(A talk presented by Claude Piron in Basel during the Trilanda
Renkontigho on March 21, 1998.)
We can approach the world language problem in many different
ways; for example, politically, linguistically, financially and
economically and so on. Probably because of the distortions of my
professional training I approach it from a psychological point of
view. I believe that the importance of this point of view has not
been correctly understood.
Esperantists often complain that the world does not understand
their point of view or that it is not interested in it, or that
Esperanto is not making good enough progress. It is very easy for
Esperantists to blame each other for this. In my opinion, these
kinds of negative feelings are not at all justified when you take
into account the psychological aspects of the situation. In other
words, as I see it, Esperanto is progressing at a normal rate
even though it may actually regress for, let us say, ten years at
a time. In addition to this, awareness of the world language
problem is also progressing at a normal rhythm, the rhythm of
history.
The widespread idea that Esperantists have, that their cause is
not going forward fast enough, has its source in one of the most
important parts of the human psyche, that is: desire. We want
Esperanto to go forward, and we react to that desire like a
little child; we do not want to see all of the obstacles that
stand like great walls between our desires and their fulfillment.
So we feel frustrated. When we feel frustrated, instead of facing
the fact that we were not realistic in the first place and,
because of that, that the mistake was our own, we look outside of
ourselves for people to blame; those will be the outside world
which does not pay attention to us or in those bunglers in the
Esperanto world who fail to act effectively and purposefully.
This is childish. When I say this I am not being critical. I am
only expressing something about the way the human psyche normally
works; when strong desires emerge, we tend to act like little
children. Impatience because Esperanto is not making enough
progress and looking around for guilty parties to blame is
completely normal and natural. This is how normal adults react in
most areas of their lives. We are really mature only in some
aspects of our lives. In many areas, such as politics,
metaphysics and human relations, we continually react like little
children.
Society does not understand
Back when I said that the world does not understand us, I was
touching on a psychological aspect of the situation. Why
doesn't the world understand us? Because society in general does
not understand the language situation. But why? There are plenty
of reasons. One of them is because linguistic relations are
complex, and it is not easy to understand something that is
complex. When something is very complicated, simplification is
the natural way of dealing with it. Consequently, society in
general has a very simplified picture of the world language
situation. A picture that is really a sketch.
Another psychological reason why the world does not understand
the language problem is fear. This might surprise you. And, in
fact, if you were to tell a politician or a linguist or the man
in the street that one of the reasons why the world does not
solve its language problem is fear, they will look at you as
though you are crazy. First of all, because for them the language
problem simply does not exist. "English takes care of it, or
the translators do." And, besides, on the whole, if there
were a problem, it is absolutely clear that it has nothing to do
with fear. "Nobody feels fear about a language. What is this
nonsense?" That is what they will tell you.
However, many fears are unconscious. We are not aware of them,
which is a good thing because otherwise because otherwise we
would not be able to live comfortably. But the fact remains that
these fears create a lot of distortions, misleading us about our
way of understanding reality.
Why does a language evoke fear? Again, there are many reasons.
For example, our language is closely linked to our identity. One
day, during childhood, we suddenly realize that the people around
us are speaking a particular language, and that language defines
us in relation to the rest of the world. I, myself, as a native
French-speaker from Switzerland, belong to a group that is
defined by the language that it speaks. So, in the depths of the
psyche, my language is me. The widespread use of the
Swiss-German dialect is a way of saying: this is who we
are; we are not Germans. Or look at how the Flemish or the
Catalans react: "If they persecute or criticize my language,
they are persecuting or criticizing me."
Many people tend to reject Esperanto because they sense that it
is a language without a particular people and because of this a
language without human identity, and so, perhaps, not a language
at all, or a language which is some kind of a fabrication without
a human quality, a language which is to real languages as a robot
is to real people. And that scares them. The fear is that this
robot, which, people say, wants to become universal, is going to
trample underfoot all other languages, all the peoples of the
world, everything that is individual and alive, destroying
everything as it goes. This might seem fantastic to you. However,
it is the truth. The existence of this unconscious fear, which a
great many people have, is uncovered by the psychological method
called clinical free association in which you investigate
the ideas or pictures that are associated with each other when
you ask a person to tell what is going through their mind when
they hear a particular word (in this case,
"Esperanto".)
