Seven Castles

Esperanto

                                      

October 12, 2007

 

Esperanto is an artificial international language created in 1887 with a vocabulary based on word roots common to many European languages and a regularized system of inflection, for use as an international second language to ease communication between speakers of different languages.

 

The name of Esperanto is after Dr. Esperanto, "one who hopes," pseudonym of Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof (1859–1917), a Polish oculist and linguist. He developed it during the period 1877-1885. As he grew up in a polyglot society, he was convinced that a common language would be necessary to resolve many of the problems that lead to strife and conflict. He rejected the major languages of his day (French, German, English and Russian) because they were difficult to learn and would put their native speakers at an advantage in discussion with respect to those who did not speak them natively; and he rejected the two "dead" languages with which he was familiar, Latin and Greek, because they were even more complicated and unwieldy than the currently extant major languages. He began work on his planned language as a junior in high school, and eventually published the first textbook of the language in 1887, at the time of his marriage and early in his medical career.

 

Esperanto's advantages are basically two: it is a neutral language, being the property of no particular group of people and therefore the equal property of everybody, and it is relatively easy to learn. For an English speaker, Esperanto is perhaps five times as easy to learn as Spanish, ten times as easy as Russian, and "considerably" easier than Chinese, Japanese or Arabic.

 

About 75% of Esperanto's vocabulary comes from Latin and Romance languages (especially French), about 20% comes from Germanic languages (German and English), and the rest comes mainly from Slavic languages (Russian and Polish) and Greek (mostly scientific terms).

 

Esperanto is phonetic: every word is pronounced exactly as it is spelled. There are no "silent" letters or exceptions.

 

The grammar is simple and regular. Nouns have no gender and end in -o, and there is only one definite article, la. Adjectives are marked with the ending -a. Verbs are regular and have only one form for each tense or mood. Its flexible word order allows speakers from different language families to use the structures with which they are most familiar and still speak perfectly intelligible and grammatically correct Esperanto. This also makes Esperanto an excellent translator of such different languages as Chinese, Japanese, Latin, English and French.

 

The Universal Esperanto Association was founded 1908. In the 20th century, it had been taught in schools and universities throughout the world but has not received wide acceptance as an international language. Its grammar and lexicon are relatively unfamiliar to users who do not know other Indo-European languages, as its syntax, spelling, and pronunciation are influenced especially by Slavonic.

 

Although no country has adopted the language officially, it has enjoyed continuous usage by a community with millions of speakers.

 

Today, Esperanto is employed in world travel, correspondence, cultural exchange, conventions, literature, language instruction, TV and radio broadcasting. Some state education systems offer elective courses in Esperanto, and there is evidence that learning Esperanto is a useful preparation for later language learning. For example, one may become more fluent in French by first studying Esperanto for six months and then studying French for a year and a half, rather than studying French for two continuous years. The reason may be that Esperanto's regular grammar and word formation and flexible syntax makes it easier to understand other languages' grammar and rules.

 

I was an active Esperantist and our library (with me as the chief librarian) once subscribed the magazine of El Popola Ĉinio. My knowledge of Esperanto contributes a lot for my studies of English. In the early 1990s, Radio Shanghai even invited me to produce a music program featuring songs in Esperanto. I exchanged letters with my Esperantist friends all over the world (mostly in East Europe) and had some at my home!

【作者: zhangliping】【访问统计:】【2007年10月12日 星期五 05:29】【注册】【打印】