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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. Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof, a Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist from Bialystok, at the time 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 famous letter to Nikolai Borovko:[16]
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 one 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.
[ Tags:L. L. Zamenhof,Dr. Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof,Ophthalmologist,Bialystok,Russian Empire,Prose,Verse,Warsaw,Eastern Europe,Western Europe,Americas,China,Periodicals,Boulogne-sur-mer,France,World Wars,Grammar,Russian,Polish,German, | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Relation to 20th-century totalitarianism |
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.[17] Esperantists were killed during the Holocaust, with Zamenhof's family in particular singled out for murder.[18]
In the early years of the Soviet Union, Esperanto was given a measure of government support, and an officially recognized Soviet Esperanto Association came into being.[19] 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.[19]
After the Spanish Civil War, Francoist Spain persecuted the Anarchists and Catalan nationalists among which Esperanto was extended[20] but in the 1950s, the Esperanto movement was tolerated again.
[ | Tags:Totalitarian,Nazi Germany,Imperial Japan,Soviet Union,Mein Kampf,International,Jewish Conspiracy,World Domination,Esperantists,The Holocaust,Spanish Civil War,Francoist Spain,Anarchists,Spanish, Official use |
Esperanto has never been an 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.[21] In addition, the self-proclaimed artificial island micronation of Rose Island used Esperanto as its official language in 1968.
The U.S. Army has published military phrase books in Esperanto,[22] to be used in wargames 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; 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. Esperanto is also the first language of teaching and administration of one university, the International Academy of Sciences San Marino.
[ | Tags:International Auxiliary Language,Auxiliary Language,Unesco,San Marino,Artificial Island,Micronation,Wargames,Non-profit,United Nations,International Academy Of Sciences San Marino, Classification |
As a constructed language, Esperanto is not genealogically related to any ethnic language. It has been described as "a language lexically predominantly Romanic, morphologically intensively agglutinative, and to a certain degree isolating in character".[23] 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.
[ | Tags:Constructed Language,Romance,Germanic Languages,Constructed,Genealogically,Ethnic,Lexically,Romanic,Morphologically,Agglutinative,Isolating,Phonology,Vocabulary,Semantics,Indo-european Languages,Phonemic Inventory,Slavic,Romance Languages,Pragmatics,French,Prepositions,Pragmatic Word Order,Subject-verb-object,Prefixing,Suffixing, Writing system |
Main article: Esperanto orthography
Esperanto is written with a modified version of the Latin alphabet, including 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 except in unassimilated foreign 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
[ts]
[tʃ]
[dʒ]
[x]
[ʒ]
[ʃ]
[u̯]
(in diphthongs)
[ | Tags:Ipa,Latin Alphabet,Letters,Diacritics,ĉ,ĝ,ĥ,ĵ,ŝ,Circumflex,ŭ, Writing diacritic letters |
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. A more recent "x-convention" has gained ground since the advent of computing. This system replaces each diacritic with an x 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. One example of this is EK for Microsoft Windows. 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.
[ | Tags: Phonology |
Main article: Esperanto phonology
Esperanto has 22 consonants, 5 vowels and 2 semivowels that combine with the vowels to form 6 diphthongs. (The consonant [j] and semivowel [i̯] are both written with the letter j.) Tone is not used to distinguish meanings of words. Stress is always on the penultimate vowel in fully Esperanto words unless a final vowel o is elided, a practice which occurs mostly in poetry. For example, familio "family" is [fa.mi.ˈli.o], with the stress on the i, but when the word is used without the final o (famili’), the stress remains on the i: [fa.mi.ˈli].
[ | Tags: Consonants |
The 22 consonants are:
Bilabial
Labio-
dental
Alveolar
Post-
alveolar
Palatal
Velar
Glottal
Nasal
m
n
Plosive
p
b
t
d
k
ɡ
Affricate
ts
tʃ
dʒ
Fricative
f
v
s
z
ʃ
ʒ
x
h
Trill
r
Approximant
l
j
The sound [r] is usually rolled, but may be tapped [ɾ]. The [v] is normally pronounced like an 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, which means "strange") and four in medial position (as in instrui, meaning "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".
[ | Tags: Vowels |
Esperanto has the five cardinal vowels found in such languages as Spanish, Swahili, 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.
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]).
[ | Tags: Grammar |
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 end in -oj (pronounced like English "oy"), whereas direct objects end in -on. Plural direct objects end with the combination -ojn (pronounced to rhyme 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 (pronounced to rhyme 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. For instance, 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 it is in English: "people are animals" is distinguished from "animals are people".
[ | Tags:Sat, Vocabulary |
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, Universala Vortaro, which had a larger set of roots. The rules of the language allowed speakers to borrow new roots as needed; it was recommended, however, that speakers use most international forms and then derive related meanings from these.
Since then, many words have been borrowed, primarily (but not solely) from the Western European languages. Not all proposed borrowings become widespread, but many do, especially technical and scientific terms. Terms for everyday use, on the other hand, are more likely to be derived from existing roots; komputilo "computer", for instance, is formed from the verb komputi "compute" and the suffix -ilo "tool". Words are also calqued; that is, words acquire new meanings based on usage in other languages. For example, the word muso "mouse" has acquired the meaning of a computer mouse from its usage in English. Esperanto speakers often debate about whether a particular borrowing is justified or whether meaning can be expressed by deriving from or extending the meaning of existing words.
Some compounds and formed words in Esperanto are not entirely straightforward; for example, eldoni, literally "give out", means "publish", paral | Tags: |