Identity with the international language
One of the problems that Esperantists have stems from that
fact that Esperanto has certain characteristics which makes it
different from all other foreign languages, namely, that it
favors identification with itself. A Swede who speaks English
with a Korean and a Brazilian feels that he is a Swede who is
using English; he does not assume a special identity as "a
speaker of English". On the other hand, a Swede who speaks
Esperanto with a Korean and a Brazilian feels that he is an
Esperantist and that the other two are also Esperantists, and
that the three of them belong to a special cultural group. Even
if non-native-speakers speak English very well, they do not feel
that this ability bestows an Anglo-Saxon identity on them. But
with Esperanto something quite different occurs. Why?
As usually happens in the field we are examining today, many
complex factors play a role. Perhaps the most important of these
is that Esperanto becomes integrated into the human psyche
integrates Esperanto at a deeper level than other foreign
language. Not at once, not with beginners, but with those whom
Janton calls "mature Esperantists", those who have
enough experience with the language to feel at home in it. Why is
it located deeper in the psyche? Because, more than any other
human language, Esperanto follows the natural tendencies of the
human brain when people want to express themselves.
Our most basic tendency, when we learn a language, is to generalize
the traits of the language which we are learning. That is why
every English-speaking young child says "foots" instead
of "feet" and "he comed" instead of "he
came". That is why every French-speaking young child
expresses the idea of "horses" by saying "des
cheval" before they learn the correct term, "des
chevaux" and express the concept of "you're doing"
by saying "vous faisez" before they learn "vous
faites". In Esperanto you just cannot make these kinds of
mistakes. Because of this, new Esperantists quickly attain a
sense of security when they use the language.
Besides, in Esperanto people are much freer than in other
languages. This is true about the way words are put together. In
English you have to say "he helps me"; in French you
say, literally, "he me helps"; in German, "he
helps to me". In each of these languages there is one
obligatory structure, only one. In Esperanto you can freely
choose any one of the three.
The same is true about choosing the part of speech of a word in a
sentence. You can often choose to use a word as any one of these
parts of speech: noun, verb, adverb, or adjective. For example,
you can use the word "automobilo" as a noun saying
"Mi venis per automobilo" (I came by car). You can
also, by changing the ending, turn "automobilo" into
the adverb "automobile" (pronounced, automobil-eh)
and say "Mi venis automobile" which means, literally,
"I came automobiley". In Esperanto this sounds
perfectly natural. You can also turn it into a verb by using a
different ending and say: "Mi automobilis" which
literally means "I automobiled", and, again, this
sounds perfectly natural in Esperanto. You do not have to do
this. You can if you want to.
Very few languages provide the means which makes this kind of
freedom possible. Even when a language does so, in many cases the
user of the language do not have the right to use them.
Besides in Esperanto circles people are very tolerant about
mistakes in grammar and vocabulary, much more than people are
when it comes to other languages. Forgetting to use the
accusative ending or using it incorrectly is practically seen as
a normal thing, maybe because it almost never gets in the way of
understanding. Only a few purists make a scene over these kinds
of mistakes. However, they do not really belong to normal
Esperanto circles. (Attention: Please do not take these remarks
about linguistic errors as a recommendation. I am acting here
purely as an observer.) In other words, there is no connection
between using the language perfectly and identifying with it.
People can feel themselves to be Esperantists even though they
always leave out the accusative ending.
All of this plus the freedom to put together word-elements to
make up new words as you like (something that you cannot do in
many languages) creates an atmosphere of freedom. This puts the
language in the deepest part of the psyche, much closer to its
core and its basis in instinct.
