Esperanto

[GuerrierCosmique 146]

Saluton "ponefratoj"!

Does somebody here speak Esperanto? Currently I learn it.

That's an artificial language created in the 1880s by Dr. Ludwik Zamenhof to serve as world language. He lived in a city with Poles, Russians, Germans and Jews and thought that many conflicts arose due to the language barrier, so he got the idea for an international auxiallary language.

It's created to be as simply as possible to learn, while still having the precision and subleties of complex natural languages. It's special point are the same endings for all words of a grammatical category, for example, nouns all end in -o and adjectives in -a. With those endings and certain a-, in- and suffixes one can create neccessary words from word stems, so the number of words you actually have to learn is quite low.

 "Poneo" means "pony" and "frato" is "brother". They can easily be melted into a compound noun, like in Greek and German. The -j is the plural marker, like -s is in English and French, while "fratino" (the suffix -in is for the female gender, as it's used in German) means sister (literally "female brother"). The word Esperanto itself means "the one who hopes", esper- is the word stem for hope (it's taken from several Romanic languages), while the suffix -ant (from French) is for "people that do something", and then comes the -o to make it a noun. "La espero" (la is the definite article, just like "the" in English) means just "the hope" while "espera" is "hopeful". You can create whatever words you want, like "spacbatalanto", my ponysona's name Space Warrior (spaco = space, batalo = fight, -ant = the one who does something, -o = ending for nouns) or "planedestrino" for "female ruler of a planet" (planedo = planet, -estr = boss of something, -in = female gender, -o = 'cause it's a noun).

"Doktoro Esperanto" was the pseudonym under which Dr Zamenhof published the first Esperanto book (Unua Libro aka The First Book). He called the language just "La Internacia Lingvo" (The International Language), but since that's a bit long and generic, the name of the book's author became a synonym for the language. He choose that name because he hoped that his creation would one day become the global lingua franca.

"Global" means that all people on the planet learn Esperanto, to use it in international situations, like as a foreign ex-change student, on a vacation or when reading a translated novel. Dr Zamenhof never thought of Esperanto to replace other languages. It's a point of critic that modern-day English is used in non-English speaking countries in situations where it isn't neccessary and many fear that a world language would totally destroy diversity. But Esperanto wouldn't.

Esperanto gained a lot of attention shortly after it was published. Millions of people in all of Europe started to learn it. There were congresses and clubs all over the continent. It could have become a world language.

Unfortunately, this changed because World War Two. The Nazis hated Esperanto because Dr Zamenhof was a Jew. Adolf Hitler called it  a Jewish secret-language for world domination in Mein Kampf. The Nazis banned Esperanto, closed all clubs and murdered many Esperantists. Dr Zamenhof's family was targeted for extermination.

After the Second World War the rise of the United States as global superpower lead to English as de facto functional world language. But English is not international - just like Latin isn't Vaticanian - , it's imperial, since it's only so popular because the British Empire once ruled the seas and the United States are so dominant in politics, economy and culture of the Western world since World War II. But who knows what's going to happen in the future.

Another constructed world language (that never became one) was Volapük, created by the German Catholic priest Johann Martin Schleyer after the had a dream where God told him to create a world language. It's name means "world speak", vol means world and pük is speak, both where taken from those English words, in fact nearly all words where derived from German, French and English. Volapük was a bit popular after it's publication, too, but Esperanto replaced it. Menade bal, püki bal - Eine Menschheit, eine Sprache - One humanity, one language

Interlingua was an international auxiallary language that was used for diplomacy during the Interwar period. It has an extremely simplified grammar and takes all words from Latin and Romance languages.

The most recent project for a real world language is Lingwa de Planeta. People at a Russian university work on it since 2010, it's based on the most wide-spread languages in the world.

