About Esperanto

• read the basic flier provided by the Universal Esperanto Association

• visit the Multilingual Information Centre (part of the Virtual Esperanto Library)

• sign up for a free on-line correspondence course (for other on-line learning materials and languages other than English, see the pages by Martin Weichert or Axel Belinfante)

• look for an Esperanto course on the Esperanto League for North America web site or e-mail them for a free information package

• access a list of Esperanto associations in other countries

• check your local library (in North America) for the following titles:

  • Esperanto - Learning and Using the International Language , by David Richardson. Eastsound: Orcas, 1990.

  • Esperanto: Language, Literature, Community , by Pierre Janton, trans. by Humphrey Tonkin, Jane Edwards, Karen Johnson-Weiner. Albany: SUNY, 1993. (A brief review is available.)

  • Teach Yourself Esperanto , by John Cresswell and John Hartley. Dunton Green: Hodder & Staughton, 1989.

  (Have a look to see if there are older titles as well - and ask the library to order the ones above!)

An Update on Esperanto (May 1997)

The international language Eperanto is gaining renewed attention from policy-makers in a post-Cold-War world increasingly marked by national and international concerns about the rights of minorities and the future of linguistic and cultural diversity...

In July 1996, the Nitobe Symposium of International Organizations brought together a group of independent experts in Prague, Czech Republic, which examined the present state of Esperanto and called for its inclusion in current debates on language rights and language policy...

In a separate initiative, over 6000 Esperanto speakers have signed the Prague Manifesto, a modern restatement of the values and goals underlying the Esperanto movement, which are said to include linguistic democracy and the preservation of linguistic diversity, among others...

Several political groupings, non-governmental organizations and coalitions are pressing to have the international language question placed on the agendas of the United Nations and the European Parliament...

Esperanto speakers to have come into international prominence recently include the 1994 Nobel laureate in economics Reinhard Selten and 1996 World Chess Champion Zsuzsa Polgár...

To bring you up to date on these and other recent developments, UEA has compiled the following fact sheet.

Purpose and origins of Esperanto

The basis for Esperanto was published in 1887 by Dr. Lejzer (Ludovic) Zamenhof, a Jewish eye doctor in Warsaw. The idea of a planned international language, intended not to replace ethnic languages but to serve as an additional, second language for all people, was not a new one. However, Zamenhof contributed the crucial insight that such a language must develop through collective use. Accordingly, he restricted his initial proposal to a minimalist grammatical sketch, a vocabulary of some 900 words, some samples of poetry and prose, and a persuasive introductory essay. On this slender basis Esperanto was to develop into a full-fledged language with its own worldwide speech community.

Characteristics

Esperanto is both a spoken and a written language. Its lexicon derives primarily from Western European languages, while its syntax and morphology show strong Slavic inŝuences. The fact that Esperanto morphemes are invariant and almost indefinitely recombinable into different words gives the language much in common with isolating languages like Chinese, while its internal word structure bears some affinity with agglutinative languages such as Turkish, Swahili and Japanese.

Development

In its earliest stages, the language consisted of about a thousand roots, from which ten or twelve thousand words could be formed. It has developed rapidly since then. Today, the largest Esperanto dictionaries contain between 15,000 and 20,000 roots, from which over 150,000 words can be formed. The language continues to evolve through use in international settings, with the role of linguists and the Esperanto Academy being essentially limited to research and commentary on current trends.

Users

The Universal Esperanto Association, whose membership is drawn from the most active parts of the Esperanto community, has national affiliates in 55 countries and individual members in over twice that number. Calculations based on numbers of textbooks sold and on membership of local Esperanto societies put the number of people with some knowledge of the language in the hundreds of thousands and possibly millions. There are Esperanto speakers in all parts of the world, including notable concentrations in countries as diverse as Japan, Brazil, Iran, Madagascar, Bulgaria and Cuba.

