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At least dismissive humor is not mean. Another frequent reaction to
the idea
of Esperanto is anger, especially from people who care about language. On an
ask-a-linguist internet message board, a place where lay people can have their
questions about language answered by a panel of professional linguists, one of
these professionals responded to an innocent question about whether Esperanto
can be a native language, writing: "I will not try to conceal my contempt for
the basket cases who teach their unfortunate children Esperanto." Contempt? As
far as I know those children grow up to be slightly eccentric but
well-adjusted
musicians, not serial killers.
Still, it is not hard to understand why so many people find Esperanto so
repellent. Language is not just a handy tool for packing up our thoughts and
sending them along to others. It's an index to a set of experiences both
shared
and extremely personal. More than any other expression of our culture, it
is the
way we do things---the way we complain, argue, comfort others. We love our
languages for this. They are the repositories of our very identities. Compared
to them, Esperanto is an insult. It asks us to turn away from what makes our
languages personal and unique and choose one that is generic and universal. It
asks us to give up what distinguishes us from the rest of the world for
something that makes everyone in the world the same. It's a threat to beauty:
neutral, antiseptic, soulless. A Mao jacket. A concrete apartment block.
Strange, then, that I don't think I've ever been anywhere more
colorful than
Esperantoland. On my second trip there, the Sixth All-Americas Congress in
Havana, I was exposed to so much culture that I started to get a headache. We
sang "Guantanamera" in Esperanto on 10 separate occasions in 10 different
Cuban
musical styles. At the Arta Vespero (Evening of the Arts)--a staple of
Esperanto
congresses where delegates from the host country get to strut their stuff--we
watched a three-hour extravaganza of every performable art Cuba has to offer,
from traditional dances by little girls in white dresses to rumba rap
music. For
the finale we made a 100-meter conga line, weaving our way through the
Museum of
the Revolution. At another staple, the Nacia Vespero (Evening of Nations),
attendees from 20 other countries took the stage. A contingent of Mexicans
sang
folk songs, a Costa Rican played the piano, a Frenchman did a comedy routine
about escargots. No, Esperantists don't want to take away your unique
identity.
On the contrary. They can't get enough of it. They just want you to express it
in Esperanto so that everyone can appreciate it.
But this doesn't mean Esperanto has an identity of its own. Isn't it
just a
soulless translation machine laid on top of this cultural mutual appreciation
society? If it is, then why did I so frequently think to myself, "God, that is
sooooo Esperantoland!"? I started to notice ways of speaking that were hard to
translate out of Esperanto. For example, to say la chielo estas blua (the
sky is
blue), is a perfectly understandable, functional way to communicate, but to
say
la chielo bluas (the sky "is bluing")--taking advantage of the feature that
lets
any word root be made into a verb--now that is Esperanto. People also love to
use the word etoso to describe the feeling in the air at events. "At my first
congress in Toronto I experienced such a bona etoso" or "I met some
Esperantists
in Bulgaria, and we spent the evening chatting and playing music. What bela
etoso!" The dictionary will tell you that etoso means "ethos" or "atmosphere,"
but it will not tell you that it connotes a sort of mystical, positive,
Zamenhofian vibe. For the newcomer, dictionary in hand, this word will be
interpretable and clear, but for the seasoned Esperantist it will evoke a
history of gatherings where the spirit of the Esperanto ideal brought
everyone a
little closer together.
While there are many words that reflect nuances of the Esperanto
experience
not captured by their dictionary definitions, there are some words that make
sense only within the context of Esperantoland. Krokodili (to crocodile) means
to speak in your national language at an event where you should be speaking
Esperanto (conjuring up the image of a reptilian beast flapping its bigjaws).
This behavior is frowned upon, and it is convenient to have it summed up in a
word, so that saying "Hey, stop crocodiling!" is enough to discourage it.
People
may also quietly complain to each other about some verda papo (green pope), a
guy who's always preaching and droning on about the ideals of Esperanto. He
is a
figure not unlike the Jewish mother--annoying at times, but ya gotta love him.
Because he is one of us. He is part of what makes us us. In other words,
it's an
Esperanto thing. You wouldn't understand.
After the Second World War, there was a push to rid the movement of its
eccentricities, spearheaded by Ivo Lapenna, a Yugoslavian Esperantist and
academic lawyer. He held important positions: professor of international
law at
Zagreb University, counsel-advocate at the International Court of Justice
at The
Hague, and professor of Soviet and East European law at the London School of
Economics. Peter Forster, in his book The Esperanto Movement, described him as
having "the sophistication of the cultured cosmopolitan." He was "fluent in
several languages" and had "distinguished himself as a sportsman and a
musician." You can imagine why such a genteel character might not be happy
with
the public image of Esperanto. After attending the 1947 Universal Congress in
Bern, he published an angry plea for respectability, lashing out against the
"naivet s and frivolities which only compromise the cause of the International
Language." He complained that "the dissemination of Esperanto among serious
people" was threatened by the "cranks" he had observed:

