What is Esperanto?

Esperanto is a planned language which has a simple, straightforward structure and essentially no irregularities.  It is therefore much easier to learn than natural languages.  The goal of Esperantists is that everyone in the world will continue to speak their native language and learn Esperanto in order to communicate with anyone outside of their own language community.  The United States continues to function in English, Mexico functions in Spanish, Japan function in Japanese.  But if an American travels in Japan, he will be able to communicate with anyone there in the international language Esperanto.

Where did it come from?

The creator of Esperanto, Dr. Ludoviko Zamenhof, first published his results in 1887.  He was born in 1859 in Bialistok, which is now in the northeastern part of  Poland about 50 kilometers from the border with Bielorus.  At that time it was part of the Russian empire.  Ludoviko's parents were Jews.  His mother was religious, and he accompanied her regularly to the synagogue where he learned Hebrew.  He may also have had a private tutor.  His father Marcus was non-religious and an assimilationist.  Russian was the language that the family spoke at home.  Marcus was a language teacher, very competent but also rigid and pedantic.  At home he was a rigid disciplinarian, whereas his wife Rosalie was kind and gentle.  From his father young Ludoviko learned German and French, which he also studied at school.  There he also studied Latin and Greek.  Bialistok had a large Jewish population (18 000 out of a total of about 30 000), and he surely heard Yiddish in the streets.  There were also sizable German (6000), Polish (3000), and Russian  (4000) communities.  Ludoviko was sensitive and precociously intelligent, and from an early age he observed that the different ethnic groups did not get along very well with each other.  He concluded that this mutual ill-will derived from the fact that the different groups spoke differerent languages and could not communicate well with each other.

Marcus Zamenhof was an ambitious man and in 1873, when Ludoviko, his oldest son, was 14, the family moved to Warsaw where they lived in an apartment in the Jewish quarter.  Marcus was first a supervisor in a private school, and then he obtained a post as a censor for the tsarist government.  His job was to censor Jewish books and newspapers.  In 1874 Ludoviko, after a period of study at home, was admitted to the fourth class of the Second Philological Gymnasium.  There he studied Russian language and literature, Latin, Greek, German, and French.  In Warsaw he routinely used Polish, which for the rest of his life he spoke natively or near natively.  The observation that he had made in Bialistok about the inability of different ethnic groups to intercommunicate and the resulting ill-will  remained very much alive,  For a time he toyed with the idea of reviving one of the classical languages, e.g., Latin, to facilitate communication, but he came to the realization that these languages lacked modern vocabulary and were too difficult to realistically expect that modern people would learn them en masse.  Since no modern language would be acceptable to everyone, he concluded that the only solution to the problem was to make one up from scratch.

At the age of 15 he began in earnest to create his new language.  He had no knowledge of linguistics, which in any event was at that time in its infancy, and no real knowledge of comparative philology.  He was also unaware of other efforts, previous and contemporary, to create an artificial language.  He had nothing but the languages that he knew, his precocious intelligence and strong powers of reasoning, and his capacity for prolonged effort.  His initial plan was true to the languages that he knew, with elaborate conjugations and declensions.  Then in 1875 in his fifth year at the gymnasium, he began to study English, and he realized that all of this complexity was really unnecessary, and he abandoned it.

Ludoviko continued to work on his language with some of his classmates.  By the time he graduated from the gymnasium in July 1879 at the age of 19 , he had developed a coherent language which was sufficient for writing and speaking.  He had tested it by translating some Biblical texts and by writing some original verse.  His father was proud of his son's achievement and could see that it showed real linguistic talent, but he was also nervous.  Tsarist Russia was not the ideal place to be trying out new ideas.  Anyone caught with papers written in some unknown language would immediately be an object of suspicion, and not only would be possessor of the documents be at risk but also people closely associated with him.  That could be Marcus Zamenhof, who was smart enough to know that many people resented Jews who had been successful and were eager to find ways to discredit them.  Moreover a colleague of Marcus, an conceited amateur psychologist, urged upon Marcus the idea that this obsession with an international language was an indication of incipient insanity.  So before Ludoviko left Warsaw for Moscow to begin his university studies in medicine, his father forced him to promise to abandon the language project until later, and he took all of his son's work, tied the manuscripts into a bundle, and locked it in a cupboard, promising to take good care of it.