It is easier to be spontaneous in Esperanto than, for example, in
English, because you have fewer arbitrary prohibitions to deal
with. Because of this people more easily feel authentically
themselves. Because of these kinds of traits, Esperanto roots
itself more profoundly in the psyche than other foreign
languages, and, because of this, people feel a much stronger
tendency to identify with it. However, people who do not belong
to the Esperanto world cannot understand this. They cannot
understand this identification. That is why the attitude of many
Esperantists seems to be crazy to them, or at least very strange.
Because of this identification with the language, when others
criticize Esperanto or even the very idea of an international
language, Esperantists easily feel under attack. Attacking the
language means attacking them, and their natural reaction is to
counterattack, sometimes very sharply. This is something that
non-Esperantists simply do not understand. So, in these normal
reactions of Esperantists, non-Esperantists see something overly
intense, too strong, proof of a sort of fanaticism which to them
seems to be the only possible explanation of such exaggerated
reactions.
Two Categories
As I see it, psychologically Esperantists fall into one of
two categories. On the one hand there are people who are not well
adapted to communal life, who feel themselves somewhat isolated
from what is currently fashionable, from society, from the
prevailing ideas and ways of acting. They are individuals who
have gotten used to the fact that they are different from most
people or who feel themselves rejected by most people. It is not
easy to take on the burden of the fundamental solitude of human
existence. That is why people who feel themselves different from
the majority tend to group together and, with others like
themselves, form a community in which they can feel at home. They
then get together and keep on telling each other how right they
are and how wrong the exterior world is. This is perfectly normal
and human. Esperanto gives many who are not well adapted to
society a place where they can find others like themselves who
are also not well adapted, a place where it is possible to find
the consolations and the strengths they need in order to make
life more bearable. This was especially true in the period after
the first hopes for an immediate world-wide adoption of Esperanto
were shown to be illusory and before the body of arguments
favorable to Esperanto became sufficiently strong and factual; in
other words, between the First World War and the seventies and
eighties. A large percentage of the Esperantists of that period
consisted of neurotics, that is, individuals who had either more
emotional problems or greater emotional problems than you find in
an ordinary person.
We owe an enormous debt to those neurotics, to those individuals
who suffered from crippling emotional problems, because without
their efforts the language would have simply died off. It is
naive and unjust to look down on them, as some proponents of the
"Manifesto of Rauma" do. In the historical
circumstances in which they found themselves, those rather
sectarian wearers of the Green Star were needed so that the
language might develop. Normal people could not get interested in
Esperanto and use it and keep it alive. If the language were not
in constant use, if nobody wrote in it, if it were not utilized
in correspondence, meetings, and congresses (even if these
consisted mainly of eccentrics) it would not have been able to
develop its linguistic and literary strengths, it would not have
been able to enrich itself, it would not have been able to
gradually lead to a deeper analysis of the world language
problem. I am convinced that after some centuries historians will
consider these people to have rendered an enormous service to
mankind by keeping the language alive and developing it, even
though their motives in part lay in a kind of psychological
pathology.
Besides the neurotics, the eccentrics about whom I have just
spoken, Esperanto attracted people whose personalities were
especially strong. People who enjoy full mental health can be
part of a nonconforming group only if their personalities are so
healthy that they can face the great majority basing their
positions on foundations that are so clear, so well-tested, of
such consequence that they can feel that they are right without
being arrogant about it. Happily, many people of this sort were
found in the Esperanto world from the very beginning. One of
them, for example, was Edmond Privat. We owe a great debt to them
too, because they helped things go forward and because, in
various circles, they gradually demonstrated that Esperantists
were not only a bunch of fanatic oddballs.
Clearly, the two categories have an intersection, people who have
more or more serious neurotic traits than the average man does
but who also possess personalities that are especially strong,
personalities that are often strengthened by the ongoing need
that these individuals have to train themselves to live in
environments to which they do not conform or are not fully
adapted.
A Paradox: Where lies Mental Health
Here we confront a paradox: for a long time the Esperanto
world consisted in large part of people who suffered from a
psychological pathology but who had an entirely healthy mental
attitude regarding linguistic communication while society in
general consisted of people who were maybe, relatively, more
normal psychologically, but who held to a completely neurotic,
pathological – I might even say crazy – position about
linguistic communication.
