In
English class we have learnt that there are 24 official languages in the
European Union. Could you imagine that all European citizens speak the same
language? Have you ever heard about “Esperanto”? No? Then keep on reading…
The
special thing about Esperanto is the fact that it’s a constructed language,
which means that has been consciously devised for communication, instead of
having developed naturally. Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed
language. It was developed in the 1870s and 80s by L. L. Zamenhof, a Polish doctor and linguist. When Zamenhof started studying English,
he decided that the international language must have a simpler grammar. This
was the birth of Esperanto: It derives mainly from Romanic languages, but also
contains elements from German and English. Its alphabet consists of 28 letters.
Zamenhof published a number of books under the pseudonym
"Doktoro Esperanto" in order to spread Esperanto. - mi estas – I am
- vi estas – you are
- li estas – he is
- ŝi estas – she is
As I
mentioned earlier, Esperanto has been developed to simplify communications
between people from different countries, which is called an “international auxiliary language”. For this reason, it is obvious that some people
want Esperanto to become the official language of the EU. There is even a
political party that was founded to reach this goal: the “Europe –
Democracy – Esperanto”. A report found that the use of Esperanto as the lingua franca (= a
language used to make communication possible between people who are not sharing
a mother tongue) within the EU would have many advantages,
particularly economically speaking, as well as ideologically. There is even an
Austrian Esperanto association which decided to give the place between
Annenstraße and Aberiterkammer in Graz the name “Esperantoplatz”.
Language has always been an intensely political issue.
Zamenhof has already known this when he created “Esperanto“, a language which should be politically neutral for
the world. Although, this sounds like a fantastic idea to me, in my
opinion the execution of this plan is not going to work as it will cause
uncertainty: People often identify their culture with their language so will
there be a loss of cultural identity? How will you persuade someone to learn a
new language and to only use this one in the everyday life? …
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