esperanto, a language for a global identity can esperanto foster european identity?
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Mobility and Inclusionin Multilingual Europe
Esperanto a language for a Global IdentityCan Esperanto foster European identity
Federico Gobbo⟨Amsterdam Milano-Bicocca Torino⟩⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
1 June 2016de Brakke Grond Amsterdam NLGlobal Identities A Conference on Statelessness Citizenship and Migration1 of 76
A RetrospectiveWhy I learnt Esperanto
2 of 76
The linguistic heritage of my family
3 of 76
The importance of science fictionhellip
Cover of my old edition of Stefano Bennirsquos Terra SF-novelfrom Luigi Serafinirsquos Codex Seraphinianus
4 of 76
hellipand of Tolkienrsquos Middle Earth
Esperanto edition of The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers
The influence of Esperanto on Tolkienrsquos languages
Tolkien gave at the Esperanto Congress in Oxford in 1930 entitled AHobby for the Home later known as A Secret Vice
Personally I am a believer in an lsquoartificialrsquo language at any ratefor Europe a believer that is in its desirability as the one thingantecedently necessary for uniting Europe before it isswallowed by non-Europe [hellip] also I particularly likeEsperantohellipwhich is good a description of the ideal artificiallanguage [but] my concern is not with that kind of artificiallanguage at all (my emphasis)
from A Secret Vice J R R Tolkien
6 of 76
The pleasure of inventing languages
[During the war ] I shall never forget a little manhelliprevealinghimself by accident as a devotee [of Esperanto] in a moment ofextreme ennuihellipcrowded with (mostly) depressed and wetcreatures We were listening to somebody lecturing onmap-reading or camp-hygienehelliprather we were trying to avoidlisteninghellip[He] said suddenly in a dreamy ovice lsquoYes I think Ishall express the accusative case by a prefixrsquo A memorableremark [hellip] Just consider the splendour of the words lsquoI shallexpress the accusative casersquo Magnificent (authorrsquos emphasis)
from A Secret Vice J R R Tolkien
7 of 76
Inventing languages for fantasy role-playing (1980s)hellip
8 of 76
Nowadays you can roleplay in Esperanto too
Home page of the web site httpdrakojiksojnet
1993 my interest in Esperanto becomes academic
Cover of the Esperanto edition of The search for the perfect languageoriginally 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 Fiedler11 of 76
Since Feb 2014 bijzonder hoogleraar here
My official web page in Dutch at the UvA12 of 76
Why Esperanto is a fascinatinglanguage
13 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
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 lsquoyou press the button - we do
the restrsquo 1889 inauguration of the Tour Eiffel in Paris 1894 Pierre de Coubertin restores the Olympic Games 1900 LrsquoExposition de Paris the cinema was born
15 of 76
The patent of the telephone by A G Bell
The cover of the first book of Esperanto 1887
Ludwik Lejzer ZamenhofBorn in Białystok 1859 a town now in Poland ndash then under the Tsarndash Zamenhof was a Jew (Litvak Ashkenazi) bilingual Yiddish (with hismother) and Russian (with his father)
He had a twofold dream in his life to set an ethnic-free bridge acrossthe nations beyond any kind of wall through a neutral religion(Hillelism) and a neutral language (Esperanto)
19 of 76
Esperanto as a contact language
(Germanic + Romance + Slavic) x regularization = Esperanto
La viro salutas nin
copy2014 Stanislavo Belov Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko
Colour codes adopted here
1 substantives (NP heads) are in blue2 adjectives determiners numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan3 verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red4 adverbs and the like (MAdv V tails) are in orange5 affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray6 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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
A RetrospectiveWhy I learnt Esperanto
2 of 76
The linguistic heritage of my family
3 of 76
The importance of science fictionhellip
Cover of my old edition of Stefano Bennirsquos Terra SF-novelfrom Luigi Serafinirsquos Codex Seraphinianus
4 of 76
hellipand of Tolkienrsquos Middle Earth
Esperanto edition of The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers
The influence of Esperanto on Tolkienrsquos languages
Tolkien gave at the Esperanto Congress in Oxford in 1930 entitled AHobby for the Home later known as A Secret Vice
Personally I am a believer in an lsquoartificialrsquo language at any ratefor Europe a believer that is in its desirability as the one thingantecedently necessary for uniting Europe before it isswallowed by non-Europe [hellip] also I particularly likeEsperantohellipwhich is good a description of the ideal artificiallanguage [but] my concern is not with that kind of artificiallanguage at all (my emphasis)
from A Secret Vice J R R Tolkien
6 of 76
The pleasure of inventing languages
[During the war ] I shall never forget a little manhelliprevealinghimself by accident as a devotee [of Esperanto] in a moment ofextreme ennuihellipcrowded with (mostly) depressed and wetcreatures We were listening to somebody lecturing onmap-reading or camp-hygienehelliprather we were trying to avoidlisteninghellip[He] said suddenly in a dreamy ovice lsquoYes I think Ishall express the accusative case by a prefixrsquo A memorableremark [hellip] Just consider the splendour of the words lsquoI shallexpress the accusative casersquo Magnificent (authorrsquos emphasis)
from A Secret Vice J R R Tolkien
7 of 76
Inventing languages for fantasy role-playing (1980s)hellip
8 of 76
Nowadays you can roleplay in Esperanto too
Home page of the web site httpdrakojiksojnet
1993 my interest in Esperanto becomes academic
Cover of the Esperanto edition of The search for the perfect languageoriginally 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 Fiedler11 of 76
Since Feb 2014 bijzonder hoogleraar here
My official web page in Dutch at the UvA12 of 76
Why Esperanto is a fascinatinglanguage
13 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
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 lsquoyou press the button - we do
the restrsquo 1889 inauguration of the Tour Eiffel in Paris 1894 Pierre de Coubertin restores the Olympic Games 1900 LrsquoExposition de Paris the cinema was born
15 of 76
The patent of the telephone by A G Bell
The cover of the first book of Esperanto 1887
Ludwik Lejzer ZamenhofBorn in Białystok 1859 a town now in Poland ndash then under the Tsarndash Zamenhof was a Jew (Litvak Ashkenazi) bilingual Yiddish (with hismother) and Russian (with his father)
He had a twofold dream in his life to set an ethnic-free bridge acrossthe nations beyond any kind of wall through a neutral religion(Hillelism) and a neutral language (Esperanto)
19 of 76
Esperanto as a contact language
(Germanic + Romance + Slavic) x regularization = Esperanto
La viro salutas nin
copy2014 Stanislavo Belov Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko
Colour codes adopted here
1 substantives (NP heads) are in blue2 adjectives determiners numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan3 verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red4 adverbs and the like (MAdv V tails) are in orange5 affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray6 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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
