How Esperanto started and developed

Esperanto is the world's most widely spoken constructed language. Developed in the late 19th century, it was intended to be an auxiliary language for international communication.

Esperanto was first proposed in 1887 with the publication in Warsaw, Poland, of a book in Russian entitled Международный языкъ: предисловие и полный учебник (International Language: An Introduction and Complete Manual). Esperantists now know this as La Unua Libro (The First Book).

The book, which was rather a booklet, contained a theoretical introduction to the language and six example texts, some of which were translations and others were original. It also contained the 16 basic rules of the language's grammar and a short dictionary with 917 entries.

The book's author appeared under the pseudonym D-ro Esperanto, a name which in the international language means 'Doctor Hopeful'. It was soon widely known that the author was a young medical doctor from Warsaw, L. L. Zamenhof, born in a Jewish family that lived in the part of Poland then under the Russian Empire. The author's pseudonym later became used as a name for the language itself.

The work appeared shortly afterwards in Polish, German, French and English.

Many readers found the new language interesting and started learning it. In 1888, several hundred people were learning the language all over Europe and even as far away as the United States. In 1889 a Directory was published with the names and addresses of more than a thousand Esperantists.

Esperanto clubs and societies were soon established. By 1889, the first periodical, La Esperantisto (The Esperantist) was founded. Since then, more than 14,000 journals and magazines have been published about the history of the Esperanto movement, as documented in 2019 by Bibliografio de periodaĵoj en aŭ pri Esperanto (A Bibliography of Periodicals in or about Esperanto).

The First Book contains the first literary efforts in the language, and other authors soon followed Zamenhof's example. Literary activity was mostly devoted at first to the translation of classical works of world literature into Esperanto. This allowed the language to grow and to prove its effectiveness in this field. Original Esperanto literature developed with time and various literary schools appeared.

The first international Esperanto meeting took place in 1904 in Calais (France), where several dozen French and British Esperantists met to study the possibility of organising a more formal event. The first international association, the Tutmonda Esperanto-Ligo (World Esperanto League) was established the following year, which convened, also in 1905, the first World Congress in Boulogne-sur-Mer, France.

This meeting was hugely successful. It reasserted the confidence of the language's enthusiasts in its possibilities as a real means of communication, as opposed to a merely theoretical one. It also encouraged the repetition of similar meetings in the following years.

Since then more than 100 World Esperanto Congresses have been held on successive years, except during both World Wars, and- including those in 2020 and 2021 which were virtual, due to the pandemic. It's a time-honoured tradition to include all participants in a group 'Congress photo'.

The Esperanto community has had its own symbols from the start. The green star was proposed in 1892, through the magazine La Esperantisto, as a sign for the mutual recognition of speakers of Esperanto. The star's five points represent the continents (five, as per the geographical ideas of the period). The flag of Esperanto was originally that of the Boulogne-Sur-Mer Esperanto club. In the World Congress held there in 1905, it was adopted as the language's official flag. The green field represents hope and the white canton with a green star represents peace.

The Esperanto movement also has its own anthem, La Espero (Hope), with words by Zamenhof. It has been played and sung with more than twenty different melodies, but the best known one by far is that composed by Félicien de Ménil.

Esperantists have always been very keen on relating and getting in touch with people of other countries. In the early years of the language, an active correspondence was established among Esperantist penfriends by postal mail, and today, this is even more intense by email and social media.

The Esperanto movement became organised quite early. The Universala Esperanto-Asocio (UEA, World Esperanto Association) was established in 1908, aspiring to unite the language's users outside national organisations, working for mutual help and the practical use of the language. The UEA was founded by two young Swiss men, Hector Hodler and Edmont Privat.

The UEA is still the main organisation in the Esperanto movement, even though its nature and operations have changed noticeably since then.

Some time later, in the 1920s, sectors of the then thriving workers' movement saw the possibilities of Esperanto for the advancement of the so-called proletarian internationalism and they created their own Esperanto organisations. In the context of the World Congress which took place in Prague in 1921 a new organisation was founded by workers who proposed to use Esperanto as a tool in their struggle. The organisation was called Sennaciecia Asocio Tutmonda (SAT, World Anational Association), and it accommodated (and it still does) many diverse tendencies in the wide field of labour ideologies, such as socialists, communists and anarchists among others. SAT has long played a major role in the spread of Esperanto among the popular classes; it has its own peculiar character and performs a valuable cultural work.

The current Esperanto movement follows the steps of those early pioneers.

The movement has been through times of crisis as the result of political persecution, of world globalisation and the hegemony of the USA after World War 2. All this, plus the concept of English as the new lingua franca of humankind, resulted in a loss of interest about Esperanto.

But, in recent times, there has been a new surge of interest about the language, associated especially with the opportunities for communication afforded by the new technologies. The number of international contacts and meetings has grown considerably, and cooperation between people from different countries has reached levels that the early Esperantists could barely imagine.

Besides, many people have observed that the use of a national language in international relations provides an unfair advantage for the native speakers of that particular language, as well as economical, prestige and power benefits for their countries. All these limitations to a really democratic communication have opened a new space for Esperanto, whose most outstanding feature is precisely its neutrality.

Blog translated by Alejandro Pareja