What if there was a language ...

written by u/iguerr

Have you ever felt like you weren’t being heard well enough? That there was something in your communication that just wasn’t enough to have people hear or pay attention to you? Have you ever remarked that you seem to need to change your communication code to adjust to that of a dominant group in order to be seen and heard? That you needed to change your language in order to be heard, because there simply was no one who understood or cared to understand your language?

That’s a feeling very familiar to pretty much anyone who didn’t happen to be born in an anglophone country. Those people are –or should I say, We are – in most cases, bombarded with things telling us time and time again how very important English is, how very important it is for us, and for our success in whichever career we choose, to learn it. This often leads to the forming of a worldview in which one’s own native language (and culture!) is seen as less, in favor of English (and its culture!) being seen as superior.

What if there was a language…

…that aimed to (help) solve this issue? What if I told you that you are not alone! And that many, many, many other people around the globe have felt the same over the past century and that many of them have come together to try and build an egalitarian bridge in international communication!

Those hoping people believed that we need to see each other as equals in being part of the one humanity, instead of being part of different countries – and the way to do that is to connect in an equal and democratic way. That does not, in any way, mean to make one forget one’s origins in favor of seeing oneself solely and “a citizen of the world,” forgetting that one still is a citizen of one’s country, state, city, and whatever else. Quite the opposite! Those hoping people believe that, being citizens of the same world, we have to care about (and take care of) the place where we come from, because it is part of the world, therefore, it isimportant. That’s the main teaching of Esperanto.

“But why”

–you might be thinking to yourself as you read this– “would we need another language to do that when English is already doing that job very well, thank you very much?” Well, I can’t say you’d be alone in this; many others would agree with you. But the answer for that question –which is very valid, mind you– is very simple.

English is not neutral, or egalitarian…

…or, if I’m quite honest, very easy to learn. English is a very irregular language. Having received many influences from many sources and not having patterns very intuitive in the treatment of those influences, this language can present itself to be quite a challenge to many –if I’m not bold enough to say most– people in the world. But English’s irregular nature is not the main or biggest issue with its being our current lingua franca, there is yet one bigger issue. The English language performs the hodiern imperialism remnant of the foundation on which our society was built.

Taking a look at the history of how America (and that word here means the continent, not any single country –I will get back to this in a moment–) was colonized allows us to see very clearly how language plays a very important part in the dominating of a people. The European travelers who arrived at the New World hastily made efforts to erase the native peoples’ cultures and their languages were at the forefront of that. A language is the way you name the world around you;

a language is a way of seeing the world. And therein lies a very delicate issue.

When you have a lingua franca that is the natural language of some people (or peoples), it is only inevitable that said people will be put above the rest. Its way of seeing the world will be dominant, and the other peoples of the world will have to adjust their world views to that of the dominant people.

Allow me to speak in more practical terms – as says an old expression in my native language, Portuguese, It’s necessary to give names to the bulls and it means to say that we have to call things by their names, lest we lessen the seriousness of a situation due to the inopportune use of euphemisms. So, to give

names to the bulls, currently we have the United States as the most influential country in the world and its language is, naturally, also the most influential in the world. That leads us –the other peoples of the world– to see ourselves having our perception of the world molded by that of the most influential country in the world, which can be quite tricky and mess with one’s own identity. Here’s an example.

Portuguese is the official language of, amongst other eight counties, Brazil; and Brazil is, as I assume you probably already know, located in America. The word for America in Portuguese is América, and the word for American is Americano. You can probably already see where I am going with this, so I will try to not take much longer. If Americano refers to one who comes from America and Brazil is in America, naturally Brazilians are Americans. However, if you’re ever in Brazil and you hear anyone say the word americano, it is almost certain that that person will be referring to one who comes from the United States. And it is yet more almost certain that that person probably doesn’t see themself as americana. Why is that? Because they have learned to see the world from the perspective of an English speaker, even if they aren’t one themself.

This reminds me of an episode in which a situation like this happened in an almost embarrassing way. The host of the Brazilian version of the Dutch reality show Big Brother was announcing to the Unitedstatian viewers that the platform in which the show was streamed was now established in the United States. The host then mentioned that “now you can access it over there in America'' which got me thinking, “If America is there, I wonder if maybe I’m floating around the Atlantic Ocean all this time and haven’t noticed it.”

Not recognising where you are in the world – that’s the power that a language can have.

