Uncle John’s Heavy Duty Bathroom Reader@ (63 page)

“In a development that could one day score a touchdown for better health, chemists in Australia have created a ‘Super Bowl’ molecule that shows promise for precision drug delivery. Shaped like a miniature football stadium, the molecule is capable of delivering a wide range of drugs—from painkillers to chemotherapy cocktails—to specific areas of the body, potentially resulting in improved treatment outcomes and perhaps saving lives.”

—Journal of the American Chemical Society,
January 2005

A normal breath takes five seconds: two to inhale, three to exhale.

ESPERANTO, PARTO TRI

So why isn’t this chapter written in Esperanto instead of English? Because while Esperanto has its fans, it never really caught on as an international language. Why not? Here’s Part III of our story. (Part II is on
page 296
.)

H
ERE, THERE,
CIULOKE
By 1905 Esperanto had become a worldwide movement, with speakers on every continent except Antarctica. Speakers had 27 different Esperanto-language magazines to choose from and thousands of books to read, many of them original works of Esperanto literature. More of the world’s great works of literature were translated into Esperanto every year.

1905 was also the year that the Esperanto movement held its first World Congress, in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France. With the exception of the World War I and World War II years, a congress has been held every year since. The single most important piece of business ever conducted by the Esperantists was transacted at that very first conference in Boulogne: They voted to establish Zamenhof’s early works, known collectively as
Fundamento de Esperanto,
as the permanent and immutable basis of the Esperanto language. This “Declaration of Boulogne” remains in force to this day.

WIN SOME, LOSE SOME

The Declaration of Boulogne spared Esperanto from the fate that had befallen Volapük and other constructed languages: With the basis of Esperanto set in stone, the movement would never splinter into a hundred different factions, each believing its own version of Esperanto was best.

But the Declaration of Boulogne also set the Esperanto movement on a collision course with the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Language, which was still trying to pick a single international auxiliary language. The advantages of adopting Esperanto were obvious—it was the most successful constructed language in history, it already had an established base of tens of thousands of speakers all over the world, and it was growing rapidly.

A pitched baseball slows by about 8 mph by the time it reaches home plate.

But Esperanto was the language of linguistic
amateurs,
as far as the French intellectuals at the Delegation were concerned. It was still burdened with Zamenhof’s silly diacritical alphabet, and it still had no word for “mother” other than “father-feminine-noun.” To the Delegation, Esperanto wasn’t so much a language as it was a scandal, one popular with—gasp!—
ordinary
people. The Delegation refused to endorse it.

ESPERANTO JR.

Not
as is,
anyway. Esperanto wasn’t going to change—the Declaration of Boulogne made that clear. But the language did have much about it that was desirable, so in the end, the Delegation decided to build a new language out of Esperanto by fixing or getting rid of everything they hated about it. They called their new language
Ido
—Esperanto for “Offspring”—and in 1907, they proclaimed it the world’s new international auxiliary language. They probably assumed that the great unwashed Esperanto masses would see the error of their ways and come over to Ido, which was close enough to Esperanto to make it easy for them to switch.

They were wrong. Ido flopped: Though many university professors and other high-profile leaders in the Esperanto movement defected to Ido, the overwhelming majority of rank-and-file Esperantists stayed put. They had no interest in a language without a culture, even if the eggheads thought Ido was better.

And just as Zamenhof had feared would happen to Esperanto, once Ido opened its own door to tinkering, it was doomed. One reformer after another split off from Ido to create their own “improved” version of the language, each of them sapping Ido’s strength without any of them catching on. Only an estimated 2,000–5,000 people speak Ido today, and if it weren’t so similar to Esperanto, the number of speakers would likely be smaller still.

WAR AND PEACE

Esperanto’s best chance for becoming a truly universal language came in the early 1920s, following the end of World War I. An estimated nine million solders died in the war
—far
more than had died in all the wars fought in the previous 100 years—and six million civilians were killed as well. (Zamenhof himself died of natural causes in April 1917, at the age of 57.)

First white man scalped by Indians: Simón Rodriguez, in what is now Florida, in 1540.

The astonishing scale of the carnage helped to reignite interest in establishing an international language as a tool for peace. Attempts were made to win official support for Esperanto at the League of Nations, which, had they succeeded, might have led to Esperanto being made a part of elementary and high-school curricula worldwide. But France and other countries saw Esperanto as a threat to their own national languages, and they withheld all but token support for it.

THE ENEMY WITHIN…AND WITHOUT

The League of Nations was set up to prevent a repeat of World War I. It failed, of course. After World War II ended in 1945, yet another attempt was made to promote Esperanto as an international language with the United Nations, the successor to the League of Nations. The leaders of the postwar Esperanto movement made repeated attempts to tone down the eccentrics among the Esperantist community, at least when they were out among the general public. These efforts were not particularly successful, but it didn’t really matter. The real challenge that Esperanto faced in the postwar era wasn’t its own eccentricities: It was English.

ESPERINGLISH

By the end of World War II, English was well on its way to becoming the new international language. It, not Esperanto, had become a mandatory part of the educational curriculum in schools all over the world. Numerous attempts were made to boil English down to a more simplified or “controlled” form that non-native speakers could adopt as a first step to learning the full language.

