Esperanto
Esperanto
Esperanto
The language's original name was "La Internacia Lingvo", which means the
international language Zamenhof's goal was to create an easy to learn and
politically neutral language that would serve as a universal second
language to foster peace and international understanding.
Esperanto was created in the late 1870s by Dr. Ludovic Lazarus Zamenhof, a
Polish-Jewish ophthalmologist at the time when Poland was part of
the Russian Empire. According to Zamenhof, he created this language to
foster harmony between people from different countries.
Since the Second World War, the number of esperanto speakers has been
increased by an average of over 6,000 people.
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. 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.
After the Spanish Civil War, Franco in Spain persecuted
the Anarchists and Catalan nationalists among which Esperanto was
extended
Classification
As a constructed language, Esperanto is not genealogically related to
any ethnic language.
The phonology, grammar, vocabulary, and semantics are based on the
western Indo-European languages.
The phonemic inventory is essentially Slavic, while the vocabulary derives
primarily from the Romanic languages, with a lesser contribution from
the Germanic languages.
The Institute of Cybernetic Pedagogy has compared the length of study time
it takes Francophone high school students to obtain comparable 'standard'
levels in Esperanto, English, German, and Italian. The results were:
• 2000 hours studying German = is comparable to
• 1500 hours studying English =
• 1000 hours studying Italian =
• 150 hours studying Esperanto.
The results show that esperanto is a real form of an universal language
because it takes much less study in comparison to other romanic
languages.
Esperanto has been placed in many proposed political situations. The most
popular of these is Europe – Democracy – Esperanto, which aims to establish
Esperanto as the official language of the European Union. The Irish political
party Éirígí has recently adopted the green star as its emblem partly in
support of Esperanto as an international language instead of English.
Personally I prefer Esperanto because is not a sort of universal language
that can affect the survival of other languages, but takes elements from
many cultures and integrate them into new forms of expression.
Ariel Alvestegui IVºA