History of Esperanto

This article summarizes the history of Esperanto of its creation in 1887 with today.

The Esperanto is a built Langue. A built language or artificial language is a Langue created by one or more people in a relatively short time, contrary to the natural languages whose development is largely unconscious and implies several people over one long period of time.

In a booklet published in 1887, the language which will become Esperanto appears for the first time under the name of Lingvo Internacia (“international Language”). Its author, Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof, had the project to facilitate the Communication between people of different languages through the whole world. In this first publication, Zamenhof had used the pseudonym of Doktoro Esperanto (“Hoping Doctor”, “Doctor which hopes”), from where the name under which the language was popularized thereafter.

Beginnings

Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof outline at the 19 years age a first project of Lingwe Uniwersala . This test is the answer of an young man sensitive vis-a-vis a political and social linguistic context extremely tended in which the Poland is at that time, and in particular its city Białystok, divided by Poles, Germans, Russians and Jews which côtoient themselves there without same including themselves/understanding. This first outline will be destroyed by his/her father, fearing that at the time of the study trips of his son in Russia, it is taken for a spy.

In 1887, to the 28 years age, it presents a new completely worked over again version of it, under the name of International Langue signed pseudonym of Doctor Esperanto (“the doctor which hopes”). In its foreword of the manual first published in 1887, Zamenhof had defined the goal of the International Language thus: “That each person having learned the language can use it to communicate with people of other nations, that this language is or not adopted in the whole world, that it has or not many users. ”

Expansion

The first club of Esperanto is born in 1888 on the ruins from the club from Volapük (another built language which had had a relative success) Nuremberg when its members discover the language suggested by Zamenhof. It is as in this same city as appears in 1889, Esperantisto , the first newspaper in international language. The circle of the people who launch out in her study increases. The list of the first thousand addresses appears the same year with five names in France, of which that of Louis de Beaufront (in fact Louis Chevreux).

More than 60% of the subscribers of Esperantisto are Russian in 1895. To the serious financial problems which he knows the prohibition of entry adds on the Russian territory. Indeed Leon Tolstoï become a large friend of Esperanto after having studied it, writes an article which displeases with the censure tsarist. It is the death-blow for the newspaper. Transnational solidarity appears then for the first time to save the language.

A student of the university of Uppsala and a viticultural director of institute of Odessa launch at the end of the same year a new newspaper, Lingvo Internacia . The Swedish period thus relays the Russian period. The initiatives multiply.

The progression accelerates for this “language of Doctor Esperanto” whom one finds already simpler and sympathetic nerve to name “Esperanto”. In Switzerland, Helene Giroud is in 1895 the first blind woman in the world to learn how it then to teach it. German professor, 28 years old, Alice Roux is the first woman to learn it in France. It makes it discover in 1896 with a high-school pupil of Louhans, Gabriel Chavet who, as of the following year, there founds the first club of Esperanto de France and one of the six first in the world.

In 1898 a first number of Espérantiste appears which announces the foundation of the Company for the propagation of Esperanto (SPPE). The French period practically starts with the XXe century. Published in Sweden since 1895, Lingvo Internacia is transferred in 1904 in Paris where the drafting is since 1902, then under the feather of Theophilus Cart who returns from the university of Uppsala or he taught French. The language is propagated already out of Europe: Canada in 1901, Algeria, Chile, Japan, Malta, Mexico and Peru in 1903, Tunisia in 1904, Australia, the United States, Guinea, Indo-China, New Zealand, Tonkin and Uruguay in 1905, etc

1905 with the first World congress of Esperanto in Boulogne-sur-Mer are one year historical in the world espérantophone. It marks the first important gathering people of different nationalities with Esperanto like only common language. Accommodating 688 participants originating in 20 countries, this congress shows that Esperanto is adapted perfectly to the function of international language. 1905 are also the year of the acceptance of the Fundamento of Esperanto i.e. the whole of the intangible principles which guarantee the stability and the evolution of the language, and the year of the creation of the linguistic Committee which constitutes the first stage towards the foundation of the Académie of Esperanto, in 1908, at the moment when the language passed through a crisis of “réformite” with the creation of the Ido.

Theophilus Cart in the columns of Lingvo Internacia will be one of the defender of Fundamento. He was in favor of the orthodoxy of the language, and took part in the controversies on the questions of morphology and syntax which agitated the circles esperantists at the beginning of the century, as in the polemics which then reflect in danger the unit of the community espérantophone. In order to protect Esperanto against any ideological drift, the congress of Boulogne-sur-Mer adopts the Declaration on the Espérantisme which stipulates in particular that:

“the esperantism is the effort to spread in the whole world the use of a neutral human language which, without involving themselves in the interior matters of the people and without aiming less world at eliminating the existing national languages, would give to the men various nations the possibility of including itself/understanding; who could be used as language of conciliation within the institutions of the countries where various nationalities are in linguistic conflict; and in which could be published works which have an equal interest for all the people. Any other idea or aspiration that such or such esperantist associates with the esperantism are its purely deprived business, for which the esperantism is not responsible. ”

The congresses are followed from now on each year until 1913.

The period of the Wars

The First World War bursts the August 2nd 1914, just at the moment when the congress of Paris, for which 3739 people of about fifty country were registered, must open in the presence of Zamenhof. It will not take place, the German authorities having prevented Zamenhof from coming there.

