Slides for the special lecture in Spui25, 8 oct 2015

1. An alternative globalisation
Why learn Esperanto today?
Federico Gobbo
F.Gobbo@uva.nl
Spui25, in cooperation with the Faculty of Humanities, 8 october 2015
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2. A Retrospective:
Why I learnt Esperanto
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3. The linguistic heritage of my family
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4. The importance of science fiction. . .
Cover of my old edition of Stefano Benni’s Terra! SF-novel
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5. . . . and of Tolkien’s Middle Earth!
Esperanto edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

6. The influence of Esperanto on Tolkien’s languages
Tolkien gave at the Esperanto Congress in Oxford in 1930 entitled A
Hobby for the Home, later known as A Secret Vice:
Personally I am a believer in an ‘artificial’ language, at any rate
for Europe a believer, that is, in its desirability, as the one thing
antecedently necessary for uniting Europe, before it is
swallowed by non-Europe; [. . . ] also I particularly like
Esperanto. . . which is good a description of the ideal artificial
language [but] my concern is not with that kind of artificial
language at all. (my emphasis)
from A Secret Vice, J. R. R. Tolkien
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7. The pleasure of inventing languages
[During the war, ] I shall never forget a little man. . . revealing
himself by accident as a devotee [of Esperanto], in a moment of
extreme ennui. . . crowded with (mostly) depressed and wet
creatures. We were listening to somebody lecturing on
map-reading, or camp-hygiene. . . rather we were trying to avoid
listening. . . [He] said suddenly in a dreamy ovice: ‘Yes, I think I
shall express the accusative case by a prefix!’ A memorable
remark! [. . . ] Just consider the splendour of the words! ‘I shall
express the accusative case.’ Magnificent! (author’s emphasis)
from A Secret Vice, J. R. R. Tolkien
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8. Inventing languages for fantasy role-playing (1980s). . .
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9. Nowadays you can roleplay in Esperanto too!
Home page of the web site: http://drakoj.iksoj.net/

10. 1993: my interest in Esperanto becomes academic
Cover of the Esperanto edition of The search for the perfect language,
originally in Italian

11. 1998: my MA thesis on the sociolinguistics of EO
I received the Premio Lapenna for the best thesis on Esperanto, with colleague Sabine Fiedler
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12. Since Feb 2014: bijzonder hoogleraar here
My official web page in Dutch at the UvA
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13. Why Esperanto is a fascinating
language
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14. Esperanto, an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014), the first globalisation happened
between 1870 and 1914, when the major European colonizing
nation-states conquered the world and established their empires (de
jure or de facto).
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream of
‘perpetual peace’ was absolute for many members of the ´elites –
philosophical position called positivism.
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15. Esperanto, an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014), the first globalisation happened
between 1870 and 1914, when the major European colonizing
nation-states conquered the world and established their empires (de
jure or de facto).
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream of
‘perpetual peace’ was absolute for many members of the ´elites –
philosophical position called positivism.
Esperanto came out in that moment.
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16. Esperanto as part of the innovations of its time
1865: International Telegraph Union;
1874: Universal Postal Union;
1876: Alexander Graham Bell makes the first phone call;
1884: International Meridian Conference (Greenwich);
1886: the Coca-Cola was born in Atlanta, US
1887: Zamenhof publishes Esperanto in Warsaw, Poland;
1888: The Kodak camera was born: ‘you press the button - we do
the rest’:
1889: inauguration of the Tour Eiffel in Paris;
1894: Pierre de Coubertin restores the Olympic Games;
1900: L’Exposition de Paris: the cinema was born.
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17. The patent of the telephone by A. G. Bell

19. The cover of the first book of Esperanto, 1887

20. Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof
Born in Bialystok, 1859, a town now in Poland – then under the Tsar
– Zamenhof was a Jew (Litvak Ashkenazi), bilingual Yiddish (with his
mother) and Russian (with his father).
He had a twofold dream in his life: to set an ethnic-free bridge across
the nations, beyond any kind of wall, through a neutral religion
(Hillelism) and a neutral language (Esperanto).
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21. Esperanto as a contact language
(Germanic + Romance + Slavic) x regularization = Esperanto

22. La viro salutas nin
c 2014 Stanislavo Belov. Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko

23. Colour codes adopted here
1. substantives (NP heads) are in blue;
2. adjectives, determiners, numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan;
3. verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red;
4. adverbs and the like (MAdv, V tails) are in orange;
5. affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray;
6. accusative marker (ending in -n) is in green.

24. Possible descriptions of the photo
La viro salutas la publikon.
La viro salutas vin.
La viro salutas vin afable.
La viro salutas vin per desegno .
La viro salutas vin per desegno sur la nigra tabulo .
La viro apogas la manon sur la muro .
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25. Verbs have 6 possible endings. No exceptions
1. -as for present tense;
2. -is for past tense;
3. -os for future tense;
4. -us for conditional;
5. -u for imperative;
6. -i for infinitive.
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26. Ne forgesu la akuzativon!

