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First Came Volapük
After the passion for pasigraphies had faded, a Catholic priest-Monsignor Johann Martin Schleyer of Konstanz, Germany-ignited fresh interest in model languages by publishing his own language, Volapük, in 1880. Unlike the rough ideas for philosophical systems, Volapük had been fully fleshed out, with a vocabulary based on English, Latin and Romance roots and with a somewhat simplified grammar that was based on German and eliminated many conjunctions and declensions. The grammar was still very complex and shared many German idiosyncrasies.
The name Volapük, meaning "world's speech", was derived from the Volapük words vol (itself taken from English world) and pk (borrowed from English speech), with the -a appended to vol indicating possession. Volapük was the first model language to become widely used, gaining hundreds of thousands of adherents in a decade. At its height, Volapük was used for 30 magazines and newspapers and by 300 clubs and associations.
However, Volapük was just seven years old when another, more elegant model language was released-Esperanto.
In one way, Esperanto actually pre-dated Volapük, having first taken form during the childhood of its inventor, Ludwik Lazar Zamenhof. Zamenhof was born in 1859 in Bialystok, Poland (then part of Russia), in an environment steeped in languages. His father, Dr. Mark Zamenhof, was a professor of language who had written a book that compared proverbs from the Russian, Polish, French and German languages. Little Ludwik grew up speaking Russian, but quickly learned Yiddish and Polish, which were used by his extended family. Spurred on by his father, he learned Latin, Greek, German, French, English and Hebrew in school.
An idealist, Ludwik was very aware of the troubles aggravated by people's separation into different language groups. In his home town alone, the languages commonly spoken included Russian, Polish, Yiddish and German. As a result, Ludwik desired a common language that would enable people to easily communicate with one another, eliminating the barriers that separated them while favoring no single social group's language.
Originally, Ludwik thought of reviving Latin or Greek, but when learning English, he realized that grammar could be incredibly simplified. Like a sculptor chipping away stone to reveal the wonder within, he eliminated irregularities and complex constructs. As he wrote to a friend, "I began to simplify, discarding unecessary forms. I saw the grammar gradually melt away under my hands until it occupied only a few pages."
To ensure that others could quickly learn his language, he freely borrowed terms from the many languages that he was familiar with. He would often adopt a common word, such as telefono, which thanks to modern science's dependence on Greek and Latin is widely recognizable. In other instances, he chose what he thought was the most mellifluously sounding word with that meaning. As well as borrowing from classical Latin and Greek, he borrowed words from the Romance, Germanic and Slavic languages.
It was not his goal to make every word instantly recognizable to speakers of other languages. For instance, Anthony Burgess wrongly criticizes Esperanto:
Among the world linguistic lineup, the English "school" is represented as cole, escuela, scuola, escola, scoala, Schule, school (Dutch), skola and skole (in Scandinavia), szkola, skola, shkola (Slav forms), iskola (Hungarian), scholion (Greek), skkuli (Swahili) and sekolah (Bahasa). Zamenhof's word sticks out like a sore thumb-lernejo.
"Zamenhof's word" is actually a compound form, derived from lern-, "to learn" + -ej-, "place" + -o, <noun ending>. To make sure the vocabulary to be learned was minimal, Ludwik created a consistent and extensive system of affixes. For instance, patro means "father," but mother is not matro but patrino, where the -in- suffix indicates "feminine"; as another example, the language has root words representing only half of a concept: grande means "large" but "small" is malgrande, where mal- means "opposite of." While it might seem awkward, it is no more contrived than using the word unhappy to mean "sad."
Additionally, all words are pronounced exactly as spelled, sparing learnings of Esperanto the difficulty experienced by students learning the irregular spellings of French or English, for example.
By the time he was 19 years old, in 1878, two years before Volapük was released, Ludwik felt his language was ready to be shared with others. He published it as a school project, but decided that it was not yet ready for the wider world. He spent the next several years polishing its vocabulary and testing its grammar extensively, by translating from other languages into his own language, and vice versa. In 1887, he was ready, and he published a book in Russian describing his lingvo internacia. The book was published under the pseudonym Dr. Esperanto: "Dr." because by this time Ludwik had a medical degree and was an optometrist and "Esperanto"-which meant "he who hopes" in his language-because he hoped that the language would be widely used. It was not long before Esperanto was the name applied to his language.
Esperanto was an easier language to learn than Volapük, with a dramatically simpler grammar and a vocabulary that was more recognizable to speakers of European languages. Volapük could be read and written, with difficulty, but it was so difficult to converse in that even its inventor had problems. Not even the international conferences convened for devotee of Volapük used the language in a spoken form, whereas Esperanto was widely spoken as the lingua franca of its international conferences.