What makes it possible for us to make such a drastic assertion?
It is the fact that society in general presents all of the
symptoms of a psychopathology in its relation to linguistic
communication.
What do normal people do when they feel a need? They act to
satisfy that need by using the most effective, agreeable and
timely means available. Imagine someone who is hungry. He has a
wallet in his pocket filled with money. He finds himself in a
neighborhood with a lot of food stores and restaurants. If he is
normal, he steps into one of these and buys some food or orders a
meal and he quickly satisfies his hunger. What would you think of
a person who, instead of acting like this, goes to the train
station, buys a ticket for a place two hundred miles away, and
after arriving walks a long way through the countryside to a
small restaurant that has mediocre food? What would you think
about that kind of person who, because of his strange approach to
his problem, continues to go hungry for hours and winds up in the
end with something that is not very satisfying, spending a
hundred times more money than was necessary? Everybody would
diagnose this particular behavior as neurotic, as pathological.
Why act in such a complicated way that does nobody any good when
it was possible to easily and straightforwardly satisfy the
hunger. In the field of linguistic communication Esperantists act
like the first person, the rest of the world, like the second
person.
The existence of resistance confirms the diagnosis
Maybe you have some doubts about whether this behavior is
really pathological and you need confirmation of the diagnosis.
Well, we know that one of the characteristics of these kinds of
pathology is resistance. A person who has these kinds of
pathological traits will do anything in order to not become
conscious of the fact that they are not behaving sanely, that
they could act in an entirely different way that would be much
more agreeable and useful. Sometimes, it is true, the individual
recognizes that the behavior is abnormal but claims, "Yes, I
know that acting in this way is strange, not normal, even
pathological, but I can't help it." This refusal to accept
the fact that the behavior is abnormal, or maintaining that it
cannot be changed is called "resistance".
Well, it is interesting to see that the way in which linguistic
communication is organized in our world has all of the
characterizations of pathological behavior. Esperanto exists. It
makes it possible for people to communicate in a way that is much
less expensive than simultaneous interpretation, that is much
fairer than just using English, that is much more comfortable
than using any other language, and all this comes after a
considerably smaller investment of time, money and energy on the
part of the people and on the part of the state. In other words
it is a direct way of satisfying the need. But instead of using
it, society opts for a very complicated and extremely expensive
path. It forces millions of children to spend year after year
studying foreign languages that are so difficult that only one
out of a hundred, on the average, in Europe and one out of a
thousand in Asia are able to effectively use the language after
all their studies. After the investment of so much effort and
nervous energy and time and money teaching languages, the outcome
is that the problem of inequality is not solved and the
linguistic barriers have been so poorly dealt with that it is
necessary to invest yet more millions and millions of dollars in
order to create translations in dozens of languages and to bring
about simultaneous interpretation without which the people would
not be able to understand each other at all. This is crazy. It is
crazy to use people's time, money, effort in such a bungling
ineffective manner when it is possible to avoid all of this. By
behaving in this way, society shows itself to be pathological.
But what confirms that we are dealing with an authentic case of
psychopathology is this: if you draw the attention of
journalists, decision-makers, public figures, people in authority
to the way that social life is organized and try to get them to
see that the system is crazy and that there is a mentally sane
manner in which people can communicate, a way that is much more
easily reached, then you discover that you have provoked
resistance. The people refuse to consider what you are trying to
draw their attention to, they refuse to investigate the matter,
they brush the testimonials and the proofs before they get
to know them. This word "before" is important, because
it provides the proof that the diagnosis is correct; it bears
witness to the resistance. Those in authority prefer to not know
that there is another way of communicating between peoples than
that which they have foisted upon billions of men and women. They
are afraid to confront the truth. And because they do not want to
see that they are afraid, which itself provides further proof
about the neurotic, pathological character of their conduct, they
employ every pretext to not open up an inquiry. So these public
figures refuse something not knowing that they are refusing; they
fear, not knowing that they are afraid; they cause embarrassment,
injustice, frustration, and needless striving, expense, taxes,
all kinds of complications and a considerable amount of suffering
(I allude, among others, to refugees for whom the lack of a means
of linguistic communication is often the cause of very specific
suffering), they cause all of this not knowing that they are
causing all of this. This is a very serious social pathology. But
very few people notice this and understand it.