In 1959, for example, the U.S. Government’s Voice of America foreign broadcasting service inaugurated broadcasts in what it called “Special English” that used a limited vocabulary of about 1,500 words, simplified grammar, and a slow, careful delivery to make broadcasts targeted at non-native speakers easier to understand. Making English simpler—more like Esperanto, in other words—has proven a lot more effective than trying to teach the whole world to speak Esperanto.

Busiest mailing day in the U.S.: December 14th. Mail volume nearly doubles.

ESPERANTO TODAY

When L. L. Zamenhof introduced Esperanto in 1887, he included in
Unua Libro
a printed pledge form that the reader could tear out, sign, and send in—a commitment to learn Esperanto if 10 million other people made the pledge. Each book contained four copies of the pledge, so that the reader’s family and friends could also sign up.

Esperanto has been around for more than a 120 years now, and in all that time it’s doubtful that 10 million people ever learned to speak it. It never did become a universal language. It didn’t end violence. It didn’t prevent World War I or World War II. It didn’t save the world. It didn’t even save Zamenhof’s own children: All three were killed in the Holocaust, singled out for murder by the Nazis, who viewed Esperanto as a tool of the international Jewish conspiracy. (Zamenhof’s grandson Louis did narrowly escape; as of 2008, Louis, alive and well at age 83, was still attending the annual Esperanto World Conferences.)

Esperanto has never been endorsed as an official language of any country anywhere on Earth. In 1908 the tiny one-square-mile territory of Neutral Moresnet, consisting only of one village and a zinc mine in what is now eastern Belgium, tried to adopt Esperanto as its “national” language. That effort failed too.

STILL KICKING

But Zamenhof also placed great importance on the values and culture that grew up around his language. The
language
may never have fulfilled the high hopes that Zamenhof had for it, but Esperanto
culture,
though small, is still alive, its proponents still communicating in an artificial language invented by a schoolboy more than a century ago. Esperanto remains the most successful constructed language in history: Estimates vary as to how many people speak it today; the number could be anywhere from 100,000 to more than 2 million people in 80 countries around the world. The Internet has made learning it even easier, and has helped aspiring Esperantists to meet and get involved with each other. Esperanto will never replace English as an international language, but considering how long it’s been around, it’s likely to be around for a long time to come.

Templar Motor Co.’s 1919 roadster offered an odd option: a Kodak camera mounted on the exterior.

LET’S SPEAK ESPERANTO

Thinking of joining an Esperanto group near you?
Bone!
Here’s a list of phrases to get you started. (For the origin of Esperanto, go to
page 195
.)

S
aluton!
“Hello!”
• Mi volas iri al la kavoj.
“I would like to go to the caves.”

•
Kioma estas la horo?
“What time is it?”

•
Kiel vi fartas?
“How are you?”

•
Bone, dankon, kaj kiel fartas via edzino?
“Fine, thanks, and how is your wife?”

•
Mi ne komprenas.
“I don’t understand.”

•
Kiel vi povas fari tion al mi?
“How could you do it to me?”

•
Ni devas rapidumi.
“We’re in a hurry.”

•
Kafon kun sukero kaj lakto-polvoro, mi petas?
“May I have coffee with sugar and non-dairy creamer?”

•
Kiu diris tion?
“Who told you that?”

•
Mi iras al florejo.
“I’m going to the florist.”

•
Mankas varma akvo.
“There is no hot water.”

•
Konsentite:
“It’s a deal!”

•
Lasu min trankvile!
“Leave me alone!”

•
Pardonu.
“Excuse me.”

•
Mi bezonas keksojn.
“I need cookies.”

•
Jen
(passing the cookies): “Here you are.”

•
Ne faru tion.
“Don’t do that.”

•
Kion vi faris?
“What did you do?”

•
Kion vi diris?
“What did you say?”

•
Mi amas vin!
“I love you!”

•
Ripetu, bonvole.
“Please repeat.”

•
Mi estas okupata.
“I’m busy.”

•
Bonvolu ne fumi, mi petas.
“Could you please not smoke?”

•
Mi ne fumas.
“I don’t smoke.”

•
Sanon!
“Gesundheit!”

•
Voku la policon!
“Call the police!”

Why were treadmills invented? So that prison inmates could use them to grind grain.

•
Ni dancu.
“Let’s dance.”

•
Kio estas la problemo?
“What’s the matter?”

•
Mi estas edzino
(female): “I’m married.”

•
Kiel oni diras tion en
Esperanto?
“How do you say that in Esperanto?”

•
Mi havas kapdoloron.
“I have a headache.”

•
Mi estas de Usono.
“I’m from the U.S.”

•
Ne gravas.
“Never mind.”

•
Kie estas mia mono?
“Where is my money?”

•
Mi soifas.
“I’m thirsty.”

•
Mi devas pisi.
“I need to pee.”

•
Vi estas freneza!
“You’re crazy!”

•
Irlandan viskion kun glacio, mi petas.
“Irish whiskey on the rocks, please.”

•
Mi preferas legomojn.
“I prefer vegetables.”

•
Hola, Moe!
“Hey, Moe!”

•
Certe!
“Soitenly!”

•
Kie mi estas?
“Where am I?”

•
Multan dankon.
“Thank you very much.”

•
Ne dankinde.
“You’re welcome.”