As a result, in 1889, just two years after the appearance of Esperanto, the Volapük speakers split into two camps, with progressive speakers calling for a reformation of Volapük. Schleyer, Volapük's inventor, rejected the need for any changes. As a result of the schism, 1889 was the last Volapük conference ever held.
A simplified version of Volapük called Idiom Neutral was prepared by progressive Volapük speakers in 1902. Though based on Volapük, it had a very different grammar and vocabulary. Not longer after the invention of Idiom Neutral, Volapük was effectively a dead language.
Esperanto was firmly established in its place. To this day, it is arguably the only living artificial interlanguage.
The Volapük vs. Esperanto debate unlocked a creative effort to develop an international language. Between 1880 and 1907, over 51 other model languages were widely publicized. Sporting names like Balta, Bopal, Dil, Langue Bleue, Latinesce, Spelin and Veltparl, most were blends of other languages. The twentieth century saw languages emerge like Gloro (n Arulo), Ido (n Esperantido), Interglossa, Interlingua, Monling, Novial, Occidental and Ro. None enjoyed the success of Esperanto or Volapük and the proliferation of languages hurt the movement to adopt an international language by keeping its energies focused on "which language is better?" rather than "how do we encourage people to standardize on an international language?"
The following interlanguages are worthy of note:
Esperantido (meaning "descendent of Esperanto" and also known as Esperanto II or Ido) was a version of Esperanto created by Professor Ren de Saussure of Switzerland to have an even simpler grammar than Esperanto.
Ido (another language known as Ido) was created by Marquess Louis de Beaufront, an French Esperantist, and was used from 1907 to 1930 as a modification of Esperanto. It was meant to be a simplification but succeeded only in being different rather than in being simpler.
Interglossa invented by Professor Lancelot Hogben (1895-1975) of England, the author of Mathematics for the Millions, used Latin and Greek roots with a syntax based on Chinese.
Interlingua was created in the 1950s by the International Auxiliary Language Association (IALA, Inc.) of New York. The association proposed Interlingua, which was intended for "perfect communication," with every word having a fixed meaning, with inflections always regular and with word order strictly logical.
Latino sine Flexione ("Latin Without Inflexions", and another language known as Interlingua) was invented by Professor Giuseppe Peano, Italy, a linguist who thought that a version of Latin unencumbered by complex conjugations and declensions would be easy for others to learn. However, the language's vocabulary was too large to make it practical.
Monling used only monosyllables for all root words, but while this was intended to make it easier to learn, it only served to obscure the meanings of its vocabulary, since European speakers were accustomed to polysyllabic words.
Novial was invented by Professor Otto Jespersen (1860-1943) of Denmark.
Occidental was created by Edgar de Wahl of Estonia.
Esperanto
The Esperanto language was meant as a universal second language; from that standpoint, the language has failed. However, its failure stems not from any design issue or mistake in execution, but from an overly optimistic assessment of human nature. For Esperanto to have become established, it would have been enough for the League of Nations or the United Nations to propose it as the official language of international government. That never happened because nations preferred that their own languages be used for international communication-not only was it more prestigious, but it meant that their citizens did not have to learn another language. Grass-roots efforts to get citizens around the world to adopt Esperanto failed for similar reasons.
That said, Esperanto enjoyed greater success than Volapük and enjoys far greater success than any other model language. Esperanto is the only model language spoken around the world. Estimates of the number of speakers ranges from 100,000 to 1 million to 8 million, but whatever the exact estimate, it is a larger body of speakers than used by many natural languages, especially the Native American and Aboriginal languages and the European languages of minority populations such as the Basques. Many newspapers, magazines, novels and poems are published in Esperanto.
Esperanto even exhibits the signs of natural languages, with changes in vocabulary and even a sound change. For instance, the word svati, "to match-make, to find a spouse," has passed out of favor, like the practice it describes, while the [kh] sound, written by an h with a diagonal bar joining the stem, has been largely replaced by the [k] sound.
That Esperanto is used as widely as it is is a testament to the language's elegant design, including its straightforward grammar, its flexible and recognizable vocabulary and its phonetic spelling.
Dr. Zamenhof summarized Esperanto in his "16 Fundamental Rules," which follow.
16 Fundamental Rules of Esperanto's Grammar
1. Esperanto has no indefinite article, only the definite article la, used before nouns of all genders, cases and numbers.
2. There are only two noun cases, nominative and accusative. All singular nominative nouns end in -o; plural nouns add -j; accusative nouns add -n to this. Examples: hundo, "dog"; hundoj, "dogs"; hunda, "(to) dog"; hundajn, "(to) dogs."