A Taboo
In fact, the entire field of linguistic communication between
peoples and between states is touched by a taboo. If you study
the documents which are produced about this area, you find out
that far more than 99 percent of them were written as though
Esperanto simply did not exist, as though mankind had no
experience of a means of international communication other than
the usual ones of translation, interpretation or the use of a
prestigious national language such as English. Esperanto is
taboo. This was repeatedly seen a little while ago in Brussels,
in the European Parliament, during a session of the so-called
International Commission which dealt with the question of
(mis)communication in the European Union. What proves that we are
dealing with something taboo is that they refused to make a
comparison.
In science, when investigators want to ascertain the value of
something, they always make a comparison with a reference. Before
making a decision about a new medication, scientists compare its
efficacy with others that are already well known. And when a
decision is to be made about a major piece of construction, such
as building a new stadium, what do people do? They put out a call
for bids. They invite the various firms to submit proposals, and
then they compare the various proposals so they can choose
the one that is best according to its cost-benefit ratio as well
as other criteria which must be considered. This is the normal
procedure. In fact there exists a particular scientific method
about the art of decision-making involving the selection of the
best way possible of reaching a particular goal. This scientific
method is called "operational research". It was born
during the Second World War as a means of choosing the best way
to transport goods or people with the greatest speed and the
least risk. Well, if the rules of operational research are
applied to the language problem, it will be found that of all of
the methods which can be presently observed in practice, the
optimum one for attaining the goal is Esperanto. But in order to
discover this, you have to compare the various systems with each
other and so see objectively, in practice ("on the
ground", as they say today) how effective Esperanto is
compared to using gestures, to trying to talk in a language which
has not been mastered, to using English, to translating documents
and interpreting speeches either simultaneously or afterwards, to
the use of Latin etc. Only when you make this kind of comparison
can you figure out which is the best system.
But, although many thousands of pages can be found in documents
that deal with the language situation, some in the UN, others in
the European Union, others in the linguistics departments of
universities, and so on, the documents which approach the problem
by making comparisons, including Esperanto, number less than your
fingers. Because comparing the various possible solutions to the
problem is something that is so common in other fields, its
absence in the field of international linguistic communication
demonstrates that a taboo is working.
What are the roots of the taboo?
Why this pathological approach to the language problem? Again
there are many causes. There are political causes. The idea that
people who are among the least talented intellectually could
freely communicate across national lines is repugnant to many
states. There are societal reasons. This same possibility is
repugnant to the privileged social classes. People who have a
pretty good command of English or of some other important
language enjoy many advantages over those who only speak some
local languages; they certainly do not want to give up these
advantages. This is particularly apparent in the so-called Third
World.
However, I believe that the main causes of this taboo have to do
with the psyche. The heart of the problem lies in the emotional
weight, burden, aura of the concept of "language", in
its ability to affect the deepest fibers of our soul. We think
with concepts or words. And the words and concepts are not merely
intellectual entities, they have certain emotional qualities to
them. Not all of them, but a lot of them. If I say
"war" or "money" or "mother" or
"sex" or "atomic energy", something vibrates
deeply in you, although you are normally not aware of it. In
other words, we are not indifferent when we face most of our
concepts, chiefly those which in some way are connected to our
desires, needs, aspirations, pleasures, suffering, power etc.