Teaching Esperanto

Because communicative ability in Esperanto can be rapidly acquired, it provides an ideal introduction to foreign-language study. Within months, students can begin to use Esperanto for correspondence or school trips. Positive effects on the study of both first and second languages are suggested by experimental and anecdotal evidence. Despite its potential contribution to the language curriculum, however, Esperanto is rarely included in national education or language policies (one present exception is Hungary, where it can be studied as part of the high school language requirement). Most people therefore learn through self-study, by correspondence (using regular or electronic mail), or through local Esperanto clubs. Textbooks and self-instruction materials for Esperanto exist in over a hundred languages.

Research into Esperanto

Many universities include Esperanto in courses on linguistics; a few offer it as a separate subject. Particularly noteworthy is the Esperanto department of the Eötvös Lórand Technical University in Budapest, which has offered a major degree option in Esperanto since 1967. Scholarly articles, journals, and books on Esperanto appear regularly in several major languages, as well as in Esperanto. The Modern Language Association of America's Annual Bibliography records over 300 scholarly publications on Esperanto every year.

Official recognition

In 1954 the General Conference of Unesco recognized that the achievements of Esperanto correspond with Unesco's aims and ideals, and consultative relations were established between Unesco and UEA. Collaboration between the two organizations has since taken numerous forms. In 1977 the Director General of Unesco, Mr. Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow, gave the opening address at the 62nd World Esperanto Congress, while in 1985 the General Conference called on member states and international organizations to promote the teaching of Esperanto in schools and its use in international affairs. UEA also has consultative status with the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations, UNICEF, the Council of Europe, the Organization of American States, and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

Meetings

Over a hundred international conferences and meetings are held each year in Esperanto ­ without translators or interpreters. A short list of venues for the annual World Congress of Esperanto shows the international character of these meetings: Havana (1990), Bergen (1991), Vienna (1992), Valencia (1993), Seoul (1994), Tampere (1995), Prague (1996), Adelaide (1997). The increasing use of Esperanto outside Europe is reflected in the growth of continental congresses: 1996 witnessed the first Asian Congress (in Shanghai), the third American Congress (in San José, Costa Rica), and the fourth African Congress (in Moshi, Tanzania). There are also many meetings for Esperanto speakers at the national and local levels, which often attract participants from other countries.

Correspondence and travel

Each year, millions of letters are written in the language and tens of thousands of Esperanto speakers travel abroad to meetings, while many more use Esperanto for private travel. The 1993 list of the Pasporta Servo, a service run by UEA's youth section, contains the addresses of over 900 Esperanto speakers in 59 countries willing to provide free overnight accommodation in their own homes to young travellers.

Professional contacts

Professional organizations for Esperanto speakers include associations for doctors and medical workers, writers, railway workers, scientists, mathematicians and musicians. Such organizations often publish their own journals, hold conferences and help to expand the language for professional and specialized use. Widest in scope are the activities of the International Academy of Sciences of San Marino, which seeks to facilitate international and interdisciplinary collaboration at the university level and has established a system of courses and examinations in several countries. There is a steady flow of original and translated publications in such fields as computing, botany, entomology, chemistry, law and philosophy.

Special interests

There are numerous Esperanto organizations for special-interest groups such as Scouts and Guides, the blind, chess and Go players. UEA has its own youth section, TEJO, which holds frequent international meetings and publishes its own periodicals. Buddhists, Shintoists, Catholics, Quakers, Protestants, Mormons and Baha'is have their own organizations, as do atheists and freethinkers. Numerous social activist groups make use of the language in their international contacts and other activities.

