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| History | |
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Main article: History of Esperanto
The first Esperanto book by L. L. Zamenhof
Esperanto was created in the late 1870s and early 1880s by Dr. Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof, an ophthalmologist of mixed cultural heritage from Bialystok, then part of the Russian Empire. According to Zamenhof, he created this language to foster harmony between people from different countries. His feelings and the situation in Bialystok may be gleaned from an extract from his letter to Nikolai Borovko:[6]
The place where I was born and spent my childhood gave direction to all my future struggles. In Bialystok the inhabitants were divided into four distinct elements: Russians, Poles, Germans and Jews; each of these spoke their own language and looked on all the others as enemies. In such a town a sensitive nature feels more acutely than elsewhere the misery caused by language division and sees at every step that the diversity of languages is the first, or at least the most influential, basis for the separation of the human family into groups of enemies. I was brought up as an idealist; I was taught that all people were brothers, while outside in the street at every step I felt that there were no people, only Russians, Poles, Germans, Jews and so on. This was always a great torment to my infant mind, although many people may smile at such an 'anguish for the world' in a child. Since at that time I thought that 'grown-ups' were omnipotent, so I often said to myself that when I grew up I would certainly destroy this evil.
—L. L. Zamenhof, in a letter to N. Borovko, ca. 1895
After some ten years of development, which Zamenhof spent translating literature into Esperanto as well as writing original prose and verse, the first book of Esperanto grammar was published in Warsaw in July 1887. The number of speakers grew rapidly over the next few decades, at first primarily in the Russian Empire and Eastern Europe, then in Western Europe, the Americas, China, and Japan. In the early years, speakers of Esperanto kept in contact primarily through correspondence and periodicals, but in 1905 the first world congress of Esperanto speakers was held in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. Since then world congresses have been held in different countries every year, except during the two World Wars. Since the Second World War, they have been attended by an average of over 2,000 and up to 6,000 people.
Zamenhof's name for the language was simply La Internacia Lingvo "the International Language".[7]
[edit] Tags:L. L. Zamenhof,Latin,Dr. Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof,Ophthalmologist,Bialystok,Russian Empire,Prose,Verse,Warsaw,Eastern Europe,Western Europe,Americas,China,Periodicals,Boulogne-sur-mer,France,World Wars,International,Grammar,Russian,German,P,T,K,F,V,S,Z,R,W,A,E,I,U,O,X, | |
| Reactions of 20th-century totalitarian regimes to Esperanto | |
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As a potential vehicle for international understanding, Esperanto attracted the suspicion of many totalitarian states. The situation was especially pronounced in Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan and the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin.
In Germany, there was additional motivation to persecute Esperanto because Zamenhof was Jewish. In his work, Mein Kampf, Hitler mentioned Esperanto as an example of a language that would be used by an International Jewish Conspiracy once they achieved world domination.[8] Esperantists were killed during the Holocaust, with Zamenhof's family in particular singled out for murder.[9]
In the early years of the Soviet Union, Esperanto was given a measure of government support, and the Soviet Esperanto Association was an officially recognized organization.[10] However, in 1937, Stalin reversed this policy. He denounced Esperanto as "the language of spies" and had Esperantists exiled or executed. The use of Esperanto was effectively banned until 1956.[10]
After the Spanish Civil War, Francoist Spain persecuted the Anarchists and Catalan nationalists among whom the use of Esperanto was extensive[11] but in the 1950s, the Esperanto movement was tolerated again.
[edit] Tags:Recognized,Totalitarian,Nazi Germany,Imperial Japan,Soviet Union,Mein Kampf,Jewish Conspiracy,World Domination,Esperantists,The Holocaust,Spanish Civil War,Francoist Spain,Anarchists,Spanish, | |
| Official use | |
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Esperanto has never been a secondary official language of any recognized country. However, there were plans at the beginning of the 20th century to establish Neutral Moresnet as the world's first Esperanto state. Qian Xuantong, a Chinese linguist, promoted the replacement of Chinese with Esperanto.[12] In addition, the self-proclaimed artificial island micronation of Rose Island used Esperanto as its official language in 1968.
The US Army has published military phrase books in Esperanto,[13] to be used in war games by mock enemy forces. In the summer of 1924, the American Radio Relay League adopted Esperanto as its official international auxiliary language, and hoped that the language would be used by radio amateurs in international communications, but its actual use for radio communications was negligible.
