Esperanto and its rivals

the struggle for an international language (Haney foundation series)

226 pages

English language

Published June 9, 2015 by University of Pennsylvania Press.

ISBN:
9780812247107

View on OpenLibrary

5 stars (1 review)

The problems of international communication and linguistic rights are recurring debates in the present-day age of globalization. But the debate truly began over a hundred years ago, when the increasingly interconnected world of the nineteenth century fostered a desire for the development of a global lingua franca. Many individuals and social movements competed to create an artificial language unencumbered by the political rivalries that accompanied English, German, and French. Organizations including the American Philosophical Society, the International Association of Academies, the International Peace Bureau, the Comintern, and the League of Nations intervened in the debate about the possibility of an artificial language, but of the numerous tongues created before World War II, only Esperanto survives today.

Esperanto and Its Rivals sheds light on the factors that led almost all artificial languages to fail and helped English to prevail as the global tongue of the twenty-first century. Exploring the social and …

1 edition

Review of 'Esperanto and its rivals' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

This (I think) well-researched book traversed the beginnings of not only the Esperanto movement, but its predecessor Volapuk and failed offshoot Ido. In this, the author weaved throughout prominent social movements and aspects of political context to paint a picture of the people involved in artificial languages and why. The relative success among artificial languages of Esperanto is, according the author, not because of any particular genius of the language itself but of the (accidental) genius of Zamenhof’s approach to starting a community and movement around the language.

This book continually made me think about what could have been had these idealists succeeded in selecting a international language before English won out. The points behind it still make sense. I also wonder what would have happened if Esperantists were not persecuted so harshly during the interwar and Second World War periods. Would we all be speaking Esperanto now? Probably not, …

Subjects

  • Universal Language
  • History
  • Artificial Languages
  • Esperanto
  • Volapük
  • Ido