Literature

The flourishing literary tradition in Esperanto has been recognized by PEN International, which accepted an Esperanto affiliate at its 60th Congress in September 1993. Notable present-day writers in Esperanto include the novelists Trevor Steele (Australia) and Spomenka Stimec (Croatia), the poets William Auld (Scotland) and Abel Montagut (Catalonia), and the essayists and translators Probal Dasgupta (India) and Fernando de Diego (Venezuela). Of the numerous literary translations published recently, titles include Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, García-Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Umar Khaiyam's Rubaiyat, Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita, Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, and Cao Xueqin's great family saga Dream of the Red House. Within the last few years, translations have appeared from French (La Fontaine, Racine, de Sade, Fournier, Queneau), Chinese (Guo Moruo, Lao She), Latin (Seneca, Erasmus), Japanese (Kawabata, K. Miyazawa), Dutch (Mulisch), Serbo-Croatian (Krleza, Andric), Hungarian (I. Nemere), Russian (Chekhov, Strugackij), Slovene (Pahor), Spanish (Lorca, Miguel Hernández), Ancient Greek (Lucian), Estonian (Vaarandi, Under) and Norwegian (Ibsen), along with translations of such English-language authors as Nevil Shute (Australia), Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling (Britain), Katherine Mansfield (New Zealand) and James Thurber (USA). Over the past few years, anthologies of Hungarian, German, Chinese, Korean, English, French, Slovene, Serbian, Bulgarian, Dutch, Australian, Italian, Hebrew, Japanese and Maltese literature have been published. Asterix, Winnie-the-Pooh and Tin-Tin have been joined by numerous other children's books, including, in recent years, a Dutch account of the life of Anne Frank, the Moomintrolls, Pippi Longstocking, and other titles from China, Japan, Iceland, Israel, Sweden and Lithuania.

Music

Well-established musical genres in Esperanto run the scale from popular and folk songs through rock music, cabaret, solo and choir pieces, and opera. In addition to these strong grassroots traditions, popular composers and performers in a number of countries have recorded in Esperanto, written scores inspired by the language, or used it in their promotional materials; such artists include Britain's Elvis Costello and the U.S.A.'s Michael Jackson. Recently several tracks from the all-Esperanto Warner Music album Esperanto, launched in Spain in November 1996, recorded high placings on the Spanish pop charts.

Libraries

The library of the Esperanto Association of Britain has a collection of more than 20,000 items. Other large libraries include the International Esperanto Museum in Vienna, the Hodler Library at the Universal Esperanto Association's headquarters in Rotterdam, and the Esperanto collection in the Aalen Public Library in, Germany. The Vienna and Aalen collections can be consulted through the Internet and the international lending system.

Periodicals

Over a hundred magazines and journals are published regularly in Esperanto, including the news magazine Monato, the lavishly illustrated El Popola Cxinio (China), and UEA's own publication Esperanto, all on a monthly basis. The biweekly Esperanto-oriented news digest Eventoj offers a electronic edition as well. Other periodicals include scholarly publications in medicine and science, religious magazines, national Esperanto journals, periodicals for young people, education periodicals, and numerous special-interest magazines.

Radio and television

Radio stations in Austria, Brazil, China, Cuba, Estonia, Hungary, Italy and Poland broadcast regularly in Esperanto. So does Vatican Radio. There are also occasional broadcasts by many other stations. Television stations in various countries have broadcast Esperanto courses, including a recent 16-part adaptation of the BBC's Muzzy in Gondoland on the Polish Channel One network.

Internet

Electronic networks are the fastest-growing means of communication among Esperanto speakers. Most network users are currently located in North America and Western Europe, with numbers rapidly increasing in other countries. Many lively Usenet groups, chat sessions, listserves and web sites exist in and on the language. Many can be found through the Virtual Esperanto Library at http://www.esperanto.net/veb/.

Universal Esperanto Association services

UEA publishes books, magazines, and a yearbook which lists Esperanto organizations and local representatives around the world. These publications, along with information on records, cassettes, etc., are listed in UEA's 160-page catalogue. The Association's Book Service has over 3200 titles in stock. An English-language series published by UEA, Esperanto Documents (ISSN 0165-2575), includes studies and reports on the current situation of Esperanto.