¿Qué es el Esperanto?


Contenido


¿Qué es el Esperanto? Al menú
El Esperanto es un idioma planificado (construido), cuyo propósito es servir de idioma puente entre personas que hablan diferentes lenguas nativas.

¿Quién construyó el Esperanto? Al menú
El Esperanto fue desarrollado durante el periodo comprendido entre 1877 y1885 por L.L. Zamenhof de Varsovia, Polonia (entonces Rusia). Zamenhof, quien creció en una sociedad políglota, estaba convencido de que una lengua común podría ser necesaria para resolver muchos de los problemas que conducen a enemistades y conflictos. El descartó las principales lenguas de su tiempo (el Francés, el Alemán, el Inglés, el Ruso) porque eran difíciles de aprender y pondrían a sus hablantes nativos en ventaja con respecto a aquellos para quienes tales idiomas no fuesen sus lenguas maternas; y él descartó las dos lenguas "muertas" con las que estaba familiarizado, el Latín y el Griego, porque ellas eran aún más complicadas y mucho menos usadas que las lenguas principales de entonces.Empezó Zamenhof su trabajo sobre esta lengua planificada, que él llamaría eventualmente "Lingvo Internacia", siendo un muchacho de la escuela secundaria, y finalmente publicó el primer libro de texto de la lengua (para hablantes del Ruso) en 1887, al momento de su matrimonio e iniciando apenas su carrera como médico.

¿De dónde viene el nombre "Esperanto"? Al menú
Esta palabra, que en Esprtanto signigica "el que tiene esperanza", fue adoptada por Zamenhof como un seudónimo para su primer libro. Y se fue adoptando en el lenguaje popular como el nombre mismo de la lengua.

¿Hay otras lenguas planeadas? Al menú
Cuando menos mil de ellas. La más exitosa de ellas es probablemente la Bahasa Indonesia, desarrollada pormun linguista alemán en los años 20´s sobre la base de varias lenguas habladas en Java y que hoy es hablada por entre sesenta y cien millones de personas en la República de Indonesia. Entre las más conocidas gracias a los medios está el idioma Elvish de J.R.R. Tolkiens de The Lord of the Rings y tlhIngan Hol (Klingon) de Marc Okrand, usada como material de fondo en las más recientes películas Star Trek y en la serie de televisión Star Trek: The Next Generation. Entre lass varias lenguas planificadas desarrolladas (invariablemente por iniciativa privada) a travez de los años para uso internacional, las mejor conocidas han sido (en orden cronológico) Volapük, Esperanto, Interlingua (Peano), Ido, Occidental/Interlingue, Basic English, Novial e Interlingua (Gode). Recientes adiciones en este terreno incluyen Glosa y Loglan/Lojban. Ninguna ha sido particularmente exitosa; las únicas tres que han ganado una significante poblacion de hablantes han sido Volapuk, Esperanto e Ido. El número actual de hablantes de Esperanto excede el número total de hablantes durante la pasada centuria de todas las otras lenguas conbinadas por lo menos un orden de magnitud.
Aquellos interesados en las lenguas planificadas pueden seguir las discusiones en un grupo de noticias dedicado aellas: alt.language.artificial. Hay también dos listas de corres, una (Conlang) dedicada principalmente a las lenguas creadas por razones artísticas, el otro (Auxlang) dedicado principalmente a los idiomas desarrollados con el propósito de servir como idiomas internacionales auxiliares. Listas de correo para aherentes al Ido, Interlingua and Lojban y algunas otras lenguas planificadas también existen. NT: en la majoría de los foros dedicados a las lenguas planifiicadas, gran parte del material enviado es de naturaleza polémica y apuntando hacia el Esperanto.

¿Otras lenguas planeadas mejoran el Esperanto? Al menú
In planned-language parlance, "improve" is generally synonymous with "reduce or purge elements that are unfamiliar to speakers of Western European languages." This is almost always the case with planned languages (e.g., Ido) which are derived directly from Esperanto
There have also been disagreements over (a) criteria for the creation of new vocabulary (should it be internally generated or borrowed from other, usual southwest European, languages?) and (b) the relative efforts which must be expended on the part of language producer (speaker, writer) and consumer (reader, listener) (e.g. should the language have an object-morpheme to free up word order and reduce ambiguity at the cost of one extra item of complexity?). In all such cases, proponents of one system or another may disagree about what constitutes an "improvement".
In general, it is probably safe to say that no other planned language has significantly improved on Esperanto, and there is little genuine evidence that any of them has improved on it at all.

¿Qué hace al Esperanto superior a otras lenguas planeadas (o a otras lenguas en general)? Al menú
Linguistically speaking, Esperanto is neither superior nor inferior to any unplanned language; you can do the same things with it that speakers of English, Chinese, Russian or Quechua can do with their languages. Whether it is superior or inferior to other planned languages is an open question, since none of the others have gathered a great enough number of speakers for a long enough period of time to provide evidence one way or the other.
Esperanto's advantages are basically two:
It is a neutral language, being the property of no particular group of people and therefore the equal property of everybody.
It is relatively easy to learn. It would appear from personal experience and anecdotal evidence that, for an English speaker, Esperanto is perhaps five times as easy to learn as Spanish, ten times as easy as Russian, and "considerably" easier than Chinese, Japanese or Arabic.
Easy learnability is often claimed by other planned languages, and it is probable that many of them are considerably easier to learn than any ethnic language. Claims that they are easier to learn than Esperanto are in no case supported by the evidence, if only because, again, for most of them there is no evidence, one way or the other.