The linguistic heritage of my family
3 of 76
The importance of science fictionhellip
Cover of my old edition of Stefano Bennirsquos Terra SF-novelfrom Luigi Serafinirsquos Codex Seraphinianus
4 of 76
hellipand of Tolkienrsquos Middle Earth
Esperanto edition of The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers
The influence of Esperanto on Tolkienrsquos languages
Tolkien gave at the Esperanto Congress in Oxford in 1930 entitled AHobby for the Home later known as A Secret Vice
Personally I am a believer in an lsquoartificialrsquo language at any ratefor Europe a believer that is in its desirability as the one thingantecedently necessary for uniting Europe before it isswallowed by non-Europe [hellip] also I particularly likeEsperantohellipwhich is good a description of the ideal artificiallanguage [but] my concern is not with that kind of artificiallanguage at all (my emphasis)
from A Secret Vice J R R Tolkien
6 of 76
The pleasure of inventing languages
[During the war ] I shall never forget a little manhelliprevealinghimself by accident as a devotee [of Esperanto] in a moment ofextreme ennuihellipcrowded with (mostly) depressed and wetcreatures We were listening to somebody lecturing onmap-reading or camp-hygienehelliprather we were trying to avoidlisteninghellip[He] said suddenly in a dreamy ovice lsquoYes I think Ishall express the accusative case by a prefixrsquo A memorableremark [hellip] Just consider the splendour of the words lsquoI shallexpress the accusative casersquo Magnificent (authorrsquos emphasis)
from A Secret Vice J R R Tolkien
7 of 76
Inventing languages for fantasy role-playing (1980s)hellip
8 of 76
Nowadays you can roleplay in Esperanto too
Home page of the web site httpdrakojiksojnet
1993 my interest in Esperanto becomes academic
Cover of the Esperanto edition of The search for the perfect languageoriginally 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 Fiedler11 of 76
Since Feb 2014 bijzonder hoogleraar here
My official web page in Dutch at the UvA12 of 76
Why Esperanto is a fascinatinglanguage
13 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
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 lsquoyou press the button - we do
the restrsquo 1889 inauguration of the Tour Eiffel in Paris 1894 Pierre de Coubertin restores the Olympic Games 1900 LrsquoExposition de Paris the cinema was born
15 of 76
The patent of the telephone by A G Bell
The cover of the first book of Esperanto 1887
Ludwik Lejzer ZamenhofBorn in Białystok 1859 a town now in Poland ndash then under the Tsarndash Zamenhof was a Jew (Litvak Ashkenazi) bilingual Yiddish (with hismother) and Russian (with his father)
He had a twofold dream in his life to set an ethnic-free bridge acrossthe nations beyond any kind of wall through a neutral religion(Hillelism) and a neutral language (Esperanto)
19 of 76
Esperanto as a contact language
(Germanic + Romance + Slavic) x regularization = Esperanto
La viro salutas nin
copy2014 Stanislavo Belov Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko
Colour codes adopted here
1 substantives (NP heads) are in blue2 adjectives determiners numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan3 verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red4 adverbs and the like (MAdv V tails) are in orange5 affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray6 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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
The importance of science fictionhellip
Cover of my old edition of Stefano Bennirsquos Terra SF-novelfrom Luigi Serafinirsquos Codex Seraphinianus
4 of 76
hellipand of Tolkienrsquos Middle Earth
Esperanto edition of The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers
The influence of Esperanto on Tolkienrsquos languages
Tolkien gave at the Esperanto Congress in Oxford in 1930 entitled AHobby for the Home later known as A Secret Vice
Personally I am a believer in an lsquoartificialrsquo language at any ratefor Europe a believer that is in its desirability as the one thingantecedently necessary for uniting Europe before it isswallowed by non-Europe [hellip] also I particularly likeEsperantohellipwhich is good a description of the ideal artificiallanguage [but] my concern is not with that kind of artificiallanguage at all (my emphasis)
from A Secret Vice J R R Tolkien
6 of 76
The pleasure of inventing languages
[During the war ] I shall never forget a little manhelliprevealinghimself by accident as a devotee [of Esperanto] in a moment ofextreme ennuihellipcrowded with (mostly) depressed and wetcreatures We were listening to somebody lecturing onmap-reading or camp-hygienehelliprather we were trying to avoidlisteninghellip[He] said suddenly in a dreamy ovice lsquoYes I think Ishall express the accusative case by a prefixrsquo A memorableremark [hellip] Just consider the splendour of the words lsquoI shallexpress the accusative casersquo Magnificent (authorrsquos emphasis)
from A Secret Vice J R R Tolkien
7 of 76
Inventing languages for fantasy role-playing (1980s)hellip
8 of 76
Nowadays you can roleplay in Esperanto too
Home page of the web site httpdrakojiksojnet
1993 my interest in Esperanto becomes academic
Cover of the Esperanto edition of The search for the perfect languageoriginally 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 Fiedler11 of 76
Since Feb 2014 bijzonder hoogleraar here
My official web page in Dutch at the UvA12 of 76
Why Esperanto is a fascinatinglanguage
13 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
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 lsquoyou press the button - we do
the restrsquo 1889 inauguration of the Tour Eiffel in Paris 1894 Pierre de Coubertin restores the Olympic Games 1900 LrsquoExposition de Paris the cinema was born
15 of 76
The patent of the telephone by A G Bell
The cover of the first book of Esperanto 1887
Ludwik Lejzer ZamenhofBorn in Białystok 1859 a town now in Poland ndash then under the Tsarndash Zamenhof was a Jew (Litvak Ashkenazi) bilingual Yiddish (with hismother) and Russian (with his father)
He had a twofold dream in his life to set an ethnic-free bridge acrossthe nations beyond any kind of wall through a neutral religion(Hillelism) and a neutral language (Esperanto)
19 of 76
Esperanto as a contact language
(Germanic + Romance + Slavic) x regularization = Esperanto
La viro salutas nin
copy2014 Stanislavo Belov Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko
Colour codes adopted here
1 substantives (NP heads) are in blue2 adjectives determiners numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan3 verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red4 adverbs and the like (MAdv V tails) are in orange5 affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray6 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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
hellipand of Tolkienrsquos Middle Earth
Esperanto edition of The Lord of the Rings The Two Towers
The influence of Esperanto on Tolkienrsquos languages
Tolkien gave at the Esperanto Congress in Oxford in 1930 entitled AHobby for the Home later known as A Secret Vice
Personally I am a believer in an lsquoartificialrsquo language at any ratefor Europe a believer that is in its desirability as the one thingantecedently necessary for uniting Europe before it isswallowed by non-Europe [hellip] also I particularly likeEsperantohellipwhich is good a description of the ideal artificiallanguage [but] my concern is not with that kind of artificiallanguage at all (my emphasis)
