entirely on innate reflexes [and] differs from all other languages in that you can always trust your natural tendency to generalize patterns. [...] The same neuropsychological law [— called by] Jean Piaget generalizing assimilation — applies to word formation as well as to grammar." [6]

Several research studies demonstrate that studying Esperanto before another foreign language speeds and improves learning the other language. This is presumably because learning subsequent foreign languages is easier than learning one's first, while the use of a grammatically simple and culturally flexible auxiliary language like Esperanto lessens the first-language learning hurdle. In one study [7], a group of European high school students studied Esperanto for one year, then French for three years, and ended up with a significantly better command of French than a control group, who studied French for all four years. Similar results were found when the second language was Japanese, or when the course of study was reduced to two years, of which six months was spent learning Esperanto. See Propaedeutic value of Esperanto for other relevant studies.

Criticism and modifications of Esperanto

For a more detailed treatment of these topics, see the daughter articles: Esperanto as an international language and Esperantido (Esperanto-inspired projects).

Common criticisms of the language are that its vocabulary and grammar are too European; that its vocabulary, accented letters, and grammar are not Western European enough (a critique addressed by Ido, Novial and Interlingua); that it is sexist, artificial, or has failed to live up to expectations.

Though Esperanto itself has changed relatively little since the publication of the Fundamento de Esperanto ("Foundation of Esperanto"), a number of reform projects have been proposed over the years, starting with Zamenhof's proposals in 1894 and Ido in 1907. Several later constructed languages, such as Fasile, were based on Esperanto.

Main article: Esperanto in popular culture

Esperanto has been used in a number of films and novels. Typically, this is done either to add the exoticness of a foreign language without representing any particular ethnicity, or to avoid going to the trouble of inventing a new language. Filmmaker Charlie Chaplin used Esperanto for signage on storefronts and buildings in his 1940 classic The Great Dictator. In science fiction, Esperanto is often used to represent a future in which there is a more universally spoken language than exists today. Examples of this include the Riverworld series by Philip José Farmer, the UK sci-fi sitcom Red Dwarf, the Stainless Steel Rat series by Harry Harrison, and the 1997 sci-fi drama Gattaca. It is also seen and heard in the 2004 vampire film Blade Trinity. More rarely, it is used jokingly, referred to as a "geek language", such as the usage seen on occasion in the animated series Danny Phantom, where the only characters who speak it are either self-described "geeks", or a particular ghost (who is apparently more fluent in the language than the human characters, as evidenced by the difficulty Tucker Foley had in translating said ghost's comments into English).

See also

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References

  1. ^ Esperanto page at ethnologue.com
  2. ^ The Maneuver Enemy website
  3. ^ Blanke, Detlev: Internationale Plansprachen. Eine Einführung ("International Planned Languages. An Introduction"), Berlin: Akademie-Verlag 1985
  4. ^ a b Sikosek, Ziko M. Esperanto Sen Mitoj ("Esperanto without Myths"). Second edition. Antwerp: Flandra Esperanto-Ligo, 2003.
  5. ^ Lindstedt, Jouko. "Re: Kiom?" (posting). DENASK-L@helsinki.fi, 22 April 1996.
  6. ^ Piron, Claude: "The hidden perverse effect of the current system of international communication", published lecture notes
  7. ^ Williams, N. (1965) 'A language teaching experiment', Canadian Modern Language Review 22.1: 26-28
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