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I once attended a small Esperanto weekend
conference in eastern Pennsylvania. Esperantists came
from such states as California, Arizona, Michigan,
Pennsylvania, Maryland and New York. The age range of
the people who attended was from three years old to
retirement age.
During this conference I met another
retiree. Although we were both native born Americans, we
naturally spoke with each other in Esperanto throughout
this Esperanto conference. We not only conveyed a lot of
information to each other but we also wound up sharing
experiences which had affected us deeply. We spoke about
family tragedies. In the course of two or three days we
spoke of those kinds of losses which bring tears to the
eyes. We also shared other kinds of experiences,
experiences that made us break out laughing.
I have had this kind of experience
before. Perhaps the fact that we were using a language
that we learned for idealistic reasons brought out a
side of our personality, our character, our soul, that
we would have been a little more hesitant to reveal had
we been speaking English. I can’t be certain. What I am
certain of is that we were both deeply moved by meeting
each other, that we both learned a great deal about each
other, and that our lives are richer for having known
each other over a period of time that can be measured in
hours.
During the same conference I had a long
talk (in Esperanto, of course) with a student at one of
our country’s leading universities. We went into
questions of the meaning of life, the kind of questions
that led me when I was a young man to the study of
philosophy. We discussed these themes for an hour or an
hour and a half after the evening session ended. Words
flowed as readily as they would have in English. If we
did not know a word we needed, a word came to us made up
out of the little words, the morphemes, which we already
knew.
Years ago a world-famous Esperantist
stayed with me for a few weeks and, in the course of
talking about a great many topics, we too shared
tragedies and the near-tragedies that had wrenched our
lives. The Chinese Esperantist I have already mentioned
whom I drove from Chicago to Detroit told me in
Esperanto about her concerns about her son.
Umberto Eco, the Italian semiotician was
once lecturing in a university about language. He
jokingly said that although people may use a planned
language for dealings with people publicly, people do
not make love in a planned language. He received a
somewhat embarassing letter from one of the women in the
class. She wrote, “Sir, you are mistaken. It is
certainly possible to make love in Esperanto.” Then she
added by saying that she does it.
Eco gave a series of lectures at the
Sorbonne on the idea of a perfect language. He later
published his research on this topic in The Search
for the Perfect Language. In this book he quoted
with approval Antoine Meillet who wrote, “Toute
discussion théoretique est vaine: l’Esperanto
fonctionne.” (All theoretical discussion is beside the
point: Esperanto works.) After studying the language Eco
became a proponent of Esperanto.
In an interview he reverted to the theme
of his student’s letter.
He said, “People have taught Esperanto
under very bad conditions for some decades, and look –
human beings make love in Esperanto. Latin has been
taught very intensively for hundreds of years, but you
can be certain that even if a priest and a nun were to
make love they would not use it under those
circumstances. Draw your own conclusions!”
When people make love in Esperanto such
as Eco’s student or the couples who speak different
languages who get together in Esperanto, date in
Esperanto, make love in Esperanto, establish families
and raise children in Esperanto, you would think that it
would be impossible to claim that Esperanto is not a
real language.
However, there are still people who know
next-to-nothing about Esperanto and dismiss it out of
hand as not being a real language.
The philosophical term a priori
means “before checking out the facts about something.”
Such people state a priori that Esperanto is not
a language in which you can express deep feelings, that
it is not a language in which you can do philosophical
analysis, and so on. There is no way to argue with them.
People cannot be made to see what they are determined
not to see.
If I were to say that I have discussed
philosophy in Esperanto, such people would scoff. If I
were to say that I have been brought to the verge of
tears when others have shared the tragedies of their
lives while speaking Esperanto, they would act as though
I were suffering from some kind of delusion. If I were
to describe how a man and a woman who did not speak each
other’s native languages met at an international
Esperanto gathering, came to know each other and love
each other, got married and raised children, all while
speaking Esperanto with each other, such people would
either ignore me or smile at what they would consider to
be my fantasy. If I went on to tell how their children
became fluent native speakers not only of their father’s
native language and of their mother’s native language
but also of the language that brought their parents
together, such scoffers would probably compliment me on
my wonderful imagination.
These a priori thinkers set up logical
structures and deduce from them all kinds of reasons why
Esperanto cannot work. They remind me of the people who
proved with irrefutable logic that human beings could
never construct heavier-than-air flying machines. The
logic of such people is perfect. If you grant their
assumptions, then their conclusions necessarily follow.
The only catch is that the conclusions which stem from
their perfect logic are based on assumptions which are
not true.
There is another term in philosophy, a
posteriori. This means “after checking out the
facts.” Sometimes scientists make up wonderful,
sophisticated theories which explain the known facts.
They rigorously construct these theories. Their logic is
perfect. Teachers and professors expound upon the
theories in schools and universities all over the world.
There is no a priori reason to suspect that there is
anything wrong with the theories.
But then some investigator uncovers new
facts. These facts do not fit the theory. Long ago the
prevailing theory was that everything in the heavens
revolves around the earth. That theory was elaborate and
consistent and it fit the known facts. It was
universally accepted. But then people looked closely at
the heavens. Hearing of the Dutch invention of a new
device to see distant objects, Galileo Galilei built the
first telescope used for astronomical purposes. He
looked at the wandering star named Jupiter and found
that four moons were revolving around it and not around
the earth. This finding conflicted with the theory that
everything in the heavens goes around the earth.
There was nothing wrong a priori with the
old theory. However, it turned out that there was a
great deal wrong with it a posteriori. In the course of
the centuries great institutions which held tenaciously
to the old theory that everything in the heavens
revolves around the earth finally had to give it up. The
only alternative was to look foolish by supporting a
theory that conflicted with a whole panoply of
well-established facts.
Similarly all of those who argue that
Esperanto is, in a very bad sense, an artificial
language without a soul (unlike English, Latin, Swahili,
Indonesian and Sioux), that it cannot be used to create
works of literature or convey deep feelings — such
people tenaciously hold on to their a priori positions
about Esperanto.
They can do so as long as they do not look at the facts.
I myself was not on the moon when Neil
Armstrong took his first step there. I myself was not in
Rome when Julius Caesar was stabbed to death. I myself
was not at Auschwitz when the Germans used hydrocyanic
gas to kill enormous numbers of Jews and other members
of what they considered to be inferior races. Yet I have
good knowledge about these events. That knowledge is
based on evidence such as films, photographs and
eye-witness accounts. I know that those events happened
just as I know that my father married my mother, even
though I was not there.
In the same way I know that people read
books in Indonesian, that they speak in Indonesian, that
they make love and argue while speaking Indonesian, and
so on. I know this even though I have never seen an
Indonesian book or heard a word of Indonesian.
There are people who have no problem
accepting all of these facts about Indonesian (or about
any other of the thousands of languages used around the
world) but who refuse to accept them about Esperanto.
They hold a priori positions and, as such, their
positions are irrefutable, even though those positions
are not in accord with the facts.
In spite of the a priori opponents of
Esperanto, the language works very well, not as a copy
of some other language, but in its own way. You can do
anything in Esperanto that you can do in any other
language. The difference is that it does not take long
years of study to get to the point where you can do it.
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