from A Secret Vice J R R Tolkien
6 of 76
The pleasure of inventing languages
[During the war ] I shall never forget a little manhelliprevealinghimself by accident as a devotee [of Esperanto] in a moment ofextreme ennuihellipcrowded with (mostly) depressed and wetcreatures We were listening to somebody lecturing onmap-reading or camp-hygienehelliprather we were trying to avoidlisteninghellip[He] said suddenly in a dreamy ovice lsquoYes I think Ishall express the accusative case by a prefixrsquo A memorableremark [hellip] Just consider the splendour of the words lsquoI shallexpress the accusative casersquo Magnificent (authorrsquos emphasis)
from A Secret Vice J R R Tolkien
7 of 76
Inventing languages for fantasy role-playing (1980s)hellip
8 of 76
Nowadays you can roleplay in Esperanto too
Home page of the web site httpdrakojiksojnet
1993 my interest in Esperanto becomes academic
Cover of the Esperanto edition of The search for the perfect languageoriginally 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 Fiedler11 of 76
Since Feb 2014 bijzonder hoogleraar here
My official web page in Dutch at the UvA12 of 76
Why Esperanto is a fascinatinglanguage
13 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
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 lsquoyou press the button - we do
the restrsquo 1889 inauguration of the Tour Eiffel in Paris 1894 Pierre de Coubertin restores the Olympic Games 1900 LrsquoExposition de Paris the cinema was born
15 of 76
The patent of the telephone by A G Bell
The cover of the first book of Esperanto 1887
Ludwik Lejzer ZamenhofBorn in Białystok 1859 a town now in Poland ndash then under the Tsarndash Zamenhof was a Jew (Litvak Ashkenazi) bilingual Yiddish (with hismother) and Russian (with his father)
He had a twofold dream in his life to set an ethnic-free bridge acrossthe nations beyond any kind of wall through a neutral religion(Hillelism) and a neutral language (Esperanto)
19 of 76
Esperanto as a contact language
(Germanic + Romance + Slavic) x regularization = Esperanto
La viro salutas nin
copy2014 Stanislavo Belov Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko
Colour codes adopted here
1 substantives (NP heads) are in blue2 adjectives determiners numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan3 verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red4 adverbs and the like (MAdv V tails) are in orange5 affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray6 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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
The influence of Esperanto on Tolkienrsquos languages
Tolkien gave at the Esperanto Congress in Oxford in 1930 entitled AHobby for the Home later known as A Secret Vice
Personally I am a believer in an lsquoartificialrsquo language at any ratefor Europe a believer that is in its desirability as the one thingantecedently necessary for uniting Europe before it isswallowed by non-Europe [hellip] also I particularly likeEsperantohellipwhich is good a description of the ideal artificiallanguage [but] my concern is not with that kind of artificiallanguage at all (my emphasis)
from A Secret Vice J R R Tolkien
6 of 76
The pleasure of inventing languages
[During the war ] I shall never forget a little manhelliprevealinghimself by accident as a devotee [of Esperanto] in a moment ofextreme ennuihellipcrowded with (mostly) depressed and wetcreatures We were listening to somebody lecturing onmap-reading or camp-hygienehelliprather we were trying to avoidlisteninghellip[He] said suddenly in a dreamy ovice lsquoYes I think Ishall express the accusative case by a prefixrsquo A memorableremark [hellip] Just consider the splendour of the words lsquoI shallexpress the accusative casersquo Magnificent (authorrsquos emphasis)
from A Secret Vice J R R Tolkien
7 of 76
Inventing languages for fantasy role-playing (1980s)hellip
8 of 76
Nowadays you can roleplay in Esperanto too
Home page of the web site httpdrakojiksojnet
1993 my interest in Esperanto becomes academic
Cover of the Esperanto edition of The search for the perfect languageoriginally 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 Fiedler11 of 76
Since Feb 2014 bijzonder hoogleraar here
My official web page in Dutch at the UvA12 of 76
Why Esperanto is a fascinatinglanguage
13 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
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 lsquoyou press the button - we do
the restrsquo 1889 inauguration of the Tour Eiffel in Paris 1894 Pierre de Coubertin restores the Olympic Games 1900 LrsquoExposition de Paris the cinema was born
15 of 76
The patent of the telephone by A G Bell
The cover of the first book of Esperanto 1887
Ludwik Lejzer ZamenhofBorn in Białystok 1859 a town now in Poland ndash then under the Tsarndash Zamenhof was a Jew (Litvak Ashkenazi) bilingual Yiddish (with hismother) and Russian (with his father)
He had a twofold dream in his life to set an ethnic-free bridge acrossthe nations beyond any kind of wall through a neutral religion(Hillelism) and a neutral language (Esperanto)
19 of 76
Esperanto as a contact language
(Germanic + Romance + Slavic) x regularization = Esperanto
La viro salutas nin
copy2014 Stanislavo Belov Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko
Colour codes adopted here
1 substantives (NP heads) are in blue2 adjectives determiners numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan3 verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red4 adverbs and the like (MAdv V tails) are in orange5 affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray6 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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
The pleasure of inventing languages
[During the war ] I shall never forget a little manhelliprevealinghimself by accident as a devotee [of Esperanto] in a moment ofextreme ennuihellipcrowded with (mostly) depressed and wetcreatures We were listening to somebody lecturing onmap-reading or camp-hygienehelliprather we were trying to avoidlisteninghellip[He] said suddenly in a dreamy ovice lsquoYes I think Ishall express the accusative case by a prefixrsquo A memorableremark [hellip] Just consider the splendour of the words lsquoI shallexpress the accusative casersquo Magnificent (authorrsquos emphasis)
from A Secret Vice J R R Tolkien
7 of 76
Inventing languages for fantasy role-playing (1980s)hellip
8 of 76
Nowadays you can roleplay in Esperanto too
Home page of the web site httpdrakojiksojnet
1993 my interest in Esperanto becomes academic
Cover of the Esperanto edition of The search for the perfect languageoriginally 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 Fiedler11 of 76
Since Feb 2014 bijzonder hoogleraar here
My official web page in Dutch at the UvA12 of 76
Why Esperanto is a fascinatinglanguage
13 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
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 lsquoyou press the button - we do
the restrsquo 1889 inauguration of the Tour Eiffel in Paris 1894 Pierre de Coubertin restores the Olympic Games 1900 LrsquoExposition de Paris the cinema was born
15 of 76
The patent of the telephone by A G Bell
The cover of the first book of Esperanto 1887
Ludwik Lejzer ZamenhofBorn in Białystok 1859 a town now in Poland ndash then under the Tsarndash Zamenhof was a Jew (Litvak Ashkenazi) bilingual Yiddish (with hismother) and Russian (with his father)