One woman with green stockings explained to me that every lady Esperantist
should wear only green stockings for propaganda purposes. One came to
the ball
in a dress, like a nightdress, with masses of green stars, large medium and
small. I saw a loud yellow tie with an even louder green star woven into
it.
In general, one could see stars everywhere; on the chest, in the hair, on
belts, rings, etc.
People will say again that everyone has the right to dress as he wishes.
Certainly; but could we not kindly request such cranks not to hinder the
spread of Esperanto by their standpoint and external appearance? If that
does
not work, have we not at least the right to make a mockery of them,
since they
make a mockery of Esperanto?
War's end had ushered in a new era of international communication and
organization, and Lapenna did not want Esperanto to sabotage once again its
chance to enter the world stage in an official capacity. Proposals for
Esperanto
endorsement after the First World War had received serious consideration at
the
League of Nations. There was enough opposition (the most vocal from the French
delegation, which claimed that French was already the universal language) to
prevent the league from taking up the cause of Esperanto, though it did
accept a
resolution to recommend that it be considered a regular language, rather
than a
code, in the determination of fees for telegraph messages.
The dislocations of the Second World War convinced Lapenna, among others,
that there was a fresh chance for Esperanto, and after a petition bearing the
signatures of more than 500,000 people and 450 organizations was submitted to
the United Nations, UNESCO began to look into the matter. With great hopes for
success, Lapenna presented an eloquent case for Esperanto. Ultimately, the
UNESCO delegates adopted a resolution expressing affinity between the goals of
Esperanto and the goals of UNESCO. The Esperanto community celebrated this
as a
victory, but no concrete measures had really been endorsed. UNESCO essentially
only agreed that yes, Esperanto is a nice idea.
Lapenna's attempts to put a respectable face on Esperanto were not
appreciated by everyone, and the cranks had an ardent voice in John Leslie,
AKA
Verdiro (truth-teller), the secretary of the British Esperanto Association. He
is described in Forster's book as "an 'anarchist, freethinking, patriotic
Scot.'
... He objected to supporting UNESCO, regarding it as a bulwark of financial
capitalism ... He also opposed formality in dress and defended deviations
... He
praised the informal equality among Esperantists of all walks of life and
criticized the importance attached to attracting those famous in other
spheres."
In direct opposition to Lapenna, Leslie promoted an attitude of crank pride
among the green-stocking crowd.
The 1947 congress that Lapenna found so disturbing was also important
in the
life of a young Hungarian named George Soros. His father, Tivadar, was an
active
Esperantist, and had changed the family name from Schwartz to Soros, an
Esperanto verb meaning "will soar." Tivadar had escaped from a Siberian prison
during the First World War and managed to keep his family away from the Nazis
during the Second. When the communists took over in 1947, Tivadar and George
escaped to Switzerland to attend the Esperanto Universal Congress in Bern.
Afterward, the father returned to Hungary and the son went on to Ipswich,
England, for the annual world youth congress. Young George decided he
wanted to
stay in England but only had a tourist visa. He appealed to his fellow
Esperantists for help, and it was Verdiro (Leslie), through a relative in the
British parliament, who arranged George Soros's more permanent visa.
On his way to becoming one of the world's richest men, Soros was for a
time
actively committed to the Esperanto movement. According to the minutes of the
Ipswich conference, he wanted to organize a bicycle trip through Europe,
spreading the word. He also extolled the virtues of Esperanto at Speakers'
Corner in London's Hyde Park, where anyone with an opinion and the bravery to
mount a soapbox can compete for an audience. But he has long since stopped
having anything to do with it. A Belgian woman I spoke to at the Havana
congress
told me bitterly, "He could do so much to help now, but he is a traitor. He
hates Esperanto."
I asked Humphrey Tonkin, who did the English translation of Tivadar
Soros's
memoir of survival during the Second World War, for which George wrote the
foreword, why Soros had changed his mind. "He doesn't hate Esperanto," Tonkin
said. "He hasn't given up on its ideals, but his position is that it had its
chance, and it blew it. Which is a perfectly respectable view."
Born in Britain and educated at Cambridge and Harvard, Tonkin is an
Esperantist but definitely not a kook. He's a professor of English
specializing
in Spenser and Shakespeare, a former Guggenheim fellow, and president emeritus
at the University of Hartford. "Staying sane while dealing with something that
is so low in the popular esteem is problematic," he told me. "It's a
distressingly marginal community. Sometimes when I'm at Esperanto meetings
I say
to myself--and this sounds terrible--I say, 'am I really like that?' But
then, I
sit in a faculty meeting, and I think to myself, 'this is not terribly
different
from an Esperanto congress,' because it's true. The fact is that overall,
people
are wackier than one imagines. So perhaps Esperanto is not that far out."
Tonkin knew about the fringe quality of Esperantoland from the moment
of his
first contact with it. On a trip to Paris when he was barely a teenager, he
went
to a meeting of the Paris Esperanto Society. When the meeting was over, Tonkin
said, he was followed out by "your sort of typical 1950s Paris Marxist, and he
bent my ear at enormous length about Marxism. The awful thing about it was
that
I discovered that Esperanto really works. I understood every word he said."
He was in it for better or worse. When he was not yet 16 years old,
Tonkin
traveled, by himself, from England to an Esperanto congress in Denmark and
fell
into a world full of interesting things. "Not that I found Esperanto was a
comfort exactly, but it provided me with opportunities that I couldn't find in
the rest of my life," he said. "Everything I know about Latvian culture, for
example, I know about as a result of Esperanto."