27. Esperanto estas regula lingvo
La viro salutas vin afable
verbo
artikolo subjekto objekto
adverbo
De man begroet jullie vriendelijk
The man greets you kindly
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28. Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la angla
granda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephant
malgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephant
rapida ˆcevalo een snel paard a fast horse
malrapidaj ˆcevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
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29. Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
c 2015 Huffington Post

30. The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la angla
ˆcevalo paard horse
ˆcevalino merrie mare
ˆcevalido veulen colt
ˆcevalejo stal stable
ˆcevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
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31. Familio de ˆcevaloj
c 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr

32. French Esperantists come into the arena
Source: Garv´ıa (2015:78)

33. Universala Kongreso, 1905
Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France
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34. From the speech of Zamenhof, 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homoj
el la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj, kaj ili renkontas sin reciproke
ne mute kaj surde, sed ili komprenas unu la alian, ili parolas
unu kun la alia kiel fratoj, kiel membroj de unu nacio.
Rough translation in English:
In the small town of the French seaside came together persons
from the most different countries and nations, and they meet
one the other reciprocally not mute and deaf, but they
understand one the other, they speak one with the other as
brothers, as members of just one nation.
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35. La bela sonˆgo de l’ homaro. . .

36. . . . ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
c 1915 Louis Raemaekers satirieke kaart van Europa, Het gekkenhuis (oud liedje, nieuwe wijs)

37. Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garv´ıa (2015:100)
summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927), these are the
main motivation in learning Esperanto (US, UK, Germany-Austria):

38. Examples: Esperanto Movement of the Workers. . .
CC 1936

39. . . . Catholic Esperantists in Austria. . .
CC 1929

40. . . . vegetarians, etc.
c 1914 Vegetarano, the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo

41. ‘Vestaˆoj malnovaj’, from: The Great Dictator, 1940
CC 2014 Vikimedio

42. Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
c 2014 Dan Mazur. Esperantists

43. Esperanto: history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory. However, we can
consider congresses, festivals, and meetings in local clubs as the
‘language territories’ of the language, where the community members
gather. This is the geography of Esperanto.
The places where these events happen – as well as some places where
Esperanto is used on a firm basis – form the geography of Esperanto.
The history of Esperanto drives new initiatives, rooted in virtual
and real places.
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44. Esperanto lives today: Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer, 110 years after the 1st
one
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45. Une maison de la culture de l’esp´eranto `a Boulogne
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46. The new Esperanto train in Poland
source: Facebook page of the Polish government asking for polling

47. Virtual places: the success of Duolinguo
screenshot made the 8th of October 2015 (the number increases very fast!)

48. Esperanto between language and culture
The fascination of Esperanto comes:
1. internally from the structural character of the language and
2. externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself, which is used to produce original cultural
products (poetry, prose, theater, music, comics, films, etc.).
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49. Why learn Esperanto today?
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50. Why learn Esperanto today?
(finally!)
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51. The four factors that motivates esperantists
1. political factor, for an alternative globalisation;
2. cultural factor, as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture;
3. cognitive factor, to foster native bilingualism, especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family.
4. ICT factor, for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software.
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52. An alternative globalisation is possible
Fronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco, ekologia krizaro,
pliprofundigo de la breˆco inter riˆcaj kaj malriˆcaj landoj, kultura
unuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiˆgo de la
demokratia vivo de la socioj, la alimondisma movado [. . . ]
senperforte celas alternativan, solidaran tutmondiˆgon de la
homaj rajtoj, socia justo kaj funda demokratio. (mia
emfazo)
Rough translation in English:
With the actual minaces of war, ecological crisis, the growing
gap between rich and poor countries, cultural homologation
(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of the
democratic life of societies, the movements from the other
world [e.g., World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent,
different, fair globalisation of human rights, social justice
and profound democracy. (my emphasis)

53. A poem by Jorge Camacho, 2013
poemo
estas kiel ovo;
se ˆgi venas mem,
ellasu ˆgin; se ne, do
tute ne gravas; sed,
se tamen fine ˆgi
venos, prefere
demetu ˆgin
ronda
J Camacho (2013). En la profundo. Mondial: Novjorko. p. 5. Recenzo de N Raˇsi´c en Beletra Almanako, 20, Junio 2014
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54. A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathers
The fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language can
be regarded as a further proof that it has all the basic
properties of a natural language. The use of Esperanto as a
family language may thus mean it is used between the spouses,
or between the parents (or one of the parents) and the children,
who thus become native speakers. There exist even
second-generation and third-generation native speakers,
though other languages are handed down in such families in
parallel with Esperanto, and there are no compact native speech
communities. All first-language speakers of Esperanto are
at least bilingual, many of them even trilingual, and practically
all of them use another language more often than Esperanto in
their adult lives. (my emphasis)
Source: Lindstedt (2010)

55. The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about the
high quality of machine translation for Esperanto... For
Esperanto, the number of existing translations is comparatively
small. German or Spanish, for example, have more than 100
times the data; other languages on which we focus our research
efforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but don’t
achieve comparable quality yet. Esperanto was constructed
such that it is easy to learn for humans, and this seems to
help automatic translation as well.
Thorsten Brants, Research Scientist, Google Translate
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56. Thanks for your attention! Dankon por via atento!
Questions? Comments?
If not now, send afterwards to:
F.Gobbo@uva.nl
Download and share this presentation from here:
http:/federicogobbo.name/eo/2015.php
CC BY: $ C
Federico Gobbo 2015
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