Esperanto--the easy-to-learn international
second language for every country--is alive and well around the world and throughout the Internet. I have just published an HTML version of the original 1887 [English] pamphlet, "Dr. Esperanto's International Language", free on my website,
http://www.genekeyes.com with a new preface (excerpted below).
When I first wrote it for a print version on September 9, 2000, Esperanto in Google yielded more than one million results. Now on December 15, 2006, Googling Esperanto gets over 30 million. (Google itself has an Esperanto interface.) The Esperanto version of Wikipedia, begun in November 2001, already has over 61,000 articles, ranking #15 among Wikipedia's 250 language-versions. At www.esperanto.net, Esperanto is introduced in any of 62 languages.
And here is the booklet where it all began. In July 1887, Esperanto made its debut as a 40-page pamphlet from Warsaw, published in Russian, Polish, French and German versions: all written by a Polish eye-doctor under the pen-name of Dr. Esperanto ("one who hopes"). [continued below]
Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof (1859-1917) had a gift for languages, and a calling to help foster world amity: by a neutral "Internacia Lingvo" that anyone anywhere could readily use as a
second language: neither forsaking a mother tongue, nor imposing it.
In 1889 Zamenhof published an English translation by Richard H. Geoghegan, a young Irish linguist. All five are respectively considered the "First Book". This classic sets forth Esperanto pretty much as we know it today (except that we no longer use internal apostrophes for composite words). Its original repertoire of 900 root words has grown tenfold in the past century, but you can still almost make do with the vocabulary herein.
Just as a key aspect of the Industrial Revolution was interchangeability of parts, so Esperanto is built with a relatively small set of interchangeable root words, prefixes, and suffixes (plus 16 grammatical rules with no irregularities): in which any human nuance can be expressed, from Winnie the Pooh to the Bible. Zamenhof translated the entire Old Testament into Esperanto--see a bit of Genesis below. All of La Sankta Biblio appeared in 1926. Now it is on the Net: http://www.uni-leipzig.de/....
Since 1887, there have been thousands of books and periodicals in Esperanto: a vast library of original and translated literature: novels; poetry; song; theater; even Nobel Prize nominations for William Auld (1924-2006), a renowned writer and poet in the world culture of Esperanto.
Of course, English (neither neutral nor easy) in some ways is surpassing Dr. Esperanto's dream of an international language. But that may not always be so: as journalist Harry Bruce points out, "English spins off so many weird but hardy variations of itself that, rather than becoming the language of universal communication, it's repeating the tower of Babel story."
Meanwhile, Esperanto has been slowly gathering strength over the decades. It has weathered deadly opposition from Hitler and Stalin, and too much indifference elsewhere. But the Internet has enabled Esperanto to spread its wings further and faster. The new millennium is a good time to look back at the very first appearance of Zamenhof's social invention. A masterwork indeed.
Gene Keyes
Berwick, Nova Scotia, Canada
gene.keyes AT gmail.com
2000-09-09; updated 2006-11-28
More information
Websites:
http://www.esperanto-usa.org
http://esperanto.net
http://en.lernu.net
http://www.uea.org
Esperanto - The International Language
Online books:
The Esperanto Book by Don Harlow (1993)
Esperanto: A Language for the Global Village by Sylvan Zaft, (1996)
Excerpts from Dr. Esperanto's International Language
I need not here point out the considerable importance to humanity of
an international language—a language unconditionally accepted by everyone,
and the common property of the whole world. How much time and labour we spend
in learning foreign tongues, and yet when travelling in foreign countries,
we are, as a rule, unable to converse with other human beings in their own
language. How much time, labour, and money are wasted in translating the
literary productions of one nation into the language of another, and yet,
if we rely on translations alone, we can become acquainted with but a tithe
of foreign literature.
Were there but an international language, all translations would be
made into it alone, as into a tongue intelligible to all, and works of an
international character would be written in it in the first instance.
The Chinese wall dividing literatures would disappear, and the works
of other nations would be as readily intelligible to us as those of our own
authors. Books being the same for everyone, education, ideals, convictions,
aims, would be the same too, and all nations would be united in a common
brotherhood. Being compelled, as we now are, to devote our time to the study
of several different languages, we cannot study any of them sufficiently
well, and there are but few persons who can even boast a complete mastery
of their mother-tongue; on the other hand, languages cannot progress towards
perfection, and we are often obliged, even in speaking our own language,
to borrow words and expressions from foreigners, or to express our thoughts
inexactly.
How different would the case be, had we but two languages to learn;
we should know them infinitely better, and the languages themselves would
grow richer, . . .
An example of Zamenhof's translation of the Bible: (As mentioned, the internal apostrophes are no longer used, but show how Esperanto words are made: e.g., "mallumo" is "darkness": the prefix "mal-" makes any root-word its opposite, and "lum-" means light, so "mallum-" is "dark", and "o" is the ending for a noun: "darkness". If the ending were "a", the word "malluma" would be an adjective: thus, "malluma kaj ŝtorma nokto" is "dark and stormy night".)
Je la komenc'o Di'o kre'is la ter'o'n kaj la ĉiel'o'n. Kaj la ter'o est'is sen'form'a kaj dezert'a, kaj mal'lum'o est'is super la profund'aĵ'o, kaj la anim'o de Di'o si'n port'is super la akv'o. Kaj Di'o dir'is: est'u lum'o; kaj far'iĝ'is lumo. Kaj Di'o vid'is la lum'o'n ke ĝi est'as bon'a, kaj nom'is Di'o la lum'o'n tag'o, kaj la mal'lum'o'n Li nom'is nokt'o. Kaj est'is vesper'o, kaj est'is maten'o —unu tag'o. Kaj Di'o dir'is: est'u firm'aĵ'o inter la akv'o, kaj ĝi apart'ig'u akv'o'n de akv'o. Kaj Di'o kre'is la firm'aĵ'o'n kaj apart'ig'is la akv'o'n kiu est'as sub la firm'aĵ'o; kaj far'iĝ'is tiel. Kaj Di'o nom'is la firm'aĵ'o'n ĉiel'o. Kaj est'is vesper'o, kaj est'is maten'o—la du'a tag'o. Kaj Di'o dir'is: kolekt'u si'n la akv'o de sub la ĉiel'o unu lok'o'n, kaj montr'u si'n sek'aĵ'o; kaj far'iĝ'is tiel. Kaj Di'o nom'is la sek'aĵ'o'n ter'o, kaj la kolekt'oj'n de la akv'o Li nom'is mar'o'j.