There are also lots of artistic languages that belletristic writers create for fictional worlds. The Elvish tongues Quenya and Sindarin from J.R.R. Tolkien's Legendarium (The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion) and Klingon from the Star Trek TV series are the best-known examples. Those three can be used, but most others have only fractual grammar and a restricted vocabulary, so they can't be spoken. But that doesn't bother somebody, since it'd be useless except at SciFi/Fantasy cons.^^

 

 

 

 

Edited January 27, 2018 by Spacbatalanto

[cuteycindyhoney 13,307]

Science fiction author Harry Harrison was a big proponent of Esperanto. One of his greatest characters, James Bolivar diGriz, alias Slippery Jim, aka, The Stainless Steel Rat, was described as speaking it 'like a native".

[Quinch 1,120]

Esperanto makes me sad.

I would love to learn it, but... it's so rarely used, there'd be no point.

[Prospekt 11,018]

Due to my familiarity with English (native speaker ) and my familiarity with Romance languages in general due to taking some Spanish in high school, the bit of Esperanto I have come across isn't terribly hard to understand, even though I have no formal instruction and certainly could not form a coherent sentence.

It would be cool to learn Esperanto one day. I think as the world gets "smaller" via technology, it is increasingly important to have a common language rather than to always have to deal with services like Google Translate that are good in theory but fall short when it comes to really conveying the intended message of a piece of text. It would also be a shortcut that keeps you from necessarily having to learn a ton of languages in order to communicate effectively with any given person in the world.

[The Kaeya Simp 13,988]

4 hours ago, Prospekt said:

Due to my familiarity with English (native speaker ) and my familiarity with Romance languages in general due to taking some Spanish in high school, the bit of Esperanto I have come across isn't terribly hard to understand, even though I have no formal instruction and certainly could not form a coherent sentence.

It would be cool to learn Esperanto one day. I think as the world gets "smaller" via technology, it is increasingly important to have a common language rather than to always have to deal with services like Google Translate that are good in theory but fall short when it comes to really conveying the intended message of a piece of text. It would also be a shortcut that keeps you from necessarily having to learn a ton of languages in order to communicate effectively with any given person in the world.

I'd also want to learn it but I don't know anyone who speaks it fluently which makes me not really want to learn it until more people learn it

[SparklingSquirrels 21,342]

It sounds like a nice idea, but I really don't think it'll ever take off. 

If you like conlangs (constructed languages such as Esperanto), check out the Conlang Critic videos! Sometimes he uses a lot of complicated linguistic terms but they're usually pretty funny. Basically he finds things to make fun of about the languages . (Don't take them too seriously though)

 

 

[Denim&Venöm 19,000]

I would learn it as well if it were used more often. Kinda my reason for not learning a second language in general. I have little use for it in day to day life, hence I'd have little reason to practice it. 

Fun fact: An entire movie was filmed in Esperanto. Though you'll probably get a laugh out of it more than anything due to the poor pronunciation. 

 

[dead account 2,710]

On 2018-01-27 at 6:22 AM, Quinch said:

Esperanto makes me sad.

I would love to learn it, but... it's so rarely used, there'd be no point.

The same reason kept me from learning it too. But I really love the idea behind a neutral language that can be used by anyone. It makes things fair for both sides.

[Dreambiscuit 9,744]

While I love the idea of a universal language that’s easy to learn and understand, I don’t see much use for this as no one seems to use it. It has to be universally used to be universally useful.

[Tacodidra 61,178]

While the idea is interesting, I prefer learning languages that are more widely used. English is a lingua franca now, and while it has its flaws, I can't see Esperanto as the solution. It's largely based on languages spoken in Europe – while learning it might be relatively easy to people speaking those languages, people of a different language background would definitely find it more difficult. With all the different writing systems, pronunciations in different languages and so on, it's basically impossible to make a language that's equally easy for everyone to learn.

Edited May 4, 2022 by Tacodidra

[Astralshy 26,697]

I'm aware of this language for many many years, but I have never learned it. The idea itself is surely interesting, but I would prefer to learn an already used language to be honest. Or to be more exact I should improve my English and finish learning Spanish and Swedish before I start with this one.