He had a twofold dream in his life to set an ethnic-free bridge acrossthe nations beyond any kind of wall through a neutral religion(Hillelism) and a neutral language (Esperanto)
19 of 76
Esperanto as a contact language
(Germanic + Romance + Slavic) x regularization = Esperanto
La viro salutas nin
copy2014 Stanislavo Belov Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko
Colour codes adopted here
1 substantives (NP heads) are in blue2 adjectives determiners numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan3 verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red4 adverbs and the like (MAdv V tails) are in orange5 affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray6 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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Inventing languages for fantasy role-playing (1980s)hellip
8 of 76
Nowadays you can roleplay in Esperanto too
Home page of the web site httpdrakojiksojnet
1993 my interest in Esperanto becomes academic
Cover of the Esperanto edition of The search for the perfect languageoriginally 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 Fiedler11 of 76
Since Feb 2014 bijzonder hoogleraar here
My official web page in Dutch at the UvA12 of 76
Why Esperanto is a fascinatinglanguage
13 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
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 lsquoyou press the button - we do
the restrsquo 1889 inauguration of the Tour Eiffel in Paris 1894 Pierre de Coubertin restores the Olympic Games 1900 LrsquoExposition de Paris the cinema was born
15 of 76
The patent of the telephone by A G Bell
The cover of the first book of Esperanto 1887
Ludwik Lejzer ZamenhofBorn in Białystok 1859 a town now in Poland ndash then under the Tsarndash Zamenhof was a Jew (Litvak Ashkenazi) bilingual Yiddish (with hismother) and Russian (with his father)
He had a twofold dream in his life to set an ethnic-free bridge acrossthe nations beyond any kind of wall through a neutral religion(Hillelism) and a neutral language (Esperanto)
19 of 76
Esperanto as a contact language
(Germanic + Romance + Slavic) x regularization = Esperanto
La viro salutas nin
copy2014 Stanislavo Belov Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko
Colour codes adopted here
1 substantives (NP heads) are in blue2 adjectives determiners numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan3 verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red4 adverbs and the like (MAdv V tails) are in orange5 affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray6 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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Nowadays you can roleplay in Esperanto too
Home page of the web site httpdrakojiksojnet
1993 my interest in Esperanto becomes academic
Cover of the Esperanto edition of The search for the perfect languageoriginally 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 Fiedler11 of 76
Since Feb 2014 bijzonder hoogleraar here
My official web page in Dutch at the UvA12 of 76
Why Esperanto is a fascinatinglanguage
13 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
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 lsquoyou press the button - we do
the restrsquo 1889 inauguration of the Tour Eiffel in Paris 1894 Pierre de Coubertin restores the Olympic Games 1900 LrsquoExposition de Paris the cinema was born
15 of 76
The patent of the telephone by A G Bell
The cover of the first book of Esperanto 1887
Ludwik Lejzer ZamenhofBorn in Białystok 1859 a town now in Poland ndash then under the Tsarndash Zamenhof was a Jew (Litvak Ashkenazi) bilingual Yiddish (with hismother) and Russian (with his father)
He had a twofold dream in his life to set an ethnic-free bridge acrossthe nations beyond any kind of wall through a neutral religion(Hillelism) and a neutral language (Esperanto)
19 of 76
Esperanto as a contact language
(Germanic + Romance + Slavic) x regularization = Esperanto
La viro salutas nin
copy2014 Stanislavo Belov Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko
Colour codes adopted here
1 substantives (NP heads) are in blue2 adjectives determiners numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan3 verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red4 adverbs and the like (MAdv V tails) are in orange5 affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray6 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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
1993 my interest in Esperanto becomes academic
Cover of the Esperanto edition of The search for the perfect languageoriginally 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 Fiedler11 of 76
Since Feb 2014 bijzonder hoogleraar here
My official web page in Dutch at the UvA12 of 76
Why Esperanto is a fascinatinglanguage
13 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
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 lsquoyou press the button - we do
the restrsquo 1889 inauguration of the Tour Eiffel in Paris 1894 Pierre de Coubertin restores the Olympic Games 1900 LrsquoExposition de Paris the cinema was born
15 of 76
The patent of the telephone by A G Bell
The cover of the first book of Esperanto 1887
Ludwik Lejzer ZamenhofBorn in Białystok 1859 a town now in Poland ndash then under the Tsarndash Zamenhof was a Jew (Litvak Ashkenazi) bilingual Yiddish (with hismother) and Russian (with his father)
He had a twofold dream in his life to set an ethnic-free bridge acrossthe nations beyond any kind of wall through a neutral religion(Hillelism) and a neutral language (Esperanto)
19 of 76
Esperanto as a contact language
(Germanic + Romance + Slavic) x regularization = Esperanto
La viro salutas nin
copy2014 Stanislavo Belov Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko
Colour codes adopted here
1 substantives (NP heads) are in blue2 adjectives determiners numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan3 verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red4 adverbs and the like (MAdv V tails) are in orange5 affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray6 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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
1998 my MA thesis on the sociolinguistics of EO
I received the Premio Lapenna for the best thesis on Esperanto with colleague Sabine Fiedler11 of 76
Since Feb 2014 bijzonder hoogleraar here
My official web page in Dutch at the UvA12 of 76
Why Esperanto is a fascinatinglanguage
13 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
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 lsquoyou press the button - we do
the restrsquo 1889 inauguration of the Tour Eiffel in Paris 1894 Pierre de Coubertin restores the Olympic Games 1900 LrsquoExposition de Paris the cinema was born
15 of 76
The patent of the telephone by A G Bell
The cover of the first book of Esperanto 1887
Ludwik Lejzer ZamenhofBorn in Białystok 1859 a town now in Poland ndash then under the Tsarndash Zamenhof was a Jew (Litvak Ashkenazi) bilingual Yiddish (with hismother) and Russian (with his father)
He had a twofold dream in his life to set an ethnic-free bridge acrossthe nations beyond any kind of wall through a neutral religion(Hillelism) and a neutral language (Esperanto)
19 of 76
Esperanto as a contact language
(Germanic + Romance + Slavic) x regularization = Esperanto