Among these concepts with a strong emotional aura is the concept
"language". Why? Because the language evokes the fact
that we are able to make ourselves understand, and the being able
to be understood is one of the deepest desires of each human
being. When I am tormented by some worry or when I am hurting, if
I can speak about it to someone who will hear me and react with
understanding, then I will feel that I have been helped, that I
will have shared my worry or suffering so that I no longer feel
alone, and because of that I will feel better. When a baby is
hurting and cries, very often adults do the wrong thing because
they do not understand what is going on, or they do nothing
except show by their expression how helpless they are. But when
the small child acquires language and can say, "My ear
hurts", then there is an altogether different reaction on
the part of the grown-up. What takes place then is real
communication, and that changes the child's life. Because this
communication usually happens with the mother who then can do a
better job of helping her child, the emotional aura of the
concept of "language" takes on feelings about her.
Because of this, most languages have an expression like "our
mother tongue" when, in fact, it is the "parental
tongue" or "the language of our environment".
Acquiring language is really a very ordinary thing. It happens
like any other kind of learning. There is nothing more mystical
about the acquisition of language than acquiring the ability to
drive a car. Nevertheless, there is an enormous difference
between the two. It is because of our age. When we learn how to
drive, we know that we are learning, and we already know a great
deal about the art of learning because we have already spent many
years attending school where we learned a lot about learning. But
when we acquire our parental language, we do not know in any way
that we are learning. This is why the experience seems like a
miracle to us. Before we could not communicate clearly. Now we
can express ourselves. Here is a miracle which changes our whole
life. Because of these circumstances in which we acquire
language, learning without knowing that we are learning, without
knowing that a perfectly ordinary process of learning is taking
place, the language becomes something that is holy, magical,
fabulous, mythical. Something which is located beyond the field
of reason. Something about whose origins we know nothing. In the
deepest part of our soul language is a gift of the gods, a
supernatural gift. No person has the right to change it. No one
has the right to freely and rationally meddle with something that
is linguistic
Just see how upset people get when they hear of an attempt to
change the spelling of words. Examine their arguments closely and
you will see that there is nothing really rational about them. It
is simply a matter of feelings, the feelings which the concept
"language" always stirs up.
A hidden authoritarian message
This core feeling about language as mythic, bestowed by the
Gods, and thus holy and not to be touched is the innermost part
of the emotional aura that surrounds the concept of
"language". To this core is added the fact that the
concept "language" evokes our earliest connections in
the family, mainly those with mother. To these two layers we can
add a third: the relationship with authority. When language is
handed down to children along with it comes a hidden message that
is almost never made explicit. And this message is horribly
dictatorial.
In fact it dictates the respective positions of the child and the
adult in society. When a child speaks incorrectly, they correct
the child almost from the very first day of school. If they do
not correct the child, they laugh or make fun or smile
meaningfully. Whatever the reaction, it makes little ones realize
that when they use a form of language that differs from correct
vocabulary or grammar, they are no longer within the bounds of
what is normal. When little English-speakers say "more
good," they are told, "We don't speak that way. We say better".
Perhaps in German they don't have the right to say "mehr
gut" or "guter" or "gueter" and yet,
apparently, children use those forms. They are corrected:
"Not like that. You say besser".
What does this mean for the depths of the psyche? It carries a
hidden message: "Do not trust your spontaneous, natural
tendencies which make you generalize those features of the
language that you have recognized. Do not trust your own logic.
Do not trust your reason. Do not trust your reflexes, your
instincts. Do not trust yourself. Obey us, even if our system is
absolutely irrational and foolish."
For children language is essentially a way to communicate. So the
first step in their thinking is: "If they understand me,
everything's OK. We have language so we can understand each
other." However, the reactions of those around them keeps on
sending this message: "Language is not something that was
thought up so people could understand each other. Language is a
field in which you learn to conform to the arbitrary,
inexplicable demands of the big people." There are taboos in
language which no one can justify. If a child who wants to
express the idea "he came" says "he comed",
"er kommte", "il a venu", they point out that
the child must say, "he came, er kam, il est venue".
Suppose the child then asks "Why?" No one can provide
him with a rational answer. People can only say, "Because
that's the way it is." And that implies that the language is
something that is governed by incomprehensible laws that are
never to be explained, that have their roots in the long ago.
