Mention Esperanto in polite society and you will either be met with a blank, uncomprehending expression or the statement “ Oh, yes my grandfather/mother used to learn that but I thought it had died out”. Then when you start to explain that it is a neutral international language designed to overcome the problems of communication among the world’s people, you are often asked “Well, which country does it come from”? So you tell them that it doesn’t belong to any country but is an invented language intended to be a second language for everyone. Many people just can’t get their heads around that one. Many will tell you proudly “Oh, but most people speak English and I don’t have to bother learning another language”. Well the truth is that although English is widely used internationally especially in commerce and travel, once you get away from the tourist traps overseas, they don’t all speak English. It is also an extremely difficult language, especially the pronunciation and the spelling. I should know, I live with someone who struggles with it daily.
About 120 years ago a Polish Jew called Zamenhof invented a simple, easy-to-learn language, which became known as Esperanto. His idea was that everyone should know their own language for use in their own country and his auxiliary language when they were abroad or receiving visitors from another country. He felt that having a common language would help people understand each other better and lead to world friendship and above all world peace. The language only has 16 main grammatical rules and is entirely regular i.e. there are no exceptions to the rules. It is flexible, sounds nice and can be used for any purpose. After its launch in 1887, it quickly spread around Europe and then around the world. Thus a worldwide movement for peace and friendship came into being.
During the 20th century, Esperanto had its ups and downs. The First World War hampered progress but a revival after the war almost led to its adoption by the League of Nations. However, this move was blocked by the French who claimed that French was already in use as an international language. Despite some gains in the broadcasting field during the 1920s, the onset of the great economic depression led to a withdrawal into isolationism and blatant nationalism. The Nazis were bitterly opposed to Esperanto and its ideals and did their best to destroy it. The post war years saw the formation of the United Nations Organisation and attempts were made to get the UN to encourage its members to teach Esperanto in schools and use it for tourism and international commerce. By this time English was becoming the dominant language the way French used to be. Now the interests of the English-speaking nations were seen to be at stake and the U.S. government made known its opposition to the proposal. Needless to say that was that. In 1965 the Universal Esperanto Association initiated a worldwide petition asking the UN to support the use of Esperanto in international affairs. There were close to a million signatures on the petition and organisations supporting the petition had a combined membership of 73 million people. Nevertheless, the UN Secretariat has never taken any effective action on this petition. Esperanto is perceived as being a bit like the Metric System of language. When metrics were invented nobody wanted to know and it took a long time before the world began to adopt it. Even now there is resistance from the U.S. and Britain. The main reason for its adoption was that calculators and other machines needed a regular system based on 10. In the same way Esperanto is waiting for the need, which will cause the nations to accept it. The rising need and cost of expensive translations in organisations like the European Union may well lead the member countries to look on it more favourably.
Despite all the setbacks the Esperanto movement survives and keeps trying to achieve recognition for the language. It also participates in UNESCO-sponsored programmes on behalf of human and minority rights. My own interest in the movement dates back 35 years and began shortly after my arrival in NZ. Much of my travel overseas has only been possible because of my knowledge of the language and the contacts it has enabled me to make. I have been writing to one of my pen friends for about 25 years and have visited him many times. I have also participated in many Esperanto conferences both here in NZ and overseas.
Recently I went to Sydney to take part in the 16th Australian Summer School and the third combined Australia/New Zealand Esperanto Congress. It was held at International House, the student hostel for the University of Sydney. About 80 people participated in a varied and interesting programme. Most of them were Australian but some came from Korea, the U.S. and, of course, New Zealand. Many of the Australians were immigrants from other countries and one young guy from Brazil had only started learning Esperanto a month previously but was already fluent in the language. Sydney was hot and humid so we appreciated the air conditioning. Our days were made up of lectures in the morning, meetings in the afternoon and entertainment in the evenings. We had 3 excursions, 2 of them were full day and the other half-day. We went to the north of the city and saw the northern beaches and forest areas on the first trip. The other full day trip went to Kangaroo Valley, which is south of Sydney and near Wollongong. The scenery was charming and we saw some nice places. The half-day trip was to Home Bush the site of the Olympic Games to be held later this year. The Aussies have done a great job there and care has been taken to conserve the ecology of the area. We were divided into 3 groups for the Summer School lectures, according to our level of attainment in the language. The lecturers for the top group were Prof. Daniel Kane and Mr. Lee Jung-Kee from Korea. Mr. Kee told us about Korean literature in Esperanto and we studied some of it. Prof. Kane lectures on Chinese language at McQuarrie University and he gave some interesting talks on that language and discussed with us the future of Esperanto.
Will Esperanto survive? I feel it will because of the dedicated network of speakers and supporters of the movement around the world. How long it will be before it gains more general acceptance, I just don’t know. It is waiting for that initial break that will set the ball rolling. I recently read on the Internet that the Catholic Church in Germany has agreed to consider using Esperanto to improve worldwide communication within the church, as traditional Latin fades away. Who knows, this may be just the break-through we have been waiting for?
Dennis Pease