La viro salutas nin
copy2014 Stanislavo Belov Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko
Colour codes adopted here
1 substantives (NP heads) are in blue2 adjectives determiners numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan3 verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red4 adverbs and the like (MAdv V tails) are in orange5 affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray6 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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Since Feb 2014 bijzonder hoogleraar here
My official web page in Dutch at the UvA12 of 76
Why Esperanto is a fascinatinglanguage
13 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
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 lsquoyou press the button - we do
the restrsquo 1889 inauguration of the Tour Eiffel in Paris 1894 Pierre de Coubertin restores the Olympic Games 1900 LrsquoExposition de Paris the cinema was born
15 of 76
The patent of the telephone by A G Bell
The cover of the first book of Esperanto 1887
Ludwik Lejzer ZamenhofBorn in Białystok 1859 a town now in Poland ndash then under the Tsarndash Zamenhof was a Jew (Litvak Ashkenazi) bilingual Yiddish (with hismother) and Russian (with his father)
He had a twofold dream in his life to set an ethnic-free bridge acrossthe nations beyond any kind of wall through a neutral religion(Hillelism) and a neutral language (Esperanto)
19 of 76
Esperanto as a contact language
(Germanic + Romance + Slavic) x regularization = Esperanto
La viro salutas nin
copy2014 Stanislavo Belov Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko
Colour codes adopted here
1 substantives (NP heads) are in blue2 adjectives determiners numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan3 verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red4 adverbs and the like (MAdv V tails) are in orange5 affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray6 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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Why Esperanto is a fascinatinglanguage
13 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
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 lsquoyou press the button - we do
the restrsquo 1889 inauguration of the Tour Eiffel in Paris 1894 Pierre de Coubertin restores the Olympic Games 1900 LrsquoExposition de Paris the cinema was born
15 of 76
The patent of the telephone by A G Bell
The cover of the first book of Esperanto 1887
Ludwik Lejzer ZamenhofBorn in Białystok 1859 a town now in Poland ndash then under the Tsarndash Zamenhof was a Jew (Litvak Ashkenazi) bilingual Yiddish (with hismother) and Russian (with his father)
He had a twofold dream in his life to set an ethnic-free bridge acrossthe nations beyond any kind of wall through a neutral religion(Hillelism) and a neutral language (Esperanto)
19 of 76
Esperanto as a contact language
(Germanic + Romance + Slavic) x regularization = Esperanto
La viro salutas nin
copy2014 Stanislavo Belov Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko
Colour codes adopted here
1 substantives (NP heads) are in blue2 adjectives determiners numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan3 verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red4 adverbs and the like (MAdv V tails) are in orange5 affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray6 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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
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 lsquoyou press the button - we do
the restrsquo 1889 inauguration of the Tour Eiffel in Paris 1894 Pierre de Coubertin restores the Olympic Games 1900 LrsquoExposition de Paris the cinema was born
15 of 76
The patent of the telephone by A G Bell
The cover of the first book of Esperanto 1887
Ludwik Lejzer ZamenhofBorn in Białystok 1859 a town now in Poland ndash then under the Tsarndash Zamenhof was a Jew (Litvak Ashkenazi) bilingual Yiddish (with hismother) and Russian (with his father)
He had a twofold dream in his life to set an ethnic-free bridge acrossthe nations beyond any kind of wall through a neutral religion(Hillelism) and a neutral language (Esperanto)
19 of 76
Esperanto as a contact language
(Germanic + Romance + Slavic) x regularization = Esperanto
La viro salutas nin
copy2014 Stanislavo Belov Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko
Colour codes adopted here
1 substantives (NP heads) are in blue2 adjectives determiners numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan3 verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red4 adverbs and the like (MAdv V tails) are in orange5 affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray6 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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Esperanto an offspring of the first globalisation
According to Thomas Piketty (2014) the first globalisation happenedbetween 1870 and 1914 when the major European colonizingnation-states conquered the world and established their empires (dejure or de facto)
The faith in science and technology to foster the Kantian dream oflsquoperpetual peacersquo was absolute for many members of the eacutelites ndashphilosophical position called positivism
Esperanto came out in that moment
14 of 76
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 lsquoyou press the button - we do
the restrsquo 1889 inauguration of the Tour Eiffel in Paris 1894 Pierre de Coubertin restores the Olympic Games 1900 LrsquoExposition de Paris the cinema was born
15 of 76
The patent of the telephone by A G Bell
The cover of the first book of Esperanto 1887
Ludwik Lejzer ZamenhofBorn in Białystok 1859 a town now in Poland ndash then under the Tsarndash Zamenhof was a Jew (Litvak Ashkenazi) bilingual Yiddish (with hismother) and Russian (with his father)
He had a twofold dream in his life to set an ethnic-free bridge acrossthe nations beyond any kind of wall through a neutral religion(Hillelism) and a neutral language (Esperanto)
19 of 76
Esperanto as a contact language
(Germanic + Romance + Slavic) x regularization = Esperanto
La viro salutas nin
copy2014 Stanislavo Belov Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko
Colour codes adopted here
1 substantives (NP heads) are in blue2 adjectives determiners numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan3 verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red4 adverbs and the like (MAdv V tails) are in orange5 affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray6 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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
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 lsquoyou press the button - we do
the restrsquo 1889 inauguration of the Tour Eiffel in Paris 1894 Pierre de Coubertin restores the Olympic Games 1900 LrsquoExposition de Paris the cinema was born
15 of 76
The patent of the telephone by A G Bell
The cover of the first book of Esperanto 1887
Ludwik Lejzer ZamenhofBorn in Białystok 1859 a town now in Poland ndash then under the Tsarndash Zamenhof was a Jew (Litvak Ashkenazi) bilingual Yiddish (with hismother) and Russian (with his father)
He had a twofold dream in his life to set an ethnic-free bridge acrossthe nations beyond any kind of wall through a neutral religion(Hillelism) and a neutral language (Esperanto)
19 of 76
Esperanto as a contact language
