Esperanto was created in the late 19th century by Ludovic Zamenhof, a Jewish ophthalmologist. With the goal of erasing language barriers between ethnic groups, he created Esperanto as a politically neutral and culturally diverse language. So why didn’t a language with such a lofty intention become the international language?
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An Eurocentric Language
Esperanto is Eurocentric when it comes to its vocabulary and some grammatical features. Many of the 9,000 words in Esperanto are rooted in 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 to its English counterpart. In contrast, the Vietnamese word for that is tính toán. This makes it clear that it’s easier for a speaker of an Indo-European language, such as English, Spanish, or Italian, to learn Esperanto than it is for a person from another part of the world.
Being Banned Throughout History
The use of Esperanto has been outlawed or at least suppressed 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 the many reasons for the repression of the language was Zamenhof’s Jewish identity.
A Failed Proposal to Make Esperanto an International Language
Another reason for its failure was France. In the early 1920s, it was proposed to the League of Nations that Esperanto be adopted as the international language. Fearing that their language’s dominant power would be affected, France vetoed the proposal 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 hoped to unite the world