The International Auxiliary Language Esperanto.

by George c.o.x.

PREFACE TO THE FOURTH EDITION

In this Fourth Edition of a work which, since its first appearance in August, 1906, has had a very favourable reception among English-speaking Esperantists in all parts of the world, advantage has been taken of the necessity for reprinting the work, to make a thorough revision of the text, and to introduce some other improvements.

Major-General c.o.x, born 1838, the author of the Commentary, died on 27th October, 1909, and the revision of the work has been carried out under the direction of the British Esperanto a.s.sociation (Incorporated).

Footnotes to the Preface to the First Edition have been introduced to record facts not known to the author at the time.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

Esperanto is the International Auxiliary Language created by Dr. L.

L. Zamenhof, a doctor of medicine, residing at Warsaw, Poland. It is now hardly necessary to mention this fact, but there was a time, not very long ago, when many people thought that Esperanto was a patent medicine, or new kind of soap, or, in fact, anything except a language!

Its aim is not to displace existing languages, but to be a second language for the world, and its merits are now recognized by many eminent men of all nationalities.[1]

If we consider the enormous advantages of a common language, understood by all, we shall at once confess what a blessing Dr.

Zamenhof has conferred upon mankind, for:--

_Firstly._--It enables anyone to correspond on any topic, social, commercial, or scientific, with persons of all nationalities.[2]

_Secondly._--Books of all descriptions can at once be translated into this common language, and sold all over the world; consequently, scientific and medical men will not have to wait, perhaps years, before some important treatise appears in their own language.

Lovers of fiction would also have at command the works of all the best foreign novelists.[3]

_Thirdly._--At international congresses the speeches and discussions could be in Esperanto, and understood by all present, the aid of interpreters being unnecessary, by which great saving of time would be effected.[4]

_Fourthly._--Treaties and Conventions with foreign Powers could be drawn up in the international language, and there would be no difficulty in determining their exact signification.[5]

Esperanto was first introduced into Great Britain by Mr. Joseph Rhodes, of Keighley, Yorkshire, who formed the first group in that town in 1902. Shortly afterwards, in January, 1903, a group was formed in London, under the auspices of Mr. W. T. Stead, Editor of the "Review of Reviews," Miss E. A. Lawrence, and Mr. J. C.

O'Connor, M.A., Ph.D., which resulted in the foundation of the present London Esperanto Club. The first English-Esperanto Gazette was founded by Mr. H. Bolingbroke Mudie, in November, 1903; this was followed in January, 1905, by "The British Esperantist," the official organ of the _British Esperanto a.s.sociation_, which was then founded as the official organization of the Esperantists of the British Empire. Progress in the language was at first slow, but it is now advancing by leaps and bounds, and there are at present, in England, Ireland, and Scotland, some 60[6] societies, groups, and clubs, affiliated to the _British Esperanto a.s.sociation_.

There is also now an American Esperanto a.s.sociation, with already a large number of energetic groups.[7]

I hope that those who take up this Commentary on Esperanto will not think it necessary to wade through all its pages before they can read and write the language. All that is necessary for this purpose is to read the 16 simple rules, written by Dr. Zamenhof himself (par. 94), and a few paragraphs and examples on the Formation of Words (par. 40), and on the Parts of Speech (pars. 103, 107, 125, 149, 159, 238, 249, 262). This can easily be done in two or three hours; and then, with the aid of a small English Dictionary, you will be able to write a letter in Esperanto, which will be readily understood by any Esperantist.

Or, you can buy for a few pence various primers, first lessons, or instruction books, most of which contain a small vocabulary of common words. A tiny book, costing 1d., called the "Esperanto Key," weighing 1/5th of an ounce, containing a vocabulary of over 1,500 roots, with explanations of the suffixes, formation of words, etc., gives you the language in a nutsh.e.l.l. This little book is already published in nineteen different languages. If you wish to correspond with anyone of a different nation, all you have to do is to write your letter in Esperanto, enclose the "Esperanto Key" in the language of the person you are writing to, and he will understand your letter.

