Mobility and Inclusion
in Multilingual Europe
Esperanto, a language for a Global Identity
Can Esperanto foster European identity?
Federico Gobbo
⟨Amsterdam / Milano-Bicocca / Torino⟩
⟨F.Gobbo@uva.nl⟩
1 June 2016
de Brakke Grond, Amsterdam, NL
Global Identities: A Conference on Statelessness, Citizenship and Migration
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A Retrospective:
Why I learnt Esperanto
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The linguistic heritage of my family
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The importance of science fiction…
Cover of my old edition of Stefano Benni’s Terra! SF-novel,
from Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus
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…and of Tolkien’s Middle Earth!
Esperanto edition of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

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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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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Inventing languages for fantasy role-playing (1980s)…
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Nowadays you can roleplay in Esperanto too!
Home page of the web site: http://drakoj.iksoj.net/

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

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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Since Feb 2014: bijzonder hoogleraar here
My official web page in Dutch at the UvA
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Why Esperanto is a fascinating
language
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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 élites –
philosophical position called positivism.
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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 élites –
philosophical position called positivism.
Esperanto came out in that moment.
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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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The patent of the telephone by A. G. Bell

The cover of the first book of Esperanto, 1887

Ludwik Lejzer Zamenhof
Born in Białystok, 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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Esperanto as a contact language
(Germanic + Romance + Slavic) x regularization = Esperanto

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

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.

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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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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Ne forgesu la akuzativon!

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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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 ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horse
malrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
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Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
© 2015 Huffington Post

The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la angla
ĉevalo paard horse
ĉevalino merrie mare
ĉevalido veulen colt
ĉevalejo stal stable
ĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
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Familio de ĉevaloj
© 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr

Europe is the lullaby of
Esperanto
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French Esperantists come into the arena
Source: Garvía (2015:78)

From Białystok to Paris

Universala Kongreso, 1905
Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France
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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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La bela sonĝo de l’ homaro…

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

Appeal to the Diplomats, 1915
Will you begin simply to remake and patch up the map of
Europe? Will you simply decide that territory A must belong to
the nation X and territory B to the nation Y? True, such work
you will have to do, but it must be only an insignificant portion
of your work; […] in handing over any territory to the people of
this or that race, you will always do an injustice to other people
who have the same natural rights in respect of that territory.
[…] It would be best if, instead of various large and small
European states, we should some day have proportionally and
geographically arranged “United States of Europe”.
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Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garvía (2015:100)
summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927), these are the
main motivation in learning Esperanto (US, UK, Germany-Austria):

Examples: Esperanto Movement of the Workers…
CC⃝ 1936

…Catholic Esperantists in Austria…
CC⃝ 1929

…vegetarians, etc.
© 1914 Vegetarano, the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo

‘Vestaĵoj malnovaj’, from: The Great Dictator, 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio

Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
© 2014 Dan Mazur. Esperantists

Esperanto today
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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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Local clubs around the world

Esperanto lives today: Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer, 110 years after the 1st
one
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Une maison de la culture de l’espéranto à Boulogne
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The new Esperanto train in Poland
source: Facebook page of the Polish government asking for polling

Virtual places: the success of Duolinguo2
screenshot made the 28th of OMay 2016
Approximately 30 persons per day finish the learning tree!

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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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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An alternative globalisation is possible
Fronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco, ekologia krizaro,
pliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj, kultura
unuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de la
demokratia vivo de la socioj, la alimondisma movado […]
senperforte celas alternativan, solidaran tutmondiĝon de la
homaj rajtoj, socia justo kaj funda demokratioo.
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)
José Antonio Vergara (2006)

A poem by Jorge Camacho, 2013
poemo
estas kiel ovo;
se ĝi venas mem,
ellasu ĝin; se ne, do
tute ne gravas; sed,
se tamen fine ĝi
venos, prefere
demetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013). En la profundo. Mondial: Novjorko. p. 5. Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako, 20, Junio 2014
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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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A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto

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)

Can Esperanto foster European
identity?
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Is this picture right?