¿Cuantas personas hablan Esperanto? Al menú
It is difficult to say, since a global census is impossible. The canonical figure is two million people. Various (simplified) models based on what data is available (sales of texts and literary works in the language, representation on the internet, representation in the World Wide Web, etc.) indicate that this figure has at least ballpark accuracy. Other quoted figures range from ten thousand (from incorrigible opponents of Esperanto) to thirty or forty million (from inveterate enthusiasts for the language).

¿Hay hablantes nativos de Esperanto? Al menú
Some speakers of Esperanto have become so enthusiastic about the language that they have chosen to use it at home, even when they share a common native language, and so their children learn the language as their native tongue. An even more important factor is the number of international marriages that have developed between people who have met each other through Esperanto and whose only common language is Esperanto. The result is that today at least several hundred and perhaps as many as a few thousand individuals throughout the world speak Esperanto as a native language. There are annual conferences, at least one international magazine, and one on-line mailing list devoted to such individuals.
There are, so far as I can tell, no monolingual speakers of Esperanto beyond the age of three or four years -- in other words, beyond the age when socialization outside the family begins to become important. Furthermore, because their numbers are so small and because they are generally less dedicated to the idea of Esperanto than their parents, native speakers of the language have generally had negligible effect upon its usage and development.

¿El número de hablantes está creciendo (al menos tan rápido como la población)? Al menú
In 1927, when the population of the earth was around two billion, Dr. Johannes Dietterle of the Reich Institut fur Esperanto in Leipzig carried out a survey from which he estimated a speaking population for Esperanto of some 128,000 persons. Today the population of the earth is around six billion, and the number of speakers of Esperanto is on the order of two million. Given this date, you can do the requisite arithmetic to answer the question yourself.

¿En dónde es más usado el Esperanto? Al menú
In Central and Eastern Europe, particularly the former satellite nations of the old Soviet Union (including its Baltic republics), and in East Asia, particularly mainland China. It is also fairly well known in certain areas of South America and Southwest Asia. It is less well known in English-speaking North America, Africa, and the Moslem world.

¿El Esperanto está asociado con alguna cultura en particular? Al menú
As with any other language in actual use, speakers of Esperanto have developed a number of common points, some of them unique to this particular group, which in every sense of the word comprise a particular culture. These include a very well-developed literature, both original and translated (from a wide variety of sources), particular customs, a mythology (largely having to do with the history of the planned language movement), and even a small home-grown religious movement (homaranismo).
The argument has been made that a planned language intended for international use should not have a distinct culture of its own. There is much merit to this argument, but it is also likely that no language which comes into actual human use can avoid generating such a culture among those who use it -- and that no language which does not come into actual human use will, a fortiori, ever come into international use. The development of such a culture, far from not having happened (as many detractors of Esperanto continue to claim), would seem to be the inevitable result for any planned language that attains a level of use considerably below that enjoyed by Esperanto.

¿Que gobiernos apoyan el Esperanto? Al menú
Officially, none. Certain governments have, at one time or another, funded the use of Esperanto for promotion of their specific agendas (in the last quarter century these have included, among others, Hungary, Vietnam and mainland China) and have even financed national Esperanto organizations, for similar reasons, but none have either supported Esperanto as an international language or supported the unrestricted teaching or learning of Esperanto within their own countries. Esperanto is purely a private matter, and seems to function best when government interference is minimal.

