How Esperanto appeared 150 years ago, and what does anti-Semitism and the Internet have to do with it?

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

There is no particular practical benefit from learning Esperanto - at least not yet. But in the spiritual sphere, the future Esperantist wins a lot: this community unites educated, cultured and progressive people. The very essence of Esperanto contributes to this - this language arose in order to give an opportunity to come to an agreement among representatives of various peoples, often not particularly friendly to each other.

How and why the Esperanto language was invented

The creator of Esperanto was born in 1859 in the Polish city of Bialystok, at that time on the territory of the Russian Empire. This man's name was Lazar Zamenhof. His interest in languages was not accidental - firstly, his father - a teacher and public figure - instilled in his son an interest in linguistics, and secondly, the town in which Zamenhof grew up united representatives of different nations - Jews and Russians, Poles and Germans, Belarusians. Since childhood, Zamenhof was fascinated by the idea of creating a language that would promote mutual understanding, and therefore, would help overcome enmity and hatred between peoples.

It must be said that the current state of affairs, when English is recognized as the unifying language for the world, was not at all typical for the second half of the 19th century. In those days, rather, French was relatively common in Europe, while English was spoken much less often. Zamenhof developed a language that would be easy to learn and that would become neutral, that is, not dependent on any of the existing languages. At first, he intended to use "simplified" versions of Latin or ancient Greek, but in the end Zamenhof rejected such directions of work.

We can say that in its original form, the Esperanto language appeared already in 1878 - it was then that young Zamenhof showed the results of several years of work to his friends. But the young man was waiting for study, he received a medical education - and with the publication of the work, everything was somewhat delayed. But in 1887, almost ten years later, ophthalmologist Lazar Zamenhof managed to finalize and, with the help of his father-in-law, publish a brochure “International language. Preface and complete textbook. " The author of the book was named "Dr. Esperanto", that is, in the new language, "hopeful." Very soon this word became the name of a new language.

How Europeans spoke an artificial language

Esperanto was not the first artificial language to seek recognition from the European intelligentsia. Back in 1879, the Volapuk appeared, created by the Catholic priest Johann Martin Schleier. A characteristic feature of the Volapuk language was the emphasis on the last syllable in all words - according to the French model. At first, the new language was extremely popular - dozens of periodicals of Volapiukist associations were published, but this success did not last long.

To enlist the first followers and experts of the new language, Dr. Esperanto-Zamenhof sent out his brochure to a fairly impressive number of addressees. Among the first, the new language was warmly supported by Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy, who by that time had long been considered a polyglot. By 1889, Zamenhof had the opportunity to take stock of the first results: he published a new brochure called "Adresaro", which contained the addresses of the first thousand Esperantists. The overwhelming majority of them lived - as yet - in the Russian Empire.

But soon residents of other European countries began to actively join the new trend. I liked Esperanto for its simplicity of learning, the consistency and consistency of grammatical rules, the absence of exceptions that are indispensable in natural languages and cause so much suffering to foreign students. The Esperanto alphabet was compiled on the basis of Latin, the way of reading the letter did not depend on its position in the word. The stress always fell on the penultimate syllable. Oral Esperanto has acquired some of the features of the Italian language. Different parts of speech had different endings: for example, for nouns - "- o", for adjectives - "-a", for adverbs - "-e".

What helped and hindered the development of a new language

Esperanto was rapidly gaining popularity, which was facilitated by both the culture of modernity and the desire to develop an understandable universal language for communication: the world was becoming closer and closer. Dr. Zamenhof, despite the fact that he became the creator of a new language, subsequently abandoned the role of leader of the Esperanto movement, in part to allow Esperanto to develop naturally, in part because of a desire to avoid anti-Semitic slander that could damage the language. As a result, only minor changes were made to the original teaching, otherwise the language remained the same as it was described in the "Foundations of Esperanto", created by the same Zamenhof in 1905.

If in relation to any natural language linguists can debate based on historical facts, ancient documents, traditions, then in the case of an artificial or planned language, experts do not have such an opportunity. Therefore, having an inviolable knowledge base about the language was necessary in the case of Esperanto. This is how the "Fundamentals" became, obligatory for all Esperantists for over a hundred years.

The invariability of Esperanto and the impossibility of improving it (since criticism, of course, took place, despite all the advantages of the language) led to the creation of new languages based on the one invented by Zamenhof, but they did not receive much success and spread. The most popular was Ido, which appeared in 1907 as an improved version of Esperanto: it included fewer letters and a number of other reforms rejected by Esperantists. At the beginning of the century, about ten percent of all Esperantists had switched to Ido. It exists even now, and in the 21st century its popularity is growing.

Interest in the Esperanto language gained momentum until the thirties of the last century, and the number of Esperantists grew. It almost became the official language of the League of Nations, and there was talk in the USSR about Esperanto as the language of the world revolution. But soon the time came for repression - both in the Soviet Union and in Europe, seized by the ideology of Nazism. Esperanto was declared a means of uniting Jewish diasporas and was banned. With the advent of the Cold War, the influence and importance of English as an international language began to grow, and therefore artificial ones fell into the shadows. Revival awaited Esperanto by the end of the 20th century, and the emergence of the Internet only contributed to the preservation and development of the Esperanto culture. Now it is not at all difficult to find a community of lovers of this artificial language (as well as any others).

There are different options for estimating the number of Esperanto speakers - from several tens of thousands to several million people. Sometimes a person learns this method of communication from birth, for example, if he grows up in an international family where such a common language has been chosen. Among the celebrities who actively used Esperanto was the science fiction writer Harry Garrison, who predicted this language's role as the main one in the world of the future. And the chess sisters Susan, Sofia and Judit Polgar were taught Esperanto from childhood and spoke it fluently.

It is believed that proficiency in this artificial language greatly facilitates the subsequent study of others. But what kind of Russian writers knew many foreign languages.