This, you may say, is pure nonsense, but I a.s.sure you it is true, for on several occasions I have done this myself. In all cases my letters were thoroughly understood, and in two cases I received replies written in Esperanto, within three days of my writing, from persons who had never previously read a word in the language; these replies were in perfectly good Esperanto, with only one or two trifling errors, and I was quite amazed when I got them.

But then you will say, "What is the use of this Commentary?" Well, it is compiled for the use of those who wish to go deeper into the study of this delightful, logical, flexible, and sonorous language, and who wish to write and speak it, not merely sufficiently well to be understood, but to write and speak it in good style. Esperanto, although so extraordinarily easy to learn, has, like every national language, a certain style and elegance of expression of its own. If we translate French, or any other foreign language, literally into English, we see how bald and strange it reads, and probably some sentences would be unintelligible. A language literally translated into Esperanto would be quite intelligible to persons of all nationalities, owing to the fact that Esperanto is a purely logical, clear, and unidiomatic language, and to the use of the accusative case; but the literal translation might be wanting in style, grace, and smoothness, for the order of the words, although perfectly correct grammatically, might, in some cases, entail harshness of sound, and so the easy flow and euphony of the language would be lost.

The standard book for good style in the language is the "Fundamenta Krestomatio" (Fundamental Chrestomathy), or book of extracts for studying a language. This book, containing 458 pages of prose and verse on numerous subjects, was published by Dr. Zamenhof in 1903, and all the articles in it were either written by himself or, if written, as many were, by others, were corrected by him to such a degree that they do not too widely differ from the Doctor's own style.

The more the student studies this language, the more he will wonder how it could have been created by the brain of one man; for we must remember that Esperanto was not devised by a group of learned men of different nationalities, bringing the knowledge of their own language to bear upon the construction of an entirely new language, but that it was born of one individual after years of intense thought and labour, and it is marvellous how he has discarded the illogical, and introduced the logical and best points of all the European and dead languages into Esperanto. How this result was obtained can best be shown by a short history of the language, taken generally from the Doctor's article on the subject in the "Krestomatio," page 241, and also from a letter he wrote to a friend, which was first printed by his consent in 1896, and reproduced in "Esperantaj Prozajoj,"

page 239.

Footnotes:

[1] The Third a.s.sembly of the League of Nations, held at Geneva in September, 1922, unanimously adopted an exhaustive Report favourable to Esperanto.

[2] The Universala Esperanto-Asocio (U.E.A.), with headquarters at 12, Boulevard du Theatre, Geneva, has a world-wide organization with delegates (or consuls, as they are sometimes called) in over 1000 towns in thirty-nine countries who render important international services.

[3] A book list containing t.i.tles of hundreds of translations and original works in Esperanto may be had from the British Esperanto a.s.sociation (Incorporated).

[4] International Congresses, at which Esperanto was the only language used, have been held at Boulogne-sur-Mer (1905), Geneva (1906), Cambridge (1907), Dresden (1908), Barcelona (1909), Washington (1910), Antwerp (1911), Cracow (1912), Berne (1913), Paris (1914), San Francisco (1915), The Hague (1920), Prague (1921), Helsingfors (1922), and Nurnberg (1923). A Conference of educationists was held in 1922 at the Secretariat of the League of Nations in Geneva, at which twenty-eight countries and sixteen governments were represented; and in 1923 a Commercial Conference was held at Venice, to which over 200 commercial and touring a.s.sociations from twenty-three countries sent delegates. At both of these conferences, Esperanto was the only language used.

[5] The most notable example of a modern treaty was the Treaty of Peace signed at Versailles in 1919. It was executed in French and English; but not long afterwards questions of the interpretation of certain parts of it were raised, based upon alleged divergencies of meaning in the two texts.

[6] In 1923 more than 100.

[7] The Esperanto a.s.sociation of North America (Inc.), 507, Pierce Buildings, Copley Square, Boston 17 (Ma.s.s.), U.S.A., incorporates the English-speaking Esperantists of North America. There are also similar a.s.sociations in the British Colonies.