By 1881  the difficulties of studying in Moscow had become overwhelming, and Ludoviko applied for a transfer to Warsaw University so that he could live at home.  It was granted.  Back in Warsaw he confided to his mother that his real purpose in life had not changed, that he wanted to promote the brotherhood of man by means of his new language and requested that she intercede with his father to free him from the promise that he had made two years earlier not to work on the language until he had qualified.  It turned out the father, unlike the son, had not kept his part of the bargain.  He had burned all of Ludovico's work.  From that moment Ludovico began the task of recreating what had been destroyed, but he promised to keep his work a secret until he had qualified.

In 1885 Ludovico received his doctor's degree and began to practice medicine in a small town in Lithuania 100 miles north of Bialistok, but he found it difficult to cope with the suffering of his patients, and he decided to specialize in ophthalmology.  For the rest of his life he made his living as an ophthalmologist, chiefly in Warsaw.  Medicine was one of the few professions not closed to Jews in the Russian empire.  Three of his brothers were physicians, and the other was a pharmacist.  In the spring of 1887, Ludovico married Clara Zilbernick, the daughter of a modestly prosperous owner of a soap factory in Kaunas, now in Lithuania.

1887

Alexander Zilbernick recognized the genius of his son-in-law and agreed to the use of a substantial part of Clara's dowry to finance the publication of his work.  Zamenhof decided to publish in Russian partly because books in Russian were viewed with less suspicion by the government censors, and he decided to use a pseudonym lest suspicions of eccentricity cause damage to his professional career and to the reputation of his brothers.  He intended for his language to be called lingva internacia but the pseudonym that he chose, Dr. Esperanto, soon came to designate the language as well as the author.  The word 'esperanto' in Esperanto means 'one who is hoping'.  In the forty pages of the Unua Libro (= First Book), Zamenhof included a lengthy introduction in which he explained the purpose of his work, a description of the grammar (the famous 16 rules), several examples (2 original poems, a translation of several Biblical passages, and a translated poem), and a dictionary containing 917 roots.  Those roots can be transformed into a substantially greater  number of usable words by means of Esperanto's ingenious word-building system.  Also included were 8 detachable 'promise forms' in which Zamenhof asked the reader to promise to learn the language if 10 million others also made the same written promise.  He also asked the reader to promise unconditionally if he were willing.  On the back was space for the readers's name and address, and a request that the promise form be sent to the author.

Zamenhof himself translated the Unua Libro into Polish.  The Polish version and Langue Internationale were also published in 1887.  Dr. Esperanto's International Language , translated by the brilliant Irish linguist, Richard H. Geoghegan, appeared in 1889.  Zamenhof also translated the Unua Libro into German.  He and Clara began to receive many inquiries, and they began to correspond extensively with people interested in the new language, a practice that Zamenhof continued throughout his life.

Some of the new Esperanto enthusiasts had been followers of the German priest, Martin Schleyer, who in 1879 had published his language Volapük.  Schleyer was a brilliant professional philologist who was reputed to know 50 languages, but he failed to understand what Zamenhof had intuitively grasped, namely, that language learning is not easy for ordinary people and that a successful international language has to be easy to learn.  His creation was unnecessarily complicated, and it is not clear that anyone ever learned to speak it.  Volapük generated a lot of interest for a short period of time, and then faded away.  Paradoxically in recent decades there has been a revival of academic interest in Volapük, seen as a precursor to Esperanto, and most of this work has been published in Esperanto.