(Germanic + Romance + Slavic) x regularization = Esperanto
La viro salutas nin
copy2014 Stanislavo Belov Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko
Colour codes adopted here
1 substantives (NP heads) are in blue2 adjectives determiners numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan3 verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red4 adverbs and the like (MAdv V tails) are in orange5 affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray6 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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
The patent of the telephone by A G Bell
The cover of the first book of Esperanto 1887
Ludwik Lejzer ZamenhofBorn in Białystok 1859 a town now in Poland ndash then under the Tsarndash Zamenhof was a Jew (Litvak Ashkenazi) bilingual Yiddish (with hismother) and Russian (with his father)
He had a twofold dream in his life to set an ethnic-free bridge acrossthe nations beyond any kind of wall through a neutral religion(Hillelism) and a neutral language (Esperanto)
19 of 76
Esperanto as a contact language
(Germanic + Romance + Slavic) x regularization = Esperanto
La viro salutas nin
copy2014 Stanislavo Belov Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko
Colour codes adopted here
1 substantives (NP heads) are in blue2 adjectives determiners numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan3 verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red4 adverbs and the like (MAdv V tails) are in orange5 affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray6 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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
The cover of the first book of Esperanto 1887
Ludwik Lejzer ZamenhofBorn in Białystok 1859 a town now in Poland ndash then under the Tsarndash Zamenhof was a Jew (Litvak Ashkenazi) bilingual Yiddish (with hismother) and Russian (with his father)
He had a twofold dream in his life to set an ethnic-free bridge acrossthe nations beyond any kind of wall through a neutral religion(Hillelism) and a neutral language (Esperanto)
19 of 76
Esperanto as a contact language
(Germanic + Romance + Slavic) x regularization = Esperanto
La viro salutas nin
copy2014 Stanislavo Belov Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko
Colour codes adopted here
1 substantives (NP heads) are in blue2 adjectives determiners numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan3 verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red4 adverbs and the like (MAdv V tails) are in orange5 affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray6 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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Ludwik Lejzer ZamenhofBorn in Białystok 1859 a town now in Poland ndash then under the Tsarndash Zamenhof was a Jew (Litvak Ashkenazi) bilingual Yiddish (with hismother) and Russian (with his father)
He had a twofold dream in his life to set an ethnic-free bridge acrossthe nations beyond any kind of wall through a neutral religion(Hillelism) and a neutral language (Esperanto)
19 of 76
Esperanto as a contact language
(Germanic + Romance + Slavic) x regularization = Esperanto
La viro salutas nin
copy2014 Stanislavo Belov Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko
Colour codes adopted here
1 substantives (NP heads) are in blue2 adjectives determiners numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan3 verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red4 adverbs and the like (MAdv V tails) are in orange5 affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray6 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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Esperanto as a contact language
(Germanic + Romance + Slavic) x regularization = Esperanto
La viro salutas nin
copy2014 Stanislavo Belov Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko
Colour codes adopted here
1 substantives (NP heads) are in blue2 adjectives determiners numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan3 verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red4 adverbs and the like (MAdv V tails) are in orange5 affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray6 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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
La viro salutas nin
copy2014 Stanislavo Belov Foto de si mem en Fejsbuko
Colour codes adopted here
1 substantives (NP heads) are in blue2 adjectives determiners numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan3 verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red4 adverbs and the like (MAdv V tails) are in orange5 affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray6 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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Colour codes adopted here
1 substantives (NP heads) are in blue2 adjectives determiners numerals (any NP tail) are in cyan3 verbs and predications (VP heads) are in red4 adverbs and the like (MAdv V tails) are in orange5 affixes (prefixes and suffixes) are in gray6 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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
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
⟩
23 of 76
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Verbs have 6 possible endings No exceptions
1 -as for present tense2 -is for past tense3 -os for future tense4 -us for conditional5 -u for imperative6 -i for infinitive
24 of 76
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
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
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Esperanto estas regula lingvo
La viro salutas vin afable
verbo
artikolo
subjekto
objekto
adverbo
De man begroet jullie vriendelijk
The man greets you kindly
26 of 76
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Just one rule for nouns and adjectives
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglagranda elefanto een grote olifant a big elephantmalgranda elefanto een kleine olifant a small elephantrapida ĉevalo een snel paard a fast horsemalrapidaj ĉevaloj langzame paarden slow horses
27 of 76
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Granda elefanto kun malgranda elefanto
copy 2015 Huffington Post
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
The power of suffixes (example)
en Esperanto en la nederlanda en la anglaĉevalo paard horseĉevalino merrie mareĉevalido veulen coltĉevalejo stal stableĉevalaro een kudde paarden a herd of horses
29 of 76
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Familio de ĉevaloj
copy 2013 Kelly Walkotten on Flickr
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Europe is the lullaby ofEsperanto
31 of 76
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
French Esperantists come into the arena
Source Garviacutea (201578)
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
From Białystok to Paris
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Universala Kongreso 1905Esperantists from various countries met in Boulogne-sur-Mer France
34 of 76
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
From the speech of Zamenhof 1905
En la malgrandan urbon de la franca marbordo kunvenis homojel la plej diversaj landoj kaj nacioj kaj ili renkontas sin reciprokene mute kaj surde sed ili komprenas unu la alian ili parolasunu kun la alia kiel fratoj kiel membroj de unu nacio
