Esperanto Revolutionaries and Geeks: Language Politics, Digital Media and the Making of an International Community
- Автор: Fians Guilherme
- Год: 2022
- Язык: русский
- Жанр: Культурология
Электронная книга - «Esperanto Revolutionaries and Geeks: Language Politics, Digital Media and the Making of an International Community». Краткое содержание книги:
According to the foreword to the Fundamento Universala Vortaro (Universal Dictionary), 'everything written in the international language
Esperanto can be translated by means of this vocabulary' (Zamenhof 1905: 84). I call this the principle of primordiality, which consists of acknowledging that Esperanto is a living language with an evolving vocabulary, but whose vocabulary should be kept as close as possible to the primordial root words originally introduced by Zamenhof. This involves maximising agglutination and vocabulary development while minimising the addition of new root words, so that the Universala Vortaro—deemed as untouchable as the other sections of the Funda- mento—can continuously meet the needs of Esperantos growing lexical provision.
As technology requires constant vocabulary updates to name new things, it gives us an interesting entry point to explore the functioning of the three competing principles at play. Senpilota aviadilo and its shorter form, spavo, are the result of agglutination of the preposition sen (without) + the root pilot- + the adjective ending -a, followed by the root aviad- (meaning to fly an aircraft) + the suffix -il- (indi- cating a tool/instrument) + the noun ending -o. Hence, spavo more closely relates to the principle of primordiality, as a 'purely Esperanto' compound of fundamental root words listed in the inaugural Esperanto dictionary. Droneo, in turn, illustrates the principle of internation- ality: rather than stemming from fundamental Esperanto root words, it builds upon the English-derived, more internationally recognised drone. However, whereas the English word drone refers to male bees and aircrafts, the Esperanto root word dron- refers to the act of drowning. By contrast, drono elegantly depicts the principle of flexibility, which is about simply and quickly adapting the original English and French word drone—known by all the debate participants—to Esperanto, without much effort to make it correct, and based on the hope that the inter- locutors at stake will understand the meaning of what is being said.
Such as speaking scagninu (in Corsican) or bande magnetique (in French) to refer to cassette tape entails choosing which language ideology to endorse on Corsica, also selecting vocabulary in Esperanto according to these three competing principles involves approaching Esperantos language ideology differently. According to the supporters of internation- ality and flexibility, spavo is too hazy for Esperanto beginners, who are likely not to fully grasp the abbreviated form of an agglutinative word that requires speakers to know several root words. Droneo, in turn, is perceived by its opponents as too European to be readily understood by those who do not have a European language as their first language. Mean- while, drono raises controversies for being a direct borrowing, which may enable immediate intelligibility, but at the expense of the structure and certain stability of the language.
The same controversy applies to other new technologies not named by Zamenhof, whose attempts to name I followed during my research: should one refer to tablet computer in Esperanto through the more Zamenhof-inspired terms platkomputilo ('flat computer'), tabulkomputilo ('board/slate computer') and komputileto ('small computer')? Or perhaps through the more offhand, flexibly drawn from English tableto (whose literal meaning is 'small table')? How about the English word software, which is alternatively referred to in Esperanto as the Funddmento-fren&y programaro (the assemblage of programmes used to run computers and other electronic devices, stemming from the Esperanto root word program- + the morpheme -ar- indicating a collective noun + the noun ending -o) or the more international softvaro, which combines root words not originally existent in Esperanto, but which remains closer to the more widespread English word?
Certainly, the issue of vocabulary choice—and the language prin- ciples and approaches to ideology arising from it—is not restricted to technologies, being also illustrated, for instance, by the word for hospital. Zamenhof originally suggested malsanulejo, a compound made up of the prefix mal- (indicating opposition/absence of) + the root word san ('health') + the morpheme -ul- ('person', 'individual') + the suffix -ej- ('place') + the noun ending -o. Over the years, through language variation and use, the 'place for those who lack health' gained two synonyms: the less frequently used kuracejo—the root word kurac ('heal') + -ej- ('place') + the noun ending -o, thus 'healing place'—and the more recent form, less agglutinative and sounding more international, hospitalo—hospital followed by the noun ending -o.
The same applies to the primordial form maljuna—mal (absence of/opposite of) + jun ('youth') + the adjective ending -a, thus 'young [person]'—which, over time, became sometimes referred to by English- speaking and Dutch-speaking Esperantists as olda, directly derived from the English old or the Dutch oud. Such vocabulary controversies also gain ground, sometimes jokingly, in translations of places' names: would the 'correct' Esperanto name for the city of Liverpool be Liverpool (kept in the original, truer to the Fundamento, which did not rule on personal names and places' names), Liverpoolo/Liverpulo (more international, in either a literal or phonetic adaptation, deriving from the English word followed by the noun ending) or, as I once heard as a joke among British Esperantists, Hepatbaseno (a root-by-root translation, composed of hepato, 'liver' + baseno, 'pool', 'basin')?
Interestingly, the competing principles on which the development of Esperanto is based—flexibility, internationality and primordiality— were, in a way, originally outlined by Zamenhof himself.[22] Nurturing a language ideology that places Esperanto's raison d'etre in its learn- ability, inclusivity and egalitarianism, however, these competing princi- ples constitute ways to find a balance between two sensitivities. On the one hand, the perception that Esperanto must be as accessible and easy- to-learn as possible to potential speakers from across the world; on the other hand, the perceived need for the language to be complex enough to enable people to talk about any subject and express nuances of all sorts. To allow the language to evolve while being simultaneously easy to learn and complex to use, the language ideology behind Esperanto— which takes the form of the three principles outlined above—draws on the refusal of a clear linguistic authority. While groups of Breton native and non-native speakers—as well as Corsican spelling competi- tors—fight for authority over their languages, prominent Esperantists seem to fight against being seen as authoritative figures. Along these lines, Zamenhof refused to be Esperanto's owner and sole authority, transferring the rights over his language to its speech community, and the Akademio refrains from interfering in conflicts over everyday usage, taking action only when wider structural issues in Esperanto are at stake. By the same token, the foreword to the 2002 issue of the PIV outlines that Eugene Lanti (PIV's idealiser) did not expect this dictionary to be perfect, complete or authoritative, but simply useful to Esperanto users (Waringhien 2002 [1968]: 5), and Bertilo Wennergren (member of the Akademio, author of PMEG and main editor of PIV's 2020 issue) stated that, despite his powerful, prescriptive influence over the language, he does not want to be perceived as, in his words, 'the green Pope' (green being the colour that symbolises Esperanto) (Wennergren 2020).