3. All basic adjectives end in -a. Adjectives are declined for case and number to agree with the nouns they describe. The comparative form of adjectives is made by preceding the adjective with the word pli, the superlative by preceding the adjective with plej.
4. The basic numbers are unu (1), du (2), tri (3), kvar (4), kvin (5), ses (6), sep (7), ok (8), na (9), dek (10), cent (100), mil (1000). Tens and hundreds are formed by joining numbers: e.g., "11" = dek unu; "111" = cent dek unu. Ordinal nouns are indicated by -a, multiple nouns by -obl, fractional nouns by -on, collective nouns by -op. Examples: tria, "third"; triobl, "by three"; trion, "one third"; triop, "group of three."
5. The personal pronouns are mi, "I"; vi, "you (singular)"; li, "he"; ^si, "we"; ^gi, "it"; si, "-self"; ni, "we"; vi,"you (plural)"; ili, "they"; oni, "one". Possessive pronouns are formed by adding -a; e.g., mia, "my". Pronouns are declined the same as nouns; e.g., min, "me".
6. Verbs are not conjugated for person or number, but only for tense. Tenses are indicated by the following suffixes: -i, infinitive (esti, "to be"); -as, present (estas, "is"), -is, past (estis, "was"); -os, future (estos, "will be"); -us, conditional (estus, "may be"), and -u, imperative (estu, "be!"). Active participles are formed by -ant, -int, -ont, with the vowel indicating past, present, future, same as for the simple tenses; passive participles omit the -n-.
7. All adverbs end in -e, with comparative and superlative forms formed the same as adjectives.
8. All prepositional phrases modify the nominative only.
9. Every word of Esperanto is pronounced according to its spelling.
10. Accent is always on penultimate syllable.
11. Compounds are formed by joining roots; an -o- may be inserted for clarity. For instance, doghouse could be translated by hunddomo (hund-, "dog" + dom-, "house" + -o, noun ending) but hundodomo sounds better.
12. The word ne, "not," is omitted when another negative word is present in a sentence.
13. To show direction towards something (e.g., instead of the preposition "to"), nouns use the accusative case.
14. All prepositions have a definite meaning, except for je, which is used for syntactic purposes.
15. When international words adopted by Esperanto, they are not inflected, but are re-spelled according to Esperanto's orthography.
16. The final vowel of a noun or article may be omitted and replaced by an apostrophe (but this is rarely done).
Some of the rules range from important principles (2, for instance) to graffiti (14). Of course, the rules gloss over some important rules of usage, but overall this is a succinct summary.
Esperanto is most noticeable for its ability to form a large variety of words from a small collection of roots.
edzo
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edz-, (root) + -o, (noun ending)
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husband
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edzino
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edz- + -in-, "feminine" + -o
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wife
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edzi^gi
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edz- + -i^g-, "to become" + -i, (verb ending)
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to get married
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eksedzi^gi
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eks-, "ex-" + edzi^gi
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to get divorced
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ge-edzoj
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ge-, "both genders" + edzo + -j, (plural)
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spouses
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edzi^gejo
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edzi^g-, "to marry" + -ej-, "place" + -o
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wedding chapel
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eksedzi^gejo
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eks-- + edzi^gejo
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divorce court
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This makes it very easy for a speaker to learn new words and to decipher words heard in use. For instance, encountering the word malsanulejo for the first time, someone can dissemble it into its basic roots: mal-, "not" + san-, "healthy" + -ul-, "person" + -ej-, "place" + -o, (noun ending). Combining these roots, malsanulejo means "place of the unhealthy people" or-in other words-a "hospital."
Another advantage of Esperanto is that most of the vocabulary is widely recognizable to speakers of European languages-and that includes much of the Americas. The English speaker, for instance, will easily recognize three quarters of Esperanto's vocabulary. While the politically correct might decry the Eurocentric nature of Esperanto, it is a circumstance both of Zamenhof's time (19th century, when all the world powers were European powers) and place (Eastern Europe).
Personal Reflections on Esperanto
I've tried seriously to learn the language three times now -- once in a club in college, once with computer programs, once with my son with tapes. The third time was prompted by this conversation:
Son: Dad, will you learn Esperanto with me?
Me: Sure. But why did you pick Esperanto?
Son: Well, I tried reading your book on Chinese but that was *way* too hard!
Me: Yes, Chinese is a tough one.
Son: Esperanto is so much easier than Spanish. Patrino is "mother", Fratino is "sister", Filino is "daughter", from Patro, Frato and Filo. Isn't that neat?
Yes, it is neat, and he read the book Teach Yourself Esperanto for a while.
But I am at the moment an eternal beginner. My next attempt will include reading the Esperanto translation of The Hobbit.
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