Esperanto was created in the late 19th century by Ludovic Zamenhof, a Jewish ophthalmologist. With the goal to erase language barriers with between ethnic groups, he created Espranto as a politically neutral and culturally diverse language. So why a language with such lofty intention didn’t make it to become the international language?
An European-centric language
Esperanto is Euro-centric when it comes to vocabulary and some grammatical features. Many of those 9000 words which Esperanto has is rooted from many of the Indo-European languages which doesn’t make Esperanto as international as Zamenhof intended it to be.
For example, the word to compute in Esperanto is komputi, which is very similar. While the Vietnamese word for that is tính toán. It makes the point clear that it’s easier for a speaker of a Indo-European language like English, Spanish, Italian, etc to learn Esperanto than a person from other part of the world.
Being banned throughout history
The use of Esperanto has been outlawed or at least surpressed many times throughout history. Repression was especially pronounced in Nazi Germany, Francoist Spain up until the 1950s, and the Soviet Union under Stalin, from 1937 to 1956. One of many reasons for the Repression of the language was Zamenhof’s Jewish identity.
A failed proposal to make Esperanto an international language
Another reason it failed was France. In the early 1920s, it was once proposed to the League of Nations to make Esperanto should be adopted as the international language. Fearing their language’s dominance power would be affected, France vetoed it and stopped any efforts to make Esperanto the international language.
References
- Bridge of Words: Esperanto and the Dream of a Universal Language
- Esperanto: A Language for the Global Village
- The Decline and Fall of Esperanto
- Esperanto: The language that hope to unite the world