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La estonteco de la internacia lingvo
Sep. 13th, 2008 12:03 pmI am pessimistic about the prospects of a revival of the Esperanto movement, solely on the basis that a soufflé very rarely rises twice. I personally love Esperanto as a language on its own merits - there are two basic ways to create an auxiliary language, make one up from first principles or create an artificially simplified Romance language, and E-o kind of achieves a very nice balance between the two. I particularly like the quasi-agglutinative morphology - for those who don't know linguistic jargon, that means "being able to put words together from any bits which are lying around, like Lego".
Another excellent way in which E-o was "the best of both words" is what happened at the 1905 Boulogne congress - at the same time Zamenhof made the language "open source" (gave up his rights as author), but the movement agreed that no significant messing with the grammar would happen except in the context of getting it adopted as an official auxiliary language. It's that careful balance which has meant that the language has continued to be usable and flexible without splintering.
But the point was that E-o's popularity wasn't really to do with the virtues or otherwise of the language - it was a matter of being in the right place at the right time for an auxilliary language movement. That epoch ended, I think now sadly, in 1914. I do think that we still need a universal democratic auxiliary language for grassroots global networking - but there isn't a groundswell for a movement yet, since "bad English" seems to be doing the job.
I don't have much faith that when such a movement does arise it will be behind Esperanto, although there are no other serious contenders as it stands. But on the other hand, I don't have much but contempt for the "raumista" crowd, who want to use Esperanto to create a self-selected linguistic minority (a micronation on steroids, in other words!) Not only is that contrary to everything that Zamenhof lived and died for, it seems disturbingly close to the European New Right ideology. It's worth noting that the only Esperantist member of the European Parliament was elected for a Slovakian far-right party.
So that's why I'm not actively involved in the Esperanto movement as it stands, although I do think the language is beautiful (in a weird Frankenstein's Monster way) and potentially very useful. I still maintain that the most useful thing Esperantists could possible do would be to volunteer as a relay-translation team at international gatherings of the social movements.
Another excellent way in which E-o was "the best of both words" is what happened at the 1905 Boulogne congress - at the same time Zamenhof made the language "open source" (gave up his rights as author), but the movement agreed that no significant messing with the grammar would happen except in the context of getting it adopted as an official auxiliary language. It's that careful balance which has meant that the language has continued to be usable and flexible without splintering.
But the point was that E-o's popularity wasn't really to do with the virtues or otherwise of the language - it was a matter of being in the right place at the right time for an auxilliary language movement. That epoch ended, I think now sadly, in 1914. I do think that we still need a universal democratic auxiliary language for grassroots global networking - but there isn't a groundswell for a movement yet, since "bad English" seems to be doing the job.
I don't have much faith that when such a movement does arise it will be behind Esperanto, although there are no other serious contenders as it stands. But on the other hand, I don't have much but contempt for the "raumista" crowd, who want to use Esperanto to create a self-selected linguistic minority (a micronation on steroids, in other words!) Not only is that contrary to everything that Zamenhof lived and died for, it seems disturbingly close to the European New Right ideology. It's worth noting that the only Esperantist member of the European Parliament was elected for a Slovakian far-right party.
So that's why I'm not actively involved in the Esperanto movement as it stands, although I do think the language is beautiful (in a weird Frankenstein's Monster way) and potentially very useful. I still maintain that the most useful thing Esperantists could possible do would be to volunteer as a relay-translation team at international gatherings of the social movements.