Rough translation in EnglishIn the small town of the French seaside came together personsfrom the most different countries and nations and they meetone the other reciprocally not mute and deaf but theyunderstand one the other they speak one with the other asbrothers as members of just one nation
35 of 76
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
La bela sonĝo de lrsquo homarohellip
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
hellip ends with the Great War (1914-1918)
copy 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 ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Appeal to the Diplomats 1915
Will you begin simply to remake and patch up the map ofEurope Will you simply decide that territory A must belong tothe nation X and territory B to the nation Y True such workyou will have to do but it must be only an insignificant portionof your work [hellip] in handing over any territory to the people ofthis or that race you will always do an injustice to other peoplewho have the same natural rights in respect of that territory[hellip] It would be best if instead of various large and smallEuropean states we should some day have proportionally andgeographically arranged ldquoUnited States of Europerdquo
38 of 76
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Esperanto should reinvent itself after the Great War
According to the demographic analysis by Roberto Garviacutea (2015100)summarizing the work by the pioneer Tanquist (1927) these are themain motivation in learning Esperanto (US UK Germany-Austria)
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Examples Esperanto Movement of the Workershellip
CC⃝ 1936
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
hellipCatholic Esperantists in Austriahellip
CC⃝ 1929
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
hellipvegetarians etc
copy 1914 Vegetarano the official bulletin of the Vegetara Ligo
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
lsquoVestaĵoj malnovajrsquo from The Great Dictator 1940
CC⃝ 2014 Vikimedio
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Hitler and Stalin against Esperanto
copy 2014 Dan Mazur Esperantists
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Esperanto today
45 of 76
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Esperanto history and geography
There is no Esperanto state or specific territtory However we canconsider congresses festivals and meetings in local clubs as thelsquolanguage territoriesrsquo of the language where the community membersgather This is the geography of Esperanto
The places where these events happen ndash as well as some places whereEsperanto is used on a firm basis ndash form the geography of EsperantoThe history of Esperanto drives new initiatives rooted in virtualand real places
46 of 76
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Local clubs around the world
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Esperanto lives today Lille (FR) 2015
World Congress 100 near Boulogne-sur-Mer 110 years after the 1st
one48 of 76
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Une maison de la culture de lrsquoespeacuteranto agrave Boulogne
49 of 76
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
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 comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Esperanto between language and culture
The fascination of Esperanto comes1 internally from the structural character of the language and2 externally from the community of practice surrounding the
language itself which is used to produce original culturalproducts (poetry prose theater music comics films etc)
52 of 76
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
The four factors that motivates esperantists
1 political factor for an alternative globalisation2 cultural factor as everybody can contribute to a ethnic-free
worldwide culture3 cognitive factor to foster native bilingualism especially when
only one language is at disposal in the family4 ICT factor for geeks and nerds the Esperanto culture fits the
culture of open source and free software
53 of 76
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
An alternative globalisation is possibleFronte al la nunaj minacoj de malpaco ekologia krizaropliprofundigo de la breĉo inter riĉaj kaj malriĉaj landoj kulturaunuformigo (MakDonaldigo) de la mondo kaj malfortiĝo de lademokratia vivo de la socioj la alimondisma movado [hellip]senperforte celas alternativan solidaran tutmondiĝon de lahomaj rajtoj socia justo kaj funda demokratioo
Rough translation in EnglishWith the actual minaces of war ecological crisis the growinggap between rich and poor countries cultural homologation(McDonaldization) of the world and weakening of thedemocratic life of societies the movements from the other world[eg World Social Forum] aims to a non-violent differentfair globalisation of human rights social justice andprofound democracy (my emphasis)
Joseacute Antonio Vergara (2006)
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
A poem by Jorge Camacho 2013
poemoestas kiel ovo
se ĝi venas memellasu ĝin se ne dotute ne gravas sed
se tamen fine ĝivenos preferedemetu ĝin
ronda
J Camacho (2013) En la profundo Mondial Novjorko p 5 Recenzo de N Rašić en Beletra Almanako 20 Junio 2014
55 of 76
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
The point of view of the Google Translate team
The Google Translate team was actually surprised about thehigh quality of machine translation for Esperanto ForEsperanto the number of existing translations is comparativelysmall German or Spanish for example have more than 100times the data other languages on which we focus our researchefforts have similar amounts of data as Esperanto but donrsquotachieve comparable quality yet Esperanto was constructedsuch that it is easy to learn for humans and this seems tohelp automatic translation as well
Thorsten Brants Research Scientist Google Translate
56 of 76
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
A living language has new words
A neologism that is entering ordinary register of Esperanto
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
A mother tongue mainly spoken by fathersThe fact that Esperanto can be acquired as a first language canbe regarded as a further proof that it has all the basicproperties of a natural language The use of Esperanto as afamily language may thus mean it is used between the spousesor between the parents (or one of the parents) and the childrenwho thus become native speakers There exist evensecond-generation and third-generation native speakersthough other languages are handed down in such families inparallel with Esperanto and there are no compact native speechcommunities All first-language speakers of Esperanto areat least bilingual many of them even trilingual and practicallyall of them use another language more often than Esperanto intheir adult lives (my emphasis)
Source Lindstedt (2010)
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Can Esperanto foster Europeanidentity
59 of 76
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Is this picture right
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
A pilot experiment
I asked Esperanto families living in Europe if they feel Europeanidentity somehow and what does it mean This was done through amailing list used by Esperanto families to coordinate themselves
I got 13 responses that I will keep anonymous All answers were inEsperanto Translations in English are mine unless stated otherwiseQuality analysis only was done