The Origin of Esperanto.

Doctor Ludovic Zamenhof, Doctor of Medicine, the inventor of Esperanto, was born on December 3rd (15th N.S.), 1859, at Bialystok (Bjelostok), in the Government of Grodno, West Russia, where he spent his boyhood.[8] The inhabitants of Bjelostok were of four different nationalities, Russians, Poles, Germans, and Jews, all speaking different languages, and generally on bad terms with each other. The boy's impressionable nature caused him to reflect that this animosity was occasioned by diversity of language, and thus the first seeds of the idea of an International Language were sown. Even at an early age Dr. Zamenhof came to the conclusion that an international language was possible only if it were neutral, belonging to no nationality in particular. When he pa.s.sed from the Bjelostok gymnasium to the second cla.s.sical school at Warsaw he was for some time allured by the dead languages, and dreamed of travelling through the world to revive one of them for common use, but he was eventually convinced that this was impracticable owing to the ma.s.s of grammatical forms and ponderous dictionaries of those languages.

Footnote:

[8] Dr. Zamenhof died at Warsaw on April 14th, 1917.

In his boyhood he learnt French and German, and began to work out the idea of his new language, but when, in the 5th Cla.s.s of the Gymnasium, he began to study English, the simplicity of its grammar was a revelation to him, and his own grammar soon melted down to a few pages without causing any loss to the language. But his giant vocabularies left him no peace of mind.

He tried to use similar economy in his dictionary as in the grammar, thinking that it did not matter what form a word took if it had a given meaning; so he began to invent words, taking care only that they should be as short as possible. For instance, he argued that the word "conversation" has 12 letters; why should not the same idea be conveyed by two, say, "_pa_"? He tried this by simply writing the shortest and most easily p.r.o.nounced mathematical series of joined letters, and these he gave a defined meaning, e.g., ab, ac, ad, ...

ba, ca, da, ... eb, ec, ed, ... etc. He, however, soon abandoned this idea, as he found these invented words very difficult to learn, and hard to remember, and thus he came to the conclusion that the word material for the dictionary must be Romance-Teutonic, changed only as regularity and other important conditions of the language required.

He soon remarked that the present spoken languages possessed an immense store of ready-made international words known by all nations, and he commenced at once to make use of this unlimited supply.

One day, when he was in the 6th or 7th Cla.s.s at the Gymnasium he, by chance, observed that the signs over shops had certain terminations, as we might notice in England, for instance, "Surgery,"

"Bakery," etc., and it then struck him for the first time that these terminations had certain meanings, and that by using a number of suffixes, each always having the same meaning, he might make out of one word many others that need not be separately learnt. This thought shed a ray of light upon his great and terrible vocabularies, and he cried out "The problem is solved!" He at once understood how important it was to make use of this power, which, in the national languages, plays only a blind, irregular and incomplete _role_.

So he began to compare words, and to search out the constant and defined relationship between them. He cast out of his vocabularies a vast series of words, subst.i.tuting for each huge ma.s.s a single suffix, which had always a certain fixed relationship to a root-word.

He next remarked that certain words, which he had hitherto regarded as purely roots, might easily become formed words and disappear from the dictionary, such as patr-_ino_ (mother), _mal_-larga (narrow), tranc-_ilo_ (knife). Soon after this the Doctor had in ma.n.u.script the whole grammar and a small vocabulary.

In 1878, when he was in the 8th Cla.s.s at the Gymnasium, the language was more or less ready, and his fellow students commenced to study it. On December 17th, 1878, they celebrated the birth of the language by a banquet, at which a hymn was sung, the commencing words being as follows:--

Malamikete de las nacjes Kado, kado, jam temp' esta!

La tot' h.o.m.oze in familje Konunigare so deba.

The language then was very different from what it is now, as the following translation will show:--

Malamikeco de la nacioj Falu, falu, jam tempo estas!

La tuta homaro en familion Unuigi devas.