A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel European
identity somehow and what does it mean. This was done through a
mailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves.
I got 13 responses, that I will keep anonymous. All answers were in
Esperanto. Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwise.
Quality analysis only was done.
Some details are changed for privacy concerns.
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A first answer
“On my side, I do not have identity. I simply am. Because of my
birthplace, I am Xish, so I am Xish and European. Similarly, I am a
white man, bald, or a mammal. I am such.
Of course, when I am with non-Xish, I notes the differences with Xish
people. With non-Europeans, I note the ‘Europehood’. I would feel
myself cosmopolitan, when I meet an extraterrestrial, until when it
will happen...
For the family, I do not like too much when they teach the national
anthems, or when they paint national flags on the face.”
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Sport-like and linguistic feelings…
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the World
Cup: in a competition against Americas or Asia, they cheer on
Europe.
“Nothing to serious to be called ‘European identity’, though.” (or:
the question is meaningless)
“If you do not know English, French and German you cannot feel
European. You have to travel a lot spending time to live in different
countries. Multilingualism shape European identity.” (note: no apart
mention of Esperanto)
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…and a family answer
4-member family: father from Sweden, mother from Bosnia. They
live in Norway. They feel that Europe is wider than the EU. Children
(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian. When asked directly:
“Do you feel to be a European?”
“No, but I am an Esperantist.”
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Context-based answers…
“It depends on the context,” said a French woman married with a
Hungarian, living in Luxembourg. “When I cook, for example, I am
French.”
“I feel European with non-Europeans, for differences. But I do not
adhere to the European ideology, when it is warlike and imperialistic.
I also feel cosmopolitan.” said a German woman.
“We are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words, not with
weapons anymore among us,” says a Belgian. “When we see refugees,
we cannot not think that we are so lucky.”
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…and one context-free answer
“Being an Esperantist implies that there should be no European
identity. Human beings are one big family. The warlike spirit came
from Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continents.
EU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peace.”
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A man in Luxembourg 1/2 (original in English)
“I’m a German and Argentinian, grew up mainly in Germany, studied
in the UK, and am now living in Luxembourg. At age 16 I started
learning Esperanto, which I’m using a lot since then, and through
which I have made friends with people from all over the world,
including many European countries. I identify more as a European
and a world citizen than as a German. I am very happy that the
European Union has brought peace to us Europeans, and that it it
makes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continent
without showing a passport or having to change money. But I am also
afraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring about
steps backwards.”
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A man in Luxembourg 2/2
“With my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes German.
My main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they can
already as children participate with me and my wife in the
international and culturally rich Esperanto community, which is
enriching our lives a lot. Since my half Russian, half German wife
speaks Russian with them, and since the main language of their
environment is Luxembourgish, the children grow up speaking four
languages, […] Our six­year­old, on the other hand, already
understands that Esperanto is a special language without territory,
and is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who don’t
know about Esperanto.”
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A young woman in Luxembourg 1/2
“I am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker […] My mother is
French and my father is Hungarian, so they spoke their respective
languages to me; also, living in the Netherlands, I learned Dutch from
my nanny from the age of three months. Where would a fourth
language have fit? Having met at an Esperanto meeting, my parents
spoke the language to each other, and brought me with them to
international meetings where I heard it spoken. Sometimes we had
guests, sometimes we were guests. They made a point of not actively
teaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it, calling it their
secret language. I learned it anyway.”
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A young woman in Luxembourg 2/2
“How does this relate to European identity? I think I was doubly
lucky, because I had Esperanto and I also went to the European
School of Luxembourg. In these schools, pupils with origins from all
over Europe grow up together. I think this makes us very
open-minded and multicultural, and it definitely makes you feel
European, especially as many of us – like me – cannot pinpoint one
country where they ‘come from’. Once a German asked me if I was
German and I said ‘yes, if you want’. After all I speak German
fluently, am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of German
friends, so why not? Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch, just not on
paper. Sometimes I say I’m a French-Hungarian from the Benelux.
Sometimes I say I’m European.”
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An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate. Common
traits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour, a ‘ludic’ or
somehow ‘light’ sense of territorial identity, sometimes linked to
Europe, sometimes not.
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identity,
at least in its present situation. But Esperanto really is a vehicle
of a practical cosmopolitanism, a vehicle for an alternative
Global Identity.
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So, yes, this picture is right…

But this picture is also right…

And this one too!

Acknowledgement of funding
MIME – Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-
ing from the European Community’s Seventh Frame-
work Programme under grant agreement No. 613344
(Project MIME).
UEA – Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam, NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chair
in Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University of
Amsterdam on behalf of UEA. The content and opin-
ions expressed here are the author’s ones and they do
not necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA.
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Thanks for your attention! Dankon por via atento!
Questions? Comments?
 ⟨F.Gobbo@uva.nl⟩
 @goberiko  federico.gobbo  +FedericoGobbo
 http:/federicogobbo.name/pub/
CC⃝ BY:⃝ $
⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
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