Esperanto is the working language of several non-profit international organizations such as the Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda, a left-wing cultural association, or Education@Internet, which has developed from an Esperanto organization; most others are specifically Esperanto organizations. The largest of these, the World Esperanto Association, has an official consultative relationship with the United Nations and UNESCO, which recognized Esperanto as a medium for international understanding in 1954.[14] Esperanto is also the first language of teaching and administration of one university, the International Academy of Sciences San Marino.[5]
[edit] Tags:International Auxiliary Language,Auxiliary Language,International Academy Of Sciences,San Marino,Artificial Island,Micronation,War Games,Mock Enemy Forces,Non-profit,Sennacieca Asocio Tutmonda,United Nations,International Academy Of Sciences San Marino, | |
| Classification | |
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As a constructed language, Esperanto is not genealogically related to any ethnic language. It has been described as "a language lexically predominantly Romance, morphologically intensively agglutinative, and to a certain degree isolating in character".[15] The phonology, grammar, vocabulary, and semantics are based on the western Indo-European languages. The phonemic inventory is essentially Slavic, as is much of the semantics, while the vocabulary derives primarily from the Romance languages, with a lesser contribution from the Germanic languages. Pragmatics and other aspects of the language not specified by Zamenhof's original documents were influenced by the native languages of early speakers, primarily Russian, Polish, German, and French.
Typologically, Esperanto has prepositions and a free pragmatic word order that by default is subject–verb–object. Adjectives can be freely placed before or after the nouns they modify, though placing them before the noun is more common. New words are formed through extensive prefixing and suffixing.
[edit] Tags:Constructed Language,Romance,Germanic Languages,Constructed,Genealogically,Ethnic,Lexically,Morphologically,Agglutinative,Isolating,Phonology,Vocabulary,Semantics,Indo-european Languages,Phonemic Inventory,Slavic,Romance Languages,Pragmatics,Polish,French,Prepositions,Pragmatic Word Order,Subject–verb–object,Prefixing,Suffixing, | |
| Phonology | |
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Main article: Esperanto phonology
Esperanto has 23 consonants, 5 vowels, and 2 semivowels that combine with the vowels to form 6 diphthongs. (The consonant /j/ and semivowel /i̯/ are both written j, and the uncommon consonant /dz/ is written with the digraph dz.[16]) Tone is not used to distinguish meanings of words. Stress is always on the second-last vowel in fully Esperanto words unless a final vowel o is elided, which occurs mostly in poetry. For example, familio "family" is [fa.mi.ˈli.o], with the stress on the second i, but when the word is used without the final o (famili’), the stress remains on the second i: [fa.mi.ˈli].
[edit] Tags:Consonants,Vowels,Semivowels,Diphthongs,Tone,Elided,Poetry, | |
| Consonants | |
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The 23 consonants are:
Bilabial
Labio-
dental
Alveolar
Post-
alveolar
Palatal
Velar
Glottal
Nasal
m
n
Plosive
p
b
t
d
k
ɡ
Affricate
t͡s
d͡z
t͡ʃ
d͡ʒ
Fricative
f
v
s
z
ʃ
ʒ
x
h
Trill
r
Approximant
l
j
The sound /r/ is usually trilled [r], but may be tapped [ɾ]. The /v/ is normally pronounced like English v, but may be pronounced [ʋ] (between English v and w) or [w], depending on the language background of the speaker. A semivowel /u̯/ normally occurs only in diphthongs after the vowels /a/ and /e/, not as a consonant /w/. Common, if debated, assimilation includes the pronunciation of nk as [ŋk] and kz as [ɡz].
A large number of consonant clusters can occur, up to three in initial position (as in stranga, "strange") and four in medial position (as in instrui, "teach"). Final clusters are uncommon except in foreign names, poetic elision of final o, and a very few basic words such as cent "hundred" and post "after".
[edit] Tags:Bilabial,Labio-,Alveolar,Post-, | |
| Vowels | |
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Esperanto has the five cardinal vowels found in such languages as Spanish, Swahili, Filipino, Modern Hebrew, and Modern Greek:
Front
Back
Close
i
u
Mid
e
o
Open
a
There are also two semivowels, /i̯/ and /u̯/, which combine with the cardinal vowels to form six falling diphthongs: aj, ej, oj, uj, aŭ, and eŭ (nearly the same as the diphthongs of Filipino).
Since there are only five vowels, a good deal of variation in pronunciation is tolerated. For instance, e commonly ranges from [e] (French é) to [ɛ] (French è). These details often depend on the speaker's native language. A glottal stop may occur between adjacent vowels in some people's speech, especially when the two vowels are the same, as in heroo "hero" ([he.ˈro.o] or [he.ˈro.ʔo]) and praavo "great-grandfather" ([pra.ˈa.vo] or [pra.ˈʔa.vo]).