Respect for those who lived so long ago or for the gods who
provided the language is more important than logic, than reason,
than the tendency to act spontaneously, instinctively, and so
more important than individual human nature.
Esperanto messes all of this up. It was born not so long ago.
That is sacrilege. A language does not have the right to be
young. A language is something that is holy and was handed down
by our ancestors or by the gods, not something that could come
into being now. And they say that this language does not have any
exceptions. That is criminal! If you could follow your natural
tendencies, your nature, your logic to express yourself, what
remains of the authority of your ancestors? That is why Esperanto
causes terrible fears in the depths of the psyche. It threatens
to deprive our parental language of its mythical, holy, magical
character. It relativizes it in spite of there being a powerful
emotional need that the parental language be something absolute.
We need to stop Esperanto's spread by all means possible. And we
need to do everything we can to prevent serious scientific
investigation of Esperanto. It might be seen that language is not
what we thought, and then the foundations of social relations
will be undermined. This subject is too emotional for calm,
objective scientific study, and also for such study of the
reactions to Esperanto.
A Monster
Besides, Esperanto seems to be a monster, because, they say,
one man made it up. In other words, it has a father but no
mother. It is the monstrous product of a single pervert. You can
find many definitions which contribute to this idea in
dictionaries, encyclopedias, books about language and materials
put out by Esperantists. According to these "Esperanto was
created by Zamenhof in 1887." Actually Esperanto was not
created in 1887. In 1887 there appeared the seed of a language, a
seed which had been growing and development in the mind and in
the notebooks of Zamenhof for many years. After that long
process, which can be compared to the process by which a seed is
gradually created in a plant, the project became public. That
means, the seed was sown. But the seed could become something
that lives only if the soil accepted it. And that soil was the
mother of Esperanto. It was the community of those first
great-hearted idealists who accepted the seed and gave it an
environment in which it could grow, could become transformed
could become something that was viable independent of any
particular individual.
Esperanto, as we use it today, is not the work of Zamenhof. It is
a language which has developed on the foundation of Zamenhof's
project through a century of constant use by very diverse people.
It is a language which has developed in an entirely natural way
through usage, literary creation, successive proposals and
counter-proposals, usually unconsciously. It is not a monster
which a single person brought into existence. It does have a
father, certainly, a marvelous father who successfully endowed it
with an incredibly powerful suitability for life, but it also has
a mother who lovingly cared for it and who, much more than a
single father could have, gave life to it.
Facts are more stubborn than words
You see, the psychological aspects of Esperanto, and of the
world language problem, are much more complex than you would have
first imagined. In the psyche of most individuals lies a terrible
resistance to the very idea of an international language. Because
of this resistance, almost no one in the political, social and
intellectual elite will willingly and calmly investigate the
matter. And yet it progresses. Similar cases of resistance to
something that is an improvement, that is more suitable and more
democratic occur very often throughout history. The most typical
example is the resistance in Europe to the numerals which we now
use, the Indian/Arabic numerals: the intellectual elite (and not
only they) felt these numerals to be a sacrilege against the
Roman numerals which had been in use. I am convinced that
Esperanto will someday be generally accepted. The pathology will
not always be more powerful than the healthy forces which are
also active in society. Among these healthy forces is the greater
and greater understanding of the phenomenon of Esperanto on the
part of linguists and of many other people. There are also the
demands of reality. As Lincoln said, "You can fool all of
the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the
time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the
time." If you compare Esperanto with other means of
communicating between peoples, you find it to be objectively the
best method by far according to all the criteria. Facts are more
stubborn than ideas. The resistance will go on and it will be
intense, certainly, even if only because you can perceive
something only when you ready to. Because of this, nowadays, many
people simply will not hear what you are saying about Esperanto:
their minds are not ready and so your phrases pass them and do
not reach them. Yes, the resistance will continue to be powerful.
But, believe me, it cannot win out. The facts will win out. The
truth will win out. Esperanto will win out.