A fair solution to the language problem :

Esperanto

Charmian Common

“Esperanto? I thought it had disappeared!” “It was a good idea – shame it didn’t take off.” “Oh, Esperanto! This is great, you should advertise it more!” “But it has no culture.” “It doesn’t have many words, does it?”

These are some of the remarks we heard during the Geneva Book Fair, where the local Esperanto group had a small stand at the edge of the Alternative Village.

In fact, far from disappearing, Esperanto is experiencing a great resurgence mainly due to the Internet. There are many very lively sites, some of which offer free courses for beginners, and a lively correspondence service by means of which one can communicate with esperantists all over the world. Esperanto is over 100 years old and it is true that its popularity has waxed and waned over the years. The dominance of the English language is usually given as the reason for its lack of success, however it is now recognized more and more that English is not spoken so universally as is claimed and moreover that English is a very difficult language to learn.

I got interested in Esperanto as a means of communication in the organizations – in particular my ex-employer WHO – because this seems to be such a tough problem. The experts who work for WHO are usually specialists in particular health areas and may not be linguists. They have to travel a lot and would not find it easy to keep up with language courses. I decided to have a closer look at the language to see if it really is easy to learn, and much to my surprise I discovered a very attractive language with a superb and beautifully logical grammar – it certainly is the first time I got hooked on a language because of its grammar! Esperanto is fun and a very amusing language – its humour is very distinctive and it is rare to have a conversation in Esperanto without lots of laughter.

After completing the free course of 10 lessons on the Internet, I decided to find out if there were any local Esperantists and, with the help of the Internet, I discovered that there is a local club, Esperanto- Grupo La Stelo Genève, which meets once a month, and classes at the Université Populaire de Genève for beginners and at intermediate level. After my Internet course I was able to start with the intermediate class. At the end of the school year, when we were faced with 4 months holiday, I proposed a weekly conversation group for beginners, as I needed to improve my spoken language, and I also attended a 6-day total immersion course in the UK – this was great fun! The conversation group helped a lot and is still going strong 2 years later.

Esperanto certainly is easy to learn – there are no exceptions and once you have mastered the rules and a fair amount of vocabulary you can use the language simply by applying the rules. I would say that after a year I had attained a level where I could understand, read and write the language with ease and speak sufficiently well to maintain a conversation on any subject without reverting to English or French. I eventually discovered that in Geneva there is a more advanced conversation group, conducted by a very eminent esperantist whom we are lucky enough to have as a neighbour – Claude Piron. Some of you may remember him, as he used to be an interpreter/translator in the UN and WHO. He has written many books directly in Esperanto, including some books used as teaching aids.

Some interesting facts

1887, Dr L.L. Zamenhof published the first Esperanto text book under the name of “Dr Esperanto” in Russian. It was subsequently translated into Polish, German, French and English.

1905 The first Universal Congress was held in Bourgogne-sur-Mer, France, the 100th anniversary will be celebrated there in March 2005, and the next Universal Congress will be held in Vilnius, Lithuania, at the end of July 2005.

Internet sites of interest:

www.esperanto.net – a site with a lot of general information about Esperanto and on-line courses www.lernu.net – a nice site for learning on the Internet www.uea.org – the Universal Esperanto Association’s site www.gxangalo.com – an on-line news site The Geneva group’s site: http://charmian-lastelo.chez.tiscali.fr

Local activities

The UPG (www.upcge.ch, tel: 022 339 05 00) courses are held at the Collège Voltaire on Thursdays (beginners) from 18h00 to 19h30 and on Wednesdays (intermediate) from 17h30 to 19h30 every week (in term-time).

The Esperanto Group La Stelo meets once a month (on the first Tuesday) at the Brasserie des Cheminots, 7 rue des Gares (behind the station, next to the Montbrillant Poste).

The Monday conversation group for beginners meets in the same place every Monday from 18h00.

The Conversation Group with Claude Piron is held in the Maison du Quartier de PlainPalais, 1 rue de la Tour (near the Hôpital Cantonal) every Thursday from 12h00 to 13h00 (in term-time).

There are many gatherings of Esperantists in various parts of the world, the biggest of which is the annual Universal Congress. I attended last year’s in Gothenburg, Sweden, and it was a magical experience – to be in a group of around 2000 people from 62 countries and to be able to communicate with everyone! I could speak with people from Japan, China, Russia, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Finland, to name a few – just as if I had a babel fish in my ear! (See The Hitch-Hikers’ Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams – intergalactic travellers would slip a babel fish in their ear and thus be able to communicate with other inhabitants of the galaxy). The best thing is that if you get stuck, everyone helps each other to find the right word or the correct grammar – you don’t feel stupid because everyone is in the same boat.

Esperanto is a very versatile and practical language – the focus is on using the language as a means of communication, so one is expected to use it immediately – few concessions are made for beginners! This does not mean that it does not have a cultural side – far from it! There is a very rich literature including a lot of poetry, many novels, including science fiction and thrillers written directly in Esperanto, and also some very brilliant translations – e.g. Hamlet (translated by Zamenhof himself), The Hound of the Baskervilles (translated by William Auld, a very eminent Scottish writer), Le Petit Prince, Le Grand Meaulnes, Tintin et Asterix. It also opens a window to literature that is not easily available in English translation – I have discovered some interesting Scandinavian and oriental writers. The practical side of the language is demonstrated by the fact that over 1000 terminologies have been published to date.

It has been proved that children who learn Esperanto find it easier to learn other languages – Claude Piron started learning Esperanto when he was 12 and subsequently learned Chinese (amongst other languages!) after his interest was stimulated by a Chinese boy he corresponded with in Esperanto. The Geneva group was invited to present a small exhibition in a school in Geneva in June by one of the teachers who visited our stand at the Geneva Book Fair. She is promoting the introduction of Esperanto in primary schools from the age of 7, before the children have to contend with German and English – two very difficult languages which often lead to blocks in children who don’t learn languages easily.

The European Union now has 20 “official” languages and a huge budget is allocated to interpretation/translation. Apparently, English has become the language of communication, which means that many people are disadvantaged when it is not their mother tongue. Mistranslations and misinterpretations are rife, understandably with such a versatile language. Also this situation is not very fair, is it? The United Nations is better off, with “only”6 official languages. So, aren’t we lucky that we have another option – Esperanto exists, is already used by millions of people in every country in the world, and at nearly 120 years old, it has surely come of age.

A glimpse of Esperanto:

Note: the circumflex accent softens the letter, e.g. g as in “go” and ^g as in “George”. The other accent is placed on the “u”, to make a dipthong, e.g. au or eu. “C” is pronounced “ts” and “j” as “y”. T he stress is always on the last but one syllable and all letters are pronounced. Pronunciation is similar to Italian. See the Lernu! site for a complete description of the grammar.

The author is a former staff member of WHO.