[edit] Tags: | |
| Writing system | |
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Main article: Esperanto orthography
The Esperanto alphabet is based on the Latin script, using a one-sound-one-letter principle. It includes six letters with diacritics: ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ (with circumflex), and ŭ (with breve). The alphabet does not include the letters q, w, x, or y, which are only used when writing unassimilated foreign terms or proper names.
The 28-letter alphabet is:
a b c ĉ d e f g ĝ h ĥ i j ĵ k l m n o p r s ŝ t u ŭ v z
All letters are pronounced approximately as in the IPA, with the exception of c and the letters with diacritics:
Letter
c
ĉ
ĝ
ĥ
ĵ
ŝ
ŭ
Pronunciation
t͡s
t͡ʃ
d͡ʒ
x
ʒ
ʃ
u̯
(in diphthongs)
[edit] Tags:Ipa, | |
| Writing diacritic letters | |
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The letters with diacritics (found in the "Latin-Extended A" section of the Unicode Standard) once caused problems with printing and computing. This was particularly true with the five letters with circumflexes, as they do not occur in any other language. The diacritics are normally only a problem now with computing situations such as internet chat groups and databases that are limited to ASCII characters.
There are two principal workarounds to this problem, which substitute digraphs for the accented letters. Zamenhof, the inventor of Esperanto, created an "h-convention", which replaces ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ, ŝ, and ŭ with ch, gh, hh, jh, sh, and u, respectively. If used in a database, a program in principle could not determine whether to render, for example, ch as c followed by h or as ĉ, and would fail to render, for example, the word senchava properly. A more recent "x-convention" has gained ground since the advent of computing. This system replaces each diacritic with an x (not part of the Esperanto alphabet) after the letter, producing the six digraphs cx, gx, hx, jx, sx, and ux.
There are computer keyboard layouts that support the Esperanto alphabet, and some systems use software that automatically substitutes x- or h-convention digraphs with the corresponding diacritic letters (EK for Microsoft Windows is one example).[17] Another example is the Esperanto Wikipedia, which uses the x-convention. When e.g. cx is entered, this will automatically appear as the correct ĉ in the saved text.
[edit] Tags:Unicode, | |
| Grammar | |
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Main article: Esperanto grammar
Esperanto words are derived by stringing together prefixes, roots, and suffixes. This process is regular, so that people can create new words as they speak and be understood. Compound words are formed with a modifier-first, head-final order, as in English (compare "birdsong" and "songbird," and likewise, birdokanto and kantobirdo).
The different parts of speech are marked by their own suffixes: all common nouns end in -o, all adjectives in -a, all derived adverbs in -e, and all verbs in one of six tense and mood suffixes, such as the present tense -as.
Plural nouns used as grammatical subjects end in -oj (pronounced like English "oy"), whereas their direct object forms end in -on. Plural direct objects end with the combination -ojn (rhymes with "coin"); -o- indicates that the word is a noun, -j- indicates the plural, and -n indicates the accusative. Adjectives agree with their nouns; their endings are plural -aj (pronounced "eye"), accusative -an, and plural accusative -ajn (rhymes with "fine").
Noun
Subject
Object
Singular
-o
-on
Plural
-oj
-ojn
Adjective
Subject
Object
Singular
-a
-an
Plural
-aj
-ajn
The suffix -n, besides indicating the direct object, is used to indicate movement and a few other things as well.
The six verb inflections consist of three tenses and three moods. They are present tense -as, future tense -os, past tense -is, infinitive mood -i, conditional mood -us and jussive mood -u (used for wishes and commands). Verbs are not marked for person or number. Thus, kanti means "to sing", mi kantas means "I sing", vi kantas means "you sing", and ili kantas means "they sing".
Verbal Tense
Suffix
Present
-as (kantas)
Past
-is (kantis)
Future
-os (kantos)
Verbal Mood
Suffix
Infinitive
-i (kanti)
Jussive
-u (kantu)
Conditional
-us (kantus)
Word order is comparatively free. Adjectives may precede or follow nouns; subjects, verbs and objects may occur in any order. However, the article la "the", demonstratives such as tiu "that" and prepositions (such as ĉe "at") must come before their related nouns. Similarly, the negative ne "not" and conjunctions such as kaj "and" and ke "that" must precede the phrase or clause that they introduce. In copular (A = B) clauses, word order is just as important as in English: "people are animals" is distinguished from "animals are people".
[edit] Tags:Sat, | |
| Vocabulary | |
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Main article: Esperanto vocabulary
The core vocabulary of Esperanto was defined by Lingvo internacia, published by Zamenhof in 1887. This book listed 900 roots; these could be expanded into tens of thousands of words using prefixes, suffixes, and compounding. In 1894, Zamenhof published the first Esperanto dictionary, Uni Tags: | |
zote monety |