The Early Movement

There are several biographies of Zamenhof.  The only one in English is Zamenhof, Creator of Esperanto by Marjorie Boulton, 1960.  There is a copy in the Rice Library.  Another much more recent one is La Homo kiu defiis Babelon (The Man who defied Babel) by René Centassi and Henri Masson.  It was written in French and has been translated into Esperanto.  Much of the information in this summary comes from these two books.  They have a lot of information about the movement before Zamenhof's death in 1917.  I will include here only the most salient points.

Because of the large volume of requests for information Zamenhof decided to publish a second book as an explanatory supplement to the first.  The Dua Libro de la Lingvo Internacia, written entirely in the new language, had received the approval of the censor in January, 1888.  He intended to publish it as a series of brochures.  However, because of financial difficulties, the project was never completed.  The first Esperanto magazine La Esperantisto appeared in Nuremberg September 1, 1889 and lasted until 1895.  In 1891 there were 33 textbooks in 12 languages, and local clubs were springing up where they were legal.  In 1890 an acquaintance showed Zamenhof a German translation of Charles Dickens' minor novel The Battle of Life, declaring that it would be impossible to translate such a work into Esperanto.  Zamenhof translated it, and it appeared in serial form in La Esperantisto.

As Zamenhof and others corresponded, wrote articles for La Esperantisto and other publications, translated literary works, and composed original works in Esperanto, they from time to time needed additional words, and so the vocabulary of the new language grew.  In 1893 Zamenhof published a new enlarged dictionary called the Universala Vortaro.  It contained about 2650 roots, which were translated into 5 languages: French, English, German, Russian, Polish.  In 1894 he published his translation of Hamlet, an important collection of exercises called Ekzercaro, and the Granda Vortaro Germana-Esperanta.

In the early 1890's an important topic of conversation among Esperantists were various 'reforms'.  Some were harebrained; others were sensible.  Beginning in January, 1894, Zamenhof wrote a series of articles proposing various of the more sensible changes.  Since 1893 there had existed a League of Esperantists, consisting of the subscribers to La Esperantisto, and Zamenhof proposed that the membership vote on the proposal: either keep the language as it was, accept all of the proposals for change, or accept only some of them.  The membership voted to keep the language as it was.  Zamenhof was a very modest, non-authoritarian sort of person.  Already in the Unua Libro he had renounced his rights to the language and had stated that it now belonged collectively to those who used it.  That he put the reform proposal to a vote in which each member had one vote was very consistent with his character.

Boulogne-sur-Mere, 1905

By 1904 it was obvious to any honest person who bothered to investigate the matter that Esperanto was satisfactory for correspondence, translation, and many forms of literary work, but the language had not been extensively tested in oral use between persons of  different nationalities.  The first organized international encounter was a meeting of about 100 people, mostly French and British, in Calais in August, 1904.  Since the discussions and social events were successful, many participants wanted to repeat the experience.  So an invitation was issued for a full-scale Esperanto Congress in Boulogne-sur-Mere in August, 1905.  Dr. Zamenhof was pleased about the event but was not eager to participate himself.  Although only 46 years old, his health was poor due to the heart condition that would lead to his early death only 12 years later.  He had never spoken before a large public gathering;  he had a weak voice and a slight speech defect.  But he agreed to speak, and in fact his speech was a big success.  This congress was the first in a long series of annual meetings which are called in Esperanto 'Universalaj Kongresoj'.  One of the important consequences of this first Universala Kongreso was the delegates' approval of the Declaration of the Essentials of Esperantism written by Zamenhof and already available to the them for study.  It is generally known as the Boulogne Declaration.  If referred to a small green book, published earlier in 1905, entitled Fundamento de Esperanto (Foundations of Esperanto) which had 3 parts, each of which already existed:  1) the 16 rules of grammar which had appeared in the Unua Libro of 1887, 2) the Ekzercaro of 1894, and 3) the Universala Vortaro of 1893.  The Boulogne Declaration states that these fundamental parts of the language must remain unchanged. In other respects the language may evolve as needed.  Before the delegates disbanded they agreed to meet the following year in Geneva.  Thus began a tradition that has continued to the present day, interrupted only by the two world wars.  The 89th Universala Kongreso took place in Beijing in July, 2004.

