Talk:History of Esperanto

Not a language for the Jewish diaspora

Removed the following because Zamenhof only considered Latin to be the international language and after learning it realized it was obsolete and too difficult for the task:

Zamenhof's intention had been creating a world language to linguistically unite the Jewish diaspora. To him the Yiddish language, as an old German dialect, didn't seem appropriate for this task, while old Hebrew and Latin were too difficult for a new world language.

More to the point, there doesn't appear to be any support for the above statement re: the Jewish diaspora, at least that I have come across. The usual story is that he always intended a language for the whole world, not just for one specific people, as described in eg Esperanto: A Language for the Global Village. --Brion Vibber

---

Quote:

IV. Zamenhof.

Segun chekoslovakian esperanto-revue un letre fro Dr. Zamenhof, datat 1889, kontena konfesione kel jeta non-expektat lume sur li historie de lon lingue. Li autore dar dikte ke lo ha krea li lingue unesmim e prinsipalim por sen nonfelisi popule, li judes, diviset inter multi landes e lingues - un popule kel pove bli ri unifika per li lingue. Ti popule pove deveni apostole del internationali lingue pro sen kosmopoliti role e pro sen historial traditiones. Kun li lingue vud veni li nov religione "Homaranismo," kel finalim sal deveni li religione del toti monde. Dunke li amo a sen popule, li nationalisme, ha es li unesmi motive por Zamenhof, kel adi in li sami letre: si me non vud fermim kreda ke li nov religione sal triumfa, me nulitem vud ha publikisa li lingue, kel es solim moyene, non eme.

End quote. (My bolding)

Source: An International Language (1928). Otto Jespersen. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/5037/AILtexts.html#textIV

If you want an accurate, rather than propogandist article, you might consider such reports which present-day Esperantists may wish to bury. Nov ialiste 18:20, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't think there is a "wish to bury" anything here, but something like this needs a better citation than a Novial anecdote. A member of our Esp. society in New York mentioned an article in the magazine "Israela Esperantisto" which quoted Zamenhof saying that he hoped Esperanto would unite the Jewish people linguistically. But I didn't get the impression from his talk that this was Z's main intention in creating Esperanto. Nevertheless if it turns out he said something like this and someone turns up a good cite, go for it. --Cam 02:28, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I agree the quote I made is insufficient evidence in itself. However, it claims to be quoting from an Esperanto journal. It would be interesting if somebody could find the original source. That Esperanto source itself may not be incontrovertible evidence but the whole question is worth investigating. If there are publications claiming so it could be said that "some sources claim...." and give references.

Note on cited works

Incidentally, La Danĝera Lingvo is also available in an abridged German edition as Die Gefärliche Sprache (same publisher). To my chagrin, my university's library has a copy in German, which I can't read, but not the Esperanto version. --Brion 02:31 Apr 30, 2003 (UTC)

Questions on focus

• Why the link to Taiwan Esperanto Association? Why is it relevant?
• Why the "focus on youth" in the timeline?

--Jim Henry 21:29, 8 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Terribly incomplete

This needs a lot more detail. It chatters about comparatively unimportant things while leaving out any discussion of the periodicals (La Esperantisto etc.) that united the early movement before the first congresses, the first or any subsequent world congresses, the Ido crisis, or other important milestones. --Jim Henry 18:41, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Timeline position

Why was the timeline moved up to the beginning of the article? It makes more sense to me to have it at the end. Is there a Wikipedia standard on this? --Jim Henry | Talk 14:40, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

I moved it up to the beginning when it was shorter. It made more sense to me to have it there at the time, especially with the article as incomplete as it was, but I've since expanded the timeline a fair amount. It would be great if you could expand the whole article per your comments above (I don't have the knowledge to do so); and if you're doing most of the work, I think you should decide what goes where! kwami 19:30, 2005 August 15 (UTC)

Much of what I mentioned in my above comment from February has already been added by now, either by me or other people. The Ido crisis is only briefly mentioned, though. I'll need to do some research to refresh my memory on that before writing more. It would also be good to say something about the Manifesto of Raŭma in 1980, and its consequences, too; other than that I can't think of any topics that desperately need to be added. --Jim Henry | Talk 20:14, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Well, I still think you should format the article as you see fit. You've probably done the most work on it. kwami 22:16, 2005 August 15 (UTC)

Ŝvejcarskaja, konditorskaja

It seemed inappropriate to use these Esperanto transliterations in an English-language article, so I changed them to the more "English"-looking shveytsarskaya, konditerskaya (corrected from "konditor-", see Kolker [1]). Also added the Cyrillic.
--Cam 07:43, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Ido/Interlingua

I changed "the movement descended into fragmentation and decline" to "the movement stagnated and declined", 'cos, first, I'm not aware that Ido has ever fragmented (i.e., split into competing dialects), and, second, while Courturat's death was obviously a blow, Ido seems to have gained ground for several years after. At least, activity seems to have peaked in the early 1920s (C. died 1914).

To call Eo the "foundation or inspiration" for Interlingua is definitely a stretch, except in the sense that it stimulated (but certainly didn't create) a widespread interest in international languages. Concretely, Pirro's Universalglot and Peano's Latino sine Flexione were stronger influences. Occidental certainly has Esperanto traits, in superficial and substructural -- so you could almost call Interlingua "Occidental with all the Esperanto bits removed". Anyway since this isn't an article on Interlingua, I hope my edit isn't too intrusive.

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League of Nations

"The French delegate to the League of Nations vetoes the use of Esperanto as its working language, leaving English and French."

That never happened, and a lot of the rest is inaccurate too. You should not rely on anonymous blogs, which in any case are against the sourcing rules. If you want to write the history of Esperanto and the League, it will take some work but here are some good sources:

• League of Nations, Esperanto as an International Auxiliary Language, 1922.
• Forster, The Esperanto Movement, 1992.
• Panchasi, Future Tense, 2009.

Zero^talk 11:07, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Standardized Yiddish citation

So the Spolsky citation doesn't show that the relexification hypothesis isn't generally supported by linguists. It shows Wexler's other theory about the origin of Yiddish is unsupported. 24.85.234.134 (talk) 21:57, 11 March 2020 (UTC)