¿Algún gobierno se ha opuesto al Esperanto? Al menú
There is a very large and popular book on this topic, Ulrich Lins's La Dang^era Lingvo (The Dangerous Language); the title comes from a comment about Esperanto made by Josef Stalin. As a few examples:
The Tsarist government of Russia banned the entry of all magazines and books in Esperanto from 1895 to 1905.
The Soviet Union put heavier and heavier restrictions on the use of Esperanto by private citizens from 1930 on, culminating in 1938 when all registered speakers of Esperanto in the U.S.S.R. were rounded up and either deported to Siberia or shot. Esperanto was effectively banned in the Soviet Union until 1956, discouraged until 1979, and kept under strict governmental control until the late 1980s.
The government of France in the early 1920s banned the teaching of Esperanto in French schools.
Most Central European governments before World War II discouraged the learning or use of Esperanto, considering that it was not necessary for the polyglot ruling elites and that it was not desirable as a means of international communication for the economic and political underclass.
Adolf Hitler specifically referred to Esperanto as a tool of Jewish world domination in a speech in Munich in 1922, and expanded on this idea in Mein Kampf. Esperanto organizations were banned in Germany in the mid-1930s, and Esperanto speakers in the territories occupied during World War II were either discouraged (generally in the occupied West) or exterminated (more common in the occupied East).
The prewar and wartime Japanese government discouraged, persecuted, and sometimes executed Esperanto speakers on the grounds that "Esperanto speakers are like watermelons -- green [a color associated with Esperanto] on the outside but red [Communist] on the inside." (Interestingly, an identical simile has been used in recent years here in the United States by right-wing politicians attacking the environmental movement.)
The Communist Chinese government has been ambiguous about its attitude toward Esperanto. Learning Esperanto under official auspices for official purposes has been not only tolerated but encouraged and (in one case of which I am personally aware) even required. Learning Esperanto outside official channels for personal use was, until around 1980, considered beyond the pale, and during the Cultural Revolution could lead to prison or worse.
Esperanto was barely tolerated in Romania under the Ceaucescu regime, and most Esperanto books and magazines were excluded from the country (they were nonetheless smuggled in on a regular basis by Bulgarian, Hungarian and Jugoslavian Esperanto speakers). Being active in the Esperanto movement was an almost sure route to an interview with the dreaded Securitate and their rubber hoses.
The Mullahs in Iran were quick to encourage Esperanto after 1979 -- it was not, after all, like a real Western language. But in 1981, when it was discovered that the Baha'i religion also had an interest in Esperanto, it became very convenient for Esperanto speakers in Iran to keep their heads down.
When one Esperanto speaker in Saddam Hossein's Iraq attempted to teach the language to others in the country, he was immediately imprisoned and later deported.
The incident of a few years ago when two Swedish Esperanto speakers were severely beaten by Tanzanian police for attempting to teach Esperanto to refugees in a Tanzanian camp may not have been a manifestation of official government policy; and in any case it was ineffective -- graduates of the refugee camp at Mandeleo have formed a large part of the nucleus of the new Tanzanian Esperanto Association.

¿Qué hace que el Esperanto sea más facil de aprender que otros idiomas? Al menú
Esperanto has a number of features that make it relatively easy to learn:
A regular and phonetic spelling system. Where the Chinese school child must spend years learning the relationship between the spoken and written language, and the American school child must spend an almost equally long period learning to spell, the Esperanto system (one letter = one sound) can be learned in about half an hour. This also includes a regular system of accentuation.
A regular and exception-free formal grammar. Doubters correctly insist that the grammar of any real language cannot be completely described, as Esperanto speakers sometimes claim for themselves, with a mere sixteen grammatical rules that can be written on the back of a postcard, and they are entirely correct; but what they fail to mention is that, in fact, most of the grammar, and certainly all of the most important grammar, is available in these rules. Learn eleven invariable grammatical endings and how they are used, and (with a vocabulary) you will immediately be able to invent grammatically correct, usable and useful sentences in Esperanto.
A regular, one-to-one and easily learned system of forming new words from words you already know. This is particularly useful because it allows you to take a fairly small basic vocabulary (the usual figures is about 500 items, including word-roots, particles, and affixes) and carry on long and fairly complex discussions about a wide range of topics, including technical ones. While modern Esperanto has a considerably larger overall vocabulary of unique roots (officially, about 9000 at last count), many of these are simply synonymous with words that can be formed from the most basic roots, and it is always considered acceptable (and usually elegant) to create your own words rather than borrowing somebody else's.

¿Qué puedo hacer con el Esperanto cuando lo haya aprendido? Al menú
You can do anything with Esperanto that you can do with other languages. Examples include:
International correspondence. Many Esperanto magazines carry correspondence columns. Pen-pals are also available through, among others, the Koresponda Servo Mondskala, p/a François Xavier Gilbert, 33 rue Louvière, FR-55190 VOID-VACON, France. There is an on-line pen-pal service.
International travel. Esperanto speakers love to travel, and there is an international organization devoted to arranging group tours for such people: Monda Turismo, p/a/ M. Sklodowskiej-Curie 10, PL-85-094 BYDGOSZCZ, Poland, telephone +48 (52) 415 744, telex 562844 mtur pl. Americans who wish to travel should contact the Esperanto-Vojag^Servo. An international hosting network for Esperanto speakers, Pasporta Servo, is administered by the World Esperantist Youth Organization.
Literature. Literary works are available from many different countries and cultures in Esperanto. Among the best services for Esperanto books are those of the Esperanto League for North America, which has made an HTML version of its catalog available, and the Universala Esperanto-Asocio. A small sample of Esperanto literature is available on-line.
Periodical literature. Between a hundred and two hundred magazines are regularly published in Esperanto. While some are often difficult to come by in this country, both the Esperanto League for North America and the Universala Esperanto-Asocio serve as subscription agents for a small number from among the best of them.
Esperanto on-line. There is a strong Esperanto presence on the net, including at least three Usenet newsgroups (soc.culture.esperanto, alt.uu.lang.esperanto.misc, alt.talk.esperanto) and several Esperanto mailing lists, and a large number of Web sites and documents.

¿Dónde puedo encontrar más información sobre el Esperanto? Al menú
Esta página fue adaptada de la información que se encuentra en la página de Don Harlow

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