The war involves the disappearance of many associations and publications of Esperanto, inter alia Lingvo Internacia . Many esperantists are killed with the face. Zamenhof dies the April 14th 1917. The search for missings is organized. President of Universala Esperanto-Asocio (UEA), which it founded in 1908, Hector Hodler recommends to the delegates to visit as much as possible the prisoners of war and to see whether there are no esperantists among them. The Christian Association of young people (YMCA) diffuses itself of the booklets of Esperanto near the prisoners of war of various countries. He is learned in camps from detention where no other means allows people not having any common language to include itself/understand well in also little time. Fraternization between the prisoners can be thus established. It is not rare one prisoner teaches the language to several hundreds of others which copy the words and the rules, inter alia in Siberia.

Universala Esperanto-Asocio, whose seat is in Geneva, ensures each day the transmission from 200 to 300 correspondences between the belligerent countries, sometimes even with their translation, between separated friends, prisoners, their family or close relations. The number of services thus rendered reached 200.000 during the war. Esperanto is also used by the Croix-Rouge. In 1916, whereas he is under-secretary of state to health, Justin Godart recommends his training by a circular to the military male nurses. It orders 10.000 specimens of the small handbook of the captain Bayol, Esperanto-Ruĝa Kruco , to make it distribute. This booklet is translated in seven languages.

Esperanto is very quickly raised when peace returns, so much so that, as of 1922, its teaching is exempted in Germany with 20.000 pupils by 630 teachers. On the other hand, the same year, the French government opposes a proposal deposited with the seat of the Société of the Nations in December 1921 by eleven countries among which the India, the China, the Perse and the South Africa. It aims its inscription among the allowed languages in all the schools of the world.

In France, the Minister for the state education prohibited, in 1922 the provision of the school buildings for its teaching, it in what he will be imitated in 1935 by the Minister for the education of the IIIe Reich, Adolf Hitler having criticized Esperanto in a speech.

In Kassel, in 1923, is chaired by honor of Albert Einstein IIIe congress of the Worldwide association Anationale (SAT), organization in sociocultural matter and vocation émancipatrice founded with Prague in 1921 and whose working language is Esperanto. Forty-two scientists of the Academy of Science express the same year a wish in favor of its teaching as “a chief of work of logic and simplicity”.

French prohibition is cancelled in 1924 by the government of Edouard Herriot. Rise is important in certain countries. The English linguist Edward Thorndike notes at the beginning of the Années 1930 that Esperanto is as widespread as German in Soviet Union. He is the cultural main activity of Lapland, on the railway line of Luleå with Narvik.

Obstacles with the extension of the fabric espérantophone appear, sometimes even before the years 1930, as with the Portugal and in Romania. Prohibitions and even of persecutions strike it for a long time as the totalitarian modes gain Europe and the world, starting from 1933 in Germany and of the Stalinist Purges in the USSR. Dimitri Snejko is the first Russian esperantist with being stopped in the USSR, with Minsk, on February 5th, 1936. It will leave the Gulag only in 1955 and will die in 1957.

In France, the National union of the teachers expresses a wish in favor of its teaching in 1932 and another in 1937. Appointed of the Rhone, Maurice Roland deposits in 1935 a motion for a resolution “tending to invite the government to introduce the international language Esperanto into the programs of public education”. The interest of its application in various spheres of activity is argued at the time of an International Conference which is taken place in Paris in 1937 within the framework of the International exhibition of Arts and the Techniques in the modern life. It results from it that the Minister for the State education Jean Zay considers it desirable to facilitate the study of it. Its teaching is allowed within the framework of the socioeducational activities by a ministerial circular of October 11th, 1938 whose text is always valid.

For Hitler, Esperanto is the language of the Jewish Conspiration and the Francs-maçons, for Stalin, that of the Cosmopolitisme middle-class. In the Years 1940, these two men exert the power on the near total of the continental Europe. Esperanto is prohibited, its stocks of books are liquidated, good number of its partisans are locked up in the Concentration camps. With the Japan, in China, in Spain, in Portugal, the modes with the capacity practice in its connection a less violent policy, but which goes in the same direction.

The Second world war has effects definitely more important than the first on the community espérantophone and leaves it bloodless. The duration of the brake application which stopped its dash can be estimated overall with the equivalent of a generation. The raising is all the more difficult as the Cold war obstacle exchanges, and English asserts little by little like international language . The international congress of the New Education, which are held in Paris in 1946, Formula One a project for the teaching of Esperanto and training of Masters to his teaching. Its value in the international cultural exchanges is the subject of recommendations at the time of the general conferences of UNESCO, in 1954 then in 1985, and of the Worldwide organization of tourism in Manila (Philippines) in 1980.

After the cold war

In 1993, after a long and fastidious investigation, PEN international club admits the Esperanta PEN-Central in its center. In July 1996, the proclamation of Prague, seems to take the opposite course to the Manifeste of Raùmo while registering for the community espérantophone, of the objectives of widening.

Today

The steps continue to make admit Esperanto like language with whole share in teaching, and near the international organizations for her adoption like auxiliary language common to all. The Hungary is the only country of Europe to propose a test of Esperanto on the level of the Baccalauréat. Although dispersed with the four corners of planet, the espérantophones knew to benefit from the New technologies of communication such as the Email, the Mailing lists, VOIP and a number always crescent of Internet sites. In 2001, the version espérantophone of Wikipédia, is launched, thus creating the second encyclopedia general practitioner written in a built language. It became one of most popular Internet sites espérantophones. One can also note the creation of sites of international information such as Ĝangalo which created in 2005 a television channel by Internet: Internacia Televido ceased nevertheless emitting in August 2006. The site Farbskatol' is devoted to the diffusion of vidéos in Esperanto. Others vidéos in this language are also diffused on the site YouTube .

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