The Ido crisis

France had been since 1887 a major center of Esperantist activity.  It was also a center of bitter personal rivalries and quarrelling.  The Boulogne Declaration had not been sufficient to suppress the very natural idea that "I could have done better."  In 1907 Dr. Louis Couturat, a brilliant French academic who made important contributions to symbolic logic, was largely responsible for bringing the question of an international language before a committee of distinguished academics which bore the name 'Delegation for the Choice of an International Language'.  They chose a small Committee of the Delegation.  Of the approximately 15 members, only 2 were linguists, and one of them, Otto Jesperson, a very distinguished Danish philologist, was busy creating his own language.  Another member was the famous Italian mathematician Peano, who in 1903 had proposed his own solution Latine sine flexione.  The goal of the committee was to decide which of various planned languages should be promoted as the international language.  One of the peculiar rules of the committee was that no author could argue in favor of his own creation.  Zamenhof asked Louis de Beaufront, a prominent French Esperantist and friend, to argue in favor of Esperanto, which he did.  After all the presentations had been made, Couturat presented a small grammar and vocabulary which he said had been submitted anonymously for a language which the author wished to call 'Ido'.  It was very similar to Esperanto, but with major changes.  'Ido' means 'child, offspring' in Esperanto.  De Beaufront defended 'Ido', giving the impression that it would be acceptable to Esperantists.  With 5 members present, Couturat forced a vote on a resolution which passed unanimously and which stated that none of the languages was acceptable without modification, and recommended Esperanto with the changes proposed by the Ido project.

Louis de Beaufront was a enigmatic figure, who had made the dubious claim of being of marquis.  The whole affair was characterized by a high degree of scheming and conniving and treachery.  Finally de Beaufront admitted that he was the author of Ido, but there is substantial reason to believe that the real author was Couturat.  The committee had no real authority, and most Esperantists refused to accept its decision.  The final result was that a small number of Esperantists went over to Ido and became Idists.  For several years there were nasty accusations and denunciations from both sides.  Zamenhof himself refused to become involved in the mud-slinging.  The crisis may have been beneficial to the stability of Esperanto in the sense that those who were convinced that "they could do better" separated themselves from the movement and were no longer around to cause trouble.  There are still a few Idists in the world today.  Ido claims to be more 'Western European' than Esperanto, so the appearance in 1922 of the language 'Occidental' took away some of its appeal, and then in 1928 one of the principal Idists, Otto Jesperson, published his own language, Novial (New International Auxiliary Language).

Until 1914

One of the consequences of the Ido crisis was that many Esperantists came to the realization that they needed to be better organized.  From the earliest days Zamenhof had worked to create an international organization.  In 1908 UEA (Universala Esperanto-Asocio) was created.  It remains the principal international organization for all Esperantists.  It's central office is in Rotterdam (http://www.uea.org ).  The tradition of the annual Universala Kongreso continued, and the speech by Zamenhof continued to be the main event, although he implored other Esperantists to simply think of him as the originator of the idea, which now belonged to all of them jointly, and to cease referring to him as the 'Majstro'.  He realized that the personality cult that had grown up around him was not good for the language, that in the long term it would have to stand or fall on its own merits. Even so it is probably true that the passionate devotion and loyalty which ordinary Esperantists felt for him, which he did not seek or encourage, probably did have a salutary stabilizing effect on the movement during the first 30 years, when the new langauge was particularly vulnerable.  Finally in 1912 at the UK in Cracow, he stated firmly that he was appearing for the last time as a leader of the movement, that if he were able to attend another UK he would appear "not before you but among you".  Paris had been chosen as the host for the 1914 UK and a record 3739 persons from 50 countries indicated their intention to attend.  It was to begin on August 2.  Before dawn on August 4, advance units of the German 1st army crossed the Belgian frontier in the vicinity of Liege, and the world would never again be the same.  There was a UK in San Francisco in 1915 attended by only 163 people.  The next UK was in 1920.