“But we use English for globalization” –you might insist– “and that is about interchange between countries through the internet.”

You would not be wrong in that argument, simply misguided. Globalization is not fully practiced as it is in theory, and conveniently so. Globalization is the idea of things assuming a global nature – our very experience as humans on this planet being, seen under the scope of being in connection with the experiences of other humans in other parts of the world. And that implies horizontality, meaning that everyone would be interested in knowing about everyone else.

What happens is not quite that. The reality is that the whole world occupies itself of consuming what is produced in the English language, by English speaking countries, especially the United States.

“So English is the devil itself, is it?”You, possibly a native English speaker, might be inquiring. And no, not at all, of course. As I mentioned before, America’s colonisation is a very good illustration in history of how languages are tools and in so being, can be used for good or evil. English was not the language used in Central and South Americas, and yet, the colonisation of those portions of the continent was no less cruel and abominable; Portuguese and Spanish were the main languages in those cases and likewise, were used to commit foul crimes against the native peoples.

Getting our focus a little away from America and taking a look at Europe, a while ago it had French as the regent lingua franca, and I am sure many people had a lot of struggles with dealing with French’s irregular phonetics. But being obligated to learn it either way because it was a means of social ascending and not mastering it meant, naturally, having less prestige.

So, as you can see, the issue lies in a fact aforementioned and subsequently quoted – “When you have a lingua franca that is the natural language of some people (or peoples), it is only inevitable that said people will be put above the rest.”

And that’s where Esperanto comes in – however long it may have taken

As exposed, the issue with a natural language that is still alive being an international lingua franca is that the natural language never had the intention of being egalitarian in the first place. And that’s where Esperanto comes in.

For a quick context on how the idea for Esperanto came to be: its creator, a Pole man called L. L. Zamenhof, lived in a city that was undergoing a moment of critical conflicts between different groups. Those groups, he noticed, spoke different languages and that made him wonder about how big a part the lack of a common, egalitarian language that was easy for all to learn played in the conflicts.

From there he had the idea of creating such a language. The core of Esperanto’s ideal is the idea of it having a very simple grammar and syntax, so that it is easy for everyone to learn, and of it being a language of all. Having been created, it is not the native language of any country, which makes it a language of the whole of humanity. It is a commonly shared conception –no matter how much scholars of linguistics may beg to differ– that a language is owned by those who speak it natively, meaning that Brazilians would have more propriety over Portuguese than a Chinese, for example, and simultaneously, the Chinese would have more propriety over Mandarin than I, a Brazilian; and so on. Esperanto doesn’t leave any room for such considerations, as no country has it as its native language, so no one has more propriety over it than someone else. Esperanto is a language of all and for all.

Its creator, L. L. Zamenhof, spoke a few languages and studied a handful of others in order to get what is the most simple and logical of each language family and combine it all into one intuitive grammar. The result is that you can easily identify the similarities between Esperanto and natural languages, even recognizing where Esperanto got some words from. For example, if you’re a speaker of a romance language, I’m sure you’ll have no difficulty recognizing the Esperanto word “libro¹”; or if you are an English speaker (which I assume you are, if you got this far into this article), you’ll be able to easily recognize the word “tablo¹”.

The word “frato¹” means “brother,” the word “fratoj¹” means “brothers.” If you are a German speaker, I expect you to not have much difficulty inferring that the words “fratino¹” and “fratinoj¹” mean, respectively, “sister” and “sisters.” And even less difficulty I expect you to have in inferring that the word “gefratoj¹” means “siblings.”

If you are neither a romance language speaker nor a German speaker, I trust these words still were easy enough to understand.

¹IPA: /ˈtablo/, /ˈlibro/, /’frato/, /’fratoj/, /fra’tino/, /fra’tinoj/, / ge’fratoj/

“So Esperanto is easy because it has an easy vocabulary?”

You might be meaning to ask me. Well, no, of course not. A language is not a dictionary. And that means that a language is not made only of a grouping of words. There’s still syntax, of course, to care about, and grammar, and semantics. But these are all also very easy to grasp. If you either don’t believe me and want to see it for yourself, or do believe me but would still like to see it for yourself just to be sure, you are in luck, because a comrade of mine, a teacher that goes by the name Ikvero, has been in touch with the editors of the Kwikspell Correspondence Course to learn their ways and create a KwikEsperanto (which is not how the course is actually called) course, published right here, on your known and loved Quibbler.