I will make teh next one shorter, I promise.

unuigxis! biggrin

unuigxi = to join (literally unu "one" + igxi "to become" --- "to become one")

do, unuigxis = "(I) joined"

Bone, dankon. cool

(Last installment)




In 1959 he went to Poland. "Nobody went to Poland in '59 except crazy
Esperanto people," he said, "and I traveled all over the place. I was in Iran
right before the revolution with Esperantists, and what I heard the
Esperantists
saying about Iran was nowhere to be found in the newspapers. Here I was in
direct contact with a collection of people who were not beholden to the United
States or Britain or whatever, and were not going to tell me what they
thought I
wanted to hear. So I was able in a sense to get a particular notion of the
truth
that other people didn't have."
I mentioned a man I had met at the Havana congress, an Icelandic
fisherman
who couldn't be more gaunt, or more silent, or farther from home. He first
learned about Esperanto from a radio broadcast, studied it from a book, and
had
been to every Universal Congress since--Berlin, Tel Aviv, Zagreb, Fortaleza,
Gothenburg. That July, he was headed for Beijing. "You know," Tonkin said,
"there are a lot of Esperantists out there who just haven't yet found their
way
to Esperanto."
Back where it all started for me, at that MIT conference, I never did
gain
an understanding of the role of rock music in Esperanto culture. But I did get
to hear Kimo play. On a stage set up on the lawn in front of the student
center
on the main quad, he brought out his accordion while his friend Jean-Marc
LeClerc, formerly of the group La Rozmariaj Beboj (The Rosemary's Babies),
tuned
his guitar. They began with the mellow strains of Besame Mucho: "Kisu min /
Kisu
min multe ..."
Two gray-haired women in matching green dresses twirled to the music,
their
feet bare in the grass. A large-bellied man with a big green star on both his
cap and his belt buckle stood with his hands in his pockets, swaying
awkwardly.
Others joined the ladies, or perched on benches and sang along. Outsiders
wandered by. The curious ones stopped to listen or to take a leaflet from a
friendly college student in an Esperanto T-shirt. Others sniggered or rolled
their eyes as they refused the leaflet and continued on. I sat at a careful
distance from the stage, hoping it wasn't too obvious that I was part of this
group, but feeling guilty for thinking so. While Esperanto-land has its
share of
people you don't want to meet--insufferable bores, sanctimonious radicals,
proselytizers for Christ, communism, or a new kind of vegetarian healing--for
the most part, the Esperantists I encountered were genuine, friendly,
interested
in the world, and respectful of others. Though I may not have fully crossed
over
myself, I did develop a protective defensiveness about them.
Is it crazy to believe that Esperanto has a chance in the age of English?
It's insane. Ask any businessman in Asia, any hotel operator in Europe. Is it
ridiculous to believe that a universal common language will bring peace to the
world? Of course it is. We have all the brutal evidence we need: the fact that
Serbians and Croatians speak the same language did not prevent the
bloodshed in
Yugoslavia; the shared language of the Hutus and Tutsis did nothing to stop
the
massacres in Rwanda. Do Esperantists really believe either of these
propositions? Whether they do or they don't, as far as they are concerned
they're doing their part. It can't hurt.
The world may not need Esperanto, but it does need people who, like
Zamenhof, are moved to act against "the enmity of nations." Knowing Zamenhof s
fate makes it difficult to dismiss his life's work with a chuckle. During the
bloody peak of the First World War, Zamenhof s brother Alek-sander killed
himself upon being ordered into the Russian army because he couldn't bear to
face once again the horrors he had witnessed while serving as an army doctor
during the Russo-Japanese War. Not long after that, in the midst of death and
destruction on a scale he never could have imagined, Zamenhof died of a broken
heart. He was lucky. He would not have to know that his lineage would end
in yet
another world war with the murder of his children at Treblinka.
Kimo and Jean-Marc began another song whose tune was unfamiliar to me. An
original Esperanto song. Normando, a slight man with a hint of gray in his
beard
came and sat on the grass across from me, his legs folded under him, facing me
with his back to the stage. He proved to be a sweet-natured Esperanto
ambassador
who had been kindly introducing me to people and explaining special phrases
and
vocabulary to me in a modest, nonpedantic way. He leaned forward, and in
French
Canadian-accented Esperanto explained that the song we were hearing is called
Sola. People closer to the stage began to sing along, and he said it is often
played at youth congresses, where it is a sort of anthem. The lyrics tell the
story of a young person who feels completely alone, but then goes to an
Esperanto congress and feels such friendship and connection to the world that
his loneliness leaves him ... until he is back in his own nation in his own
little room. "This song," he almost whispered, "is so meaningful for
Esperantists. Sometimes, when it's played at the congresses, you see people
crying."

Arika Okrent, a linguist living in Philadelphia, is writing a book about
invented languages.

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