Some details are changed for privacy concerns
61 of 76
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
A first answer
ldquoOn my side I do not have identity I simply am Because of mybirthplace I am Xish so I am Xish and European Similarly I am awhite man bald or a mammal I am such
Of course when I am with non-Xish I notes the differences with Xishpeople With non-Europeans I note the lsquoEuropehoodrsquo I would feelmyself cosmopolitan when I meet an extraterrestrial until when itwill happen
For the family I do not like too much when they teach the nationalanthems or when they paint national flags on the facerdquo
62 of 76
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Sport-like and linguistic feelingshellip
Some informants argues that they feel Europeans like in the WorldCup in a competition against Americas or Asia they cheer onEurope
ldquoNothing to serious to be called lsquoEuropean identityrsquo thoughrdquo (orthe question is meaningless)
ldquoIf you do not know English French and German you cannot feelEuropean You have to travel a lot spending time to live in differentcountries Multilingualism shape European identityrdquo (note no apartmention of Esperanto)
63 of 76
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
hellipand a family answer
4-member family father from Sweden mother from Bosnia Theylive in Norway They feel that Europe is wider than the EU Children(11 and 8) feel to be Norwegian-Bosnian When asked directly
ldquoDo you feel to be a EuropeanrdquoldquoNo but I am an Esperantistrdquo
64 of 76
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Context-based answershellip
ldquoIt depends on the contextrdquo said a French woman married with aHungarian living in Luxembourg ldquoWhen I cook for example I amFrenchrdquo
ldquoI feel European with non-Europeans for differences But I do notadhere to the European ideology when it is warlike and imperialisticI also feel cosmopolitanrdquo said a German woman
ldquoWe are lucky being Europeans as now we fight with words not withweapons anymore among usrdquo says a Belgian ldquoWhen we see refugeeswe cannot not think that we are so luckyrdquo
65 of 76
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
hellipand one context-free answer
ldquoBeing an Esperantist implies that there should be no Europeanidentity Human beings are one big family The warlike spirit camefrom Europe and was exported everywhere in the other continentsEU did not deserve the Nobel Prize for Peacerdquo
66 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
A man in Luxembourg 12 (original in English)
ldquoIrsquom a German and Argentinian grew up mainly in Germany studiedin the UK and am now living in Luxembourg At age 16 I startedlearning Esperanto which Irsquom using a lot since then and throughwhich I have made friends with people from all over the worldincluding many European countries I identify more as a Europeanand a world citizen than as a German I am very happy that theEuropean Union has brought peace to us Europeans and that it itmakes it possible for us to move freely in most of our home continentwithout showing a passport or having to change money But I am alsoafraid that the current conglomeration of crises could bring aboutsteps backwardsrdquo
67 of 76
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
A man in Luxembourg 22
ldquoWith my children I speak mainly Esperanto and sometimes GermanMy main motive for speaking Esperanto with them is so that they canalready as children participate with me and my wife in theinternational and culturally rich Esperanto community which isenriching our lives a lot Since my half Russian half German wifespeaks Russian with them and since the main language of theirenvironment is Luxembourgish the children grow up speaking fourlanguages [hellip] Our sixshyyearshyold on the other hand alreadyunderstands that Esperanto is a special language without territoryand is proud that she can sometimes explain this to adults who donrsquotknow about Esperantordquo
68 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
A young woman in Luxembourg 12
ldquoI am 20 years old and a native Esperanto speaker [hellip] My mother isFrench and my father is Hungarian so they spoke their respectivelanguages to me also living in the Netherlands I learned Dutch frommy nanny from the age of three months Where would a fourthlanguage have fit Having met at an Esperanto meeting my parentsspoke the language to each other and brought me with them tointernational meetings where I heard it spoken Sometimes we hadguests sometimes we were guests They made a point of not activelyteaching me Esperanto or encouraging me to speak it calling it theirsecret language I learned it anywayrdquo
69 of 76
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
A young woman in Luxembourg 22
ldquoHow does this relate to European identity I think I was doublylucky because I had Esperanto and I also went to the EuropeanSchool of Luxembourg In these schools pupils with origins from allover Europe grow up together I think this makes us veryopen-minded and multicultural and it definitely makes you feelEuropean especially as many of us ndash like me ndash cannot pinpoint onecountry where they lsquocome fromrsquo Once a German asked me if I wasGerman and I said lsquoyes if you wantrsquo After all I speak Germanfluently am familiar with German culture and I have a lot of Germanfriends so why not Sometimes I say I am kind of Dutch just not onpaper Sometimes I say Irsquom a French-Hungarian from the BeneluxSometimes I say Irsquom Europeanrdquo
70 of 76
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
An evaluation
The European feelings of Esperanto speakers are variegate Commontraits are a refusal of military and imperialistic behaviour a lsquoludicrsquo orsomehow lsquolightrsquo sense of territorial identity sometimes linked toEurope sometimes not
Esperanto in itself does not bring special values of European identityat least in its present situation But Esperanto really is a vehicleof a practical cosmopolitanism a vehicle for an alternativeGlobal Identity
71 of 76
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
So yes this picture is righthellip
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
But this picture is also righthellip
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
And this one too
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Acknowledgement of funding
MIME ndash Mobility and Inclusion in Multilingual Europe
The research leading to these results has received fund-ing from the European Communityrsquos Seventh Frame-work Programme under grant agreement No 613344(Project MIME)
UEA ndash Universala Esperanto-Asocio (Rotterdam NL)
The author is appointed as holder of the Special Chairin Interlinguistics and Esperanto at the University ofAmsterdam on behalf of UEA The content and opin-ions expressed here are the authorrsquos ones and they donot necessarily reflect the opinions of UEA
75 of 76
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
Thanks for your attention Dankon por via atento
Questions Comments ⟨FGobbouvanl⟩
goberiko federicogobbo +FedericoGobbo
httpfedericogobbonamepub
CC⃝ BY⃝ $⃝ c⃝ Federico Gobbo 2016
76 of 76
- A Retrospective Why I learnt Esperanto
- Why Esperanto is a fascinating language
- Europe is the lullaby of Esperanto
- Esperanto today
- Can Esperanto foster European identity
-
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