Esperanto Revolutionaries and Geeks: Language Politics, Digital Media and the Making of an International Community

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5

The Speech Community Against the Language Counciclass="underline" Vocabulary Choice, Authority and Standardisation in a No Man's Language

Paris, November 2016. As usual, a group of around twelve Esperantists gathered at the headquarters of SAT-Amikaro for their weekly debate in Esperanto. Having gone to the association on that cold Friday evening carrying cheese, wine and snacks to share with others, the participants were eager to discuss that evening's debate topic: technology, surveillance and freedom. Nonetheless, the expected debate on political issues would soon become a discussion on language.

During the debate at SAT-Amikaro, the participants shared their perspectives on an apparent paradox: while new technologies—from digital media to face recognition—create spaces for people to express themselves and feel safe, such technologies also limit people's freedom and make room for increasing censorship. Then, Reza—an Iranian Esperantist who was visiting Paris and joined the debate that evening— weighed in on how the United States had used drones in the Iranian airspace for unauthorised surveillance and data collection. As he explained, there had been issues between the Iranian and the US govern- ments due to the use of drones, leading to Iran accusing the United States of espionage at the UN Security Council in 2011. The debate

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participants showed surprise and interest in the topic, as this issue was unheard of for most of them. While people asked questions about the content of Reza's intervention, one of the queries, posed by Idris, contrasted with the previous debate: 'Speaking of which, how do we say drone in Esperanto?'.

Idris rightfully pointed out that drono—the word Reza used to refer to drone in Esperanto—is the noun stemming from the Esperanto verb droni, which, in English, means 'to drown'. Even though it does not seem to make sense to refer to drone as 'the object that drowns', from the context, people understood Reza's drono as he meant it. While Idris ques- tioned his interlocutors vocabulary choice, Reza exchanged glances with other participants sitting around the long table, hoping that someone would know the right word, utter it and allow him to continue what he was saying. However, Juliette—who was hosting Reza during his visit to Paris—smirked and suggested, with an ironic tone: 'Maybe it's droneo. Why not?' Disagreeing with the previous suggestions and calling for a more serious discussion on this, Alain noted: 'both drono and droneo sound like direct borrowings from English, like the word drone we use in French. This can't be right! There must be another word for it in Esperanto, a more international one!' As the participants interrupted the debate to join in a collaborative exercise of language creation, one might ask: why, instead of looking for an already existing word in a dictionary, were these people trying to come up with a new one?