The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
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FEATURES yet completely ascendant, and the delegates believed that Esperanto could fill the vacuum, starting in schools and telegraph offices and spreading inexorably as both the medium and the message of international cooperation and world peace. It's easy to see why the League was so enamoured. Modern, efficient, progressive, Esperanto embodied a certain spirit of early 20th-century internationalism. Channelling what he called "the spirit of European languages", Zamenhof had forged a hybrid of Romance, Germanic and Slavic elements, streamlined for maximum transparency (no irregular verbs!) but distinctive and ingenious when it came to word formation. Chains of prefixes and suffixes work virtuoso wonders in Esperanto, with -eg- making anything bigger, -et- making anything smaller, and mal- turning anything into its opposite. More thoroughly and elegantly than the English suffix '-ly', Esperanto's -e transforms any noun into an adverb; Kiel vivi vegane is an Esperanto pamphlet whose title translates as 'How to Live Veganly'. There is no lack of idioms, slang or linguistic colour. Though the League of Nations eventually sent the Esperantists packing after three years of debate – official French opposition was apparently decisive – Zamenhof's followers would ultimately outlast the League itself. While it never achieved the fina venko ('final victory') projected by its more devoted acolytes, Esperanto is today "a living language with a worldwide community", reports Esther Schor in her fascinating new history Bridge of Words: Esperanto and the dream of a universal language. The language has survived derision, repression and the onslaught of global English, and it still has an estimated million-plus speakers in a hundred-odd countries. Probably in INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION A Spanish street named in tribute to Esperanto (main image); (right) books in the language at the World Esperanto Congress; and (far right) the seventh congress in Antwerp, 1911 24 The Linguist Vol/55 No/6 2016 www.ciol.org.uk Ross Perlin considers the continued relevance of the invented language on the eve of its 130th anniversary W hen the League of Nations first convened in 1920, a universal language was on the agenda. Delegates from a dozen countries, including Brazil, China, Haiti and India, declared their hope "that children of all nations from now on would know at least two languages, their own mother tongue and an easy means of international communication". The most likely candidate for such an "international auxiliary language" was Esperanto, launched only 33 years earlier by Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist Ludwik Zamenhof. At its height, the lingvo internacia was embraced by working-class Jews, French intellectuals, East Asian leftists, Baha'i believers, Shinto sectarians and Brazilian spiritists. French was in decline, English not ESPERANTO an idea with a future?