Over A Hundred Years of Esperanto In Chiswick

Research shows that local people were early adopters of a new language

Crowd of Esperanto speakers in Slovakia in summer 2016

From dusty, yellowing directories and old magazines we can find some the history of Esperanto in Chiswick. F. G. Archer of 20 Arlington Gardens was the first in the area to take up the new tongue, which he learned it in 1903. A year later he was joined by W. H. Jek of 34 Heathfield Gardens, Chiswick and R. F. Kerr of 60 Linden Gardens. A. E. Cousins of 43, Upham Park Road and Mrs Marion Cox of Adgar Studio, Bedford Park, both learned the new language in 1905. P. H. Lewis of Kenilworth, Grosvenor Road took up Esperanto in 1907. I have been unable to trace why these people learned the new tongue. Through idealism or a desire for contacts overseas, perhaps.

Exactly 130 years ago in Poland, an eye specialist called Dr L. L. Zamenhof, published a slim book detailing the structure and vocabulary of a wholly new language (which was not given any name in the book). The pen name Zamenhof chose was Doktoro Esperanto—and people who started learning the new language simply called it by the “surname” of its author, Esperanto.

The main goal of the new language was to simplify international communication by providing a common language that is easy to master. It took off slowly, firstly in the Russian Empire, then gaining support throughout the world. There are now Esperanto speakers in about 120 countries. I am one of them.

Some people think that, as it is a constructed language, Esperanto must be somehow “worse” than languages like English or Spanish or German. This is not the case; Esperanto is a fully developed language. Although it started as a theoretical construct, it has had an active community of users ever since its creation, and the language naturally absorbed new words and new ways to express things as people were using it, just like a natural language would. The Esperanto community strongly supports the concepts of language diversity and language rights. All languages are valuable, and it's important that the bigger languages do not push local and minority languages out of use.

The precise number of Esperanto speakers is hard to gauge. It has been estimated that there are a few hundred thousand proficient speakers of Esperanto in the world and up to two million people who are familiar with the language to some extent. In my experience there are enough speakers to make learning the language worthwhile.

People use Esperanto every day in various ways: when travelling, at international conferences, on the Internet, for work, or in family life. Normally Esperanto is used between people who don't have the same mother tongue. When used in this way, Esperanto acts as a "bridge language" between people from different language backgrounds. That's Esperanto's strength – it works well as a bridge across national borders.

Some Esperanto speakers use the language to actively promote a better, more peaceful world. There are those who use it to read news about events in various countries, written by the very people who live in those countries. And others enjoy books that were originally written in a minority language, which have been translated into Esperanto but not into the reader's mother tongue.

Where can I start learning Esperanto? There is a wide range of books available, and some courses on line. Duolingo is, hands down, the best free system for learning Esperanto. You certainly won’t regret the time you spend on Esperanto, a very practical way to overcome language barriers. The Esperanto Centre in Staffordshire can also support learners.

Bill Chapman

patbillchapman@gmail.com
01492 583420

June 2, 2017