After the war

Although there were Esperantists and Esperanto organizations in many countries, the epicenter of Esperanto activity was Europe.  World War I was very damaging to the movement.  After slaughter on such a large scale it was difficult to recreate the spirit of hope and optimism that had flourished before the war.  But the survivors struggled on.  The official Esperanto movement has always maintained strict neutrality in politics and religion.  In 1921  Eugene Adam, better known by his pseudonym of Lanti, a highly intelligent, self-educated manual worker who had learned Esperanto in an ambulance unit on the Western Front, founded the Sennacia Asocio Tutmonda (approximately World Association of non-Nationalists), a left-wing but not doctrinaire political movement.  S.A.T. was at first much favored by the new regime in Russia, until in 1930 there was a breach between the Russian branch and the rest of S.A.T., which became definitely non-Communist.  S.A.T. continues to exist, holds annual world congresses, publishes a quality magazine, and has published several Esperanto classics.  One of its greatest contributions has been in the field of lexicography.

In 1927 Lanti convinced Prof. Emilo Grosjean-Maupin, who at that time was the Director of the Section for the "General Dictionary" of the Esperanto Academy, to undertake the creation of a new dictionary.  He and Gaston Waringhien with the help of various others created the Plena Vortaro (Full Dictionary), which was published by S.A.T. in 1930.  It was followed by a significantly enlarged version in 1934.  This dictionary is still in print and is still useful.  It contains many examples from the writings of Zamenhof and other early writers.  Thirty years later Waringhien lead a team which substantially enlarged  PV to create PIV (Plena Ilustrita Vortaro) which appeared in 1970.  'Ilustrita' comes from the fact that there are about 70 pages of sometimes useful illustrations in the back.  In 2002 this dictionary was again updated, still under the aupices of S.A.T., with the title 'La Nova Plena Ilustrita Vortaro ' or NPIV for short.  The illustrations have been incorporated into the text.  NPIV has 16 780 main entries and 46 890 words in all.

I am not well informed about the Esperanto movement from 1920 until the mid 1990's, so I won't say much about it.  There isn't a lot of readily accessible secondary information, although there is a world of primary information for the enterprising historian.  Many local groups have published newletters and magazines.  For events since 1940 there are people alive who remember them.

In 1910 the UK was in Washington, D. C.  Attendance was relatively low since most Esperantists were then Europeans.  The 1915 UK was held in San Francisco only because of the war.  Not until the UK in Tokyo in 1965 was there another UK outside of Europe.  Non-European UK's since then have been  Portland, Oregon, 1972; Reykjavik, Iceland, 1977; Brasilia, Brazil, 1981; Vancouver, Canada, 1984; Beijing, China, 1986; Havanna, Cuba, 1990; Seoul, South Korea, 1994; Adelaide, Australia, 1997; Tel Aviv, Israel, 2000; Fortaleza, Brazil, 2002; Beijing, China, 2004.  

ELNA

The Amerika Esperanto-Asocio was founded in Boston in 1905, and in 1908 it merged with several other 'national' groups in the US and Canada to form the Esperanto-Asocio de Norda Ameriko (EANA).  In the late 1940's the dictatorial personality and obsessive anti-Communism of the then General Secretary, George Alan Connor, caused a split in the American movement and finally in 1952 the establishment of another national organization, the Esperanto-Ligo por Norda Ameriko (ELNA).   Connor's vitriolic attacks against UEA and other Esperantists resulted in his being expelled from UEA in 1956.  EANA's newsletter continued to appear for several years with its standard fare of warnings about the Communists conspiracy outside and within America.  It gradually faded away.

ELNA (http://www.esperanto-usa.org ) is today the national organization for Esperantists in the United States.  Its central office is in El Cerrito, California.  At some point after 1908, the Canadians formed their own separate national organization, so that the name of the US organization is a misnomer.  It represents only the US, not all of North America.


Updated 10/14/2004